It’s democracy v plutocracy – this is the endgame for our planet | George Monbiot

The US supreme court is helping to destroy our climate. But it was a much smaller decision, closer to home, that was the final straw for me

It feels like the end game. In the US last week, the third perverse and highly partisan supreme court decision in a few days made American efforts to prevent climate breakdown almost impossible. Ruling in favour of the state of West Virginia, the court decided that the Environmental Protection Agency is not entitled to restrict carbon dioxide emissions from power stations.

The day before, in the UK, the government's climate change committee reported a shocking" failure by Boris Johnson's administration to meet its climate targets. So stupid and perverse are its policies on issues such as energy saving that it's hard to see this as anything other than failure by design. On the day of the supreme court ruling, the UK government also announced that it intended to scrap the law protecting the UK's most important wildlife sites.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist