A Corrupt Republican Generation Doesn’t Care If the Whole World Burns

American indifference to the climate crisis is a combination of arrogance, of in the end, “nature will never get the better of us,” and a twisted attitude of “whatever happens to you in life depends on you.”

Something really extreme would have to happen for the president of the United States to apologize to the world. An apology would go against the ethos of the arrogant empire, and it would also be bad public policy. So, Joe Biden’s apology for America’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change was very unusual. The fact that it was accepted relatively quietly in the United States testifies to American apathy about the crisis. Yes, most Americans finally believe that there is a problem, but they don’t really care about it.

There are a few reasons for why they don’t care. It begins in the DNA of the United States. Indifference to climate change is a combination of arrogance, the “we are Americans, in the end, nature will never get the better of us,” with a twisted individualistic attitude which has it if your house burns in a fire in California, or is swept away in another hurricane, it’s not so bad, because you have insurance. And if you don’t have insurance, “ah, well … it’s your problem, you should have had insurance.”

This has also been the case with America’s substandard public school system, since Ronald Reagan stopped investing in good teachers, especially in outlying small towns, where what happens outside the village seems like happenings on another planet. And this has reached a crisis point given the politics which tied the United States up in the past century.

Above all, the Republican Party is more or less the only political entity in the world that denies the phenomenon of climate change. That doesn’t mean that specific Republican politicians don’t believe in it – many educated people know the truth – but denial is good politics in the party that sent Donald Trump to the White House. We are talking about a person who decided to leave the Paris Agreement and to send his grandchildren’s world up in flames, only because he hated the Black predecessor who joined the agreement.

On the other hand, Americans recognize how serious the crisis is, but that isn’t enough. Just as Biden is trying to convince everyone in Glasgow that the United States is serious in its intention to take radical steps, Joe Manchin, a Democratic senator in Washington, is going around quashing every one of Biden’s plans. Manchin comes from West Virginia, one of the reddest states in America. Most of his donors come from the coal industry, and even if he agrees that the climate crisis is real, he agrees even more that he should not upset his donors.

Senate Democrats represent 40 million more Americans than the Republicans do, but in reality the split in Congress is 50-50, and Biden cannot lose even one vote. Thus, one senator from a state of 1.7 million residents can wield veto power over a program that would save the world.

The United States bears a tremendous responsibility for the damage that has been caused to the planet. This is the cost of building an empire and turning it into the wealthiest nation in the world. The younger generation, which is waking up to the enormous damage American capitalism has caused, understands that this harm stems from the corrupt generation of Trump and Manchin, and the generation of those who will be gone when the world drowns and burns.

Tzippy Shmilovitz is a journalist for Yedioth Ahronoth