It goes with the territory. Fascist leaders are convinced they are always right and therefore empowered to make correct judgments about anything that comes their way. For Hitler that meant denial of most of 20th century physics, especially relativity and quantum mechanics, as Jewish physics. There was a direct line from that to the Germans’ inability to mount any significant challenge to allied development of nuclear weapons. In the end the Germans were defeated without such weapons, but it was only a matter of luck that it happened in time. Hitler defeated the entire German war machine, because he was always right.

The parallels to climate change are exact. Climate change is real, and the technological underpinning for the rest of the world is being built about combatting it. We’re either part of that future or we’re not. It affects not only how energy is generated and distributed but also how major applications use it. We sit around talking about how to “win” our competition with China when we have ceded all of that to them.

In our own power network the situation is beyond ridiculous. The many new mega-datacenters demand vast increases in electrical power to run them. We could use that opportunity to upgrade our (outdated and insecure) electrical infrastructure nationwide in a way that would serve the datacenters, the public, and the evolution to new energy sources. That would buy benefits for the datacenters themselves, and would certainly improve public attitudes about their construction–and that’s in addition to the benefits as we address climate change and new energy sources come online. (See what China is doing here.) In fact we have refused to do any such thing, leaving the implementation as a bunch of point solutions based primarily on fossil fuels and an outright prohibition on wind and solar. When you’re never wrong, there’s no limit to the damage.

We the human race may or may not succeed in avoiding real climate disaster, but any successes we achieve will be despite Trump’s sabotage. Whatever international order comes out of it all will reflect the interests of those who build it. And the status of the US will recognize that Trump’s sabotage was in literal terms a crime against humanity.