Daddy State - Stealth Mode

The only thing missing here is the angle that the Daddy State thrives on calamity.

If we lurch forward into Climate Change disaster after Climate Change disaster - with all the accompanying disruption due to mass migrations of people who can't live where they used to be able to live due to drought and sea level rise and monster storms etc, then people will be far more willing to accept draconian "solutions" from governments led by strong-man dictators.

A study:

From National Academy Of Sciences

The New Republic (2018):

National crises make governments vulnerable to autocracy—a rather obvious assessment, perhaps, but one rarely seen in debates about climate change. Take the Maldives, an atoll nation in the Indian Ocean. Rising seawater is projected to consume most, if not all, of the country this century. In 2008, the Maldives chose its first democratically elected president, Mohamed Nasheed. Almost immediately, he made climate change preparations central to his administration. He announced plansto move 360,000 Maldivian citizens to new homelands in Sri Lanka, India, or Australia, and he promised to make the Maldives the world’s first carbon-neutral country. Nasheed also demonstrated a flair for the dramatic, staging an underwater Cabinet meeting that turned him into a viral climate celebrity. “What we need to do is nothing short of decarbonizing the entire global economy,” he said. “If man can walk on the moon, we can unite to defeat our common carbon enemy.”

In 2012, the military deposed Nasheed, forcing him to flee the country at gunpoint after mass protests over economic stagnation and spikes in commodity prices. His eventual successor, Abdulla Yameen, has since suspended parts of the constitution, giving himself sweeping powers to arrest and detain opponents, including two of the country’s five Supreme Court justices and even his own half-brother. Meanwhile, Yameen has tossed out Nasheed’s climate adaptation plans and rejected renewable energy programs, proposing instead to build new islands and economic free zones attractive to a global elite. “We do not need cabinet meetings underwater,” his environment minister told The Guardian. “We do not need to go anywhere. We need development.”

If any lesson can be drawn from the power struggle in the Maldives, it is that people who feel threatened by an outside force, be it foreign invaders or rising tides, often seek reassurance. That reassurance may come in the form of a strongman leader, someone who tells them all will be well, the economy will soar, the sea walls hold. People must only surrender their elections, or their due process, until the crisis is resolved. This is perhaps the most overlooked threat of climate change: Major shifts in the global climate could give rise to a new generation of authoritarian rulers, not just in poorer countries or those with weak democratic institutions, but in wealthy industrialized nations, too.

Refugee crises, famine, drought—these are materials strongmen can use to build power. Already, strife and civil instability are spreading throughout the global South, with droughts and floods stoking conflict and refugee crises in parts of Africa and the Middle East. According to a 2016 paper in Science, climate change will increase the risk of armed conflict across Africa by 50 percent by 2030.

But then - American Univ, a book review:

From wildfires in California to hurricanes in the Carolinas, the recent extreme weather in the United States highlights the threat of climate change. Yet, the Trump administration has been rolling back policies to protect the environment, raising concerns that democratic governments are incapable of responding to the growing danger to the planet.

In his new book, "Can Democracy Handle Climate Change?" published by Polity Books, SPA Distinguished Executive in Residence Dan Fiorino challenges those who are skeptical of democratic countries’ capacity to address climate change.

“There is a school of thought that protecting the environment is so difficult in a consumer-oriented society that capitalism and democracy are not up to the task, so more authoritarian, top-down regimes are needed to make the hard choices,” says Fiorino, director of the AU Center for Environmental Policy.

Critics of democracies maintain the system is cumbersome and voters are too short-sighted in their thinking. Also, pressure from special interest groups makes it nearly impossible to make substantive change to energy, agriculture, transportation, and land use policies.

Fiorino criticizes these arguments in his book, which was released this summer. He cites research showing that, despite their failure to mitigate the causes of climate change, democratic countries have made more progress than authoritarian ones on environmental issues, including climate change.

Always hopeful - seldom optimistic.