Climate realism or climate cynicism?

The New Republic transitions quickly from calling it the former to calling it the latter, businesses and think tanks ditching the baseline idea of the Paris accords and accepting that we're not just going to hit 2C, we're going to hit 3C or more.

It's all about capitalism, even more than TNR shows.

First, Paris was always just aspirational Jell-O, as I wrote at the time. And, two people made sure it would be just that — Xi Jinping and .... Merikkka's Dear Leader. Why? Capitalism.

What does this mean?

First, banksters, hedge funds and others, pivoting from backing decarbonization, which they never really backed, and carbon offsets and other such kabuki theater pretendianism on fighting climate change, to touting investments in air conditioning and other such businesses.

Second, especially as more and more countries eye a selective isolationism or increased efforts at autarky, it means upping the ramparts against climate destruction from outside the doors. And, TNR notes that think tanks as "venerable" as the Council on Foreign Relations are signing off on at least some of this.

This:

The brand of climate cynicism being voiced by the Council on Foreign Relations is more novel. In an essay outlining the founding principles of the Climate Realism Initiative, Varun Sivarum—the program’s director and a former top aide to Biden-era U.S. climate envoy John Kerry—describes a zero-sum, catastrophically climate-changed world where “other countries will single-mindedly prioritize their own interests” and the United States should do the same. Facing climate-fueled mass migration “of at least hundreds of millions of climate refugees [that] could upend the international order, and increasingly grisly natural disasters,” the U.S. “should provide the support it can, cooperate with countries on building resilience capabilities, and protect its borders,” as well as “prepare for global competition for resources and military positioning that is intensifying in the melting Arctic.”

As emissions continue to rise from emerging economies, Sivarum calls on policymakers to treat climate change as a “top national security priority—on the level of averting nuclear war and engaging in great-power competition with China,” working with allies to penalize countries whose emissions continue to rise. Acknowledging that such an approach is “fundamentally unfair,” Sivarum makes the case for an America First climate policy. “Nevertheless, the fact is that foreign emissions are endangering the American homeland,” he argues. “Every tool of the U.S. and allies’ arsenals, spanning diplomatic and economic coercion to military might, should be on the table.”

Donald Trump and his top allies don’t seem to think climate change is real, or that it’s a bad thing. But as the White House threatens to invade Greenland for its minerals and disappears people into Salvadoran prisons, it’s helping to build precisely the kinds of climate resilience that the Council on Foreign Relations—with its roster of Biden and Obama White House alumni—seems to be championing. Bleak as warming projections are, a planet where governments and businesses fight to the death for their own profitable share of a hotter, more chaotic planet is bleaker still.

What it really means is that, as income inequality looks to rise even more in both developed and upper-tier developing nations, is that, within countries, the poor and the precariat will get screwed even more, while being exploited in the name of economic nationalism.

What it means for me personally as far as political activism, is that this remains, or increases, as another reason to say "fuck the Democrats" as well as "fuck the Republicans."