System collapse unfolds first gradually, then suddenly, as Ernest Hemingway might have put it. It is worth recalling that the fascist epoch of the 1920s to 1940s only ended due to the catastrophe of World War Two.

The apocalyptic fear today, encapsulated in a new book by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, is that the global right, from Washington and Tel Aviv to Brazil, will burn the world, through war, ecocide and pumping every last drop of the planet-frying oil that fossil capital sees as its birthright (and the funding source of the right’s political campaigns).