[goleksiak]

This is about control - but control for what purpose? The short-term financial gain of elites? Maybe. To satisfy elite paranoia?. Maybe.

Maybe this is control for stability.

The government creates models of the future and with more and more data about climate change pointing to disaster in the next few decades, those models must be focusing more and more at that point. So instead of government "holding its people back from a bright future", they are pragmatically laying the foundations for the control structures that will be necessary in the unavoidably dark future.

How can stability be maintained when society is radically altered by climate change?

Answer: Control