Greek Coast Guard Abandons Asylum Seekers at Sea Amid European Crackdown

As we move into 2025, we look at how the world is cracking down on migrants and asylum seekers, and the dangers they face when trying to flee their countries due to persecution, economic conditions, the climate crisis and more. As Greek prosecutors open a murder investigation of “unknown perpetrators” following a damning exposé of the deadly crackdown on asylum seekers by the Greek coast guard, we revisit the BBC film, Dead Calm: Killing in the Med? The investigation revealed evidence the coast guard routinely abducted and abandoned asylum seekers in the Mediterranean Sea. The film found the Greek coast guard caused the deaths of dozens of migrants over a period of three years, including of nine asylum seekers who had reached Greek soil but were taken back out to sea and thrown overboard. “We really have no real clue about the true numbers of the people that are crossing [the Mediterranean Sea]. Many people don’t make it,” producer Lucile Smith told Democracy Now! in an interview last year, when the film was released. “And when people do arrive, they tend to disappear, because … if you are caught by the authorities in Greece, you will be most likely subjected to some very serious violence.”This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. If you want to sign up for our newsletter to get a newsletter every day about all the stories that we do, you can go to democracynow.org.As we move into this new year, into 2025, we look at how the world is cracking down on migrants and asylum seekers, and the dangers they face as they flee their countries due to many conditions, from persecution to economic conditions to the climate crisis.In Greece, prosecutors have opened a murder investigation of, quote, “unknown perpetrators” following a damning exposé of the deadly crackdown on asylum seekers by Greek authorities. A BBC investigation revealed evidence of the Greek coast guard abducting and abandoning asylum seekers in the Mediterranean Sea, where thousands have died, mostly from Africa and the Middle East, as they attempt to reach Europe. The film finds the Greek coast guard caused the deaths of as many as 43 migrants in the Mediterranean over a period of three years, including of nine asylum seekers who had reached Greek soil but were taken by the Greek coast guard back out to sea, then thrown overboard. The investigation analyzes at least 15 incidents between 2020 and ’23, verifying reports made by humanitarian aid groups which have long accused Greek officials of international crimes as they target asylum seekers, often sabotaging and delaying rescue missions of those adrift at sea. Several eyewitnesses featured in the film corroborate the disturbing accounts.In a minute, we’ll bring you our interview on Democracy Now! that I did with Juan González with the BBC producer Lucile Smith about the investigation called Dead Calm: Killing in the Med? But first, this clip of [Dead Calm] that features Ibrahim, a Cameroonian migrant who says he was hunted by Greek authorities after arriving on the Greek island of Samos in 2021 and is now the focus of a new murder investigation by Greek prosecutors.
LUCILE SMITH: After crossing from Turkey, he’s now a refugee.

IBRAHIM: [translated] There were two policemen dressed in black and three others in civilian clothes. They were masked.

LUCILE SMITH: Ibrahim says he was beaten and strip-searched, and that the Greek coast guard took him and two other men out to sea.

IBRAHIM: [translated] They started with the Cameroonian. They threw him in the water. The Ivorian said, “Save me. I don’t want to die. Save me.” An incredible strength animated me. I survived.

LUCILE SMITH: He swam to safety, but the other two men died. We’ve heard allegations of a total of five separate incidents in which people were thrown into the sea by the Greek coast guard. In all, nine of them died. In a statement, the Greek coast guard strongly rejected all accusations of illegal activities and questioned the veracity of the testimonies we’ve gathered.
AMY GOODMAN: That was a clip of the BBC documentary Dead Calm: Killing in the Med? In another part of the film, a former Greek coast guard is shown footage of 12 asylum seekers being loaded into a Greek coast guard boat, then abandoned on a dinghy in the Mediterranean. He responds to the footage.
DIMITRIS BALTAKOS: I can see people getting on board the vessel, doesn’t seem like it’s forceful.

BEN STEELE: Can you see any small children?

DIMITRIS BALTAKOS: Yes, now I can. That’s something that happens. The migrants traveling the Aegean Sea, very often they abandon the children. They don’t seem to have the same affection that we have for children.

BEN STEELE: Do you have any questions about that video?

DIMITRIS BALTAKOS: I don’t. You need to understand something, that that’s not me trying to hide something. There are hundreds of videos showing the Greek coast guard saving people. Why save someone and let someone else die?

BEN STEELE: Should we take a break?

LUCILE SMITH: Yeah.

BEN STEELE: Have a cup of tea?

LUCILE SMITH: Yeah, it’s a good moment.

BEN STEELE: Yeah, yeah. Great.

DIMITRIS BALTAKOS: I’ll visit the loo.
AMY GOODMAN: During the break from the interview, the former Greek coast guard gets up from his chair. His mic is still on. He begins speaking on the phone to an unnamed person, in Greek, off camera.
DIMITRIS BALTAKOS: [translated] I haven’t told them too much? What do you think? Yes, it’s crystal clear, but what should I tell them? When you look at it from the outside, it’s very clear, isn’t it? It’s not nuclear physics. I don’t know why they did it in broad daylight. It’s clearly illegal. Obviously, obviously illegal. It’s an international crime.
AMY GOODMAN: A clip of the BBC doc Dead Calm, the former Greek coast guard caught admitting that actions by Greek authorities are, quote, “clearly illegal,” an “international crime,” in his own words.This comes as Greek officials leading an independent investigation into a deadly shipwreck last year in the Mediterranean, which led to the deaths of well over 500 asylum seekers, recently summoned the head of Greece’s coast guard to testify on eyewitness allegations the Greek coast guard tied up the vessel, attempted to pull it, causing the ship to sway, which authorities strongly denied. It would capsize and sink. The tragic event is also featured in the BBC investigation.I recently spoke with Lucile Smith, the producer of the BBC documentary titled Dead Calm: Killing in the Med?
LUCILE SMITH: The film, essentially, is a 90-minute documentary, which looks at and investigates alleged criminality by the Greek coast guard. There are two strands to it. On the one hand, we look at the Pylos shipwreck, which was the tragic story of a fishing trawler which left the port city of Tobruk last summer on the 9th of June and tried to journey to Italy, had about 750 passengers on it. But when it reached Greek territorial search-and-rescue area in the Mediterranean, it started to call for help. The Italian authorities were made aware of it. The Greek authorities were made aware of it. Frontex, Europe’s border agency, was made aware of it. And it sat there for — you know, the authorities had eyes on it for about 14 hours before it capsized. And when we started making — and, very sadly, over 600 people drowned, despite the fact that a Greek patrol vessel was there at the time of the capsizing.And so, when this catastrophe occurred, lots of journalists started to investigate. And what transpired were allegations by survivors from the shipwreck that the Greek coast guard had, in fact, attempted to tow the vessel into Italian waters, and that, in doing so, the ship capsized. And various other things started to come out, that the patrol boat also had their cameras turned off, so a lot of kind of suspicious activity that — and journalists started to ask questions.And so, when the BBC decided to commission this film, Ben Steele, the director, and I, we started investigating and looking into whether there was any kind of precedent of this sort of activity by the Greek coast guard. And unfortunately, what we found were very, very dark and serious, terrifying stories that are coming out of many of the islands that border Greece and Turkey, stories of asylum seekers, refugees, migrants arriving on Greek soil, and before they can reach a camp in order to seek asylum, they find themselves kidnapped by men in balaclavas who are armed. They say that they are often beaten. All of their belongings are removed. They are then brought onto a Greek coast guard vessel, brought out to sea and dumped in a — they call it a life raft. I wouldn’t call it a life raft. It’s a motorless dinghy, essentially, and left adrift in the sea. Sometimes the Turkish coast guard might rescue them. In fact, actually often, often they do. But what we found in our investigation was that in many cases, people die. And we found 43 deaths over 15 cases across three years.And some of the stories were just awful. I mean, you heard Ibrahim there. He very bravely gave us his testimony for this film. And in his situation, he was thrown directly into the water without a life vest. The two other individuals he was with also, they drowned, very sadly. And, you know, before that, he was badly beaten by these men in the balaclavas.And we spoke to other survivors. In one case, someone was thrown into the water whilst he had his hands zipped together. We had incidents of allegations of the Greek coast guard puncturing the life raft. In one terrible case, they failed to allegedly close the valve on the life raft. And we spoke with a survivor who lost his two children and his wife, as well as his nephew, and terrible footage, which was released by the Greek coast guard, where you watch — and 11 people drowned in that case, where you watch, you know, the father dragging their child through the water. So, just absolutely awful stories.And the more and more we read about this, it started to kind of, I guess, strengthen the stories and the allegations that were coming out over what happened with the Pylos shipwreck. And it made it seem like, potentially, Pylos, that shipwreck, the shipwreck of the Adriana, potentially was, you know, an accident waiting to happen.JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Lucile, could you talk about the overall militarization of the Mediterranean states of Europe against migrants coming from the Middle East or North Africa? And also, what is Frontex?LUCILE SMITH: Sure. I mean, yeah, I mean, that’s a great question. I think it’s interesting if you look at — you know, let’s look at 2015, for example. 2015, we had in Europe a million refugees coming over from Syria. And it was very much — you know, it was a shock to Europe. And at that time, I suppose you could say that, you know, particularly if you compare to what’s happening now, Europe responded fairly well. I mean, Germany accepted the million refugees. And you had humanitarian organizations going over to Lesbos and Samos and many of the islands in Greece, as well as Italy. Today — it was very much a kind of all hands on deck. And I don’t know if you remember the famous photograph of that that young child, Alan Kurdi, very sadly, who washed up on the Turkish coast. And there was a kind of outpouring of sympathy.You know, the picture today is very different. If you, as a humanitarian, want to go over to Italy or Greece and help rescue asylum seekers that are attempting to cross, you will most likely be arrested and thrown into prison and charged with smuggling. I mean, Greece’s second prison population are made up of smugglers, usually asylum seekers that are the ones that are driving the boat when they reach Greek soil. It’s a very, very different picture. I mean, if you look at the number of deaths in 2015 compared to the number of deaths in 2023, it is now 20 times deadlier. And that’s with a fraction of the number of people crossing. And even if you compared it to 2014, it’s twice as deadly, because, obviously, 2015, we had so many more people crossing. And so, it sort of begs the question of: Why is it so much deadlier? Why has it become deadlier?And Frontex is Europe’s border agency. And Europe’s border agency, which kind of manage Europe’s border, they provide petrol and money to the nation-states for coast guard vessels. They provide vessels. They also patrol the coasts of Europe. And we interview the fundamental rights officer in the documentary. But, unfortunately, they were quite unwilling to really engage and really were unwilling to talk on the record about the reality on the ground and about these allegations and the stories that are coming out of Greece. And, in fact, they became so frustrated that they walked out of the interview. Yeah.JUAN GONZÁLEZ: So, in effect, are some claiming that this crackdown on migrants is actually working and leading to fewer people getting into Europe?LUCILE SMITH: Well, Mitsotakis, the prime minister of Greece, would say so. He says that he’s managed to reduce migration by 90%. I don’t know how easy it is to verify that number. But, yes, you could say that it is effective. It is a deterrent. And based on the number of refugees that we spoke to, asylum seekers that we spoke to, generally, there was a kind of a reluctance to cross to Greece, and people were much keener to go to Italy. So, I suppose, yes, you could say that the level of violence that is occurring on these borders is effective in deterring people.But then again, let’s face it, you know, people are disappearing; we really have no real clue about the true numbers of the people that are crossing. Many people don’t make it. And when people do arrive, they tend to disappear, because, as I’ve just explained, you know, if you are caught by the authorities in Greece, you will be most likely subjected to some very serious violence. So, it’s very difficult to have a clear answer to that.And, I mean, you played a clip, as well, in there by a former coast guard official, who was shown some incredible evidence, shot by Fayad Mulla, who is a journalist and activist based in Austria, showing these men in the balaclavas placing asylum seekers, including a baby and children, onto a coast guard vessel, and they were eventually picked up by the Turkish coast guard. And the former coast guard official denied that they understood what they were seeing when — during the interview, but during a break, they then revealed that they felt it was a — they thought what they saw must be an international crime. And this is because this is an open secret. You know, everybody knows this is happening. The Greek government deny that it is happening, but the evidence is extremely compelling.AMY GOODMAN: Talk more about this, Lucile. And this also shows the power — LUCILE SMITH: Yeah.AMY GOODMAN: — of investigative journalism. While you say it’s an open secret, it’s astounding to hear this — you said he’s former Greek coast guard, saying, “Why did they do it in the middle of the day?” as he’s secretly saying this to someone.LUCILE SMITH: Yes, that’s right. I mean, this is just — I mean, you know, people don’t want to — it’s a very hostile environment. You know, speaking out and speaking the truth is a scary thing. And it’s obviously much easier for me to do it here sitting in London than it is for someone who is in Greece. You know, it’s perhaps a convenient truth for the rest of Europe and for many in Greece. I mean, they’ve been bearing the brunt of this for a very long time. So it’s easier to kind of turn away.But it’s very much — you know, when I first arrived on Samos to do some filming, I went to a restaurant. This is just anecdotal, but, you know, I went to a restaurant with the director and with one of our contributors. And we sat there, and someone came over to us, and they were just chatting and, you know, that, “Oh, you’re from Britain?” Well, you know, talking to us — you know, I went on a coast guard vessel. And they sort of looked at us, and it was a kind of wink, wink, shove, shove, you know, “Maybe we do pushbacks,” “pushbacks” being the term that people use, which we don’t use in the film, because we think it sort of downplays the violent nature of these illegal expulsions. But this is the thing. Everybody knows about it. And maybe it’s convenient, but no one dares speak out, because it’s a hostile environment, and it’s scary to speak the truth.AMY GOODMAN: So, where is the accountability, for example — and we’ll go into the hundreds of people who die in one incident — but of migrants being thrown overboard by the Greek coast guard? Has anyone been held accountable?LUCILE SMITH: No one has been held accountable. That’s the bottom line. You know, this is something that Frontex are aware of. It was very interesting, in the week after the film came out, you know, the journalism continues, and a news article came out in the EUobserver, as well as El País, which demonstrated some serious incident reports that had been written by — I don’t know if they were leaked or whether they got them through a Freedom of Information request. But they demonstrated that the the Fundamental Rights Office at Frontex were aware that it was very likely that people had drowned, had been thrown into the water by the Greek coast guard. And yet, nothing seems to happen, even though it says in Frontex’s regulations that if there are human rights violations, that Frontex should withdraw, or at least temporarily withdraw, withdraw in the long term, from that state where the human rights violations are occurring. But, you know, everyone knows about it. Who knows what’s being said behind closed doors? We just don’t know.There’s a petition which is going around the EU that, you know, 30 MEPs, or just more than 30 MEPs have signed, asking for the EU to investigate what’s happened. The opposition party, off the back of the BBC’s investigation, spoke out against it, said that this needs to be investigated. So, people are speaking out, but it’s kind of, you know, let’s — it’s business as usual. I mean, the week after the film came out, over a hundred people were picked up by the Turkish coast guard in Greek assets, and including, I think, 14 children. So, this seems to continue. And so far, so far to date, no accountability.AMY GOODMAN: I’m just looking at a piece in Al Jazeera that was dated June 17th. “Last summer, a shocking video of asylum seekers cable-tied and blindfolded in the back of a van on a Greek holiday island went viral online. At the time, the veracity of the video was questioned and Theodosis Nikitaras, the mayor of Kos, filed a defamation case against the NGO that published it. Now, new documents obtained from the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) confirm the incident and pin the responsibility on individuals it describes as ‘likely working in concert’ with Greek authorities.” This is what you were talking about.LUCILE SMITH: Yes. I mean, I’m familiar with that video. It was posted on social media by Tommy Olsen of Aegean Boat Report, who has been screaming about this for years and who’s a consultant on the film. You know, that video, we don’t feature it in the film. BBC hasn’t verified it. But, as you say, Frontex have looked into it and have said that it is likely linked to the Greek coast guard.And what I would say, based on my experience of speaking with survivors, as well as lawyers and humanitarian organizations working on the ground, which is that, you know, I’ve heard stories of this, of people having their eyes taped. I mean, I had one terrible story that I was told, you know, of people being captured, kidnapped, brought into a prison cell, kept overnight, and were stripped naked and had their eyes taped, and then overheard someone being beaten violently. They described also electrocutions. And the next day, they were all brought onto a coast guard vessel, including this man who was, you know, barely alive and had been beaten all night. They had listened to the screams. And they put them on a — one of these motorless dinghies. And the man, they held the man in their arms, and he died in front of their eyes.So, yeah, I mean, it’s entirely plausible that that video is indeed an example of some of what’s going on linked to the Greek coast guard. But, you know, as I say, the Greek authorities do deny it. And many of the men in the balaclavas, maybe women, as well, they often remove their insignia. So it’s very difficult, really, to track down who is doing what, and it’s very easy for the Greek authorities to keep denying it.AMY GOODMAN: Lucile —LUCILE SMITH: Even though, in so many cases, you can see they’re on a Greek coast guard vessel. But yeah.AMY GOODMAN: Lucile Smith, talk about the criminalization of humanitarian workers.LUCILE SMITH: Sure. I mean, unfortunately, this isn’t something that we managed to include in the documentary. But, yes, as you say, many humanitarian workers are criminalized now. So, you would not be able to go to Greece — and Italy as well, I would add, although I’m not as familiar with Italy, but I understand that this is happening there, as well. You would not be able to go out into the sea and, if somebody is drowning or needs help or is in distress, be able to rescue them. It is entirely now managed by the state.And, you know, it’s difficult. You know, the cynic would say that what they have essentially done is removed the witnesses, so we can’t — really don’t have proper eyes on what’s going on. Others might say it shouldn’t really be up to NGOs or humanitarian workers to be doing search and rescue; it should be run by the state.But either way, you know, we know that there are many individuals — Sarah Mardini, Seán Binder — Sarah Mardini is the subject to a Netflix drama, The Swimmers. She has been criminalized for doing search and rescue. This was all the way in 2019. And she wouldn’t say, and Seán Binder, who we spoke to for this documentary, wouldn’t say that — I don’t want to speak for them — that they are smugglers. But those are the charges that they’re facing.So, it’s really a way to take back control of search and rescue, and perhaps also remove any witnesses. But, obviously, since that has happened, it would seem that this forced expulsion has become really, really common and looks, you know, very much like a policy. The repetitive nature of it looks like a policy. And there’s a clear time, 2020, when this really began and the criminalization also of humanitarian work has also begun. And that’s not to say that forced expulsions didn’t happen before then. But the scale is really quite — is dramatically bigger.
AMY GOODMAN: That was BBC producer Lucile Smith speaking about the 2024 documentary Dead Calm: Killing in the Med?, which has led to Greek prosecutors opening a murder investigation of, quote, “unknown perpetrators.” We’ll link to the film.That does it for our show. Happy News Year! I’m Amy Goodman.

Read More

Monster of 2024: Self-Checkout Machines Taking Over Grocery Stores

Mother Jones illustration; Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group/Getty Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write…

Read More

India’s Free Library Movement Counters Caste Discrimination and Authoritarianism

Outside the Khirki branch of Delhi’s Community Library Project, a signboard details the day’s programs, including scheduled story times and art activities. Children bounce and buzz as they wait in line to check out their books. Patrons take advantage of clean public bathrooms, drinking water (in short supply in many of Delhi’s unplanned communities) and…

Read More

Eugenics Isn’t Dead—It’s Thriving in Tech

Mother Jones illustration; Photo by Ariel Majewski Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. Elon Musk’s calls for a so-called “efficient” US government—including wanting to end the already endangered right to work from home, a disability accommodation for many—are less surprising when you view him…

Read More

Trump Won’t Confront the Climate Crisis. He’ll Feast Off It.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

With the election of Donald Trump, we’re in for a climate catastrophe.

We know because we’re in that crisis now, already. We just don’t talk about it all that much, mostly because we don’t like to admit what it means.

Many of us recognize on some level that we’ve moved into a world of superstorms and rising seas; droughts and failed crops; deluges and floods; megafires and orange skies full of gagging smoke; life-threatening heat waves and blackouts; invasive insects spreading infectious diseases, and the loss of native ecosystems. We may try to tune it out, but we know it’s bad.

But what hasn’t sunk in is that we built this country for physical conditions that no longer exist. We’ve experienced a discontinuity with the past, a threshold where what used to work no longer does, and what we used to know no longer makes much sense. Once-sturdy systems will break more frequently. Once-safe places will find themselves disaster zones. No aspect of our lives will go untouched. And while it’s true some places are safer than others, nowhere is immune, and even communities like Asheville, North Carolina, can find themselves walloped by extreme weather.

Hundreds of millions of Americans are about to have a collision with planetary reality. We’re already seeing the impact on insurance and finance. Insurance depends on the ability to accurately price risk, to accurately measure future value. And the truth is, a big chunk of America is way riskier than we thought it was, and seriously overvalued.

A conservative estimate of the homeowner insurance gap is $1.6 trillion in uncovered risks. That’s mostly being borne by people who are relatively poor or live in acknowledged flood and fire zones. Everyone in the insurance industry expects that gap to grow, as risks metastasize and are priced into policies. Insurance eventually becomes too expensive for many to afford, if it’s even still available. For homeowners, skyrocketing premiums are too high. But insurers worry they can’t charge enough to keep up with increasing risk. The climate crisis is already rendering entire communities and even regions uninsurable.

Uninsurable properties are also often unlendable. Typically, getting a mortgage depends on the bank agreeing that the house it’s loaning you money to buy will hold its value for 30 years. Millions of American homes won’t. Homes you can buy only with cash (or with shady commercial loans) are homes that are also set to see a huge drop in value. This is as true in mountain towns surrounded by flammable timber as in cities on the floodplains of the Mississippi or beachside communities on the Gulf.

This pricing of unacknowledged risk into our communities will be a watershed event that extends into nearly every kind of real estate and local industry. Ignored climate brittleness—the quality of being easily broken by weather extremes but hard to fix—is being exposed. And brittleness revealed means value lost.

A 2023 study in the journal Nature Climate Change found that the overvaluation of homes measured only by their exposure to floods alone was as high as $237 billion. When we factor in all of the combinations of risks that communities face, we could easily be talking trillions of dollars. The scale of known risks, magnified by future uncertainties, is so massive that a Treasury council called it a “threat to the financial stability of the United States.”

Sooner or later the brittleness shoe will drop. Both destruction and discontinuity will erode the ability of many communities and local governments to respond to these challenges, creating a spiral of risk, loss, and partial recovery—until there’s not much left of value in the most vulnerable places.

Already, some folks are realizing they have no option but to leave. Some will be directly displaced by fire or flood (as we’ve seen in California and Texas). Many more will simply find life in a declining community untenable. Others are getting out while the market still slumbers. There is some evidence that rising home prices in the safer ­communities­ in the Great Lakes and ­Northwest are starting to be driven by (largely wealthier) newcomers relocating away from climate change.

A house in Lake Elsinore, California, seen in the path of the oncoming Airport Fire.Jason Putman/SOPA Images/ZUMA

If millions of Americans do start to flow out of the most battered places, we may well see a climate squeeze on housing in relatively safe communities. Rising costs could trigger secondary dislocation, where less advantaged locals find themselves pushed out, victims of climate displacement. The only thing that might check that new housing crisis is construction on a scale we haven’t seen in a generation.

I don’t believe America still has the option of an orderly transition. We’re going to have to fight like hell for rapid decarbonization while we reckon with the challenges of a climate-changed America and continue to contend with intergenerational problems of poverty and oppression. The next decade was always going to be messy.

The next president could declare a climate emergency and launch a national climate response. We could invest heavily in climate science, foresight capacities, and worker upskilling. We could forge a national insurability strategy—one that combines tax breaks for household adaptation measures with local disaster readiness and a major investment in stabilizing insurance costs in places that are still insurable. We could undertake wartime-scale efforts to build out clean energy, harden critical infrastructure, and defend relatively safe places from their worst demonstrated threats. We could invest in widespread managed retreat (especially on the coasts) with supported mass relocation for those living in the communities we cannot possibly save. We could lay the groundwork for equitable growth, making sure those moving away from climate chaos find places to live, with functioning roads and water systems and with schools, hospitals, and social services ready to meet a great increase in need. We could go all in, and make this catastrophe the spur for building the stronger bones of a better country.

That is not what we’re in for now that Donald Trump has been elected.

The Trump crowd has already shown they don’t see acceleration of the climate chaos as a problem—they see it as an opportunity.

Yes, there’s still rabid climate denial in the Republican Party, but that’s not the real driver here. Trump is backed by domestic Big Oil and Russian petro-­dictator Vladimir Putin. Climate policy will be set by the people profiting off perpetuating the problem. Dirty industries will realize hundreds of billions in profits they would have forgone if America had made an honest effort not to melt the ice caps.

Trumpists’ ambition is fueled by extending the predatory delay that’s been so profitable for polluting interests to what we might now think of as predatory reaction. As the New York Times’ Jennifer Szalai wrote, gop donors like Charles Koch have “learned to treat the Trump presidency like a natural disaster: an eruption of volatility to prepare for and exploit.”

The first thing we’ll see—if we can rip our attention away from the promised concentration camps and military tribunals—is our existing climate capabilities spraying out of the back chute of a wood chipper.

Pulling out of the Paris climate accords, as he did the last time around, will only be the beginning. Every oily-fingered fossil fuel executive, cash-in-a-bag sprawl developer, and corner-­cutting factory owner in America is lining up for a jamboree of lawlessness and impunity. Project 2025 has identified hundreds of regulatory and administrative targets to destroy. A society crashing from one incompetently managed disaster to another offers ample opportunities for corruption, graft, and profiteering. Corrupt incompetence remains the one deliverable Trump has actually reliably produced.

Any effective climate response demands three basics: evidence-based decision-making, capable institutions, and public trust. You have to know what to do, have the means to do it, and be able to cooperate with the masses to get it done effectively.

Trump already came for all three in his first stay in the White House. With the power of the presidency unchecked, a submissive Congress, a compliant Supreme Court, and an army of acolytes in governors’ mansions and state legislatures, Trump will be in a position to do far, far worse this time around.

Don’t expect a national media that has lagged far behind in its climate reporting to suddenly make clear the growing peril we’re in. MAGA pundits already have a well-developed strategy for preventing accurate coverage of reality—as Steve Bannon said, “to flood the zone with shit.”

Forget nationally funded climate science and research on solutions, too. Universities will be under extreme pressure to toe the line or face defunding. Instead, look for all sorts of major institutions to decide that climate work is no longer essential. Even before the election was called, many were already showing signs of being willing to, as historian Timothy Snyder puts it, “obey in advance.”

Trump will be in a position to eviscerate federal regulations all across the board, punish uncooperative bureaucrats, withhold support to resistant states, block public access to information, and spew official disinformation at the American people.

Residents and volunteers clean up after the French Broad River flooded downtown Marshall, North Carolina. The remnants of Hurricane Helene caused widespread flooding, downed trees, and power outages in western North Carolina.Travis Long/The News & Observer/ZUMA

A main goal will be to further destroy public trust in institutions through induced hopelessness. As Lincoln Steffens quoted a corrupt politician saying more than a century ago, “We know that public despair is possible and that that is good politics.” And of course, they didn’t have Truth Social, YouTube, or 8kun in the 1920s. Getting people to give up is easier than it looks.

Disaster victims are, of course, even more easily manipulated. Antisemitic weather control conspiracy theories? Rumored FEMA shakedowns of local communities? Warnings that disaster first responders are looting and robbing? People whose brains are broken by loss and fear of exploitation are often ready to believe crazy things. The irony is that by believing these things, they’ll be ready to be exploited on a whole new level.

There are fortunes to be made from corrupt disaster relief and recovery, shoddy infrastructure repair and utility privatization, scammy insurance and exploitative credit offers. If you liked the privatization of prisons, you’ll love the privatization of disaster response under a second Trump administration. Imagine a vast new climate response apparatus, but one rife with denial, implemented by political appointees, executed through corrupt deals, and only nominally held accountable. How many billions can be siphoned off? I shudder to think.

The scams won’t stop there. Parasites thrive in muddy water, and there will be plenty of chances to leech away whatever money is left in hard-hit communities, before a process of unofficial abandonment takes hold. In collapsing places, corporations can grift via security contracts and private emergency services.

A broken and paranoid America—splintered by the incapacity to agree on observable facts, or trust the institutions we depend on to solve major problems—tumbling into the worst version of a climate catastrophe: That’s a future almost too grim to contemplate.

It may be the future we face.

Read More