The New Abnormal’s Molly Jong-Fast talks climate change with David Roberts and Kate Aronoff

Last week’s Supreme Court decision to limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s powers to regulate greenhouse gas emissions comes as far-right groups seek to use the issue as a Trojan horse to advance other issues such as anti-immigration policies.

David Roberts, who writes the climate newsletter Volts, tells The new abnormals Molly Jong-Fast on why court decision could spur rise in eco-fascism.

“The point of this is to remove the EPA’s power to regulate greenhouse gases, right? That’s what they want to do and that legal justification, that case that they came up with is so forced,” he said. “If you have a maybe more reactionary mindset and you find things are going to hell in a hand basket, maybe your reaction is that we need to build higher walls. We need to keep more migrants out. We need to mine and drill out our fossil fuels while we can. That’s the lifeboat mentality – everyone goes down, let’s stock up on our lifeboat and be the last one standing.”

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“This is how reactionaries will think about climate change. Once they really get it, you know, this kind of green fascism or whatever you want to call it. You’ve seen it pop up in little bits and pieces here and there sometimes in Europe too, but it hasn’t really come together yet,” he said. “That will happen in the next few years.”

Also Kate Aronoff, who is responsible for climate and energy New Republic and is the author of Overheated: How Capitalism Destroyed the Planet and How We Fight Backsays the democratic process needs to be better at translating majority opinion into action on climate change.

“If you look at public opinion about the climate crisis, the public really cares. The public wants action, and the problem…is that we just have a political system that’s really not equipped to translate public opinion, where there are strong majorities and support for climate action, into democratic majorities that support those policies enforce law.”

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