Can Our Broken Politics Solve a Problem Like Climate Change?

What We’ve Learned So Far From the First Extinction Summer

Image Credit: Climate Change Service

Canada. Europe. Argentina. Siberia. Turkey. A planet on fire.

What have we learned so far, from what is perhaps humanity’s first proper Extinction Summer?

One thing that strikes me, over and over again, is how…far…behind the curve our politics really are. As we discussed recently, the doom-shamers say: “We have the tech to solve climate change! All we have to do is apply it!” Of course, this is scarcely true — we don’t have replacements for industrial agriculture, food, cement, steel, glass, plastics, chemicals, not remotely at civilizational scales. But even if we did: how could we “just apply it”? As things stand today? We wouldn’t have a chance.

There’s a thought that rubs away at me like sandpaper. One that I feel is telling of where we stand — really stand. It wasn’t even a decade ago that much of the world rejected the idea of Green New Deals. The US. Britain. Europe. Asia, of course, which doesn’t have the money to implement one to begin with.

The politics of climate change? They’re nonexistent. The doom-shamers who say that “all we have to do is apply the tech!” — and by this, they mean renewable energy that rich parts of the world are beginning to implement, here and there — seem not to want to be acquainted with this difficult fact.

You know the term “climate denial,” I’m sure. But stop to really reflect on it. As a civilization? Our politics are in climate denial.

What’s been happening over the last decade or so? Forget even a window that big — let’s take the example of just the last year or so. Two of the nations hardest hit by this Extinction Summer…elected…far right governments. Italy and Greece. So while Italy burned, its ministers denied climate change existed. This isn’t some kind of anomaly, though — it’s a theme. Australia had a Black Summer, as they call it — black meaning “incineration” — not so long ago, and while it did, its PM, too, was a climate denier.

Join me in deranged laughter.

Now let’s zoom out. What are the politics of our civilization? In a recent essay, I pointed out that they ranged on a spectrum, essentially, from neoliberalism to fascism. The Overton Window — the window of political possibilities — is shifting hard, fast, and intensely to the right. So much so that politicians in once dignified social democracies speak of gunning down [racial slur] kids.

Our civilization is embracing fascism. All over again. There’s no point, really, in gilding the poisoned lily. I’m not a New York Times columnist, and I don’t have to pretend like there are two “sides” here. This is just an objective fact about our age: globally, a neo-fascist wave has risen. So much so that Spain’s recent election — where the forces of progress still lost, but at least didn’t completely collapse — was painted as a kind of victory. Think about that for a moment — things are so bleak and backwards that just not losing catastrophically anymore is thought of as winning for the side of sanity and progress. Cue the deranged laughter.

This isn’t a political point. Politics is something, in this age, that’s become wedded to people’s identities. But politics should be something we can and should change, both personally and systemically. Politics is just a response to circumstances, a set of solutions. There are times when we should want more, for example, free trade — and so we choose liberalism. Times that we need to save money, or pare back social systems — and so perhaps we choose conservatism. But in this day and age? We need something beyond this old, industrial age paradigm altogether.