RT: https://poa.st/objects/1c67ca2c-8e27-4117-adcb-ae6a250a54a7
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when the USSR fell, the massive warfare state in the US, along with its massive covert / intelligence operations needed a new enemy to justify its existence.
The War on Drugs, and the War on Terrorism were really just the Massive warfare state turning its guns upon its own citizens.
When this became too obvious, they embraced the war on Climate, which is really just a continuation of the war upon the citizens by the warfare state.
Everyone has an existential threat of personal death, and it's only very recently that this wasn't a day in, day out, death was omnipresent and could take even the most healthy out in a week or so from a random infection. Like President Calvin Coolidge's son in 1924, well in the modern era of medicine with antiseptics, but before sulfa drugs and antibiotics.
Might also think about continental vs. maritime powers. The former were always at risk of easy invasion by land, the latter had to maintain their fleets to forestall that, but generally had it easier and the fleet thing encouraged technology development and confidence. The age of airplanes changed that for the latter, although until we ended WWII with nukes no one took to heart Douhet's full thesis, which explicitly called for WMD use to make the war quick and much less expensive in lives than WWI.
Global climate concerns also go back to 200 AD as I recall.... Ah, yeah, there's famine, often climate induced ("the year without a summer" due to a volcano in Indonesia). It's very recent that mankind has had enough to eat, and if you're my age you were brought up on "finish your plate, think of the starving children in India." Then India sent relief food to Ethiopia in the early 1980s and I realized things had changed.
So going back to at least when mankind hit a population bottleneck of a few thousand we've been wired for hard times....