There will never be global solidarity against climate change

Climate activists shouldn't fight this reality, but take advantage

Flooding near Dhaka, Bangladesh.
(Image credit: REUTERS/Rafiqur Rahman)

President Ronald Reagan famously used to discomfit his advisors by bringing up a favorite thought experiment. What, he wondered, would the nations of the world do if extra-terrestrial aliens invaded our planet? Wouldn't we put aside our differences and unite against the common threat? And if that is true, then shouldn't we put aside our differences now, to unite against that which threatens all of life on earth, the scourge of nuclear weapons?

He brought the subject up with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev at their summit in Iceland, and again in a speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations, because for him it was not an idle speculation, but a very serious matter. We would, he was sure, unite against a common enemy that threatened us all in the most total way imaginable. So why couldn't we see the risk of a nuclear exchange as a similar kind of common enemy, and unite against it?

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Noah Millman

Noah Millman is a screenwriter and filmmaker, a political columnist and a critic. From 2012 through 2017 he was a senior editor and featured blogger at The American Conservative. His work has also appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Politico, USA Today, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, Foreign Policy, Modern Age, First Things, and the Jewish Review of Books, among other publications. Noah lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.