Thank a conservative. They have fought very hard to stop normal people from fighting climate change.
At this point, if you aren't fighting conservatism, you aren't fighting climate change. Conservatives will kill everyone on the planet if we do not aggressively stop them.
And they like to play it as if its over the top but its really fighting fascism. Conservatives 50 years ago are different from the nutters now who want dictatorial powers.
They're not really that different. Nationalists, racists, homophobes, misogynists, xenophobes, anti-semites... It's the same people. Conservatives. They have always been trash. They just had better PR for a while.
They are further along their trajectory now. They were always heading this direction, that much should have been obvious to a lot of people all along. I believe it was, but that the endless propaganda of the US media machine kept most of its population from realizing it. There are all sorts of (arguably) respectable political issues conservatives of the past focussed their words on, while their actions spoke different.
Some of them might even have believed they wanted 'small government' or 'fiscal responsibility'. But their actions were clear in intent, from racial segregation, to the Red Scare, to suppressing social movements, to implementing a politic of austerity. I only fail to mention war because their liberal 'opposition' carries roughly equal blame for the US war machine.
The people today may be different in body, action, word, but this is a continuation of a long political project that ended up in facism.
oh there is definitely a trajectory. Pre/post nixon, reagan, and now trump it just gets worse and worse. At one time though they did have a level of reasonableness and could effectively work with others and share power