The Common Thread Between Epstein Denial and Climate Denial
Besides its rhetorical flourishes, the throughline between climate denial and Epstein denial is that the underlying harms at issue—catastrophic global warming, and decades of sexual abuse—are straightforwardly horrific. It boggles the mind to imagine that so many of the country’s most powerful people, Democrats and Republicans alike, spent decades either aware of or involved in crimes of that magnitude, looking the other way as victims continued to accumulate.
Yet that’s exactly what’s happened. Pictures show Donald Trump smiling next to Jeffrey Epstein, who hung out with him at parties throughout the 1990s. Epstein palled around with Larry Summers, Malcolm Gladwell, Bill Gates, and Al Gore, and at one point described Trump—who even joked about Epstein’s preference for young girls—as his “closest friend.” Trump flew seven times on an Epstein-owned private jet known as the “Lolita Express,” frequented by a host of other luminaries, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Epstein died in prison while awaiting trial for federal sex-trafficking charges, and the tape the administration purports to show definitive proof of his suicide has nearly three minutes of missing footage. On Thursday evening, the Wall Street Journal reported on a letter from Trump addressed to Epstein, commemorating his 50th birthday in 2003. The birthday well-wishing features the stylized image of naked woman. “We have certain things in common, Jeffrey,” it reads, as part of an imagined conversation between Trump and Epstein. “Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
Monied interests’ efforts to deny and downplay the reality of the climate crisis—and their own products’ role in fueling it—are just as scandalous. In 1988, an internal report from Shell projected that continuing to burn fossil fuels would lead atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide to double by 2030, bringing about sea-level rise that could inundate entire low-lying countries. Such changes, Shell analysts warned, would “drastically change the way people live and work.” Even earlier, in 1982, Exxon foresaw “potentially catastrophic events.” Both companies continued lobbying against laws and regulations that would keep driving the world toward that future, and donate generously to Republican and Democratic politicians who’ll oppose them, too.
Whether you’re talking about Jeffrey Epstein’s offenses or the reality of climate change, in other words, plenty of damning evidence is already out in the open. You don’t have to possess an especially conspiratorial mind to see that members of both parties were at the very least chummy with a despicable sex criminal who died under questionable circumstances. Neither is it any great mystery why oil and gas companies shelled out handsome sums to deflect attention away from their disastrous contributions to global warming, and enlist Republicans and Democrats alike in their cause. With any luck, Trump’s disastrous handling of the Epstein affair will fatally dismember the MAGA coalition, and they won’t be fooled by his last-ditch, cherry-picking effort to release grand jury testimony. Unfortunately, a large-scale reckoning with the conspiracy that’s continuing to fuel the climate crisis will be harder to come by.
