The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that most billionaires and politicians know this and act accordingly. Also that global warming is real and can't be stopped so just buckle in and prepare to be a feudal lord when society collapses. Like the survivor class is already mostly set in place so run interference with abortion debates until the sea takes away Florida Thanks for coming to my TED talk
The Tragedy of the Commons takes away any need for conspiracy. If there are resources, and nobody prevents you from taking them, everyone will make a mad dash to use up all the resources because they're going to get used up anyway. If you're a billionaire, you can use more resources. End of discussion. Global warming fits into that quite nicely. Bill Gates has a gajillion dollars and while he's throwing money at it he's thrown hella more at malaria because a billion dollars? Might damn well cure malaria. Curing global warming is going to take all the billions. Especially when it's widely acknowledged that it's going to most directly affect the tropics, where you don't live, and where you can move away from, and in 50 years Alaska is going to be nice so let's put our capital where it counts.
Meanwhile the Koch brothers seem to just want to dismantle all government. I don't think they're stupid or do I think other stupid rich people are. I think they're nihilistic and they got theirs so fuck the world cause their heirs are gonna have clean water no matter what. It's a pretty easy to understand thesis: rich people only care about themselves. You can take it to the point where they're funding Elon Musk so they can all go live on Mars but it breaks down when you realize how miserable living on Mars would be. It's as simple as saying the rich don't care about anything because they got theirs and their descendants will too for centuries Are the powerful conspiring against us re: climate change. Probably not. Does it matter? Also probably not but the ends are the same because their families are gonna ride the shit out in luxury