How climate change became a pretext for fascism

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2024 was an ominous year for the future of Earth. Climate scientists anticipate that it will be the first year in which the average planetary temperature was 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels , a critical threshold established in 2015 during the Paris climate accord . Meanwhile a 2023 study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found humans brought about as many extinctions over the previous five centuries that if our species had never existed, it would have taken 18,000 years for that same number of genera to have gone extinct on their own.

The good news for humanity is that people have the power to stop these mass extinctions and stave off the worst consequences of climate change . The bad news for our species is that we are not doing any of those things; in fact, we are led by science-denying politicians like Donald Trump in the United States, Vladimir Putin in Russia, Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Javier Milei in Argentina.

Julian Cribb, a British-Australian author who specializes in covering the intersections between science and politics, has published nine books on subjects related to ecocide — the practice in which humans actively destroy their environment. His latest is ” How to Fix a Broken Planet: Advice for Surviving the 21st Century ,” in which he warns that humanity is running out of time to fix the escalating crisis. Among other things, Cribb proposes the creation of a Global Truth Commission to help leaders separate good science and information from bad; technological innovation to wean humanity off of agriculture and create food in more sustainable ways; and strategies that will address all of the threats to humanity’s future holistically, rather than separately. Cribb discussed his thoughts on humanity’s future with Salon.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and context.

In the past, you have advocated for a Global Truth Commission. Can you elaborate on what that means, how it would be implemented, and what you’ll say to those who claim this violates free speech principles?

A Global Truth Commission basically is a fact-checking agency. The world has 420 fact checking agencies , which are run mostly by media organizations, like Reuters, for example. In Australia, we have one run by the ABC, a … Read More