Belated update: I know most of you are focused on the big news out of Pennsylvania, and the post below was obviously written a while ago.
Few things surprise me anymore, but the revelation that one of the most repressive and backward regimes on earth is more scientifically enlightened than, say, the Republican Party of Florida still has the power to baffle me.
Rick Noack of The Washington Post reports:
While the Taliban's beliefs are rooted in centuries of Pashtun culture and an extreme interpretation of Islam, the government asserts that climate change is real, is destroying God's work, and that people around the world who deny the reality of climate change must join in. The Taliban have called on imams in Afghanistan's tens of thousands of mosques to emphasize the need to protect the environment during Friday prayers.
You’re right: right-wing white evangelical Christians in this country seem to think they can afford to ignore climate change, but it’s now being brought to the forefront by the most repressive Islamic regime on earth.
Farisullah Azhari, a Kabul-based imam, said carbon emissions will weigh heavily on Judgment Day. “God will ask, 'How did you earn your money?' And he will ask, 'How much suffering did you cause in the process?'” he said in an interview.
Meanwhile, as many know, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill in May removing the term “climate change” from state law, even though affordable home insurance is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain in the state.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the bill.HB1645State lawmakers advanced a bill Wednesday that would remove multiple instances of the phrase “climate change” from state law and restructure the state's fossil fuel-based energy policy, which had made climate change a priority in determining energy policy.
[***]
“Florida rejects the left's plans to undermine our energy grid, pursue radical climate change policies and empower foreign adversaries,” DeSantis said. X The message, posted Wednesday afternoon, included the statement: “Radical environmentalists are trying to force climate change measures on people through restrictions, regulations and taxes.”
Donald Trump’s programmatic approach to the climate issue is similarly willful and willful ignorance. For example, in Project 2025, Trump’s “plan” is to effectively accelerate the process of climate change by abandoning all efforts to stop it, and to worsen the climate by increasing the nation’s fossil fuel consumption.
The Taliban appear divided over whether Allah or the regime's foreign enemies (such as the United States) are to blame for global warming, which is destroying their ability to feed their people through prolonged drought and the resulting hardening of the soil (which also causes flash floods when it rains).
Either way, the consensus seems to be that fighting is a religious duty. As Noack points out, the Taliban's environmental approach is historically rooted in the Quran, which encourages tree planting, for example. But within the Taliban's Afghanistan Scientific Society, religious leaders are now debating how to reconcile ancient religious texts with modern climate science.
“Just as they invaded our country, they invaded our climate,” Taliban Deputy Minister of Higher Education Lutfulla Khairkau said in his opening speech at this year's Jalalabad conference. “We must protect our climate, our water and our soil to the same extent that we protect ourselves from aggression.”
Their defense strategy involves going into the country and educating the largely uneducated population about climate change and how to combat it, the article noted, and they've received little foreign aid for their efforts because Taliban-controlled Afghanistan is now essentially a pariah state.
It's often said that the Republican Party has degenerated into a sort of American Taliban, but the reality seems to be much worse than that.
