Skip to content Skip to footer

Christian Parenti on Taking Power in a Climate of Chaos

Parenti discusses climate change and our current political landscape.

Truthout Logo

“Left Out,” a podcast produced by Paul Sliker, Michael Palmieri and Dante Dallavalle, creates in-depth conversations with the most interesting political thinkers, heterodox economists and organizers on the left.

In this episode, we sat down with Christian Parenti to discuss climate change and our current political and economic landscape. Parenti is a sociologist trained at the London School of Economics and is currently an economics professor at John Jay College. He’s written extensively on the connection between climate change and geopolitical conflict around the globe and has reported from war zones in Afghanistan, Iraq, as well as parts of Africa, Latin America and Asia. His writing has appeared in Fortune, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Middle East Report, London Review of Books, Mother Jones and The Nation (where he is contributing editor).

In 2011 he authored the book, Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and The New Geography of Violence, which explored how climate change is already causing violence as it interacts with the legacies of economic neoliberalism and cold-war militarism. His latest piece of work is featured in Anthropocene or Capitalocene?: Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism, alongside a collection of provocative essays on nature and power, humanity and capitalism framed within a politics of hope that signal the possibilities for transcending capitalism. In our interview, we were able to ask Christian what it was like to straddle the realm between academia and journalism; prospects of climate catastrophe; climate change and climate justice; and the role of both politics and the state in any real solutions for a way forward.

Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn

Dear Truthout Community,

If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.

We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.

Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.

There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.

Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?

It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.

We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.

We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.

Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.

We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.

With love, rage, and solidarity,

Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy