A Grim Possible Future

The Oregon Republican legislators' nullification actions (with militias! and threats of murder by elected officials!) have been successful in killing the climate legislation supported by a clear majority of the state's elected legislators and its governor.

It's yet another bad news story in our constant flood, and one that I'm afraid will be an important turning point when the history books are written.

Dave Roberts of Vox had this to say as a first reaction:

I'm gonna write a proper piece about this soon, but for now a quick thread on the direction of U.S. conservative climate policy. I think over the next 10 years -- and probably much sooner -- we'll see two distinct trends.

First, the U.S. right will transition seamlessly from climate denialism to climate nationalism/fascism. They will acknowledge the threat abd use it to justify exploiting U.S. fossil fuel reserves, building walls, shutting down immigration, and passing punitive trade policies.

Collective action problems just don't sit well in the reactionary mind -- and non-zero-sum collective solutions are incomprehensible to it. However, a mad scramble of all-against-all, in which the powerful U.S. can hoard and intimidate and come out ahead? That, reactionaries get.

Second, U.S. conservatives will ramp up their demagoguery around "eco-terrorism." As it becomes clear that the GOP simply won't allow a small-d democratic solution, desperate young people are going to turn to direct action. The GOP will use that to justify repression.

And be clear: as climate gets more and more chaotic, and the ambient sense of threat and uncertainty rises around the world, these kinds of reactionary responses will gain more public appeal, not less. Threat and uncertainty make everyone more conservative.

So the U.S. is at a crucial juncture, one that reflects a larger global dynamic: the space for addressing climate change in a cooperative, mutually beneficial way is rapidly shrinking. From here on out, circumstances will bolster the forces of reaction.

That's why the situation in Oregon is freaking me out. I thought we had at least a little time left in which the mechanisms of democracy could still work. But the fossil-funded white minority is openly, nakedly rejecting democracy and it looks like they'll get away with it.

The right will see that it worked and it will rapidly become standard practice, across states, maybe federally. (If you think the rules are different in different states, so it wouldn't work, you are still hung up on thinking rules matter.)

That would mean the end of any chance of the U.S. addressing climate change through peaceful, mutually beneficial, democratic means. Oregon Ds elected majorities, then super-majorities ... now they're supposed to accept that success is only possible if they vote every R out?

If democratic means become impossible, what's left is violence. There may be some radical climate activists who think they're ready for that, but guess what? The reactionaries will always have more guns and fewer scruples. The forces of decency will never win that fight.

Basically, this is future-of-the-species stuff, getting decided through a spectacle that's barely even able to break into the daily news cycle. And the next time around, there may not even be the pretense of democracy. We are truly headed into the shit.