“Extinction Rebellion, London 2019” by Janitors is licensed under CC BY 2.0. (cropped)
There’s a reason the billionaires don’t seem particularly worried about climate change: they don’t plan on living here much longer. They’re eyeing their New Zealand bunkers, their Mars colonies, their floating techno-utopias where the help will serve lab-grown steak while the rest of us scramble for clean water. The rest of us, of course, don’t have escape plans. We have grocery bills. We have heat waves that turn sidewalks into griddles. We have hurricanes that once came every century but now come every season. And yet, despite the absolute certainty that burning fossil fuels will cook us alive, the oligarchs double down, kneecapping renewables and throwing more coal on the fire.
Take Donald Trump, for example. While scientists scream from the rooftops that we need wind and solar yesterday, Trump is out there calling wind turbines “bird-killing monstrosities” while pushing new subsidies for oil barons who could already afford to bathe in crude. He’s stacking regulatory agencies with fossil fuel lobbyists, gutting environmental protections, and making sure we stay on the path to planetary collapse—all in the name of “energy dominance.” Because nothing says “freedom” like being shackled to an industry that’s turning the Earth into an ashtray.
But this isn’t just about Trump. He’s a symptom, not the disease. The disease is oligarchy itself—the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few who have zero incentive to change course because they’re insulated from the consequences. When you own the media, the banks, the tech platforms, and the government, climate disaster isn’t a crisis—it’s just another investment opportunity. Burn the forests? Fine, they’ll buy water rights. Collapse the fisheries? No problem, they’ll sell you synthetic protein. Turn the planet into a dust bowl? They’ll rent you a condo in the space station.
This is why saving democracy and saving the planet are the same fight. You cannot address climate change under a system where a handful of billionaires decide our energy policy, our land use, our survival. You cannot build a sustainable future when every politician is a marionette, their strings pulled by oil tycoons and Wall Street executives. And you cannot expect the ultra-rich to develop a conscience when their entire psychology is shaped by never having to hear the word “no.”
Wealth on that scale warps the mind. It breeds an arrogance so profound that billionaires genuinely believe they can outsmart death, outbid physics, and outlast the consequences of their own actions. It’s why Jeff Bezos fantasizes about moving industry to space instead of, say, paying workers a living wage. It’s why Elon Musk treats Earth like an afterthought, because he’s betting on Mars. It’s why the Davos crowd talks about “climate resilience” instead of “stopping climate collapse”—because they’re planning for survival, not prevention.
The oligarchs don’t care if the house is on fire because they think they own all the exits.
But here’s the thing: there is no escape hatch. Not for them, not for us. The air is shared. The oceans are connected. The storms do not check net worth before they level a city. And the only way we stop this train before it crashes is by taking power back—by breaking the oligarchy, reclaiming democracy, and making sure that the people who actually have to live on this planet get a say in whether it remains livable.
That starts with crushing fossil fuel influence. It starts with treating wind and solar not as an “alternative” but as the absolute baseline for a functioning civilization. It starts with kicking the billionaires out of politics, out of media control, and out of the driver’s seat before they take us all over the cliff.
Because at the end of the day, this isn’t about left vs. right. It’s about life vs. death. And oligarchy? It always chooses death.
