Gradually, Then Suddenly

Despite conservatism’s dream of denial, we clearly live in the Buddhist world of impermanence. In addition, Darwinian evolution emphasizes the ability of almost all creatures to adapt to gradual change. Sudden change presents far more difficulty. We have seen slow but steady changes in our world over the last few decades, and especially in the first quarter century of this century – the increasing impacts of climate change; the erosion of democracy both here in the US and elsewhere abroad; the increasing power of transnational oligarchs; and the fragmentation of the media and decline in trusted sources due to rapid technological change. As we enter the second Trump presidency, it seems pretty clear that all these trends are reaching the “then suddenly” stage of rapid change and are increasingly interrelated. And it is clear that most people and the institutions that support them are woefully unprepared for what lies ahead.

The warnings about anthropogenic climate change have been with us for nearly half a century. Even the early climate models proved to be fairly accurate predictors of where we are now with around a 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) rise in global temperatures, a potential climate tipping point. It is readily apparent that the pace of climate change impacts is increasing both in frequency and ferocity. The record average temperatures in both air and sea temperatures are driving higher winds, massive flooding from moisture-laden atmospheric rivers, stronger and more frequent hurricanes, especially those arising from the boiling Gulf of Mexico, and longer and deeper droughts that crush agriculture and create tinderboxes for uncontrollable wildfires. Better warning systems and increased responder capacity may save lives, but it is never going to stop the economic and physical destruction of the wildfires in Lanai and Los Angeles, the flooding in Asheville and Vermont, and the carnage of hurricanes Helene and Milton.

While some, like Republicans here in the US, continue their denial, the insurance industry is taking notice. Insurance rates are skyrocketing, and insurers are literally pulling out of certain vulnerable areas. Climate change is at least partly responsible for the civil war in Syria, with the resulting rise in migration to Europe, and the rise in immigration from Central America. It is also linked to a rise in pathogenic disease. The numbers of climate change refugees, both internal and international, are increasing rapidly.  As parts of the world become literally uninhabitable, climate change refugees will be facing a world increasingly inhospitable to welcoming them.

At the other end of the spectrum is the increasing global power of the transnational oligarchy. In 1987, the richest 3,000 households around the world had a combined wealth of around 3% of the world’s GDP. Today, the top 3,000 have wealth equivalent to 13% of total GDP. A larger group, merely the richest 1%, now have more wealth than 95% of the rest of the world. The emergence of this global oligarchy has been abetted by post-1980s laissez-faire economics that allows corporate crime to largely go unpunished and the post-2000s erosion of limits on campaign finance and lobbying in democratic countries. In addition, austerity-driven Western governments made little effort to prevent foreign oligarchs like the Middle East oil barons and Russian robber barons from hiding their money in their countries, often under the guise of “investment”, further enhancing their power and riches.

Years of gradually increasing oligarchic power are now reaching their own “then suddenly” phase. The 10 richest billionaires have actually doubled their wealth in the last four years. Today, one third of the world’s top 50 companies has a CEO or principal shareholder who is a billionaire themselves. Globalization, especially the post-2001 WTO regime, and the free flow of capital has meant that these corporations increasingly have business interests in multiple countries and increasingly use their economic power to exert political power and control in the countries where they do business in furtherance of their own interests, again eroding the institutions that might limit both their economic and political power. They knowingly engage in actions that are often at odds with the actual foreign policy of the country in which these countries are theoretically domiciled, with Rex Tillerson’s Exxon deal with the Iraqi Kurds and Facebook’s abetting Chinese censorship and the Rohingya genocide just some of many prime examples. This has, unsurprisingly, now morphed into disdain for any democratic governance that might restrict their corporate activities. Instead, today’s oligarchs prefer to work with autocrats who are more easily “negotiated” with, leading to situations like Musk aligning with Putin and his Russian oligarchs in supporting and funding Trump and far right parties in Europe. When not working to destabilize democratic governance, these oligarchs dream of building their own nation-states, and prepare to retreat to their own impregnable bunkers to protect themselves from the damage, anger, and societal collapse that they themselves helped create.

Here in the United States, years of democratic erosion have finally led to our own tipping point. The corruption and collapse of the legal and political systems began with Bush v. Gore and the inability or unwillingness to deal with those who led the first mini-insurrection in Florida in 2000. It continued with the failure to hold to account those who lied to get us into war in Iraq and who kept the lies about Afghanistan going for decades; those who ordered and administered torture; those who created the worst financial crises since the Great Depression through massive mortgage and financial fraud while profiting from it; those who dismantled the Civil Rights Act, neutered the Voting Rights Act, obliterated any campaign finance limits, and lied about upholding decades of legal precedence to get confirmed. All of that led to the most criminal president the country has ever had who then led the largest insurrection against the United States since the Civil War when he lost the next election. And still the political and legal systems could not hold him to account, instead gutting the whole concept of “no man is above the law” and giving the president near-dictatorial powers.

We are now ruled by a demented self-avowed dictator who issues orders every day that violate the law, enhances his own powers while enriching himself, and uses the power of the state to punish his enemies. He is implementing loyalty tests and purging the government of those who can legally restrain him and those who might be unwilling to break the law for him. His patently unfit cabinet appointments and impromptu policies promise more destruction, disease, and death, both at home and abroad. He openly cavorts with violent terrorists whom he calls upon to intimidate any opposition. He is unrestrained by either political party, one because most of its members are onboard with his autocratic policies, and the other because its geriatric feckless leadership are stuck in a now long-gone world, defending failed institutions and still observing shattered norms that are now meaningless. The other supposed independent watchdog, the media, has been fragmented by technological change and the rump of what’s left had lost all credibility due to its oligarch owners imposing ideological restrictions on what can and can’t be said, best illustrated by the rapid collapse of both twitter and the Washington Post. Like every other autocracy, the final targets are science and education, using state dollars to fund indoctrination, restrict critical thinking, and suppress knowledge. Even taking the long view, the “then suddenly” cratering of American democracy in just eight years into what is as close to a fascist autocracy as we have ever had is remarkable. The worst may be mitigated to some degree by the last shreds of law and democracy we have left and retaliation from our soon-to-be-former allies, but the path is unmistakable.

These trends may seem disparate but they have increasingly become interconnected. The oligarchs of the fossil fuel industry and its myriad of reliant corporations have obfuscated the truth about climate change. They buy political influence to both deny its existence and block efforts to mitigate it. The tech oligarchs demand ever-increasing amounts of electricity, creating more emissions than some entire countries, and then use their money to buy control the media environment and deliver more propaganda for the politicians in their pocket. The increased intensity of natural disasters driven by global warming and corresponding heightened chances for more global pandemics create climate change refugees and disrupt global supply chains and production. The resulting economic and political instability creates the perfect conditions for far-right parties like the GOP in the US and AfD in Germany to thrive.

The negative feedback loops are now self-reinforcing. The damage from climate change will increase, creating more destruction and chaos, which then feeds more economic and political instability which then creates more room for autocracy, fascism, and crony capitalism. The autocrats always need to find an “other” to constantly scapegoat and the oligarchs will not and can not generate the collective action necessary to mitigate climate change, so the instability and the feedback loop of chaos and repression not only continues but intensifies. The world that most of us, at least those of us in the West, have known for the last half century – a relatively stable climate, peaceful democratic governance, critical alliances that at least pay lip service to defending the peace – all that is gone. Suddenly, we are in a new place – a more unstable, more autocratic, more unequal, more chaotic, probably more violent, and much more dangerous world. And we are largely unprepared for it.