Opinion: Committed to One Another, and to the Earth

Every once in while I read something that expresses ideas that I’ve been thinking and writing about, but does so more powerfully and beautifully than I’ve yet been able to. Sometimes I just want to say, “Yes!” right out loud. I find it deeply reassuring that someone else is putting forth important ideas so boldly and effectively.

Today I want to share with you excerpts from an article by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor. Naomi Klein has written numerous important books, including This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate (2014), a book that had a tremendous influence on my thinking about the climate crisis. I don’t remember hearing of Astra Taylor before, but it turns out that she wrote a book with the compelling title of Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone (2019).

In a recent article they write,

“Our opponents know full well that we are entering an age of emergency, but have responded by embracing lethal yet self-serving delusions. Having bought into various apartheid fantasies of bunkered safety, they are choosing to let the Earth burn.” Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, 2025

Some early climate denial was based on ignorance. However, as early as 1977 Exxon scientists knew that burning fossil fuels was heating the climate and that disastrous consequences were coming. They not only hid that fact, they engaged in a persistent, nefarious public relations campaign to discredit the existence of climate change. Almost forty years ago they choose profits over planetary health and the lives of humans and other creatures. Now, the efforts of the MAGA, and of similar movements in other countries, to derail all positive climate action and to increase the extraction and burning of fossil fuels, are a choice “to let the Earth burn.”

Klein and Taylor are equally clear about what we must do now:

“Our task is to build a wide and deep movement, as spiritual as it is political, strong enough to stop these unhinged traitors. A movement rooted in a steadfast commitment to one another, across our many differences and divides, and to this miraculous, singular planet.”

I keep coming back to these two sentences. I think they encapsulate a vision that I deeply believe in. I want us all to keep asking what it means to be organizing and building a movement “rooted in a steadfast commitment to one another … and to this miraculous, singular planet.”

These quotes are from a rather long featured essay that Klein and Taylor published in The Guardian in April of this year titled “The Rise of End Times Fascism.” It contains a lot of information that was new to me. They report on a movement among some of the ultra-rich to create sovereign, exclusive, corporate city-states that would be fortressed escape bunkers for the wealthy. They find similarities between this and a more mass market idea gaining traction among the hard right in a number of countries, including the United States, of brutal fortressed nations that are openly white supremacist and exclude/deport/imprison humans they see as undesirable.

They note that both of these visions “share a great deal in common with the Christian fundamentalist interpretation of the biblical Rapture, when the faithful will supposedly be lifted up to a golden city in heaven, while the damned are left to endure an apocalyptic final battle down here on earth.” They conclude that “If we are to meet our critical moment in history, we need to reckon with the reality that we are not up against adversaries we have seen before. We are up against end times fascism.”

As terrifying as these ideas are, Klein and Taylor find hopeful possibilities in our situation. They are convinced that as people understand that the right has “succumbed” to this end times thinking, they will be more willing and committed to standing up and fighting back. How do we fight back?

“First, we help each other face the depth of the depravity that has gripped the hard right in all of our countries. To move forward with focus, we must first understand this simple fact: we are up against an ideology that has given up not only on the premise and promise of liberal democracy but on the livability of our shared world – on its beauty, on its people, on our children, on other species. The forces we are up against have made peace with mass death. They are treasonous to this world and its human and non-human inhabitants.”

“Second, we counter their apocalyptic narratives with a far better story about how to survive the hard times ahead without leaving anyone behind. A story capable of draining end times fascism of its gothic power and galvanizing a movement ready to put it all on the line for our collective survival. A story not of end times, but of better times; not of separation and supremacy, but of interdependence and belonging; not of escaping, but staying put and staying faithful to the troubled earthly reality in which we are enmeshed and bound.”

Thank you, Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor.

New Alarm Bells – A Time For Everyone to Protest
Trump has decided to use the military against civilians within our own country (starting with mostly non-violent protesters in L.A.). This is a key step toward the U.S. becoming a fascist police state. It is time to dramatically expand our protests. If you are physically able, please join one of the No Kings Day rallies across the country this Saturday, June 14th. Events everywhere, from small towns to larger cities, can be found at Indivisible. There is widespread agreement that it is essential that these protests be peaceful and non-violent. I’ll be in the streets that day, I hope you will be too.

Russ Vernon-Jones was principal of Fort River School 1990-2008 and is currently a member of the Steering Committee of Climate Action Now-Western Massachusetts. He blogs regularly on climate justice at www.russvernonjones.org.