Original article by Chrissy Stroop republished from OpenDemocracy

Despite floods and fires, both left and right in the US act like environmental disaster isn’t happening

There’s a lot of hot air from the American right around education at the moment, with hate groups inciting moral panics that have resulted in the banning of books related to race, sex and gender. But there seems to be surprisingly little emphasis on another right-wing bugbear: environmentalism.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s not that US conservatives don’t consider bashing Greta Thunberg on the internet a national pastime. It’s just that Greta and the cause she represents don’t seem to come up when right-wing activists go to school-board meetings to scream about ‘transgenderism’ or ‘critical race theory’.

On one level, it is, of course, good that they’re not calling for literature addressing our environmental crises to be banned in schools. Growing up, I learned a lot from Ranger Rick magazine, a product of the National Wildlife Federation that teaches children about nature and supports conservation. But on another level, the lack of interest on this issue from the right may actually signal a problem for the US and therefore – because my country is such an outsized contributor to global climate change – the entire planet.

Authoritarians are bullies who paint themselves as victims. If you want to see what I mean, just type ‘Donald Trump’ and the phrase ‘treated very unfairly’ into Google. They whine and scream the loudest when they feel their privilege and power to be most immediately threatened. And if Republicans do not feel especially threatened on behalf of their precious fossil fuels industry, that’s probably because the US is highly unlikely to pass any serious environmental regulations any time soon.

Original article by Chrissy Stroop republished from OpenDemocracy