As Naomi Klein has pointed out, the Right may be onto something when it describes global warming as a Bolshevik plot: curbing climate change requires a fundamental rethinking of our economic system and the role of the state in orchestrating it. Conservatives grasp at a visceral level just how vast the implications of the ecological crisis really are. For them, rejecting climate change is a perfectly rational political position.

And yet, while climate-denying Republicans grab the headlines, neoliberal and openly right-wing actors have carved out sizable space in policy discussions about how to stem rising tides and scale up renewable energy.

Though the climate fight tends to get painted in black and white terms — either you believe in global warming or you don’t — the former camp contains multitudes. The thread linking the Wall Street bankers, oil magnates, and progressive heroes contained within it is a conviction that a perfectly free market and its rational economic actors can offer salvation from the end of the world as we know it. Even amid the GOP’s staunch denialism, it’s this uneasy coalition that may pose one of the most difficult barriers to surmount as the stark reality of the climate crisis becomes more painfully obvious.