Spend enough time with some of the worst-case climate scenarios, and you may start to assume, as I did, that a major demagogue would contest the presidency in the next century. I figured that the catastrophic consequences of planetary warming would all but ensure the necessary conditions for such a leader, and I imagined their support coming from a movement motivated by ethnonationalism, economic stagnation, and hatred of immigrants and refugees. I pictured, in other words, something not so far from Trump 2016.

I just assumed it wouldn’t pop up until 2040.

But Trump’s success in the primary among the civically disintegrated suggests another way forward. Improving the United States’s immune response to authoritarian leadership—a response that could be repeatedly tested in the century to come—can follow from weaving its civic fabric ever tighter. I don’t know what this will look like, exactly, for every person. But here are some places to start: Volunteer. Run for local or state office. Give to charity (whether due to religion or effective altruism). Organize at work. Join a church or a community choir or the local library staff. Make your hometown a better place for refugees to settle. Raise a child well.

Das hat nichts mit dem eigentlichen Ziel zu tun, die Klimaemissionen zu reduzieren. Deswegen mag all das unbedeutend erscheinen, so der Autor.

And, admittedly, they are. But climate realists have always split their work between mitigation—that is, trying to keep the climate from getting worse—and adaptation—trying to protect what we already have. As more warming gets baked into the biosphere, as seas rise and livelihoods fall, these prosaic steps will become vital forms of adaptation.

Die Eindämmung des Klimawandels ist an sich ein lohnenswertes Ziel. Er ist umso wichtiger, wenn er als eine weitere Form des langfristigen Antifaschismus verstanden wird, so der Autor.

Ich würde mir wünschen, dass unsere Regierung diesen Gedanken mit Blick auf Russland nicht vergisst.