The Trump administration’s attitude to climate change, and to those campaigning for drastic measures to contain it, is ugly, nasty, and wrong. But behind the crassness and toxicity of Trump, Mnuchin, et al is cold logic and brutal honesty: Their politics is the only authentic defence of contemporary capitalism. And, judging by Mnuchin’s patronising advice to Thunberg, they understand that mainstream economics, unlike climate science, is their friend. Trump gets it: climate change is capitalism’s Waterloo. The only alternative to their policy of accelerated climate change, to the oil and finance curses that drive capitalism, is the wholesale disintegration of today’s technostructure.

Source: Irish Examiner January 31, 2020 00:00 UTC