Globally we are seeing authoritarians aggressively expand their control of fossil fuel infrastructure, attack climate change expertise, and disrupt the social cohesion needed to demand change. The result is a global feedback loop of disinformation, regulatory sabotage, coercive diplomacy and entrenched fossil-fuel dependency. This is making the transition to sustainably produced renewable energy and life-saving climate adaptation far more precarious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The playbook: Suppress truth, lock in fossil power, crush dissent<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Authoritarian projects tend to advance through three core tactics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, they not only trash climate science but discredit the very idea of expertise and manipulate the information ecosystem to breed cynicism. A report<\/a> compiled by a group of \u201cindependent experts\u201d, convened by the US Department of Energy, says projections of future global warming are exaggerated and climate action could do more harm than good. Similarly, Javier Milei, president of Argentina, actively pushes<\/a> the lie that climate change is not due to human activity. Also, Russia\u2019s state-backed TV station has rolled out<\/a> an \u201calternative perspective\u201d training programme for journalists in Africa, explicitly pitching themselves as a counterweight to coverage on climate change and LGBTQ+ issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Coordinated disinformation is but one tactic in the larger strategy of diminishing the credibility of the scientific establishment. This also entails demonising scientists, defunding their institutions, cancelling their projects and co-opting platforms and forums to share pro-fossil-fuel narratives and policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Second, many authoritarians lock in fossil dependence at home and abroad by exploiting economic interdependence and asymmetries of power. The recent efforts of the US are a case in point. Following the extraordinary capture of President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro by US special forces, President Donald Trump said<\/a> the US intended to tap Venezuela\u2019s oil reserves. Trump has also said he would like to take Iran\u2019s oil<\/a> amid the ongoing battle for control of the Strait of Hormuz through which about 25% of the world\u2019s seaborne oil passes. The US has made the purchase of its so-called \u201cnatural\u201d gas (methane) a condition in some of its tariff negotiations. It bullied diplomats and threatened tariffs and sanctions to halt a long-negotiated global levy on ships’ carbon which Trump denounced as a \u201cscam\u201d. And it engaged in muscular lobbying to undermine corporate sustainability legislation in the European Union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Third, as the American philosopher Jason Stanley has documented in his book How Fascism Works, authoritarian projects intentionally stoke social divisions, sabotage community relationships and divert attention to the wrong \u2018bad guys\u2019 to cement power and hobble collective action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n People power has played a critical role in fomenting climate commitments and action: from the \u201cFridays for Future\u201d movement to the group of Pacific Island students that took the fight against climate change to the International Court of Justice. Yet across the world, governments are rewriting laws to make peaceful mobilisation by climate and social justice movements risky and costly<\/a>. When protest is treated as a crime, the political cost of fossil expansion falls and the social cost of climate impacts rises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Governments are also defunding public services<\/a> using antagonistic rhetoric<\/a> about outsiders to justify cutting health, emergency and social welfare services<\/a> that are essential for climate resilience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What we face today is not a random scatter of national decisions. It is a coordinated ecosystem of power. Networks of authoritarian-leaning actors share tactics, give each other diplomatic cover and coerce other states into obeying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The “Axis of Petrostates<\/a>” is exerting wide geopolitical influence by offering developing nations affordable energy access in exchange for long-term infrastructural lock-in. Cuts in global aid for climate mitigation and adaptation, and paltry payments into the Fund for responding to Loss and Damage, have been accompanied by denial of any liability for climate harms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These cuts and refusals to recognise liability are overlaid on an economic system that consistently favours high-income countries who fail to ditch fossil-fuel subsidies; an unfair global tax system that allows multinational corporations to shift some profits to advantageous tax jurisdictions; and an “investor-state dispute settlement” regime that allows foreign fossil-fuel companies to claim compensation if climate policies affect their profits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The climate implications are obvious: a fossil-fuel economy is foisted on countries that lack the power or courage to resist, and they find themselves depleted of funds to invest in systems like health \u2013 required to save lives in the face of growing climate disasters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, multilateral systems are also being weaponised for authoritarian ends. The consensus rule governing the world\u2019s multilateral climate change forum, the UNFCCC, was designed to ensure all countries are heard. But it is being exploited by fossil-fuel\u2011aligned states to undermine the Paris Agreement\u2019s call to act on the “best available science”. The US has gone even further by formally withdrawing from climate and other multilateral fora, and Argentina and Russia were more hostile to climate action at the most recent UNFCCC annual Conference of the Parties (COP) than in the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many current authoritarian practices also share a common ideological base: anti-environmentalism and anti-feminism. Political scientist Cara Daggett calls this fusion “petro-masculinity<\/a>“. Authoritarians often hark back to an idealised past, and are increasingly protagonists in the so-called “culture wars” that drive social atomisation. Recent investigations exposed fossil-fuel money flowing into the anti\u2011trans movements<\/a> and pushback on a gender action plan<\/a> at the recent COP30 meetings. The strategy is deliberate: create cultural distraction, fuel division, keep environmental deregulation and fossil-fuel expansion out of the spotlight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is tempting to treat human rights as a moral add-on in climate policy. That is a mistake. Rights provide a mobilising vision and a framework for effective climate action. Concern about climate change is a widely shared value, and studies of authoritarian practices show that values-based organising can be integral to resisting. The Yale University Program on Climate Communications has found<\/a> that fear of climate change and support for climate action is widespread in countries where authoritarian momentum is strong. This includes Argentina, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Chile, El Salvador, India, Mali, Senegal, the United States and Uzbekistan, among others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When rights defenders and communities organise, expose facts and litigate, they can shift trajectories. Last year, the International Court of Justice published an historic advisory opinion<\/a> on states\u2019 climate change obligations. It was made possible by a global campaign that originated with 27 law students from the Pacific Islands. People power can force governments to confront responsibilities they would otherwise dodge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"President](\"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Donald-Trump-announces-the-US-is-withdrawing-from-the-Paris-Agreement_Kevin-Dietsch_UPI_Alamy_W0JHBN.jpg\")
<\/div>Transnational authoritarianism hurts the ability to adapt and survive<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The case for human-rights-centred climate politics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n