Some
new, lowbrow basic-cable comedy?
Don't you wish.
There
are Trump's children: Eric, Junior, Ivanka, and the rest. Then there
are his symbolic spawn, taking root in governments around the
globe like a rejected sci-fi movie pitch.
When
Queen Elizabeth II formally made Boris Johnson the newest British Prime
Minister on July 24, he joined a growing list of "populist" new
leaders whose collective rise bodes ill for a healthy planet.
Scott
Morrison in Australia may not play the tyrant card, but he represents a turn
toward coal-burning, climate change denial. Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Rodrigo
Duterte in the Philippines loom as a return to cold-blooded tyranny; Duterte is
halfway into his six-year term in the Philippines, and has earned comparisons
as "the Filipino Trump."
He's less of a full-throated eco-disaster than his Brazilian counterpart, but let's turn back the clock a bit. In 2013, Yeb Saño turned that year's U.N. climate conference on its emotional ear.
The
youthful Saño was the chief Filipino climate delegate under President Benigno
Aquino III, and he turned a normally tedious conference into a genuine crying
jag with a speech about his nation's agony at the mercy of Typhoon Haiyan. The
unprecedentedly strong storm killed at least 6,000 and displaced four million.
Saño
left government for NGO work on climate. While Duterte hasn't leapt headlong
into climate denial, he's resisted calls to withdraw from the Paris climate
agreement and even chided diplomats for "accomplishing nothing."
Bolsonaro
has similarly earned "Brazilian Trump"
comparisons, but the environment is taking the main hit. Illegal Amazon
deforestation – already a crisis – is accelerating, while the Bolsonaro
government is moving apace to legalize even more destruction.
In
May, Australia's Scott Morrison rose to Prime Minister in what was dubbed "the climate
election." The climate lost, and Morrison is pumping more
Aussie coal into Asian exports to growing economies like China and India.
Boris
Johnson's new cabinet reflects their boss: They're all over the map, from
Environment Secretary Theresa Villiers ("action on climate change is
vital") to Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg, who deploys denialist language
like "climate alarmism." (Thanks to the sleuths Mat Hope and Richard Collett-White at DeSmogBlog
UK for these.)
At
a time when the world is in desperation for climate leadership, we're getting
climate despots instead.
