Reactionary politics and climate change are connected. At the dawn of 2023 that connection may seem obscure, but ongoing droughts, mega-storms and displaced people will aggravate America’s existing political tensions.
When the news shows me low water in Lake Mead, I see rioters in the nation’s Capitol. The Salt Lake Tribune reports on North America’s climate crisis the same day it reports on the January 6 hearings. We read of water shortages and storm surges. We read of kidnapping Michigan’s governor and of right-wing Proud Boys. Climate change did not cause the January 6 uprising. However, the destabilizing social circumstances that generated January 6 will intensify as the climate crisis unfolds.
My science colleagues tell me about climate change through parts-per-million of carbon, through rates of glacial melt, through centimeters of sea level rise. Those are ominous numbers, but the climate threat facing the average American is the political fallout from the imminent economic downturn and related social disorder.
The U.S. National Climate Assessment projects increased economic disruption: “Climate change creates new risks and exacerbates existing vulnerabilities in communities across the United States, presenting growing challenges to human health and safety, quality of life and the rate of economic growth.”
The political extremism already agitating America will be inflamed by climate change, and it would be healthy to start thinking about the two together.
Those climate pressures are coming, so now is the time to prepare democracy’s infrastructure for the shock. I’m talking about bipartisan efforts to secure the peaceful transfer of elected offices and building a more efficient electricity grid. I’m talking about making media responsible for the truth of their claims while investing in energy independence. I’m talking about regulating violent paramilitaries alongside policies that reward public transportation. If we overlook the human consequences of climate disruption, the engineering victories won’t matter.
The January 6 anniversary tells me that the time to address America’s extremist tendencies is before they metastasize under climate pressure. Plato said that democracy erodes into tyranny, but maybe the coming stresses of climate can inspire Americans to safeguard democratic institutions.
While the IPCC forecasts rising temperatures and seas and poverty, the initial erosion of democracy is underway. Across Europe, democracies are devolving into authoritarian regimes. Hungary is now a one-party sham of a parliamentary republic shaped by censorship and false elections. Turkey has devolved from a constitutional republic to a presidential regime where President Erdogan disallows opposition. Poland’s ruling Law and Justice Party threatens the free press and disparages liberal democracy.
Authoritarian drift is real, and Europe re-enacts American author Sinclair Lewis’s haunting novel “It Can’t Happen Here,” about a president who becomes an authoritarian dictator.
Meantime, the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack charges that Rudi Giuliani and Donald Trump and others conspired to upend vote totals and a transition process stretching back to George Washington. Nonetheless, millions of Americans are convinced the 2020 election was stolen in the states their man lost.
Closer to home, Kari Lake, the Republican who just lost the race for governor of Arizona, is one of several who fan dangerous flames of insurrection as a campaign strategy. The point here is that America’s grand experiment is at a vulnerable spot. Add the fact that climate change will precipitate ecological disasters that occasion emergencies and the coming decade promises demagogues pretexts to undercut our Constitution the way the Nazis used the Reichstag Fire to suspend democratic norms.
Given this political context, Utah has a profound opportunity. The parallel news track about our Great Salt Lake’s demise, record summer heat and water shortages should warn climate-concerned citizens to invest in democracy. Sure, get solar panels eventually, but cross the political aisle now to cooperate on bills like the Electoral Count Reform Act.
If climate change generates extreme politics, the reverse is also true — political polarization precludes collaborative efforts toward sustainability. I am ready to applaud cross-party efforts when the Utah legislative session starts January 17.
James Madison warned that “tyranny” grows “on some favorable emergency.” The ongoing climate crisis will precipitate emergency after emergency, and America needs a resilient political infrastructure to weather the storm.
Jeffrey McCarthy
Jeffrey McCarthy, Ph.D., is director of the Environmental Humanities Program and affiliate faculty at the Global Change and Sustainability Center, University of Utah.