Societies adjust to climatic shocks when they are internally coherent and social cooperation is high, and therefore they can find solutions, but when such climate shocks happen when the elites are divided, essentially different factions of elites start using the climate shocks as a weapon in internecine struggle. We see this in the United States where one party denies... there is quite a large fraction of climate deniers, and so it has become part of the political infighting, rather than trying to find a collective decision, collective action that would address this issue.

Peter Turchin Connected to the Carolinas

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