It was a plan you’d have to see executed to believe it was possible. For decades, Donald Trump lived his role perfectly: the carnival barker playing the mad king, cashing out just in time to save the world as only he could. Now generations to come will bow in reverence to the statue, literal and figurative, of the man who fooled us all for the greater good and, in the process, saved the planet.

If ever there were an existential crisis to threaten humankind, it was climate change. The challenge was intractable but not unsolvable. The trick to sorting out the conundrum, it turned out, was to sneak up on it. To at once deny and exacerbate climate change was to lull it into submission. To open coal-fired electricity plants to power artificial intelligence data centers, roll back mandates for electric vehicles, and attempt to discredit climate change itself was to approach the problem with a wiliness and cunning that, to the untrained eye, was impossible to distinguish from making everything worse.

Launching a war in the Middle East stacked further strain upon a weary population that had just lived through a pandemic and years of affordability crisis. It also coincided with a long-term, full-scale Russian invasion that had undermined the global order, driven up energy prices, and increased food insecurity. Accordingly, it seemed an insane thing to do. Granted. But what of it? Such grousing is the complaint of those who have not consulted and understood the Plan.