AMERICAN EMPIRE VS PLANET EARTH
Climate denial reveals the most dangerous form of American narcissism: The delusion that reality will bend to accommodate our convenience.
“IT MEANS THAT THE U.S. FEDERAL GOVERNMENT is now at war with humanity.”
When climate scientist Michael Mann uttered those words in response to the Trump administration’s latest assault on climate science, a chill ran down my spine. Not because it was shocking — but because it articulated something so obviously true that we’ve been dancing around for decades.
So, let’s talk about this war. Because wars have casualties, strategies, and endgames. And this one’s no different.
Last week, news broke that the Trump administration is assembling a body of federal “research” aimed at showing that a warming world actually *benefits* humanity. Yes, you read that right. As coastal communities drown, wildfires rage, and heat waves kill thousands, they’re working overtime to tell us it’s all sunshine and roses. Or rather, sunshine and profits.
This isn’t just standard-issue climate denial. It’s a dramatic escalation.
We’re moving from “bruh, it’s not even happening” to “it’s sooo happening and it’s like good for you!” — which is essentially the gaslighting equivalent of being punched in the face and told it’s a gentle-exfoliating massage with a steam.
Yet before I go on, I need to add something crucial to Mann’s insight . . .
While this administration’s climate approach represents a shocking new front in the war on humanity, the truth is that the U.S. government has been waging different versions of this war for generations. There was no golden era of American benevolence.
My mind immediately goes to the countless coups orchestrated across Latin America, the never-ending wars in the Middle East, the callous disregard for Indigenous lives, the centuries of brutal enslavement and its ongoing legacy, the racial terrorism directed at any community challenging white dominance, the industrial prison complex, and the systematic neglect of the poorest Americans.
The U.S. government has been waging war on various segments of humanity since its bloody inception — AND also, yes, climate catastrophe represents something even more finite: An annihilation on the very ecological foundations that sustain all life on Earth.
It’s American imperialism gone global and geological — expanded to include not just targeted human communities but the entire web of life on the planet. All of us, all the time, all at once — which makes Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s recent comment that “the Pentagon does not do climate change crap” especially terrifying (imagine being so dedicated to ignorance that you proudly announce it like it’s a virtue).
So, yes, the U.S. federal government is now at war with humanity. But this isn’t new. It’s merely escalated a centuries-long conflict to its final, existential stage.
This brings me to a personal story that illustrates how deeply this fuckery has seeped into our culture . . .
My husband has a Masters in Climate Science, yet when he offered to explain the basics to my climate-denying uncle, we were promptly disowned and written out of their will. Yes, really. Not because the conversation was condescending — it wasn’t — but because suggesting that Fox News might be wrong about science was apparently an unforgivable offense. Jesus wept.
Now, do I care about being written out of a will? Absolutely not. But I do remain fascinated by how willing people are to reject reality — to deny the existence of rising seas while their ankles are already wet — to protect the interests of politicians who don’t know they exist, couldn’t give a fuck about them, and a capitalist structure that will eventually consume them too.
It’s the ultimate expression of narcissism — this idea that the world revolves around human constructs and interpretation, that nature will bend to accommodate our convenience, that money can buy escape from planetary boundaries.
Because here’s what climate-denying capitalists fail to understand: Wealth won’t protect them when the wildfires come, when the floods rise, when the food systems collapse. Yes, wealth might buffer you temporarily. It might buy you a nicer evacuation hotel with a good wine list, a better air purifier, a more remote sanctuary with great croissants. But eventually, the bill comes due for everyone. Just ask the wealthy residents of Pacific Palisades how their bank accounts protected them from the horrific flames in December.
The white supremacist, authoritarian strain that’s gripped our politics isn’t separate from climate denial — they’re two sides of the same coin. Both require rejecting evidence in favor of comforting mythology. Both prioritize short-term power over long-term survival. Both justify cruelty to the *other* while promising safety to the chosen.
And both are suicide pacts dressed up as salvation.
When Trump’s administration fires climate scientists and scrubs climate data from government websites, they’re not just attacking science — they’re attacking our collective capacity to respond to existential threat. It’s like ripping out the smoke detectors while the house is already on fire, then selling us all tickets to stand closer to the flames.
The truly disturbing part? None of this is accidental. Trump’s Budget Director and anti-climate bureaucrat Russ Vought and the Project 2025 crowd have explicitly stated their intention to cut “climate fanaticism” (also known as “basic scientific literacy”) from the federal government while expanding executive authority and protecting fossil fuel interests.
They CONSTANTLY tell us who they are. Are we ready to believe them?
Climate denial is narcissism at its most destructive. It places human desires above natural laws, personal comfort above collective survival, and present convenience above future existence. It says: My right to remain comfortable in my beliefs trumps your right to a livable planet. My psychological comfort is more important than your physical survival.
And God, it makes me angry. Because this isn’t just abstract policy anymore. It’s about whether all children will inherit a world of possibility or a world of suffering. When I look at all kids’ faces, I feel a rage so pure it could power cities. The same people who claim to care about future generations when it serves their political narratives will sacrifice those very generations for short-term gain without a second thought.
What makes it all the more tragic is that the people working hardest to deny climate change are also those most vulnerable to its effects. Not the billionaires bankrolling the denial machine — they’ve got bunkers in New Zealand. I’m talking about everyday people who’ve been convinced to fight passionately against their own interests, against the future of their own grandchildren. Even wealthy individuals who believe their money creates a forcefield against reality will find that nature doesn’t accept bribes.
This is the cruel genius of fascism: It transforms victims into willing accomplices.
So yes, the U.S. government is at war with humanity — with our present and our future. But it’s a war being fought with the enthusiastic support of millions who’ve been convinced that their liberation lies in their own destruction. And that’s the part that keeps me up at night.
Because how do you fight a war when half the casualties are cheering for the bombs?
I don’t have easy answers. But I know this: Reality doesn’t care what any of us believe. The rising seas won’t stop because some bureaucrat decides they’re actually beneficial. The fires won’t extinguish themselves because acknowledging them is politically inconvenient.
Sometimes, in quiet moments, I’m overwhelmed by a sadness so vast it feels bottomless. I grieve for the world we could have had — the one where we met this moment with courage and clarity instead of denial and delay. I grieve for the relationships severed by ideological chasms too wide to bridge. I grieve for the parts of our humanity that we’ve sacrificed on the altar of consumption and convenience.
But grief isn’t the end of the story. It’s the fuel.
The first step in any resistance is to name things truthfully. So thank you, Michael Mann, for calling this what it is: A war on humanity.
The second step is to recognize that this war won’t merely be won through polite disagreement or appeals to reason. It will require direct action, civil disobedience, and dismantling the systems that have brought us to this point. We have to realize the ballot box and *permitted* marches have proven woefully inadequate against the machinery of ecocide.
We need to dismantle the narcissistic worldview that places human convenience above planetary boundaries, that privileges profit over people, that sees nature as something to dominate rather than something we’re utterly dependent upon. We need to build an economy and a society that recognizes our profound interconnectedness with all life.
This isn’t abstract. It means creating community resilience networks that operate outside capitalist logic. It means learning to grow food, harvest rainwater, and generate energy locally. It means normalizing degrowth and voluntary simplicity as acts of resistance. It means sabotaging the machinery of extraction wherever possible and necessary. It means building dual power structures that can sustain us when both the climate and political systems collapse. It means reconnecting with ancestral wisdom about living within planetary boundaries. And perhaps most importantly, it means rejecting the individualism that has isolated us from each other and the earth, and instead building collective power that can actually challenge the forces destroying our world.
The planet is writing its own testament right now. And unless we act with unprecedented clarity and conviction, it may be humanity’s last chapter.
I refuse to surrender to despair. I refuse to accept that the story ends with billionaires in bunkers while the rest of us burn. I refuse to believe that humanity is incapable of rising to meet this moment.
Because underneath all my anger and grief lies something else: A stubborn, irrational hope. A belief that we are better than our worst impulses. That we might yet choose life over profit, community over isolation, truth over comfortable lies.
I, for one, am not ready to let the story end that way. Are you?
Let's not forget that this is all being sold to the climate-deniers as the "End Times", the ultimate good being all these disasters will prompt Jesus to return and rapture all the white American evangelicals from the tribulations and curses listed in Revelation.
I recently read an opinion piece somewhere (I wish I could remember where), that suggested that one of the reasons that Trump is so interested in Greenland right now is that the ongoing climate change and the melting ice will reveal new sources of natural resources for us to exploit, as well as opening new shipping lanes through the arctic. I mean...WTF??