“Borders are the environment’s greatest ally,” twenty-three-year-old RN spokesperson Jordan Bardella told a right-wing paper in April. “[I]t is through them that we will save the planet.” Le Pen herself has argued that concern for the climate is inherently nationalist. Those who are “nomadic,” she said, “do not care about the environment; they have no homeland.”

"As climate impacts continue to ramp up, there’s no reason to believe an international focus on it will automatically lend itself either to progressive or even small-d democratic politics. In addition to those young people drifting right, weak showings for the left across Europe (the left GUE/NGL coalition dipped to 5 percent) should cast some doubt on the idea that the next generation are fledgling, inevitable leftists."

"The climate crisis is the foundation on which the politics of the twenty-first century will be built. Claiming to believe in the science behind it—still an applause line for many U.S. Democrats—doesn’t carry any more rhetorical weight than claiming, proudly and defiantly, to believe in gravity. The xenophobic right is beginning to catch on to what an opportunity this crisis represents for them, and the potent political capital of promising to prevent the end of the world."