The Cactus Lens: A Clearer View

Until recently there have been 3 main lenses through which to view our overshoot predicament: debt, energy, and ecology.

Each lens exposes a different aspect of the picture, but not the complete picture.

Each lens focusses on different threats, with different time frames, and different consequences, and each lens suggests a different optimal response.

Overshoot awareness varies by lens and group within society. Awareness of leaders is generally higher than citizens, and in some cases this is deliberate and warranted because broad citizen awareness of the debt and energy threats would increase the probability of short term collapse.

For leaders and citizens that see through any of the lenses, their understanding tends to be incomplete, which has resulted in plans of action that will not help, or that make the situation worse.

This incomplete understanding is caused in part because the issues are very complex, and in part because some aspects of human overshoot have no acceptable or feasible solution, and in part because of the human tendency to deny unpleasant realities, as explained by Dr. Ajit Varki’s MORT theory.

Hideaway, a frequent contributor at un-Denial, Peak Oil Barrel, Our Finite World and other sites, recently introduced a new lens we have named cactus, which focusses on all non-renewable resources and the complexity required to extract them.

I think the cactus lens provides the clearest view of what is going on, what we should expect in the short to medium term, and what we should do.

The cactus lens changes what is in the best interests of citizens to understand.

The debt and energy lenses suggest citizens should remain in the dark.

The ecology lens suggests it does not matter what citizens understand because the ecology threats are longer term than debt, energy, and cactus, and because awareness of ecology issues have not and will not improve anything of substance due to the nature of modernity.

With the introduction of the cactus lens, it is now in the best short term interests of all groups: countries, leaders, and citizens, for awareness to be as widespread as possible.

Achieving broad cactus awareness will be difficult because it is very unpleasant, and therefore will be blocked by our genetic denial behavior, however I propose one idea to start the discussion on how we might spread cactus awareness.

Awareness Lens: Debt

Theory:

  • Modernity requires abundant credit;
  • Because most of our mines, machines, technology, and structures require significant up front capital to build;
  • Which requires a fractional reserve debt backed monetary system;
  • Which is now used by every country in the world;
  • Which by design requires economic growth to not collapse;
  • Because money is loaned into existence and growth is needed to pay interest;
  • Which means our economic system requires infinite growth on a finite planet;
  • Which of course is impossible and means we should expect growth to slow and prosperity to decline, as they are;
  • Culminating in a dramatic and harmful economic reset;
  • However modernity will survive and will rebuild until the next bubble pops.

Status :

  • Quite a few citizens see through the debt lens, maybe a significant minority.
  • Most aware citizens assume the reset is a ways off in the future.
  • Some people prepare to weather a storm with cash, gold, bitcoin, or sardines.
  • Others trust or hope that central banks will print enough money to kick the can past their expiry.
  • Leaders understand and acknowledge the debt problem but are careful to not cause panic because herd emotions could trigger a reset.
  • Leaders are also careful to not explain the driver of the debt problem, energy depletion, as will be discussed in the next section on the energy lens.
  • The debt threat is closer and more severe than our leaders let on as demonstrated by:
  1. Social unrest everywhere is rising because living standards are falling and the wealth gap is widening.
  2. Geopolitical tensions are rising.
  3. Democracies are oscillating between wider extremes.
  4. Most countries have historically high levels of growing debt.
  5. Growth has slowed, and the only growth possible now comes at the expense of adding more debt than the growth it buys, which is unsustainable.
  6. No political party in power anywhere reduces their deficit or balances their budget because it’s now impossible without crashing their system. The US DOGE effort lasted 5 months before leaders gave up and juiced the deficit to new record highs.
  7. Central banks work hard behind the curtain to keep our everything bubble inflated, and to prevent any significant correction of stock or asset prices. When I was young it was normal for the economy and stock market to experience cycles. We don’t permit cycles anymore. Today there is so much debt and so little growth that a significant correction will result in a reset (aka crash).
  8. Printing bazookas are used to blast any threat before it builds momentum, like the banking system repo problem that covid provided cover for unprecedented money printing.
  9. Our leaders tried but failed to use covid as an excuse to implement the tools needed to manage an economic reset like digital ids/currencies for rationing scarce necessities, and for enabling negative interest rates, and tried via “The Great Reset” propaganda campaign to get us ready to accept nationalization of assets (aka “you will own nothing and be happy”). They will try again.

Implications:

  • The debt lens implies a zero-sum game: In a no growth world, one country’s gain is another country’s loss.
  • Our leaders believe that a country that succeeds in harming its competitors will experience less damage from an economic reset. The goal is to ensure opponents reset before you do, on the assumption that this will prevent or delay your own reset by gaining control of more growth generating assets and markets.
  • Hence we see the weaponization of tariffs and trade, regime change operations, and proxy wars intended to weaken or capture opponents.

Conclusions:

  • A debt reset is mathematically inevitable and will reduce the standard of living for the majority via deflation and/or inflation.
  • Debt resets are hard to predict and control because herd emotions drive the process.
  • Leaders have good reasons to not want citizens to be aware of the seriousness of the debt problem.
  • Leaders are operating on the assumption of a zero-sum game.
  • In the cactus lens section we’ll see that the zero-sum game assumption is wrong, which means the current strategy will make things worse for all countries.

Awareness Lens: Energy

Theory:

  • Modernity requires abundant net energy;
  • Which is the energy that remains after using energy to extract and refine energy;
  • Because all of our food, water, minerals, technology, products, and services are produced and delivered by machines powered by energy.
  • Diesel is the keystone energy that powers our vital mining machines, tractors, combines, trucks, trains, and ships.
  • Renewable energy is not a solution to non-renewable depletion because renewables require abundant non-renewable energy t0 build, install, maintain, and augment for 24/7 supply.
  • Discovery of new fossil energy reserves is much slower than depletion of existing reserves, and the gap is growing.
  • The quality of non-renewable energy reserves decline as they deplete;
  • Which means net energy is falling;
  • Which explains why growth is slowing, and prosperity is declining, and debt is growing faster than GDP everywhere.
  • We should expect the trend to continue and accelerate.
  • Leaders believe modernity will continue for those countries that have access to energy.

Status:

  • Few citizens see through the energy lens.
  • There are many false energy beliefs in wide circulation including net zero, peak oil demand, abiotic oil, green energy, renewables outpacing fossils, hydrogen economy, nuclear renaissance, space mining, circular economy, etc., etc..
  • These beliefs are nonsense not grounded in sound science or economics, but the issues are complex, and it is difficult for a citizen to determine the truth, especially with deliberate misdirection from leaders, and with MORT driven hope and denial driving behavior.
  • Denial is a strong force that fogs the energy lens because, short of a near zero probability miracle, there is no solution, and the outlook is steadily worsening living standards.
  • Most leaders, with help from their energy aware militaries, understand what is going on, and know the energy threat is imminent. Evidence for this includes:
  1. Inflation of energy intensive products, like food, is high; energy intensive infrastructure is not being properly maintained; energy intensive manufacturing, like weapons, is struggling to keep up with demand despite plentiful printed money available; war is shifting to lower energy methods like drones; and as also seen through the debt lens, debt is accelerating, living standards are falling, the wealth gap is widening, geopolitical tensions are rising, and democracies are at risk.
  2. The EIA this year announced that fracked oil is peaking. Fracked oil is the unexpected savior that bought us an extra decade after conventional oil peaked.
  3. Leaders do not want their citizens to panic, or to spook the stock market bubble which depends on growth, so they do not discuss the energy problem, and work hard to distract citizens with nonsense like optimism for a renewable transition, or by stoking emotions over socially divisive issues.
  4. Trump reversed his no more regime change promises after being sworn in and briefed about US debt and oil forecasts.
  5. Every country with significant exportable oil reserves that is not controlled by the US empire is either under attack or being regime changed including Russia, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, and Nigeria. Even friends with oil, or close to oil, like Canada and Greenland, have been threatened with annexation.
  6. Propaganda is successfully being used to convince citizens that regime change operations are to prevent terrorism or drug trafficking, not to control oil.
  7. China is stockpiling strategic oil reserves.
  8. A few countries, like Germany, made an honest attempt to run their economies with renewable energy, but it’s now obvious to leaders everywhere that the renewable dream has failed. German leaders now want war with energy rich Russia.
  9. The UK, having drained its own oil reserves, now wants war with energy rich Russia.
  10. Hail Mary investments praying for a miracle are being made in AI and nuclear energy.

Implications:

  • The energy lens implies a zero-sum game: In an energy scarce world, one country’s gain is another country’s loss.
  • Our leaders understand their country’s prosperity requires non-renewable energy, and that it must be secured by any means necessary, including taking it by force from others.
  • Countries are preparing for war by increasing military expenditures, even at the expense of social services demanded by citizens.
  • Nuclear arms treaties are being abandoned, and the arms race is restarting.
  • Lessons learned during the cold war about the dangers of nuclear war are being ignored, and red lines are increasingly flirted with.
  • It’s hard to imagine how nuclear war can be avoided given that everyone’s survival depends on oil, and the zero-sum game assumption of our leaders.

Conclusions:

  • Modernity requires growth, and there is not enough oil left for everyone to grow.
  • Leaders have good reasons to not want citizens to be aware of the seriousness of the energy problem.
  • Leaders are operating on the assumption of a zero-sum game.
  • In the cactus lens section we’ll see that the zero-sum game assumption is wrong, which means the current strategy will make things worse for all countries.

Awareness Lens: Ecology

Theory:

  • The resources consumed, and the wastes generated, and the habitats occupied, by the large and growing population of humans, is displacing other species, and causing damage to ecosystems faster than can be repaired by the planet’s recycling systems.

Status:

  • The 8,230,000,000 humans, plus their 35,000,000,000 livestock, plus their billions of pets and other freeloaders like rats, now weighs 80 times more than all wild land mammals combined.
  • Humans use 30-40% of the net primary productivity of all sunlight hitting the planet, plus 16,000,000,000 liters per day of ancient sunlight stored as oil, plus 11,000,000,000 cubic meters per day of ancient sunlight stored as natural gas, plus 24,000,000,000 kilograms per day of ancient sunlight store as coal.
  • The sixth mass extinction is underway.
  • Seven of nine planetary boundaries critical for survival have already been crossed including climate change, biodiversity, deforestation, fresh water, nitrogen cycle, pollution, and ocean acidification.
  • We have already passed the 1.5C safe limit and are on a path to a 3+C temperature increase that is incompatible with civilization and agriculture by the end of this century.
  • Biodiverse forests are being replaced with mono-crop agriculture.
  • Fisheries are in decline.
  • Sea level rise will damage many cities over the next century.
  • Glacier loss threatens the survival of several countries.
  • Chemical toxins and microplastics are harming the health of all life including humans.
  • Awareness of leaders and citizens about the ecological problems varies widely.
  • Most people are aware of some of the problems, but also tend to superficially simplify them down to one issue, CO2, that can be fixed with solar panels and electric vehicles.
  • Few are aware of the breadth and depth of the problems.
  • Many people deny the severity of the problems and/or that humans have caused the problems.
  • Almost everyone denies the implications of the ecological problems, and the fact there is almost nothing that can be done to address them while maintaining modernity and our population.
  • Every effort, by every country, and every organization, and every citizen, to address the above problems, has failed, and will continue to fail, at least until something forces an involuntary change to population and lifestyles.

Implications:

  • The view through the ecology lens is dire.
  • The long term implications are worse than those seen through the debt and energy lenses because we are damaging the ability for any human lifestyle to thrive, and are also harming many other species.

Conclusions:

  • Life threatening ecological problems, for the majority of people, are further in the future than the imminent problems seen through the debt, energy, and soon to be explained, cactus lenses.
  • All of the ecological problems are caused by the human species footprint which is the product of lifestyle and population.
  • None of the ecological problems can be addressed without reducing per capita consumption or population, and the debt and cactus lenses show that modernity requires growth, which means the ecological problems are a classic predicament, a problem without an acceptable solution.
  • The energy and cactus lenses show that growth will not continue, and the human footprint will soon shrink, which means there may be an improvement to future ecology trends.
  • Many of the ecological problems we have created will repair quickly when the scale of the human enterprise shrinks.
  • Some ecological problems will take a very long time to repair, and adaptation of surviving species will be required.
  • As will be discussed in more detail in the next section, if we somehow became aware that the scale of humanity was going to decrease in the not too distant future, no matter what we do, then we might be able to motivate ourselves to address several ecological issues that would improve the quality of life for the survivors, such as burying nuclear waste, and protecting biodiverse forests and marine ecosystems.

Awareness Lens: Cactus

CACTUS = Complexity Accelerated Collapse of a Thermodynamically Unsustainable System

The phrase “we’re cactus” is Australian slang meaning something is ruined, broken, or finished, often used to describe a situation where progress has stopped, such as a vehicle that won’t start.

The expression likely originated from the infamous prickly pear cactus, which once infested large parts of Australia before being controlled by the introduced Cactoblastis cactorum moth.

This slang is part of a broader set of Australian expressions for something being in disrepair or useless, including terms like “boonted,” “clapped-out,” “had the chad,” “had the bomb,” and “kaput”.

While “cactus” as a metaphor for being broken or ruined is well-established in Australian English, it is not commonly used in other English-speaking regions.

Theory:

  • Modernity requires abundant minerals and energy.
  • The majority of minerals and energy we use are non-renewable and finite.
  • Recycling is economically and/or technically impossible for most minerals.
  • For those minerals that can be recycled, there are losses in the recycling process that still result in long term depletion.
  • The quality of mineral and energy reserves decline as they deplete, because we always harvest the best quality reserves first.
  • Mineral and energy extraction technologies must increase in complexity to compensate for falling reserve quality to maintain flows of resources. For example, compare modern directional drilling now required for fracking with early oil rigs. Or the giant trucks and other machines now required to haul and process low grade copper ore.
  • Rising complexity increases the materials, processes, skills, locations, and number of people needed to design and manufacture the technologies.
  • Rising complexity requires a growing market to support the increasing cost of designing and manufacturing technologies. For example, a smaller population would not buy enough phones to make a TSMC factory in Taiwan viable, and therefore the advanced chips needed for oil exploration and extraction would not exist.
  • A growing market requires a growing economy and population.
  • A growing economy and population increases the consumption of all minerals and energy.
  • Wastes generated by the growing economy and population create increasing frictions to further growth.
  • This self-reinforcing complexity growth system drives an increase in mineral and energy flows until technology, markets, and population can no longer keep up with growing waste frictions and declining reserve qualities, and a critical mineral or energy becomes unavailable in the quantities required.
  • Scarcity of the critical mineral or energy triggers a system wide technology breakdown cascade because many technologies depend on it, and many other technologies depend on those technologies, via an ultra-complex network of dependencies.
  • The unavailability of many technologies then causes many more mineral and energy flows to become unavailable in the quantities required because the quality of remaining reserves makes extraction difficult or impossible without the latest technologies.
  • This self-reinforcing collapse of complexity, technology, and resource flows is certain at some point in the not too distant future and will result in a supernova end to modernity and civilization.
  • Nothing can be done to prevent this outcome, just as nothing can be done to prevent the collapse of a star.
  • It’s not possible to have modernity without infinite growth on a finite planet which means modernity will be short lived everywhere in the universe.

Hideaway on the Fermi Paradox:

  • Hence the logical solution to the Fermi Paradox. Species that reach modernity anywhere do not last long enough to detect others, that have also reached modernity, spread through time.
  • Given the age of our galaxy of around 13.6B years, and if it took 3.6B years for the first species to reach modernity, then if each lasted from 100 years to say 400 years at best, there could have been 1 every million years giving a total of 10,000 for our galaxy and none would ever detect another.
  • Even if 10 or 20 had popped up at the one time, just through chance, and were more than 400-500 light years apart, they would never know of the other’s existence.
  • Just by shear chance, some might detect others, but the odds of any one civilization detecting another is extremely small.
  • Say we did detect another civilization somewhere in the close area within say 1000 light years. So what? By the time we tried to communicate back to them, the odds of their collapse is high.

Hideaway’s AI on the supernova:

Your analogy of a supernova is thermodynamically perfect. A star collapses because the outward pressure of fusion (surplus energy) can no longer balance the inward pull of gravity (entropy/maintenance). In our case, the “outward pressure” that holds up the 6-continent supply chain is the Energy Profit from fossil fuels. Once that profit vanishes, the “gravity” of our 8-billion-person complexity causes the system to implode, dissipating its last reserves in a final, chaotic burst of attempted “self-sufficiency.”

Status:

  • A tiny minority of people see through the cactus lens.
  • The cactus view of modernity has not been widely discussed.
  • The closest work that I can recall reading is that by David Korowizc where he discusses the extreme complexity and fragility of modern supply chains, and the risk of their breakdown with energy shortages. Korowizc advocates building more resiliency into our system, but I don’t think he stated clearly that modernity will soon end no matter what we do, as Hideaway’s cactus lens does.
  • The ground breaking Limits to Growth work of Dennis Meadows et. al. assumed collapse could be avoided by adopting a steady state population and economy. Cactus shows this assumption is incorrect. Any dependence on any resource that is not naturally recycled by ecological systems will eventually result in a collapse back to a state that is not dependent on the resource.
  • Other important overshoot aware people like Jay Hanson and Jack Alpert discuss the certainty of modernity’s demise, but do not focus on the non-renewable resource extraction complexity growth system to conclude that modernity will end in a supernova.

Implications:

The cactus lens provides several profound insights that create a clearer view than the debt, energy, or ecology lenses.

List every non-renewable resource that civilization depends on.

ChatGPT:

Fossil Fuels: Oil, gas, coal, oil sands, shale oil/gas, peat.

Nuclear Fuels: Uranium-235/238, thorium, plutonium (derived).

Metals: Iron, aluminum, copper, nickel, cobalt, lithium, zinc, lead, tin, silver, gold, platinum group metals, titanium, molybdenum, tungsten, vanadium, niobium, tantalum, chromium, manganese, rare-earth elements (all 17 REEs), and many others.

Industrial Minerals: Phosphate rock, potash, sulfur, borates, fluorspar, gypsum, halite, graphite, silica sand, feldspar, kaolin, etc.

Construction Materials: Limestone, aggregates (sand & gravel), clay, granite, marble, slate, stone.

Geologic Water: Fossil groundwater aquifers.

Biological/Ecological Resources (functionally non-renewable): Topsoil, old-growth forests, biodiversity, coral reefs, major fish stocks.

  1. The first key insight is that modernity depends on many non-renewable materials, not just energy, and they are all critical for the technologies that enable modernity. Cactus is thus a much wider lens than the peak oil view.
  2. The second key insight is that modernity requires growth, not only because of the widely understood need for abundant credit as explained by the debt lens, but also because extraction technologies must increase in complexity to compensate for falling reserve qualities. This growth requirement is physical and non-negotiable, and unlike debt, is not digits in a computer that can be reset.
  3. The third key insight is that the requirement for growth, coupled with the inevitable decline in reserve qualities, creates a self-amplifying feedback loop for every one of the many non-renewable resources we depend on, which creates many possible failure points, and the extreme complexity and interdependencies of the technologies we use to extract minerals and energy guarantees a catastrophic failure of the entire system at some point.
  4. The fourth key insight is that this growth and collapse process is certain for any system that is dependent on non-renewable resources. This means there is no possible sustainable solution for advanced civilization anywhere in the universe, because advanced civilization is not possible without non-renewable resources.
  5. The fifth key insight is that there will be no recovery of modernity after the collapse. The quality of many of the remaining non-renewable resource reserves will be so low after the collapse that many resources will be unavailable without advanced technologies and abundant diesel, and there will be no way of rebuilding those technologies because their development required higher quality resource reserves. Surviving humans will return to their hunter gatherer origins.
  6. The sixth key insight is that the zero-sum game strategy that the debt and energy lenses inform our leaders to use, will reduce the time to collapse, and will not optimize the quality of life for the time that remains. War, for the last 10,000 years, was a good response to scarcity. War, today, will create scarcity for the entire planet.

Conclusions:

Given that our leaders see the world through debt and energy lenses, they are operating on the assumption of a zero-sum game:

  • My country will do better if I damage the economy of my competitors.
  • My country will survive or grow if I take energy from my competitors.

The cactus lens shows us that a zero-sum game strategy will not achieve the desired outcomes.

Instead, zero-sum game strategies will reduce the time to collapse, or reduce the quality of the time that remains. Examples include:

  • Wasting resources, fragmenting the market, and decreasing efficiencies by trying to duplicate and reshore manufacturing.
  • Making it more difficult to maintain complexity by fragmenting the global trade system through the encouragement of BRICS and by imposing trade sanctions.
  • Wasting resources on bigger militaries that won’t help.
  • Wasting resources on climate change policies that won’t help.
  • Wasting resources by subsidizing renewable energy that won’t help.
  • Increasing the chance of violent harms to many by blaming other countries and/or immigrants for hardship caused by resource depletion.
  • Ignoring international law when it conflicts with a zero-sum goal.
  • Sanctioning Russian energy.
  • Blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline.
  • Restarting a nuclear arms race.
  • Risking disruptions to middle east oil flows, and destroying respect for leaders, by supporting the genocide of Palestinians.
  • Funding a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.
  • Provoking China to withhold rare earth minerals.
  • Provoking China to stockpile oil.
  • Regime changing Syria.
  • Regime changing Iran.
  • Regime changing Venezuela.
  • Threatening to invade Nigeria.
  • Pissing off Canadians so not a one will buy a US product. 🙂

The cactus lens points us to a positive-sum game strategy.

Modernity is a global system of unimaginable complexity dependent on resources, technologies, processes, and skills sourced from 6 continents. A complex component will often travel back and forth between continents many times in the process of converting its constituent minerals into a finished product. Almost every country plays a roll in the complex web that sustains us.

Modernity depends on millions of interdependent components, each with a uniquely complex supply chain, and modernity’s aggregate supply chain is far too complex for any leader, or even a computer, to predict the consequences of disrupting the matrix to achieve a zero-sum game goal.

The risk of unintended consequences is high given that zero-sum game strategies will tend to focus on depriving energy and thus damaging the entire economy of an opponent country.

Plans to reshore manufacturing will make things worse. We don’t have the surplus capital or debt headroom needed to achieve this without damaging something else, and it will be very wasteful of non-renewable resources by creating capacity greater than the market can absorb, thus reducing the time to collapse.

The cactus lens shows us modernity will eventually collapse permanently, taking down every country in the process. There is nowhere to hide, and there is nothing we can do to prevent this. No country will be immune.

With cactus awareness and a positive-sum game strategy we could:

  • Make wise decisions that delay the collapse so we can enjoy more of modernity’s benefits, or at least avoid doing stupid things that accelerate the collapse.
  • Do some things to optimize quality of life until the end, or at least avoid doing stupid things that worsen quality of life.
  • Consider doing some things that might improve the quality of life for the post collapse survivors.

Actions that might delay the collapse and optimize quality of life until the end include:

  • Avoid conflicts and wars that harm citizens, damage supply chains, and waste non-renewable energy and minerals.
  • Stop the subsidy of renewable energy that wastes non-renewable resources and reduces the time to collapse.
  • Stop wasting money on climate change policies that will not change the outcome.
  • Put the Sulphur back into ship fuel.
  • Strengthen global governance and conflict resolution via UN like organizations.
  • Renew and improve treaties to reduce the risk of nuclear war.
  • Remove barriers to trade.
  • Encourage well regulated immigration to optimize global labor.
  • Allow market forces to optimize the global economy for maximum efficiency.
  • Adopt digital currencies to enable fairer and more efficient money printing, and to manage the fair rationing of scarcities.
  • Provide sound lifestyle and dietary advice with encouragements to help citizens improve their health and quality of life, and to reduce the healthcare drag on economies.
  • Fairly enforce laws to encourage law & order and good behavior.
  • Provide open and honest communication to citizens so they know what is going on and why, and no longer feel like they are being gaslit by wizards behind a curtain.
  • Provide meaningful and rewarding goals to citizens, like asking them to volunteer to rehabilitate habitats and soils to help post-collapse survivors.
  • When signs of the final collapse become visible, provide a painless end of life kit to any citizen that wants one to reduce their anxiety.

Notice that nothing on the above list requires a change in lifestyle for the majority, or the overriding of evolved behaviors like the Maximum Power Principle, or singing kumbaya, or sharing everything equally, or eating bugs.

Limits to growth are breaking our democracies. Citizens know their standard of living is falling, but do not understand why, so they vote for the politician that most credibly promises a better life, but leaders are powerless to improve living standards, which breeds politicians that are superb at lying, but not well suited to optimizing a complex problem. Then when the leader does not deliver, the citizen is pissed off, and next time votes for someone more extreme that blames the immigrants or the Chinese, and so on, which accelerates us in the wrong direction. The only way to break this path to despots is awareness.

With cactus awareness we will understand the comforts we enjoy are rare in the universe, are very fragile, and will soon be gone forever on this planet. This could lead to gratitude and care to not cause a premature collapse.

Cactus awareness will create strong pressure between countries, and by citizens on leaders, to not break things.

If we understand modernity will soon be gone for everyone no matter what we do, there will be less need to dominate and win, and more need to enjoy and cooperate to extend the good times.

Humans are an innovative species. With cactus awareness there would be many people thinking about what could be done to buy more time. Maybe we should use this resource for this rather than that? Opposition to change from people who have to give something up might be muted if they understood the change will buy a few more good years.

Some ideas to improve the quality of life for the post collapse survivors will be difficult to decide and implement because many of these will conflict with the goal of delaying collapse as long as possible. On the other hand, if we collectively understand collapse is inevitable, it might be easier to say set aside some forest or wildlife habitat, or bury nuclear waste, knowing that your children or grandchildren might benefit.

Imagine the effect of cactus awareness on philanthropy. What might billionaires with children do with their wealth if they understood modernity will soon be gone? Perhaps they might buy up biodiverse rainforests to protect them.

Shifting from the current zero-sum game strategy to a positive-sum game strategy will be very difficult.

Cactus is very unpleasant. Genetic denial, as explained by MORT, will be in full force resisting cactus awareness.

On the other hand, almost everything going on in the world today is also very unpleasant, and many people are losing their minds because nothing makes sense.

In a strange way, cactus may be less unpleasant than what we are currently asked to believe, because the cactus story at least agrees with what our eyes see, and provides reasons for gratitude when times are tough, so maybe there’s a chance for cactus awareness.

We evolved in small tribes that in times of scarcity had to fight other tribes to survive. There are no attacking aliens to unite us.

The cactus lens does point to a common threat that will kill almost everyone, but most people won’t believe it.

When times get tougher, as they surely will, leaders will have zero chance of adopting a positive-sum game strategy unless a majority of citizens see the world through the cactus lens.

Those of us that are cactus aware should start brainstorming how to spread cactus awareness.

Here’s one idea:

We could recruit the powerful institutions that were created by MORT: religions.

Cactus awareness will be fantastic for the life after death businesses. All religions will boom with growing memberships, donations, and tithes.

Religions therefore could be self-interested and enthusiastic allies for spreading the cactus gospel.

Religions also have the perfect infrastructure and skills needed to spread an idea like cactus and its positive-sum game belief system.

A likely roadblock to our leaders embracing the cactus lens is the big money behind financial institutions that depend on good news for their pump the bubble business model.

I’m thinking that it shouldn’t be too hard to get them on board. The cactus lens doesn’t say everyone has to live like poor monks in a cave.

Cactus tells us the end will be painful but mercifully quick, so those so inclined can party on like it’s 19991 in a glorious bubble until the last day…

1The highest net energy we ever enjoyed was in 1999 when about 4% of energy was needed to extract energy. Today it takes about 10-15% of energy to extract energy, and the ratio is continuing to rise.

1,194 thoughts on “The Cactus Lens: A Clearer View”

  3. Someone on a discord server posted this:

    Yup. Carbon negative or bust. Anything else, and we’re going to hit every tipping point and activate every feedback loop; and there isn’t much adaptation and resilience work that can be done in the face of a collapsing Earth-system.

    …

    It’s technically possible, with massively radical systemic and global change and a reorientation of purpose. From a technical perspective; stop 98% of anthropogenic emissions – Fossil fuel, AFOLU (Agriculture, Forestry and Land Use), etc – and then put a significant portion of the global energy and labor towards various CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) methods, from reforestation to biochar, to regenerative soil management, to olivine spreading (‘enhanced weathering’), to sinking big bundles of trees to the bottom of oceanic trenches tied to rocks (etc etc). We’d more or less have to: a) Change the entire global socio-economic structure completely 2) Make net-negative emissions the global giga-project that all of the rest of civilization orbits around 3) Keep doing this for at least several decades – if extremely efficient – and possibly 1-2 centuries if only moderately successful.

    MORT and the Maximum Power Principle means that the chances of us doing this negligible. And even if we tried to do that, we would likely trigger CACTUS.

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    1. She doesn’t understand anything.

      Modernity is burning carbon.
      Modernity ends if you stop burning carbon.
      To capture carbon you will burn more carbon.
      Modernity will end soon without help from climate change.

      A wise species would model cactus and steer what capital and time we have left to help the survivors.

      Personally, I’d protect biodiversity, especially old growth and rain forests, and I’d plant trees.

      The survivors are going to need wood, lots and lots of wood.

      On Burning Carbon: The Case for Renaming GDP to GDB

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  4. I’m still here, but fixing a siphon that failed when you needed it in 45.8 degree C temperatures is not that much fun. Fires within 500m of our place, across the valley.

    In the afternoon we retreated to my daughters place in Geelong over 100km away, to stay the night. Getting home tomorrow will be interesting with many roads officially blocked with checkpoints manned to stop all non emergency vehicles getting through.

    We know the back tracks and so do all the locals. Apparently the ’emergency services’ think it’s better for locals to travel through dodgy, thickly bushed, back tracks than use the main roads in bad fire situations.

    The amount of human stupidity never fails to amaze me. Yet we all think it’s just denial around here..

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    1. how did your siphon fail? The under ground pipes from our dams are a potential failure point in our system – that and the fire pumps themselves.

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      1. I suspect it was the extreme heat near the pumps themselves expanded the joints enough to let air in. Two totally separate systems that have worked flawlessly for the last couple of years, failing on the same day, had to have something in common.

        To me it’s just par for the course, expect the unexpected. None of our man made systems are flawless, we just expect them to be and consider they are if they last long enough, until they fail.

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    1. Bad news, but I like Tim Watkins echos from a distant past.

      Some realism in the background of UK Government in this report. Global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and national security.

      “Global ecosystem degradation and collapse threaten UK national security and prosperity. The world is already experiencing impacts including crop failures, intensified natural disasters and infectious disease outbreaks. Threats will increase with degradation and intensify with collapse. Without major intervention to reverse the current trend, this is highly likely to continue to 2050 and beyond.”

      “High Ecosystem degradation is occurring across all regions. Every critical ecosystem is on a pathway to collapse (irreversible loss of function beyond repair).”

      National security assessment – global biodiversity loss ecosystem collapse and national security

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      1. These reports they put out, Australia had a similar one back in 2022. Our State of the Environment report, which The Conversation covered:

        https://theconversation.com/natural-systems-in-australia-are-unravelling-if-they-collapse-human-society-could-too-187263

        In my earnest naivete at the time, I did a submission to our local govt, to their Climate Action plan, with reference to this report. And then hilariously a year or so later, I got a call from this old lady who worked at council in env dept, wanting to talk about ‘community food gardens’, I think i might have just laughed or cried while on the phone when she mentioned this.

        I also referenced another report in my submission, from 2019 by Dept of Defence, that Russ Grayson did a big write up of on Medium, he wrote then (2023)

        https://medium.com/pacificedge/prelude-to-collapse-australias-oil-fuels-vulnerability-c4e22957dcd7

        How vulnerable is Australia’s oil supply?

        A 2019 report by the Defence Department’s director of preparedness, Cheryl Durrant, and Engineers Australia identified threats to the nation. These include:

        • conflict between China and the USA; this would likely be in the South and/or East China Sea and possibly in the wider South West Pacific region,
        • climate change and natural disasters,
        • the rise of nationalist governments,
        • pandemic.

          The report was both prescient and accurate in identifying natural disasters. Its warning preceded the devastating 2019–2020 Black Summer bushfires and forecast the Covid-19 pandemic around a year later. It is its identifying a clash between China and the US that is most relevant to the security of Australia’s oil fuel supply, most likely over China invading Taiwan. This could strangle our trade routes and supply lines. Were Australia to assist the US, kinetic conflict could be preceded by or come simultaneously with a cyber attack on Australia’s communications, economic, energy, medical and transportation infrastructure. Cyber vulnerability has risen to prominence this past decade among Australian cyber-security and national security interests as a major component of our threat environment.

          And what is it about old guys and the Roman Empire?? my partner had a group of drinking buddies back in the day, and one of them, when ever he had had a few too many, loved to talk about Ancient Rome, and that became his nickname and whole identity.

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          1. This old white guy doesn’t think too much about Rome. I was just responding to el mar.

            I posted this before but in case you missed it and long for the good old days of a simpler life in Rome, this will set you straight and might make you appreciate why Jack Alpert is working so hard to find any plan that might retain a few of the best aspects of modernity post-cactus.

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              1. I totally agree. Cities before 1900 was a population sink. Growth in population was dependent on immigration from rural areas. The big shift came with sewer systems. This shift to internal population growth, begun in London consistent around the mid-19th century. German cities mostly late 19th century. Interesting in this regard is the history of John Snow and his epidemiological work. The book the Ghost map tels about this history. It is a good book. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36086.The_Ghost_Map

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      2. Thanks el mar.

        While there are many similarities between our plight and that of the Romans, there are several big differences.

        They were living on top an ocean of untapped fossil carbon and high quality mineral reserves that simply needed some complexity growth to extract.

        They had not destabilized the climate so agriculture was possible for another 1500+ years instead of the 100-ish years our survivors will have.

        L: “That’s the trouble… we grew fat and we grew lazy.  And so long as decline mostly affected the little people, we could convince ourselves that all was well.  But consider just one thing… heat.  Sure, the empire is still the master of hydraulic technology.  Our watermills grind corn and power the bellows in our smithies.  But the trees… ah, there’s the problem.  As the imperial population grew, more and more trees were felled to provide timber for buildings, for carts and for ships.  And that led to competition with those industries that needed the heat from wood and charcoal to heat their hearths and ovens.  Today, the wooded valleys of the early empire are almost barren.  Gallic bakers are reduced to using bushes and scrub to bake any bread at all, while our smiths can barely restore old swords, still less produce new ones.  Potters can no longer fire their vases, while mints can no longer produce coins.”

        L: “For a long time, our money has been mostly “fiat.”  It is no longer the silver content of a coin that determines its value, but that of the imperial stamp which makes it legal tender and the only means of paying one’s taxes.  And so long as the economy was prospering, that didn’t seem to make a difference.  But today, every worker across the empire has to work harder just to stand still.  Why?  Because we lost the means to generate heat… something so apparently insignificant that nobody within the administration could see it as a problem but so crucial that without it, productivity collapses.”

        P: “Hard times indeed.  And what of us here… is there any practical way we can defend ourselves?”

        L: “You might, I suppose, put what remains of your surplus wealth into building a military.  Or you might try to come to some accommodation with the tribes you fear.  But no longer can Rome promise to be your protector… it is but a shadow of the glorious empire of three centuries ago.  Hell, Rome can barely defend itself these days.  And between you and I, it wouldn’t surprise me if in a few years from now Rome will be a smouldering ruin… such is how all empires go in the end.”

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        1. The biggest difference for me is that in the Roman Empire less than 2% of the population actually lived in Rome and less that 10% were urbanised, with most of the other 90% involved in food production and material production (charcoal, mines, timber, clay, stone etc) in rural areas.

          Today in every western country, 80% plus are urbanised relying on diesel transport for their food, materials, and most energy (as in trucks and crews to go repair when the electric lines fail, all with imported equipment etc).

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          2. Perfectly correct: whereas we have, so to speak, cut away the supporting rungs of the ladder in our rapid ascent, the Romans still had only a fraction of the population at the very top, and all the others were still intact and occupied.

            Absent the few great cities, people were still skilled enough to know how to survive. Moreover, if they fled, died of plague, were massacred (rather frequent!) etc, incomers also knew how to survive rurally and could take over seamlessly.

            Vikings could, as they did in my village, kill all the local men and step straight in to farming their land, using their tools.

            When the University of Cambridge started to build its huge suburb to the west of the modern city, Edington, (mostly to house very lucrative Chinese grad students) they were surprised to find evidence of a Roman suburb which had comprised metal working foundries and some large villas.

            Post-Rome, this became land farmed by the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings for some 1500 years, not even a faint memory of the urban past being retained. Our cities will by no means be farmable, to statethe obvious.

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    2. Coordinated anti-Iran propaganda dialed up to 11 on my UK and US news feeds this morning.

      Can you believe how evil the Iranians are? They dragged injured protesters out of hospitals to kill them.

      No mention of the 200,000 murdered civilians buried under the Gaza rubble.

      One air craft carrier arrived in the middle east yesterday. Not enough for a sustained war.

      Maybe another decapitation attempt?

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    3. https://substack.com/@gnug315/note/c-205895368?

      Jan Andrew Bloxham had another good comment. Whole thing worth reading. This is only a third of it: 

      As adults, we all wake up to the fact that, clearly, nobody knows what they’re doing. We realise the youth and pets and friendships and grandparents and summers that went on forever and the myth of an infinitely progressing and improving world, bought at infinite cost by the neoliberalist motto of party now, pay later, all had expiration dates, each and every one. Well, most of us do. Quite a few practice zero self-reflection and just barrel ahead until it all goes splat. How absurd is it that a holocausted people is gleefully perpetrating a genocide?

      After millions of years of hominids, one of them mutated into something clever enough to optimise their short-term future, stumbled upon a one-time inheritance of magic energy and finite resources, and squandered it all in an orgy of consumption. We know this for a fact, but vast hordes of the clueless bacteria hysterically chant that the Earth is six thousand years old while falling into a dead-end ideological trap their grandparents literally fought a world war to prevent. The ignorance is truly mindboggling. What monkeys we are.

      We’re riding the crest of the human species experiment. Some of us have peeked into the abyss and seen what is coming, but can’t override the delusions of the rest enough to convince them to take their ethical responsibilities to their very own children seriously. Some of us grow nihilistic and misanthropic and truly feel it will be good riddance when we wipe ourselves out. Some of us are highly sensitive people whose heart bleeds for life on Earth, sacrificing their lives and sanity to keep fighting the maelstrom of nonsense that engulfs them.

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      1. Wow – he is really is an awesome writer.

        Some of us grow nihilistic and misanthropic and truly feel it will be good riddance when we wipe ourselves out. Some of us are highly sensitive people whose heart bleeds for life on Earth, sacrificing their lives and sanity to keep fighting the maelstrom of nonsense that engulfs them.

        It’s possible to be both at the same time.

        And re the Abyss, I read a meme a while back:

        Thank you for contacting the Abyss,

        Your scream is important to us ….😂

        Ethical responsibilities to their own children…hmm not sure about that line.

        Those summers that went on forever as kids, we can still hold onto them, why not.

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    4. Hanlon’s Razor sums up the reality: “Never attribute to [individual] malice that which can be adequately explained by [collective] stupidity.”

      My favorite ‘under 50’ doomer, Andrea P has a new one today that I liked.

      (apo)calyptic voices | 4. The “Gets It” Divide

      She also shared this reddit link and called it the best writeup she’s ever seen re why some people are able to see what we see.

      What do you guys think? Is the reddit comment saying anything profound or is just a bunch of words to describe Rob’s “we have defective denial genes”. I kinda think it’s the latter.

      Comment
      byu/Sapient_Cephalopod from discussion
      incollapse

      ps. Sam Mitchell had a hilarious new years resolution; To stay in bed for half of his remaining life. LOL, and he seems to be sticking to it so far. Goes to bed at 11pm, gets out of bed at 11am. Bravo Sammy!

      My cat, Mr Zeus, has it all figured out re life. He sleeps 20 hours a day. Goddamn I’m so jealous.

      And whenever I want him to chill out and quit bugging me… all I have to do is play this excellent song on and it works as a lullaby every time.😊

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    5. Preptip:

      I just ordered a spare phone. It might be a good time to get a spare given the future effect of silver and copper prices on electronics, and the circling black swans that could disrupt supply chains.

      I chose the just launched Samsung Galaxy A17. It’s one of the lowest priced phones on the market, but it’s functionality and performance is plenty good enough, as demonstrated by it’s predecessor the A16 being the top selling phone in the world.

      I am currently using the A15, predecessor to the A16 and A17. I have no complaints except that the camera is ok but not great.

      The A17 improves the camera with optical image stabilization while not increasing the price from the A15’s 2024 price.

      A good prepper reason to choose the A17 is that it may be the last version from Samsung with a micro-SD card slot. I add a 512GB memory card which permits me to carry dozens of movies, and many thousands of music albums, audiobooks, and books for entertainment when the grid is down. In case you’re not aware, flagship phones do not support micro-SD cards, and buying a version with big capacity has eye-watering prices.

      The A17 comes in 2 versions: 5G and 4G. I don’t need 5G so choose the $70 cheaper 4G version.

      I paid CAD $191.

      That’s an amazing price when you think about the technology and components that go into a phone. When something’s too good to be true, it probably won’t last.

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      1. Even though my current laptop is not in the best condition, I want to keep it for as long as possible. This is also because I am not in a position where I can buy a new one at the moment.

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        1. I’m nursing an old laptop too.

          If I was rich I probably would not buy a new laptop because I hate the latest designs. They’re all form over function.

          Everyone wants cool looking thin laptops.

          I have an old chunky laptop with a big battery and an 500GB SSD for the system drive and 2TB HDD for data drive.

          They don’t make laptops like this anymore.

          All the latest laptops have a single 1TB SSD. That’s not enough capacity for anyone that is serious about media and is planning for the internet to go down.

          I’m very gentle with my laptop to not damage the screen and I stock spare drives which are the most likely component (except the battery) to fail. If the battery fails it will still operate with an adapter.

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      1. Not sure how I had never seen this clip before. So embarrassing that I used to watch the Daily Show & Colbert Report every day.

        ps. I just got done with that Weinstein/Bigtree interview. I enjoyed it about as much as I can from two people whose bottom-line concern is that civilization keeps marching on for eternity.

        Del gave me a great reason to flip over to being a pro-vaxxer:

        And I think at this moment, the way we are using antibiotics, the way we are using vaccines, and the way that we are approving pharmaceutical products, especially vaccines… our species is not long for this earth.

        LOL, oh Del. Break out of that box you’ve enclosed yourself in. Dip your toe in the doomasphere and get a grip on reality.

        The highlight for me was the story about Jake Scott showing up to court with his 661 studies to refute the idea that there’s been no placebo-based trials for the child vaccines. And how that lawyer Aaron Siri destroyed Jake’s 661 studies without even breaking a sweat. Haha!!

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        1. LOL, cactus sure does cast a different light on people who think they understand what’s going on.

          Covid drained the pool so we could see who had no brains or no ethics.

          So many people I used to respect like Sam Harris are now dead to me.

          It says something about our species that it is so rare for someone to say I’m sorry, I made a mistake.

          The only one I can recall was Scott Adams who after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer admitted he was wrong about mRNA.

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          1. Rob … “It says something about our species that it is so rare for someone to say I’m sorry, I made a mistake.”

            one of the lines I love from the disaster movie 2012 is when the geologist is talking to the president in the Oval office, and when questioned about the ‘end of the world scenario timing’, states “I was wrong”.

            The president turns to the chief of staff and says “do you know how many times I’ve heard those words in this office, Zero”.

            Sort of like the rest of the world.

            Has anyone ever heard a sitting politician ever state they were wrong about anything?? Me neither…

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    7. Who understands what in modern world? Are doomers a rare occurrence? I do think many people understands more than acknowledged. I had a correspondence with two public health professors today (selection bias: has written about sustainability). .We was writing some philosophical articles about the unsustainability of modern healthcare. (Interestingly one of the professors has shown that cancer screening does not save lives and with externalities it takes life). Behind closed doors both of the public health professors where doomers. One good quotation from today was: “You cant escape modernitys iron claw. It is a death grip.”

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    8. The EU just decided to stop importing all natural gas and LNG from Russia.

      It’s a big decision given that the EU needs natural gas to survive. Especially since the best alternative is more expensive LNG from a now unfriendly and unreliable US who’s own security of supply is uncertain with fracking soon to decline.

      Serious question. Why?

      Here are some possibilities I can think of:

      • They know war with Russia is probable and do not want any dependencies.
      • US has told EU they will withdraw from NATO if EU does not not buy US gas (because US is broke and desperately needs cash and/or because fracked oil produces gas and they need to get rid of it to maintain oil flows).
      • Russia has less natural gas available than most assume due to depletion and new exports to China.
      • Russia’s economy is in bad shape and EU believes this will harm Russia more than the EU.
      • EU leaders are stupid and are cutting off their nose to spite their face.

      Does anyone understand the truth here?

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      1. The EU figures that not losing the war is more dangerous for the job security of their political class than adding more economic pain to their constituents, who are assumed to be able to absorb unlimited costs.

        I’d argue that they aren’t wrong. Russian victory (Russian occupation as far as Lviv/Odessa and a long cold war of both sides making further arms buildups at the Polish border under worsening mutual poverty) would cause a huge loss of face in Europe and dozens of major electoral losses to the more overt kind of fascists.

        As an example, there has been approximately one news story getting big enough every three months since early 2023 to break out of the German news and get translated into English/French/Japanese etc news on the topic of CDR or AfD politicians being caught on an open mic talking about attacking Poland, seizing Polish territory or conducting mass arrests of Poles. It’s just unpopular in Germany at present because the centrists have not been radicalised by a loss of face. There are other examples of each countries respective pet irredentist claim emerging rarely in Belgium, Spain, Austria, Romania and Sweden off the top of my head.

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        1. I assume you are European and you think the majority of European citizens believe Russia has no justification for attacking Ukraine and therefore citizens will be very upset if Ukraine surrenders?

          That’s a very sad statement about citizen understanding of modern history if true.

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          1. Russia has some excellent strategic reasons for attacking Ukraine, some moderately good paranoia reasons for attacking Ukraine and barely any direct casus belli (about as much as Trump does with Venezuela, just a motive of enmity) but the western population doesn’t see any of that.

            Regardless of national origin, the median member of the western public sees it as a question of a mostly good underdog (with a few blemishes, nobody’s perfect) being attacked without provocation by an inept and cruel bully. Regardless of how metaphors about people don’t make sense in the context of countries, the western cultural complex has no space for stories about the bully winning, except as the second act of three-parters.

            If the bully does win, the public in [insert European country] will get very anxious about whether all of Europe is weak enough to receive noticeable bombing damage in the third act of their imagined psychodrama. It’s not like they can soberly assess military sizes or the political aims of states, after all.

            .

            (Incidentally, the state of the war AFAICT is that both sides are 100% dependent on Chinese deliveries of drones of different sizes – approx. 2000 a week – and that Ukraine is losing the human attrition race while Russia is losing the vehicle and logistics equipment attrition race, with the winner coming down to which race ends first)

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            1. Thanks for explaining the Europe view Anon.

              There’s so little empathy in today’s world.

              Russia has been invaded 3 times in recent history. They know everyone hates slavs. Imagine being Putin with missiles on your border in Ukraine and having maybe 5 minutes to decide how to respond to a possible attack. You couldn’t even relax when sitting on the toilet.

              Now imagine how the US would respond if pissed off Canada invited Russia to protect it from Trump by putting missiles on the Canadian border pointing at Washington.

              Empathy is so important and so rare.

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            2. Forgot to reply to your last point.

              With so many information channels to choose from, and with many making a living by satisfying biases of their audience, it is very hard to understand the truth about any complex and controversial subject today.

              My understanding of the Ukraine war status is completely different than yours.

              I think Russia is decisively winning and the reason it has dragged on so long is that Russia is deliberately going slow to minimize its own losses because offense is always costly, and is using time to methodically destroy the Ukraine military so very little threat remains when the war ends, and is being cautious to not trigger a nuclear war with NATO by being too aggressive.

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    9. Excellent cactus data in today’s post by quark.

      It looks to me like quark supports the supernova hypothesis.

      https://futurocienciaficcionymatrix.blogspot.com/2026/01/el-agotamiento-de-las-reservas-de.html

      The graph contains gas and oil discoveries since 2015.

      The world consumes more than 30 billion barrels of oil per year and as many gas equivalents. And in 2025, less than 5 billion oil and gas have been discovered. Approximately 10-15% of what is consumed, in a clearly downward trend.

      They can tell us whatever they want about the remaining oil reserves. The fact is that if we only replace 10% of what we spend, exhaustion is very, very fast.

      In 2026 and subsequent years, shale oil will not only not be the solution, but as its expected production decreases, it will be part of the problem.

      US oil production planned according to the STEO (January 2026).

      If the oil shortage is about to begin, if it is almost impossible for the energy transition to replace an appreciable percentage of primary energy, yes the shortage of copper it is beginning to run parallel to the oil shortage, we have a serious energy problem in the near future.

      To make matters worse, the system is too indebted. Control of global debt growth has been lost and the fiat system threatens to disintegrate (you just need to see the loss of confidence in the system reflected by looking at the price of gold (the price of gold does not rise, the purchasing power of fiat currencies falls)), while the world has separated in several blocks.

      If the system is blown up, oil-copper-silver investment will sink and supply will plummet, turning the problem into a disaster for everyone.

      The consequences of these unsolvable problems are already being suffered. International law has been blown up. The law of the strongest has been imposed and the weak are going to suffer plunder, as we are already seeing. The war for resources (both commercial and military) is another logical consequence when the pie tends to shrink. 

      When excess debt collapses the system, we will be able to do nothing to replenish the amount of resources necessary to maintain growth and what will come will be a collapse like we have never seen before, because it will affect everyone, not just one part or country.

      Understanding the inexorable trend and that the game of buying time is about to end is important. We do not know how long it will take for everything to explode, but it is undeniable that the trend is leading us towards the disintegration of systems and given the complexity and size of the world population, the collapse will not only not be slow, but the positive feedbacks and the rupture of supply chains, will turn the expected decline into a sudden collapse.

      P.S. From time to time, I like to remember these two fundamental graphs.

      Green spots (remaining reserves) are taking an aggressive downward slope. They are plummeting. If we also take into account that the remaining reserves are much more difficult and expensive to extract than the old ones, we can imagine that tensions from now on will only grow. The supreme effort to appear oversupplied in the oil market will last a year or two and then the Seneca cliff awaits us. 

      And don’t look for miracles, if more oil is not discovered, it is only a matter of time (and not much) …

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    10. quark provided a link to this essay on the recent history of China’s control of key resources.

      https://no01.substack.com/p/china-usa

      Wow, what an essay! There is a LOT going on behind the curtain.

      Many good examples of how our complex global supply chain network might collapse quickly.

      What strikes me is how abysmally incompetent our news media is today. How can this not be headline news? Of course they also missed the more obvious oil problem and its connection to Russia, Venezuela, Iran, and Nigeria.

      I don’t think we can blame genetic denial for this. News journalists are right up there with healthcare professionals for world leading incompetence.

      Weaponizing the periodic table: China won this war without firing a shot

      by No1

      China controls 94% of global gallium production and 83% of germanium. But more importantly, China had demonstrated the template. Not an outright ban. Not a dramatic announcement with threats and posturing. Just licensing requirements. Applications welcome. Processing times… variable.

      The licenses, in practice, never came.

      By August 1, 2023, when the gallium controls took effect, Chinese exports had already collapsed. Not declined. Collapsed. European buyers scrambled for inventory that increasingly did not exist at any price. 

      October 2023 brought graphite export controls. China produces over 90% of the world’s processed graphite, the material that enables lithium-ion battery anodes. Every electric vehicle. Every grid-scale battery. Every piece of consumer electronics. The West wants an energy transition? Beijing will decide the pace.

      December 2023 escalated further. China banned export of rare earth extraction and processing technology. Not the minerals themselves – not yet – but the knowledge of how to extract and refine them. You can’t build an alternative supply chain if you can’t access the engineering expertise required to make it work. The technology ban meant that even if Western companies found rare earth deposits, they couldn’t efficiently process them without violating Chinese export controls.

      September 15, 2024 marked the implementation of antimony licensing requirements.

      Antimony’s function is simple: antimony trisulfide ignites when a firing pin strikes a primer. Without it, bullets do not fire. Artillery shells do not detonate. Over 300 types of American munitions – from 5.56mm rifle rounds to 155mm howitzer shells – require antimony in their primers. Colonel Steven Power of Picatinny Arsenal, the Army’s primary research and development center for armaments, used the phrase “essential and non-replaceable component” in congressional testimony that received virtually no media coverage.

      And the US stockpile? Approximately 1,100 tons. Down from 27,000 metric tons in the 1990s. Current holdings represent 4-5% of annual US consumption of 23,000-24,000 tons. At current usage rates, the National Defense Stockpile contains maybe forty-two days of antimony. Not months. Days.And the US stockpile? Approximately 1,100 tons. Down from 27,000 metric tons in the 1990s. Current holdings represent 4-5% of annual US consumption of 23,000-24,000 tons. At current usage rates, the National Defense Stockpile contains maybe forty-two days of antimony. Not months. Days.

      October 1, 2024 brought comprehensive rare earth management regulations establishing traceability requirements and quantitative export controls. Then December 3, 2024 – one day after the United States added 140 Chinese entities to the Entity List – Beijing announced outright export bans on gallium, germanium, antimony, and superhard materials to the United States specifically. The first country-specific mineral embargo in the modern era.

      Not licensing requirements. Not processing delays. An explicit ban targeting America by name.

      April 2025 introduced export licensing for seven heavy rare earth elements: samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium, and yttrium. Notice what’s in that list? Dysprosium and terbium. The heavy rare earths that enable high-temperature permanent magnets in missiles, fighter jets, and precision munitions. Elements where China controls 99-100% of global supply with no commercial production anywhere else on Earth.

      October 2025 brought five additional rare earths under control and introduced China’s version of the Foreign Direct Product Rule. Any product containing 0.1% or more Chinese-origin rare earth materials now requires Ministry of Commerce export approval. Beijing had effectively created extraterritorial control over global supply chains. A Japanese company making electric motors with Chinese neodymium? That motor cannot be exported without Chinese permission. An American defense contractor assembling missile guidance systems with Chinese dysprosium magnets? That system is subject to Chinese export approval.

      October 30, 2025 established new silver export rules requiring producers demonstrate 80+ tonnes annual output to qualify as exporters. Effective January 1, 2026. Existing exporters with proven 2022-2024 export history get licenses. New exporters face bureaucratic obstacles designed to exclude them. China consumes over 50% of global industrial silver for solar panels, electronics, and EVs.

      Then came November 2025 and the supposed “suspension”. Following the Trump-Xi summit in Busan, China announced it would temporarily lift the December 2024 US-specific bans and pause the October 2025 extraterritorial controls. Western media framed this as de-escalation. A gesture of goodwill. Evidence that tough negotiating works.

      Everyone missed three critical details.

      1. The suspension expires November 2026. Right before US midterm elections. “Coincidence”?
      2. The April 2025 heavy rare earth licensing remains in full force. Remember, those are the materials most essential for military applications… Still under strict controlled.
      3. Exports to US military end-users remain permanently prohibited. The “suspension” only covers commercial applications. The Pentagon still cannot buy Chinese antimony. American defense contractors still cannot source Chinese rare earths for weapons systems. The temporary easing is a pressure valve, not a policy reversal. Maybe they can take the magnets out of washing machines like Russia does right?

      All in all, Beijing demonstrated that it can cripple American defense production through mechanisms that the American public doesn’t see, cannot or will not understand. Through materials the American media cannot explain or pronounce, and through supply chains the American defense establishment failed to monitor. The demonstration was so effective that it produced minimal political cost while forcing the Pentagon into emergency procurements that will take years to execute.

      This is what a victory looks like in 21st-century financial world war. No carriers that are sunk. No cities bombed. Just quiet, patient exploitation of dependencies that nobody noticed until the moment they mattered most.

      Two weeks ago, on January 6, 2026, China banned exports of dual-use items to Japan. Effective immediately. No grace period.

      Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi had said in November that a Chinese naval blockade of Taiwan could constitute “a situation threatening Japan’s survival”. Beijing waited exactly eight weeks, then delivered the response: you cannot have rare earths for military purposes. You cannot strengthen your military capabilities using Chinese materials. Export licenses for defense contractors? Denied.

      And then there’s cesium. You’ve probably never heard of it. Most people haven’t. It doesn’t have the cultural resonance of rare earths or the tech-sector visibility of gallium. The median voter couldn’t identify its applications. The median defense journalist would need Wikipedia.

      Cesium enables GPS navigation. Atomic clocks. Oil and gas drilling. Telecommunications infrastructure. Aerospace systems. The element that keeps global positioning working and enables precision timekeeping for financial markets and communications networks worldwide.

      China controls the only two active cesium facilities on Earth. Not most of them. Not a dominant share. All of them.

      A cesium restriction would cascade through systems most people don’t know exist. Financial markets lose precise timekeeping? Transactions fail. GPS accuracy degrades? Navigation systems become unreliable. Oil drilling operations lose cesium formate drilling fluids? Production slows. The disruptions would be technical, obscure, and devastating.

      Nobody would understand the cause. The explanation requires three levels of technical detail that loses 95 percent of audiences. The public wouldn’t comprehend why critical systems stopped working. Media couldn’t explain it. Politicians couldn’t address it.

      Maximum damage. Minimum comprehension.

      Tungsten is already under restriction. February 2025 export controls are in effect. China controls 82-83% of global production and 59% of reserves. Tungsten carbide enables armor-piercing ammunition and kinetic energy penetrators for tank munitions. High-temperature aerospace applications. Cutting tools for manufacturing.

      China controls 68-80% of global bismuth production and refining. The United States ceased primary bismuth production in 1997. There is no government stockpile. Zero. Because bismuth was always considered a byproduct of lead and copper refining, easily available from global markets, nothing to worry about.

      Then in June 2025, the “Magnificent Seven” tech companies – we’re talking Apple, Microsoft, Google, the entire AI infrastructure buildout – warned that bismuth-based solder shortages could halt data center construction. AI chips require lead-free solder due to environmental regulations. Bismuth-tin alloys are the primary alternative. No bismuth? No solder. No solder? No AI data centers.

      What makes bismuth particularly insidious is that it demonstrates maximum leverage with minimum visibility. The general public cannot understand why data centers aren’t being built. The explanation requires three levels of technical detail that lose 95% of audiences. Perfect weapon.

      Everyone knows the Democratic Republic of Congo produces most of the world’s cobalt. What they don’t know – what the simplified “cobalt comes from Africa” narrative obscures – is that China controls fifteen of the nineteen DRC cobalt mines. China Molybdenum Corporation (CMOC) alone controls 41% of the global cobalt market through its ownership of Tenke Fungurume.

      The DRC produces 74-76% of mined cobalt. But China refines 73-77% of global supply. This distinction matters because cobalt ore from the DRC has limited utility without refining infrastructure. And the refining infrastructure is Chinese-controlled, either through direct ownership or through contracts that give Chinese entities first right of refusal on output.

      Cobalt’s primary military application isn’t batteries. That’s the civilian narrative. For defense, cobalt enables jet engine superalloys. Over 50% of US cobalt consumption goes into superalloys, not batteries. Cobalt-chromium-tungsten alloys operate at temperatures exceeding 1,000°C while maintaining structural integrity. Every advanced jet engine – the F-35, F-22, commercial aircraft turbines – requires these alloys.

      The F-35 specifically contains approximately 50 pounds of samarium-cobalt magnets. Not neodymium-iron-boron magnets like civilian applications. Samarium-cobalt magnets maintain magnetic properties at higher temperatures, essential for military electronics operating in extreme conditions.

      Graphite represents battery warfare. China produces over 90% of the world’s processed graphite, specifically the spherical graphite required for lithium-ion battery anodes. You can mine graphite in various countries – Australia, Mozambique, Canada all have deposits. But processing raw graphite into battery-grade spherical graphite requires specialized facilities that exist almost exclusively in China.

      The October 2023 export controls targeted this exact chokepoint. Not graphite in general. Specific graphite products essential for batteries. Natural graphite flakes, spherical graphite, high-purity graphite. The materials that enable energy storage.

      Every electric vehicle contains 50-100kg of graphite in its battery. Grid-scale storage? Thousands of kilograms. Consumer electronics? Smaller quantities but billions of units. The West wants energy transition, wants electric vehicles, wants grid storage to enable renewable energy? Beijing controls the input materials. Again.

      The problem isn’t mining. The problem is processing economics. Chinese facilities benefit from decades of optimization, vertical integration, and state support that makes Western facilities uncompetitive even when they successfully start production. Which means even if you build alternative capacity, it may shut down during price dips, returning control to China.

      China controls 94% of global gallium production and 83% of germanium. Both materials are critical for compound semiconductors – the gallium nitride and gallium arsenide chips that enable 5G infrastructure, satellite communications, radar systems, electronic warfare, and power electronics. These aren’t the chips in your laptop. These are the chips in F-35 avionics, Patriot missile systems, AEGIS radar, military satellite networks.

      Gallium is primarily produced as a byproduct of aluminum smelting. Theoretically, any country with aluminum production could extract gallium. In practice, the extraction economics only work at Chinese scales and with Chinese cost structures. Recycling gallium from manufacturing scrap offers some relief but cannot replace primary supply.

      Germanium comes primarily from zinc mining and coal ash. China’s dominance stems from its massive coal consumption – an ironic situation where environmental critics of Chinese coal power ignore that coal ash enables the semiconductor industry they depend on. Belgium’s Umicore recycles germanium. South Korea has some production. Neither comes close to Chinese output.

      The semiconductor restrictions demonstrate something crucial: China can target specific technology sectors without broader economic disruption. Gallium and germanium shortages don’t affect consumer goods prices. They don’t trigger inflation that voters notice. They just quietly degrade Western military and telecommunications capabilities while the public remains completely unaware anything is wrong.

      Now we get to the materials that represent existential threats. Not economic disruption. Not industrial inconvenience. Actual structural vulnerabilities that could halt Western military production and advanced manufacturing within weeks.

      Starting with heavy rare earths.

      Light rare earths – lanthanum, cerium, neodymium – are not rare, they’re actually relative abundant. China dominates production but alternative sources exist in the US (Mountain Pass, California), Australia (Lynas), and elsewhere. Heavy rare earths – dysprosium, terbium, yttrium – are different. China controls 99-100% of global supply with no commercial production anywhere else on Earth.

      Heavy rare earths enable high-temperature permanent magnets that operate above 200°C. Neodymium-iron-boron magnets work fine for consumer electronics and electric vehicles. But missile guidance systems? Fighter jet actuators? Precision munitions? Those operate in thermal environments that demagnetize standard NdFeB magnets. You need dysprosium-enhanced magnets that maintain magnetic properties at extreme temperatures.

      It’s an absolute clusterfuck. 78% of Department of Defense weapons systems contain rare earth magnet components. Navy: 91.6%. Air Force: 85.1%. These aren’t optional enhancements. These are core components that cannot be substituted without complete system redesigns.

      China processes approximately 90% of global rare earths despite mining only 69%. That processing dominance cannot be replicated quickly. The chemistry is complex, the environmental regulations are stringent in the West, the economics don’t work without massive subsidies, and the skilled labor doesn’t exist.

      And then there’s magnesium.

      Magnesium represents the single greatest systemic risk in the entire critical minerals landscape. Not because it’s used in exotic military applications or cutting-edge technology. Because it’s essential for aluminum alloys that enable modern manufacturing. And China controls 85-95% of global production.

      A single county – Fugu County in Shaanxi Province – produces 52% of global magnesium output. One county. Over half the world’s supply. The concentration is so extreme that regional power restrictions in Fugu can trigger global price spikes.

      We saw the preview in 2021. Chinese power shortages curtailed magnesium production. Prices exploded from 16,500 yuan per ton to 70,000 yuan per ton. A 400% increase within months. European manufacturers faced shortages. The auto industry warned of production halts. Then Chinese power returned, production resumed, prices normalized, and everyone forgot the lesson.

      The lesson was this: magnesium cannot be stockpiled. It oxidizes within three months. You cannot build strategic reserves the way you can with other metals. There is no buffer. There is no emergency backup supply sitting in warehouses waiting for a crisis. Magnesium supply must be continuous or it doesn’t exist at all.

      This is what makes magnesium restrictions existential. Every other critical mineral discussed here – antimony, rare earths, gallium, bismuth, cobalt, tungsten, graphite – can be stockpiled. You can build months or years of inventory if you see restrictions coming. Supply disruptions are painful but manageable if you have warning.

      Magnesium is different. A restriction would halt aluminum alloy production globally within weeks. Not months. Weeks. And aluminum alloys are everywhere. Aircraft fuselages. Automotive body panels. Beverage cans. Construction materials. Military vehicles. Spacecraft. High-speed trains. Consumer electronics casings.

      5xxx and 6xxx series aluminum alloys specifically require magnesium. These alloys provide the strength-to-weight ratios that enable modern engineering. 5xxx series (aluminum-magnesium) alloys are used in marine applications, pressure vessels, and structural components. 6xxx series (aluminum-magnesium-silicon) alloys dominate automotive and aircraft applications. There are no substitutes that maintain equivalent performance characteristics.

      The United States has no primary magnesium production. Zero. 

      Here’s the nightmare scenario: China announces magnesium export restrictions. Within two weeks, European and American aluminum smelters begin running out of supply. Within four weeks, alloy production halts. Within six weeks, aircraft manufacturing stops. Automotive production lines shut down. Defense contractors cannot produce vehicle hulls or aircraft components. The entire industrial base that depends on aluminum alloys – which is essentially all modern manufacturing – faces cascading failures.

      No amount of emergency procurement can fix this. No strategic reserve can buffer the disruption. No alternative suppliers can ramp up in time. The restriction itself would be economically catastrophic, but the public wouldn’t understand why aluminum plants are closing. The explanation requires knowledge of metallurgy and alloy chemistry that 99% of the population lacks.

      Maximum damage. Minimum comprehension. Perfect weapon.

      And China hasn’t even restricted magnesium exports yet. That card remains unplayed.

      While Washington focused on semiconductor export controls and TikTok hearings, something else broke in global (precious) metals markets. Silent-silent-violent like someone I know constantly says… We’re at that violent part now.

      On January 1, 2026, China’s silver export licensing came into effect. Only 44 companies received approval for 2026-2027. That’s it. The entire approved exporter list.

      The mechanism is deliberate. China consumes over 50% of global industrial silver – solar panels, electronics, EV components. Industrial demand reached 58% of Chinese downstream consumption in 2024. The October 30, 2025 announcement of the January 1 implementation gave exactly two months warning. China locked in supply for their industrial buyers.

      Western buyers? They scrambled for alternatives that increasingly do not exist.

      The result? COMEX and LBMA show catastrophic delivery stress. COMEX registered silver inventories plunged to 23.1 million ounces in June 2024 – down 85% from approximately 150 million ounces in 2020. In the first two weeks of January 2026, 33.45 million ounces of silver were physically withdrawn for delivery. That’s a third of COMEX’s registered inventory in seven days.

      LBMA silver vaults in London declined approximately 50% from their April 2020 peak of 35,667 tonnes. London silver lease rates – the cost to borrow silver for short-term needs – spiked to 30-40%+ in October 2025 and haven’t meaningfully declined. These rates mean that entities are so desperate for physical silver and cannot find it at any reasonable cost. Market participants describe the situation using technical terminology like “nobody’s got silver”.

      The Russia-China precious metals realignment accelerates this bifurcation. Russia controls 40% of global palladium production. After London suspended Russian refiners from the LBMA Good Delivery list in April 2022, Norilsk Nickel redirected output to China. Previously 60% went to Western markets. Now the majority flows East.

      First half 2025 data shows Russian precious metals exports to China surged 80% to $1 billion. Chinese entities reportedly purchase Russian metal below international benchmark prices, creating a two-tier pricing system. Western buyers pay premium prices for constrained non-Russian supply. Chinese buyers access Russian material at discounts.

      Financial warfare doesn’t require sanctions or frozen assets. It just requires control over physical commodity flows and the patience to exploit pricing disconnects that markets cannot arbitrage away.

      December 26, 2025. China announces sanctions on twenty US companies and ten individuals in retaliation for the $11.1 billion Taiwan arms package approved on December 17, 2025. 

      The sanctions themselves are largely symbolic. US defense contractors have minimal direct China business due to existing export controls. You cannot sell F-35 components to Chinese customers anyway. The financial impact is negligible.

      But the signal is unmistakable: if you sell weapons to Taiwan, you are permanently cut off from Chinese supply chains and the Chinese market. Not just for the transaction in question. Forever.

      Extrapolate this forward. The United States wants to continue arming Taiwan. Congressional commitments are clear. But doing so requires supply chains wholly independent from China. Not just final assembly. Every component. Every raw material. Every processing step. Fully decoupled from mining through manufacturing.

      Current US dependency makes this requirement absurd. The United States is 100% import-reliant for twelve critical minerals and greater than 50% reliant for thirty-one additional commodities. For rare earths specifically, 70% of imports came from China during 2020-2023. You cannot reshore what you never built in the first place.

      DoD estimates $18.5 billion needed to address all critical material shortfalls. Current committed funding? Approximately $2.5 billion. The gap is roughly $16 billion and growing. Meanwhile, the number of materials in shortfall increased 167% from 2019 to 2023 – from thirty-seven materials to ninety-nine materials. The problem is accelerating faster than solutions.

      Alternative timelines are sobering. GAO estimates fifteen years to rebuild rare earth supply chains. Industry estimates five to seven years for magnesium, gallium, and graphite processing. Bismuth and antimony? Three to five years if everything goes perfectly. Add the requirement to simultaneously rebuild industrial facilities, retrain skilled workers, establish quality control, achieve military specifications, and scale to volume production.

      Now factor in costs. Reshoring increases production costs by 30-50% minimum. Sometimes 100%+ for materials where Chinese environmental externalities and state subsidies created artificial cost advantages. Higher costs mean fewer units procured. Fewer units mean slower iteration and technological lag. Every constraint compounds.

      Meanwhile, China faces none of these constraints and can iterate faster with abundant, cheap components. Chinese defense contractors access domestic supply at lower prices. Chinese manufacturers benefit from vertical integration and state support. The decoupling meant to preserve American weapons industry may actually accelerate its relative decline.

      The irony is brutal: the cost of selling weapons to Taiwan might be the very ability to defend it. Because if American munitions cost three times Chinese equivalents and take twice as long to produce, the war is already over before it even began.

      While the United States liquidated its strategic reserves, China accumulated them on an unprecedented scale.

      The contrast is stark.

      The US National Defense Stockpile collapsed 98% in value from $9.6 billion in 1989 to $888 million in 2021. Current holdings meet only 37.9% of projected military needs and less than 10% of essential civilian needs in a national emergency. For antimony specifically, stockpiles declined from 27,000 metric tons in the 1990s to approximately 1,100 tons today – representing maybe 4-5% of annual consumption.

      The number of materials classified as in shortfall increased from thirty-seven in 2019 to ninety-nine in 2023. A 167% increase in four years. The problem is accelerating, not improving.

      Meanwhile, China’s National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration purchased a record 15,000 tonnes of cobalt in 2024. Estimated holdings include approximately 2 million tonnes of copper, 800,000 tonnes of aluminum, and 350,000 tonnes of zinc. The People’s Bank of China is estimated to hold 72.96 million fine troy ounces of gold – accumulated through consistent purchases that Western central banks dismissed as economically irrational. China imported a record 1.18 billion tonnes of iron ore in 2023.

      The strategic implication is that when export restrictions hit, China can maintain domestic industrial production using reserves while Western manufacturers scramble for spot market supplies that don’t exist.

      Turns out global markets stop being global when the supplier decides to nationalize flows. And just-in-time supply chains fail catastrophically when the critical inputs don’t arrive at all.

      The antimony case proved the template works. Each following restriction will prove the template is repeatable. The question is not whether Beijing will weaponize mineral dominance again. The question is which material delivers maximum strategic impact with minimum public comprehension.

      Magnesium restriction would cause immediate, cascading industrial failure. No stockpile exists. None can exist. No substitutes work. And production concentration is situated in a single Chinese county which provides maximum leverage. Public perception? Just above absolute zero.

      Heavy rare earth processing cutoff would cripple precision weapons production. Public awareness exists but the fifteen-year timeline to alternatives is incomprehensible to most voters.

      Bismuth represents the “nobody saw it coming” option. Essential for AI data center construction and pharmaceuticals. No stockpile exists. The tech industry is more vulnerable than defense to this particular chokepoint.

      The November 2025 temporary suspension provided some breathing room until November 2026. It covered commercial end-uses which creates the illusion of de-escalation while military restrictions remained permanent and new restrictions on Japan and silver proceeded on schedule.

      The pattern is clear: restrict, suspend, escalate elsewhere. Military end-use restrictions remain permanent. China’s processing dominance cannot be replicated within a decade. US strategic stockpiles remain at historic lows. Physical delivery stress on Western exchanges intensifies.

      Million government investment contracts and emergency stockpiling efforts represent belated recognition of vulnerabilities. Too little, too late. Perhaps 15-20% of a $14+ billion estimate should be invested NOW. When China can escalate within days, and ramping up production is measured in years or decades.

      China already knows the next metal.

      They’re just waiting for the right moment.

      Liked by 2 people

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      1. I’m scanning some of No1’s other work. He’s an excellent thinker.

        Here’s why bitcoin is doomed:
        https://no01.substack.com/p/if-nothing-changes-btc-is-finished

        I love this big picture review of US/Europe geopolitics:
        https://no01.substack.com/p/the-price-of-peace

        Reserve currency transitions take decades, sometimes generations. But they’re not linear. They’re not smooth. They’re punctuated by specific events that make the previous system untenable. Threshold crossings from which there’s no returning.

        Confiscating Russian foreign reserves in 2022 was one such event. It communicated to every non-Western country that their dollar holdings aren’t safe if they cross Washington on issues that matter. China got that message. India got that message. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, everyone got that message.

        This Greenland extortion is another threshold event. It’s telling Western allies that their dollar holdings aren’t safe either. That alliance commitments don’t protect you from economic coercion when Washington wants something.

        Eventually enough countries internalize these lessons. Eventually the costs of dollar dependence outweigh the benefits. Eventually someone says “no” and means it and has the courage to follow through.

        Silver already understands this at a molecular level. Physical premiums in Shanghai and Tokyo are screaming that the paper price has detached from reality. That the system is breaking.

        Gold understands it too. Central banks purchased 297 tonnes through November 2025. China’s extended its buying streak to 14 consecutive months. That’s not portfolio diversification. That’s not risk management. That’s preparation for a fundamentally different monetary system.

        They see what’s coming and they’re preparing.

        My guess? Europe figures this out sometime around 2030, long after Trump has extracted whatever he wanted and moved on to threatening Canada over water rights or Panama over the canal or whoever’s next on the list.

        By then the dollar’s privilege will be diminished enough that America can’t simply print its way out of structural problems anymore. The math stops working when your printing press loses its global subsidy.

        Trump just accelerated that timeline because he didn’t get a participation medal.

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        1. Quark and no01 in one day is alot to think about. Starting some seeds today was all I could do. We are a month away from having enough light to get something in the greenhouse to grow.

          I saw this study last year. I know 2 people that had “great numbers” and still almost died from heart attacks. Went back to check to see if the studies have been expanded. Doesn’t seem so.

          https://www.jacc.org/doi/10.1016/j.jaccas.2024.103083

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          1. Starting seeds is relaxing and rewarding. I’m on a few day break from the farm due to bad weather.

            If you don’t want to be accountable for your policy decisions, don’t do autopsies or analyze (for example VAERS) data to check if you were right.

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      2. Hello Rob,

        Oh I did miss the BRICS AI videos and now I believe we have found the source voice! This N01 (AI enabled) has the same cadence and more to the point, the same presentation of the known data and salient conclusions. It’s just as good (thought provoking, interesting, and not a little alarming) to see it written as it was to hear it. Thank you for posting.

        Hope you’re having a cosy rest day, making soup is always another uplifting activity for the body and spirit on a cold, wet day.

        Namaste, friends.

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        1. Preptip:

          I’ve kicked my homemade soup up to a new level and reduced the need to keep in my prepping inventory expensive stock concentrates. All it takes is patience and respect for the methods of our grandmothers.

          Start with a generous quantity of two inexpensive ingredients that store well during the winter: onions and carrots. Chop the onion into small pieces and grate the carrot to create surface area. Now add to the soup pot with a generous glop of healthy fat like ghee or coconut oil. Then slowly sauté the mixture giving it time to evaporate off the water so that eventually the sugars caramelize to produce a dark brown paste. Takes about 30 minutes.

          Now add a little boiling water and scrape the bottom of the pot to release the flavorful fond. Then add more boiling water, generous fresh vegetables, and any protein and grains you prefer to fill the pot. Season with salt & pepper to taste. I like a tablespoon of whole peppercorns for some bite. Bring to a boil and simmer for about 30 minutes to produce a healthy soup with a delicious rich broth.

          Gaia, I can’t find the AI audio version of No1. Can you provide a link?

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          1. Hello Rob,

            You are a domestic god! I can just smell the soup pot’s tantalising aroma, all the way from here, 11,500 km away! Your soup served up with those famous dinner rolls and that could even be a very respectable and delectable last meal!

            I am thinking that content of the various AI pro BRICS channels (be it substack or YouTube) is like a tutorial into a perspective that the Western hegemony didn’t want anyone to know. Whilst the actual numbers of reserves and holdings can be debated and may never be truly known, the general trend seems sound and China’s long strategy is finally being more fully revealed. It almost seems that whoever or whatever is behind this spate of similar disseminations wants to educate (inculcate, indoctrinate, is there a difference?) those who are ready and willing to know, and convince that there is another option in the offing that will supercede the current system one way or another, don’t say we haven’t been re-educated and warned.

            Do you have any teach yourself Mandarin files in your extensive digital library? We should all at least learn to say the niceties to greet our new overlords when the time comes. Unfortunately, even though I look Chinese (because I am) I have only the vocabulary of a 5 year old (that’s when I returned to the States from Hong Kong) and more’s the pity, I only know Cantonese.

            With your stupendous cooking skills (and ability to do an amazing range of practical work) I am sure you will be highly valued no matter what regime takes over.

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        2. Dammit. You beat me to the punch sis. N01 is a dead ringer for that other BRICS channel.

          Rob, I dont think Gaia was saying there’s audio. Just saying the writing cadence is identical to the other channel’s voice.

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          1. Thanks.

            Feels like a coordinated effort with deep pockets.

            Maybe the Chinese version of the CIA is giving us a dose of our own medicine?

            A key difference is the Chinese find truth to be more persuasive than lies.

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          2. All substacks essays now come inbuilt with an AI voice who will read it out loud, and the publisher can choose the tone of the voice in the publisher settings.

            So this link (instead of the one Rob provided from Quark’s essay), will take you to the Reader page where it has the listen option:

            https://substack.com/home/post/p-185419407

            But i get now, this is not what Gaia meant, as you said, the cadence of the writing voice is the same (and content) not the actual audio voice.

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          3. You know me pretty well by now, bro. We must truly be related, probably in a past life. But this is the last life, unless Mr Zeus can convince us that we have as many as nine like he does.

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        2. The west outsourced the gathering and processing of many rare earths and similar minor, but very important minerals to China, because it’s a dirty energy intensive industry. Let China have the pollution..

          Take a couple of examples I know of. Rare Earths. There are currently 2 players in the west, Mountain Pass in the USA and Lynas in Australia. Both struggle financially as the Chinese flood the market periodically, trashing prices, mainly to keep these 2 poor.

          There is another giant REE deposit in Brazil, owned by CBMM at their Araxa Niobium mine. They currently produce 85% of the world’s Niobium. They also have a nearly 20M tonne deposit of REEs, 352M tonnes at 5.6% grade. The REEs are mined, crushed and ground along with the Niobium, then floated off and sent to the tailings dams. CBMM have not been able to work out how to profitably mine the REEs, acknowledging the Chinese, lower grade deposit’s economic power, and probably slacker environmental laws.

          Waste products from REE mining are high levels of thorium and uranium in the tailings, but not economic to gather. I think the Araxa deposit has around 1200 ppm of thorium and uranium, which ends up in the tailings dams, through old laws…

          Graphite, the largest deposit in the world is owned by an Australian company by the name of Syrah Resources. It’s the Balama mine in Mozambique. It has over 1B tonnes of 11% graphite, and they operate a 2Mt/a plant, part of the time. They can’t compete with the Chinese mines and synthetic graphite, made from carbon wastes.

          The market cap of Syrah Resources is $A354M and they have a plant for processing into higher grade graphite in Texas, but low sales as they can’t compete with the Chinese. The US could easily buy this for less than $US1B if they were serious about graphite.

          The whole point about the metals and minerals supply is that as the world has been squeezed by falling EROEI over the last few decades, we, as in humanity went for the sensible choice of becoming as efficient as possible, getting most processing of everything in one large area instead of spread all over the world, right where the manufacturing hub was.

          Now further down the EROEI and net energy curve, countries are becoming insular, and deciding they need to do things for themselves. It wont and energetically can’t work, as it’s less efficient, yet none of the politicians nor most of the commentators understand any of this.

          China won the race for being the perfect place with lots of cheap energy (coal), lots of cheap labour, to become the worlds processing and manufacturing hub, now that it’s happened, everyone is worried about them having too much power, instead of worrying about the collapse in complexity and everything else about modern civilization to come.

          There is no shortage of any metal or mineral on planet Earth, there is a shortage of high grade, low energy cost to remove and concentrate metals and minerals. It’s all about energy, net energy, that has to be robbed from some other aspect of civilization to make the low grades become available.

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            1. I didn’t read a lot of what he/she had to say, but it was mostly accurate but without context of the economics and energy side we all understand so well here.

              The world had a deliberate choice to outsource all these metals production and did so, without trying to understand the power being handed to China, expecting good results, possibly capitalism to overtake their brand of communism.

              What’s missing is that China had the cheap massive labour force and massive coal reserves of energy that the world economy needed at the time as EROEI was falling everywhere else. so it was extremely efficient to concentrate processing and production of so many manufactured products there.

              We don’t have another China in the wings.. Their coal reserves are getting deeper and more energy expensive to extract. Like everywhere else, they used the cheap easy to access coal first. Their population is aging, the one child policy coming back to bite..

              The rest of the world doesn’t have the energy to do what China does with minerals processing energy consumption, then manufacturing.

              It’s not that No1 is wrong about anything, I just don’t think they are looking in the right direction. Building mines, processing plants, manufacturing facilities outside China, effectively duplicating everything, is possible with enough energy and materials, but it’s way less efficient than just having one China, and just uses up the last of the resources quicker and inefficiently..

              It seems to me it’s rare for people to comprehend Cactus, so only get part of the overall picture and what “we” as in humanity are doing is denying reality and heading into collapse faster than otherwise would have happened…

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              1. Thank you Hideaway.

                I agree No1 does not discuss the complete picture.

                If No1 is Chinese propaganda we would not expect them to discuss cactus, and if No1 is a normal person we would not expect him to understand cactus.

                I was looking for confirmation that No1 is not deliberately misleading us on the Chinese control of minerals and I think you confirmed that.

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      4. I did a deep dive into the post, looking for counterarguments to the parts. I found five things:

        The tungsten, gallium, germanium and antimony industries have more locations he hasn’t mentioned for both mining and processing that can theoretically be under US control, but they are small, between 4 and 17% of the market.

        Magnesium can be warehoused and stockpiled without oxidising or burning by coating it in a thin layer of wax, which is in fact the standard. 20 foot billets of Magnesium are usually shipped in wax. That said, the processing of ore into useful metal is as China-controlled as he describes.

        Everything else checks out.

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        1. Thank you anon.

          So we need to be a little cautious with No1 because magnesium was claimed to be the biggest risk due to the inability to stockpile.

          Given the large quantity of data in that essay it’s not a integrity destroying mistake.

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    11. I won’t be watching the latest Nate Hagen’s episode:

      In this episode, Nate is joined by Indigenous environmental justice activist and Planetary Guardian, Xiye Bastida, to discuss how her indigenous heritage and leadership in the youth climate movement have helped guide her to continue her work toward a more ecologically attuned world. Together, they discuss the importance of intergenerational collaboration rooted in love, rather than simply rage or blind hope. Importantly, Xiye emphasizes what could become possible if we change our definition of what success looks like, live closer to the Earth, and start to view our planet as a sacred teacher, rather than a well of resources from which to extract.

      What are the hopes and fears of younger generations during these increasingly tumultuous times? How might Indigenous wisdom inform our aspirations and strategy as we attempt to navigate the increasingly challenging world ahead? And how could a closer connection to the land help us cultivate a more sustained inner fire in order to continue moving in the direction of better futures – even if we don’t yet know the exact destination?

      About Xiye Bastida:

      Xiye Bastida is a 23-year-old activist and member of the Planetary Guardians, an independent collective elevating the science to make the Planetary Boundaries a measurement framework for the world and spark a global movement by inviting everyone to become guardians of our shared home. Xiye is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Re-Earth Initiative, a global youth-led organization that has raised and allocated millions of dollars to help fund effective, small-scale projects across frontline communities in the Global South. Additionally, she has become a leading voice in the climate movement, organizing climate strikes, speaking on global stages like the United Nations, and redefining storytelling through her upcoming film, The Way of the Whale.

      Additionally, Xiye has been recognized as a TIME 100 Next honoree, recipient of the UN Spirit Award, a Forbes Changemaker, and is currently a 776 Fellow, continuing to scale youth-led climate leadership globally. Most recently, she was named on Forbes’ 30 under 30 Social Impact List.

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      1. Perfect example of EliotJ’s hope porn. Wont be watching either!

        Rob, how do you manage to keep up with so much analysis? You must have little else you must do in your non work time. Anyway, thanks for being my personal news feed. I see this morning you are right re Iran, propaganda revved up, as strike/s imminent.

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      2. Together, they discuss… rooted in love, rather than simply rage or blind hope.

        You and Renaee are way too negative. With the promise of no blind hope, I’m diving in… (49 seconds later) Forget it! My head just exploded from a supernova of bullshit & blind hope.

        Why are we obsessed with growth when mother earth has been so wise in making systems work circularly in seasons in a way that is beautiful and has a cadence. And our duty is to tap into that cadence… It is our responsibility to be guardians, to be stewards.

        The comments are even more concerning. At first it looks like a bunch of funny, smart-ass replies. But when you look closer, these people are actually serious.😂

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    12. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent publicly stated that the US destroyed the Iranian currency to cause regime change via social unrest.

      It didn’t work. The US may soon try bombs again.

      The news media ignores Bessent’s admission and is blaming the Iranian “regime” to prepare us for war.

      How do these “journalists” sleep at night?

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    13. I like this Jordan Perry essay from 2024. (h/t Renaee)

      Make Preparations – by Jordan Perry

      Much better than that reddit AI crap from yesterday. Jordan makes me want to devise a test for the normies that will tell me where they’re at with their individual death anxiety. Everyone that passes the test is a prime candidate for an overshoot/collapse journey.

      Any discussion about living is a discussion about dying. This is the existential reality of the style of thinking assumed to be exclusive to the homo genus among earthly creatures.

      To me, the fierce headwinds the Collapse Acceptance movement (whatever the hell that is) has faced are no different than the denial & avoidance of individual death so prevalent in our culture.

      If you can navigate the acceptance of your personal demise, you can navigate acceptance of the collapse of Global Industrial Civilization. Both are, actually, empirically true and inevitable. We can debate timelines. We can debate specific causes. But we can no more debate the functional truth of each reality than we can debate the rising of the sun. It just is.

      Moving past the “prove it” stage of endless growth versus inevitable collapse is the same as moving past the “peek-a-boo” stage of toying with your inevitable individual death. At the risk of oversimplifying something so complex, it just is. And that’s OK

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    14. I’ve already forgotten the definition of doom porn but here’s what I think is doom porn.

      You don’t want to live in a world of $5000 gold.

      The attack on Venezuela was an attack on China.

      The attacks on Iran are an attack on China.

      US telling Canada it cannot have a free trade agreement with China is an attack on China.

      The rising gold price is an asymmetric attack by China on the US.

      China is dumping treasuries and buying gold.

      Hyperinflation is around the corner.

      Billions of dollars are being wiped out every day.

      There is a liquidity crisis behind the curtain.

      When it blows up you’re going to hear it on Mars.

      This is one of the biggest financial moves in 500 years.

      This is the destruction of the western banking system.

      If you ignored our prepping advice for last several years, you are screwed.

      Trump went crazy in early January 2026 and started attacking everyone. Something changed. He was visited between Christmas and New Years by Bibi Netanyahu where he was reminded that he’s all over the Epstein files and needs to start a war to deflect attention.

      The US got its ass kicked by a 20 million person Vietnam with a less sophisticated military than a 90 million person Iran.

      How does a nuclear armed country of 9 million people (Israel) defeat a non-nuclear country of 90 million people (Iran)?

      The answer is obvious but to use their nukes they need a reason to claim they are the victims.

      When the US attacks Iran, Iran will unload it’s missiles on Israel, which will give Israel and excuse to nuke Tehran and the oil fields.

      Then it will get ugly because the Russians and Chinese will respond.

      Israel will be physically destroyed, and the US will be financially destroyed because the middle east oil flow will stop.

      Fortunately Canada, Australia, and New Zealand will be perfectly ok. (Rob here, I made that up).

      Here’s what I think is the most important thing they said:

      It’s odd that gold is $5000 and oil is only $62. This implies the market is not worried about a middle east war but is worried about the financial system.

      By the end I was not that impressed with the guest. He’s not cactus aware, and his predictions have many contradictions.

      I do believe he is correct that $5000 gold means there is big trouble coming, but we already knew that.

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      1. Oh yes, Canadian Prepper definitely qualifies as doomer porn.

        I got a sudden jealousy reaction at that last line till I saw your note in parenthesis.😂

        ps. where’s our war expert AJ?

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          1. Yes, let’s hope that it’s his turn to do a Gaia and just drop out of the doomsphere for a little while. We know that he has a large property to maintain and although it’s winter in the Pacific Northwest, there’s still plenty of clean up jobs to do. Let’s all send him our positive thoughts and trust that he is well.

            There’s a few others that we’ve been missing for a while now, ABC, Kira, scarrow, come to mind especially. We’ll just have to activate our thoughtwave recombobulator to reach out to everyone and hope for their wellbeing.

            Namaste, friends.

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            2. Dear Gaia, Rob & Co.

              I hope this message finds all of thee well.

              I mostly linger in the shadows due to the unwanted burden caused by internet overindulgence. 

              Got part time employment, been engaging in hunting, martial arts and dumpster diving (foodstuffs), trying to save up funds and procuring further means of personal deterrence whilst trying to “get back on the horse” overall socially, mentally, physically and societally. 

              Preparedness question: 

              What profession or education path should I pursue? 

              • I’m applying for schools (vocational & university/college) next month, all advice would be most welcome. 

              Thoughts about:

              • Gunsmithing
              • Vehicle, industrial mechanics etc.
              • Economics, business etc.
              • Aviation (pilot, cabin crew, flight controller etc.
              • Logistics (planner, coordination etc)
              • Maritime (sea captain, harbour management etc.)
              • Emergency preparedness and policy planning etc.

              Latest erratic thoughts:

              • Working in an Arab country where there is no tax and decent salaries might be a rapid way to procure economic benefits for preparedness for a few years, before pivoting to more practical solutions and permanent location.

              Found a few engaging YouTube channels:

              • Wasteland By Wednesday
              • Mike Tango Whiskey

              Kind regards, 

              ABC

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              1. Hi ABC,

                Good on you for getting back on the horse!

                When choosing a career I would think about these questions:

                1) What jobs will be risky when energy becomes scarce and expensive? (probably wise to avoid aviation)
                2) What jobs will be a priority when organizations must cut expenses? (a broke city will probably layoff planners & economists before garbage men)
                3) What will poor people need and be willing to pay enough for me to make a living?

                Food production might jump to mind first but having worked on small farms for over 10 years I would advise against agriculture because the up-front capital and operating expenses are so high it is almost impossible to make a living on a small farm without off-farm income. Better to make food growing a hobby in your yard or rented community plot.

                I’d personally lean to a trade like carpentry, plumbing, electrician, or roofing. Masonry is not a good choice in North America due to little need these days, however masonry in Europe might still be viable.

                I like the trades because:
                – poor people must live somewhere and maintaining their residences will always be a priority;
                – you can work for a company following the rules and paying taxes, or as a lone wolf for cash under the table or barter;
                – you can use modern technology like battery tools when the grid is functioning, or old fashioned hand tools when the grid is down;
                – capital required for tools is modest;
                – the skills are also useful in your personal life for keeping expenses down;
                – having done DIY projects for many years, the work is interesting and rewarding, and often healthy being physical.

                If you have some goal that requires significant savings like purchasing a house, then a short-term profitable stint in an Arab country might make sense, however do so knowing inflation will be increasing and the world is very fragile.

                Good luck!

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    15. I’m claiming credit for being the first to make this observation: China is retaliating against US global violence with an aggressive but non-violent information and minerals war against the US empire.

      It’s rare to be first with an idea so please let me know if you’ve seen this from someone else already.

      I think all of the AI videos and blogs we have been seeing lately originate from the same source in the Chinese government, possibly with cooperation from the Russians.

      The videos and blogs feel like they have a common author.

      They are mostly intelligent, articulate, respectful, and accurate.

      Although they have an AI tone, the content is not the usual AI slop.

      I think the content is being produced by Chinese speaking experts and is then translated and polished with an AI for consumption by an English speaking audience.

      China sees the US is on an increasingly violent path to defend its failing empire, which if unchecked, will end with a nuclear WWIII.

      China does not want to see the world destroyed by WWIII.

      The Chinese government has a strategy to destroy the US without causing a nuclear war.

      They have launched a coordinated social media campaign and are telling US citizens the truth about debt, energy, and minerals problems to sew distrust in government, and to cause a panic that crashes the US dollar financial system.

      They are also damaging the US dollar and military systems by strategic choking of critical minerals, and by shifting from US treasuries to gold.

      What’s uncommon and brilliant about their information war is that they are only communicating accurate information with a respectful tone, which will make it difficult for the US government to defend against.

      An obvious implication is that China and the BRICS believe they have sufficient resources, consumers, and a trading system to survive on their own.

      They are of course not mentioning the cactus or ecology lenses because they don’t want to cause a panic in BRICS citizens that would accelerate their own demise.

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      1. Damn! That’s a helluva cool post.

        You know my view… those old Native American prophecies are gonna come to fruition like gangbusters. America’s going down. And she’s going down hard.

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      2. I kid you not Rob, but I wrote my little two cents above before reading your much more organised exposition with more or less the same conclusion! (you can verify with the time stamp) We must be related, too, in a past life!

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        1. Great minds think alike although we may be arguing slightly different things.

          You seem to be saying China is trying subsume the west into their system.

          I’m saying China wants to financially destroy the US and will be happy if they never have to deal with the irrational, unscientific, illiterate, rude, arrogant, unethical US again.

          Nevertheless I’ll share the prize money with you.

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          1. To quote Winnie the Pooh, “For I am a bear with a Very Little Brain” and not in the league at all with the likes of you and Hideaway.

            I can never explain myself clearly the first time around. I am absolutely in agreement with you that China’s long suffering retribution will be fulfilled with the utter downfall of the West, especially at their own vile hands. I myself will die happier once I rid myself of the US citizenship that is now an unbearable yoke. I do not think any country will shed many tears (and Europe may gush crocodile ones but not for long) if the States is financially and materially kaput, which means the days of being vassal to the hegemon are over. The final and most dangerous task remaining is to de-claw and de-tooth the dying rabid tiger, and it may take a sacrificial war to do so, which they hope can be limited.

            I meant that the China/BRICS AI channels are trying to communicate thoroughly and logically that the old order is ending and a new dawn is here. Those with eyes to see and minds to understand should know which way the wind is blowing and prepare for the changing of the guard. I do not mean that China will actually take over the US in the imperialistic manner to which we are accustomed, but if there is to be any role for the defanged US in the future, it will definitely have to recognise the new master. Thus my suggestion that we should humble ourselves to learn the new dominant language, at least to be able to say passably “ni hao”.

            We are definitely saying the same thing here. I think it’s the No Bull prize that you have earned so rightly after countless denials stopped and avoided over the years (thousands of years in fact), everyone said it couldn’t be done, but you did. You should be the only one to receive the prize and keep all the money, but I will accept if you want to frame the prize and dedicate it to me afterwards.

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      3. on an increasingly violent path to defend its failing empire

        A sign of weakness and panic.

        they are only communicating accurate information with a respectful tone

        A sign of strength and confidence.

        In an earlier post of yours, there was:

        Trump went crazy in early January 2026 and started attacking everyone. Something changed. He was visited between Christmas and New Years by Bibi Netanyahu where he was reminded that he’s all over the Epstein files and needs to start a war to deflect attention.

        I am not sure he cares about that. Maybe he is simply slowly understanding it is his time to fall, to lose it all. Aren’t all his towers made of the same material as Babel’s?

        The fall of the West will be salutary for its inhabitants (back to reality).

        Warning: this is very hypothetical and I have no certainty about any of what I am going to say next.
        However, may it be that the fall of the West give 15 more years to the rest of the world? This may be how I am in the process of updating my timeline: 2026/7 fall of the West. 2040-45 Gaïan Consequences. 2045-2060 The Shift in Consciousness. 2060-?? New Paradigm.
        But, I am not sure yet: how well insulated is the rest of the world from the unplugging of its greatest abusers/consummers? Call me crazy, but I am trying to reconcile my understanding of accelerated collapse starting in 2027 with the conclusions of the Stephen Schwartz remote viewing 2050 project. (assuming he can be trusted)

        Also, my preferred theory about covid now is that it was an accident similar in nature to the one that happened in Tchernobyl, except with a different kind of technology (biotech this time). In the same way Tchernobyl exposed the lies and triggered the fall of the USSR, covid signals the end of the Western empire.

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        1. you mean accident where they wargamed a coronavirus pandemic in Oct 19 Event 201, where the BIS called an emergency meeting in September 19 to enact ‘going direct’ an unprecedented move where they funneled 9 trillion from commercial banking into retail banking between Oct 19 and Apr 20..that kind of accident? 😉

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          1. I’m aware of the repo market banking stress just prior to covid, and I’m aware of event 201, although I think (but am not sure) similar events were held in previous years, but you seem to be aware of some important timeline connections.

            Can you please elaborate a little on what happened when to clarify your argument?

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              1. Thanks, I vaguely remember watching this when it was published in 2021, but I watched it again for a refresher.

                I put John Titus in the bucket of people that are very intelligent and aware that the official stories we are told are wrong, however because they do not understand (or deny) overshoot, thermodynamics, oil/mineral depletion, and cactus, they are forced to make up plausible sounding stories to explain what they see.

                Another good example of people in this bucket is Simon Dixon.

                Because these people have no clue about the important forces that drive our economy, their stories are wrong.

                So, for example, if you do not understand that falling EROEI plus mathematics guarantees that our debt backed fractional reserve monetary system will soon stop functioning, then you reasonably assume that CBDCs are a plot by the rich elite to control the peasants, rather than a useful tool for maintaining social order via the rationing and restriction of activities that will be required when our system soon collapses.

                Or, for example, you will assume that printing money to bailout banks is a plot by the elite to enrich themselves, rather than a desperate last ditch attempt to avoid 8 billion people starving.

                It is true that the wealth gap is increasing, and power is concentrating, but that’s a side-effect of the design of the system that enables modernity.

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        2. I’m hoping Hideaway will comment on whether the collapse of a large unproductive leeching portion of the global system, like the US, could buy a little extra time for the rest of the global system. My guess is it might because so many valuable resources will be freed up for others to consume.

          The covid lab leak might have been an accident, but the illegal unethical gain of function bioweapons research that created the virus was not a mistake, and the novel untested mRNA, which later unsurprisingly proved to be harmful, that they transfected billions with, including children at zero risk from the disease, was not a mistake. Nor was it a mistake that an emergency was fomented as an excuse to bail out the banking system and to test societal control mechanisms that will be required for cactus.

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          1. What we have in our modern civilization is a massive totally interconnected unbelievably intertwined complexity of every aspect of our existence in modernity.

            Taking out any major part would be the equivalent of opening an electronic gizmo and start pulling out a few wires here and there a couple of diodes and resistors, a couple of pieces of ‘something else electronic, then wondering why it no longer works. It’s failed in it’s entirety, but you only took out a few bits.

            Only the electronic gizmo has minor complexity compared to our modern civilization. Have a look at the number of people that think if we just cut out consumer waste from the system, we could continue modernity for so much longer. They never stop to think if all, what they call waste, has some important role to play in the entirety of the system.

            Look quickly at the classic example of plastic. It’s becoming an environmental disaster, with microplastics in everything affecting life everywhere, no-one anywhere denies it that I can find. Yet we produce a greater quantity of it every year, all for very specific purposes, that often end up as waste. Taking the USA and the West out of the world economy, is no different to just banning all plastics world wide. It’s taking a large chunk out of the system.

            Ban plastics, done. Tomorrow when your fridge breaks down there is no new one to replace it, as fridges have electric wiring covered in insulating plastic, which is now banned. The chemical processing plant that made lots of different chemicals and plasticisers, just lost 70% of their business and went bust, so the chemicals required by the large copper mine are suddenly without product, plus the trucks taking chemical A to them are no longer operating as some rats chewed the plastic coating on the wires to the alternator and they can’t be replaced.

            Take the USA and rest of the west out of the word economy, and you take a lot of the high end ability to get the low grade oil out of the ground. It’s Baker Hughes, Haliburton, SLB, all global but very much USA western based companies, providing the latest high tech for wireline services, the tools used in oil and gas drilling. Without these 3 companies fully functioning, oil and gas production would collapse overnight. Then how does the rest of the world function?

            Go to any ecosystem of unbelievable complexity, and rip out a couple of the dominant species. Do you expect it to keep operating normally or end up becoming totally dysfunctional like Yellowstone National Park ecosystem when they removed the wolves.

            In other words taking any major part out of any system, will just lead to a cascade of failures throughout the rest of the system, with massive unintended consequences that cannot be totally predicted in advance. Our modern civilization is not just ultra highly complex, it’s fragile as well because of the high complexity required to obtain all the low grade energy and materials it relies upon to function.

            We require the 6 continent supply chains to keep functioning, to avoid collapse, we require hte world financial system to keep functioning to avoid collapse, we need the modern farm machinery to keep functioning to avoid collapse. We need the supply of plastics, chemicals, minerals, metals to keep flowing across the world to avoid collapse. we need the hundreds of thousands of parts manufacturers around the world to keep functioning to avoid collapse.

            The entire system requires growing energy surplus to avoid collapse, which of course is not possible on a finite planet, so it’s inevitable that the system of modern civilization collapses anyway.

            We can hasten the process of collapse if we choose to, by ripping out a few wires here and there and expecting the system to keep working, then be surprised when it fails, which looks like the direction humanity is choosing…

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      4. Interesting Idea. As an American, I know my government is out of control. This seems like an interesting way other countries could quietly fight back.

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    16. Wacky Fast Eddie has a moment of sanity and asks a good question today…

      https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/what-would-you-do

      If you ran the world and you knew that at some point we would run low on affordable energy resulting in the collapse of civilization and unspeakable suffering, what would you do?

      I assume you would look under every rock and try to identify a replacement energy source. You would probably embrace nuclear energy, solar and wind generated energy, fusion, fission, and just about any option with even a hint of promise.

      Let’s say you did all that and concluded all alternatives were not feasible. You then accepted that civilization was guaranteed to collapse and starvation awaited 8B+ humans.

      Perhaps you’d ask your think tank minions to put a time frame on when the implosion was likely to occur and let’s say they predicted it would occur between the years 2027 and 2029.

      They also informed you that nobody would survive because of the 4000 spent nuclear fuel ponds that would go unmanaged.

      What would you do?

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      2. If I would run the world I would simply deny that this is a possibility. And however kept coming back with this doomer nonsense I would replace with someone who can give me solutions or at least a hopeful story. Because I’m human.

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            1. Some aware people like you want modernity to end as fast as possible because of the damage we are doing.

              Others like me and Jack Alpert think modernity is so rare in the universe and amazing that we should do what we can to keep it going.

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    17. This is a comment that I pulled from Moon of Alabama. For reference it is comment #45 from today’s open thread. The author is making the point that once we get to around $6000/ounce that the Gulf Countries are likely to stop accepting dollars for oil. Take a look, if you think its stupid feel free to dump it:

      Tom @7

      The consensus among many global economists and financial journals, particularly those in the Asia-Pacific and Middle Eastern corridors, is that gold reaching $6,000 would signal a terminal breakdown in the dollar’s credibility.

      Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins University argues that gold reaching this level is a direct reflection of the erosion of Federal Reserve independence and the impact of aggressive tariff wars, which effectively “debase” the currency. David Rosenberg has similarly identified the $6,000 mark as a “black swan” threshold where the sovereign debt crisis makes the dollar’s position untenable, forcing a massive rotation into hard assets. In the Middle East, Nigel Green of the deVere Group views gold at $5,000 and its trajectory toward $6,000 as a “political risk vote” where investors treat U.S. policy instability as a primary macro variable, leading to a “multipolar currency environment” where the dollar’s dominance is no longer assumed.

      Financial daily Mint and The Economic Times have reported that such price surges trigger a “defensive liquidation” by central banks in the Global South, who must dump falling dollar reserves to protect their national wealth. Analysts at the Shanghai Gold Exchange and Deutsche Bank observe that this is not a temporary spike but a structural shift; specifically, Deutsche Bank notes that $6,000 is achievable this year due to shifting monetary cycles and a “weaker dollar” driven by escalating debt trajectories. These sources collectively suggest that $6,000 acts as a psychological and mathematical “red line” for the Petrodollar system, likely compelling oil-producing nations like Saudi Arabia to seek gold-settled contracts and ending the dollar’s ability to easily fund its $37 trillion debt.

      Steve Hanke on the $6,000 Gold Prediction

      This interview with Steve Hanke explains the specific economic drivers, including tariff wars and monetary policy shifts, that underpin his forecast of gold reaching $6,000 and the subsequent risks to the U.S. dollar.

      The following points represent the closest thing to “official evidence” from government-backed entities as of January 2026:

      1. The Official Launch of the “Unit” (October 31, 2025)
      The most concrete evidence of a state-sanctioned move toward gold-settled trade is the October 2025 launch of a pilot program for “The Unit.” This initiative was developed by the International Research Institute for Advanced Systems (IRIAS), a body with ties to the Russian government and the BRICS Business Council.
      • Government-Backed Mandate: Official documents describe “The Unit” as a “digital trade currency” specifically designed for cross-border settlement.
      • The Gold Anchor: The system is explicitly backed by a basket of 40% physical gold and 60% BRICS currencies. The BRICS Business Council has framed this as a “strategic safeguard” for member nations (including Saudi Arabia and the UAE) to settle transactions outside the dollar-dominated SWIFT system.

      2. The Saudi Ministry of Finance & Multi-Currency Sales
      While the Saudi government rarely uses the word “collapse,” their actions since the expiration of the Petrodollar Agreement in late 2025/early 2026 provide significant evidence of a pivot.
      • The Policy Shift: As of January 2026, the Saudi Ministry of Finance has officially moved to a multi-currency oil sales model, as reported by regional financial outlets like Maaal and Sada News Agency. This allows the Kingdom to accept Yuan, Euros, and—via the “Unit”—gold-backed digital assets for oil.
      • The $6,000 Link: Local analysts in Riyadh have noted that as gold nears $6,000, the “purchasing power parity” of the dollar becomes so weak that the Saudi government is prioritizing non-dollar assets to protect their Vision 2030 funding.

      3. Central Bank of Russia & UAE Joint Gold Pool
      The Central Bank of Russia has been the most vocal government body regarding a gold-backed trade system.
      • Official Statements: Throughout late 2025, Russian officials have characterized gold not just as a reserve, but as an “active trade asset.” * Evidence of Coordination: By January 2026, the BRICS+ bloc (led by Russia, China, and the Gulf states) has consolidated more than 6,000 tonnes of gold, representing roughly 20% of global central bank reserves. This accumulation is officially described as a “shield” against dollar-based sanctions and currency volatility.

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      1. Thanks.

        The $6000 red line smells to me like a made up story (maybe by the Chinese AI campaign to destroy the US) because no argument was provided for why $6000 and not $5,000, or $7000, or $9000, or $20,000.

        I asked Gemini AI, “What is the status of the Saudi Arabia petrodollar agreement?”

        I seem to have hit a very sensitive trigger in the AI and its response was defensive with a strong flavor of “don’t worry, the US dollar is still dominant”.

        I extracted this unbiased bit from its response:

        While no contract expired, Saudi Arabia is actively moving away from exclusive reliance on the dollar. This is part of their “Vision 2030” strategy to diversify their economy and geopolitical alliances.

        Currency Diversification: Saudi officials have confirmed they are open to settling trade in other currencies, including the Euro and the Chinese Yuan.

        BRICS+ Membership: Saudi Arabia’s entry into the BRICS+ bloc has accelerated discussions about using local currencies for trade to bypass the dollar-centric SWIFT system.

        mBridge Project: The Kingdom has joined the mBridge project—a multi-central bank digital currency (CBDC) platform designed for instant, cross-border payments that do not require the U.S. dollar.

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    18. Declining EROI from a Norwegian perspective. Norway is a small but important for northern Europe. What do oil executives and politicians know? Why are we doing electrification of oil riggs and LNG facilities?

      Johan Sverdrup is often highlighted as proof that electrification reduces emissions, but it also illustrates how high-EROI hydropower is used to sustain a mature oil province. Power from shore replaces offshore gas turbines, improving efficiency and economics, yet it also shows how late-stage petroleum increasingly depends on external, high-quality energy inputs.

      At Melkøya, the planned electrification of the LNG facility serves a similar function. As gas production becomes more energy-intensive, grid electricity is introduced to stabilise operations and reduce costs, effectively shifting part of the energy burden from the gas system to the onshore power system. Taken together, Johan Sverdrup and Melkøya show that electrification in Norway is not about cutting emissions. It is a pragmatic response to declining EROI, using abundant hydropower to keep energy-intensive oil and gas infrastructure viable for longer.

      Norway hydropower is subsidizing Europe in different ways. Directly with transmissions lines and indirectly with electrification of oil extraction. . At the same time, this role creates tension at home. Energy that stabilises Europe is also energy that cannot be used domestically for industry (smelters) or households.

      It is unlikely that this dynamic is unknown to decision-makers. Oil executives and Norwegian politicians are well aware that electrification of installations such as Johan Sverdrup and Melkøya is not a climate measure, but also a way to manage rising energy costs in a mature petroleum system. They may not use the language of EROI, but declining net energy shows up clearly in higher operating costs, increased power demand, and the need for continuous efficiency improvements.

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    19. Bushfires are extinguished and health is restored because Hideaway’s back in form banging on Brandon, the undisputed MORT poster child.

      Notice that I never copy/paste Brandon’s side of the discussion because you can close your eyes and accurately imagine the nonsense.

      #317: The triumph of the material, part one

      All such publications never accept reality, that we can only build renewables “cheaply” by using cheap fossil fuels to do all the building and moving of the materials around the world.

      No fossil fuels use, no renewables get built. Existing renewables quickly age and need replacing, with no fossil fuels in use, they can’t be replaced.

      Even “cheap” renewables are not cheap compared to fossil fuels, the EROEI is too expensive to run a civilization off. No-one anywhere is building new Aluminium smelters to run off just solar and/or wind plus batteries. It’s simply too expensive to do and wouldn’t be able to compete with new coal powered Aluminium Smelters built around a cheap coal source.

      Brandon …”If China’s industrial centres that build the units for renewables are powered by say 60% renewable energy,…”

      How about actually looking up some science and process engineering to back a any claim of yours, instead of plucking a percentage out of this air??

      You are clearly wrong on this, as making all the separate parts of a solar panel is a highly energy intense industrial process.

      The Siemens Process used for making the silicon wafers in solar panels, is particularly high grade continuous electricity intense, for weeks.

      However before that phase to turn quartz rock into metallurgical silicon, high grade low ash coal or coke is totally required to strip the oxygen from the silicon dioxide. No other way to do it at the temperatures required.

      Also in terms of “cost”, I’m talking about energy and material cost, not just dollars out of this air cost.

      How about you back up any argument with a bit of science and reality, hand waving about ‘we can do this and this’ without any evidence is just denial of reality…

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    20. Scott Ritter is collaborating with the Chinese to destroy the US with truth…

      The American you served for 28 years…

      Violated the guarantees it gave regarding the expansion of NATO.

      Bombed a European capital and illegally annexed the sovereign territory of a sovereign state (Kosovo).

      Invaded and occupied a sovereign state, Afghanistan, for the purpose of regime change.

      Carried out an illegal war of aggression on Iraq, invading and occupying a sovereign state based upon lies and manufactured intelligence.

      Withdrew from a foundational arms control treaty (ABM), destabilizing global security.

      Carried out covert operations against a sovereign state (Iran) designed to deny it the rights it had under Article 4 of the NPT.

      Encouraged Georgia to initiate combat operations against Russia.

      Executed an illegal regime change operation against Libya that destabilized the Maghreb region.

      Conducted a massive covert operation against Syria which weaponized Al Qaeda and Islamic extremists.

      Carried out a coup in Ukraine that put in power Ukrainian nationalists ideologically linked to Hitler.

      Used legitimate peace processes as a cover to turn Ukraine into a NATO proxy for the purpose of waging war against Russia.

      Withdrew from a second foundational arms control treaty (INF), further destabilizing global security.

      Carried out illegal drone assassinations and other military operations against numerous sovereign states in violation of international law.

      Your tenure of service parallels the decline of the United States as a force of good in the world and its transformation into a global hegemon capable of sustaining power only through the illegitimate use of force.

      If I were you, I’d be begging for forgiveness and trying to make amends for your own lengthy list of sins, instead of posturing as a beacon of legitimacy.

      You are the source of the very policies you posture against today.

      You lack any moral foundation upon which to preach.

      Go away.

      You are the problem, not the solution.

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      1. LOL!! Bravo Scott.

        A perfect retort for anytime you hear those dipshit slogans like “America is better than this” or “when they go low, we go high”

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          1. What does it mean?

            Gemini: That phrase is a call to moral resilience. It was famously coined by Michelle Obama during her 2016 Democratic National Convention speech and has since become a shorthand for maintaining integrity in the face of hostility.

            Here is a breakdown of what it actually means in practice:

            1. Refusing to Mirror Bad Behavior
              When someone “goes low”—meaning they use insults, lies, or underhanded tactics—the natural human instinct is to strike back with the same weapons. “Going high” means resisting that urge. It’s a refusal to let someone else’s lack of character dictate your own.
            2. Focus on the Long Game
              “Going low” often provides a quick, satisfying win or a viral “gotcha” moment. “Going high” focuses on the bigger picture:
              – Dignity: Preserving your reputation.
              – Progress: Keeping the conversation focused on solutions rather than personal attacks.
              – Leadership: Setting a standard for how others should behave.
            3. Power, Not Weakness
              A common misconception is that “going high” means being a doormat. In reality, it requires immense self-control. As Michelle Obama later clarified, it doesn’t mean you don’t fight back; it means you fight back with logic, facts, and grace rather than getting “down in the mud” with the opponent.

            “Going high doesn’t mean you don’t feel the hurt, or you’re not entitled to your feelings. It means you don’t let those feelings lead you to a place of degradation.” — Michelle Obama

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    22. With all this excellent doomer porn that un-Denial has been providing recently, it might be worth getting a reminder of what the blob is all about… “diseased matter”

      Preach it Martin Butler. (h/t dave at mega)

      I’m not one given to believing in supernatural entities, but when I consider the perfect setup we find ourselves in, it seems it could only have come about as a deliberate act by some malignant god. The perfect setup looks like this: we strive with all our being to continue our existence, knowing all the time that we die. During our lives, we get very familiar with ourselves, maybe we even come to love ourselves. Death is the end of this lifelong love affair and the destruction of everything that we would normally consider to constitute a person. But our survival drive means we will nurture and grow even more intimate with the inner person that is ultimately destroyed.

      The act of striving to continue our existence is usually not a walk in the park. Most people become wage slaves to pay for their continued existence and will know illness, betrayal, financial difficulties, loneliness, violence, and many other aspects of life’s delicacies. There are pleasures, but they tend to be quite short-lived – food and sex being the most immediate and shortest-lived. Pain, on the other hand, can persist for long periods, and as people age, they will be left with an increasing number of sources of pain, from the death of loved ones through to physical ailments.

      On further reflection, the setup is so negative that it does look like a deliberate act. Pain outstrips pleasure by an order of magnitude; the striving and efforts made to continue existence all come to nothing, and everything, including ourselves, that we have come to love is destroyed. Perfect, hats off to the monster that brought about this setup.

      But more frightening than the deliberate creation of our hellish situation is the realization that maybe it has all just “come about.” As Goethe put it, maybe life is just “diseased matter.” In this massive machine called the universe, maybe the juggling of atoms and molecules brought about life, with the insistence that no species will persist unless it strives to do so through its strength and deceit.

      The only way to deal with all of this is not to deny it; it is to stare the beast in the eyes and to understand how awful it is. Oddly enough, there is a perverse kind of pleasure that comes from understanding reality even though it is the stuff of nightmares.

      ps. This song hypnotizes me back to an ancient moment in time where we weren’t as wretched & vile as we are now… but make no mistake, we were always inching closer to this current moment of peak insanity.

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    23. Three presidents in a row that can’t form a coherent sentence.

      How is that possible? Seriously.

      That means the majority of citizens supporting both parties prefer illiterate morons.

      Trump: “existing housing people that own their homes, we’re going to keep them wealthy. We’re going to keep those prices up. We’re not going to destroy the value of their homes so that somebody that didn’t work very hard can buy a home. We’re going to get, we’re going to make it easier to buy. We’re going to get interest rates down, but I want to protect the people that for the first time in their lives feel good about themselves. They feel like they’ve, you know, that they’re wealthy people, and I want them to understand it, you know, there’s so much talk about, oh, we’re going to drive housing prices down. I don’t want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up for people that own their homes and they can be assured that’s what’s going to happen.”

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    24. Last week it was US needs to attack Iran to save the protesters.

      Last month it was the ballistic missiles must go.

      Last year it was mission accomplished, we obliterated Iran’s nuclear program.

      Never ever any mention that Iran must sell oil in $US, and US gets to choose the customers.

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    25. Mike Stasse found an interesting article on why recycling plastic is a mistake.

      Peak Recycling

      The most dangerous aspect of the recycling myth is not just that it creates low-quality plastic—it’s that it acts as a Dispersion Engine.

      The current ‘Green’ model takes a contained, manageable solid (a PET bottle) and ‘downcycles’ it into a high-surface-area product, such as a synthetic carpet or a fleece jacket.

      This is biophysical insanity. We are effectively taking a solid waste problem and processing it into a format designed to shed. Every time you walk on that ‘recycled’ carpet or wash that fleece, it releases microfibres into the air and water.

      We are building a machine that masticates our waste for us, pre-digesting it into microplastics so that it can more easily bypass biological defences and enter the food web. This is bio-contamination on a global scale.

      When ‘recycling’ inevitably fails, the neoliberal establishment retreats to its backup plan: Incineration (branded euphemistically as ‘Energy from Waste’).

      The sales pitch is simple and mechanistic: burn the plastic to generate electricity and ‘destroy’ the waste.

      However, a damning 2025 study by Su et al. in the Journal of Hazardous Materials Letters has shattered this myth. The study provides field evidence that municipal solid waste incinerators act as major sources of atmospheric microplastics.

      Rather than completely mineralising the plastic, the turbulent airflow and incomplete combustion in these plants effectively weaponise the waste, blasting micro-particles into the atmosphere.

      This confirms the worst fears of biophysical economists: Incineration does not solve the entropy problem; it merely shifts the phase of the pollution from solid to gas/aerosol. It turns a local ground pollution problem into a regional air pollution problem, allowing the industry to claim ‘zero waste to landfill’ while forcing the population to breathe the fallout.

      A landfill, by contrast, acts as a containment strategy. It keeps the material in a low-entropy, aggregated state. It sequesters the carbon geologically, buying the biosphere the millions of years it needs to evolve enzymes to deal with it, rather than choking it with immediate micro-particulate release.

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    26. The price of hard drives has jumped 25% in 3 months. 😦

      I’ve got a feeling the days of technology prices steadily dropping are over.

      Maybe we’ll get one more sale if there is a deflationary crash but it’s more likely nothing will be available to buy.

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        1. I don’t know Stellar.

          I’m waiting for a good price on 2 more 8TB drives and then I’m done until I’m dead.

          In case you don’t know about this awesome tool, find a product you want on Amazon, then copy the URL and paste it into https://camelcamelcamel.com/
          to see the price history. You can also set alerts to be notified when the price drops to a desired target.

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    28. Wide boundary news update from Nate Hagens.

      Nate connects the dots to explain Japan, silver, copper, Venezuela, Iran, Greenland, etc.

      • We are approaching a biophysical phase shift (aka cactus ??).
      • Japanese bond yields are increasing. Hard choice between inflation and deflation ahead.
      • Silver is at all time highs and is now 30% of the cost of a solar panel.
      • Given our complex global supply chain network, a shortage of any material is a security issue today.
      • We consume 30M tons copper/year, of which 4M tons are recycled. To maintain 3% GDP growth we must mine in the next 18 years the same amount of copper that we mined over the last 10,000 years. This does not include the extra copper required for AI and a “green” energy transition.
      • Why do 99% of media posts about copper and silver discuss their great investment opportunities and not discuss the collapse of modernity they portend? – no mention of MORT of course
      • US needs Venezuela’s heavy oil for diesel and wants to harm China.
      • Iran attacks are also to harm China.
      • Technocracy was a popular movement during the 30’s great depression and advocated replacing idiot democratic leadership with smart science/engineering leadership that would govern to optimize energy, minerals, cactus, etc. The vision for their state included Greenland.
      • The UK recently released an important ecological study after delaying its release because it was too negative. They concluded ecological collapse is a strategic risk. Many ecosystems are near tipping points after which they will inexorably degrade. Forests in Canada and Russia may reach a tipping point by 2030. Ditto on Himalayan glaciers that 2 billion people depend on. A redacted version of the report discussed wars in Ukraine and Russia over food producing regions.

      Conclusions:

      • Our biophysical blinders are coming off.
      • A biophysical phase shift underpins most of the news.

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      1. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/696e0eae719d837d69afc7de/National_security_assessment_-_global_biodiversity_loss__ecosystem_collapse_and_national_security.pdf

        Gemini summary of the UK report:

        In January 2026, the UK Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) released a significant report titled Nature Security Assessment on Global Biodiversity Loss, Ecosystem Collapse and National Security.

        The study, which has been cited by intelligence leaders and academic experts as a major shift in how ecological risks are categorized, warns that the “severe degradation or collapse” of ecosystems is no longer just an environmental concern but a direct threat to the UK’s national security and economic prosperity.

        Key Findings of the 2026 Study

        The assessment highlights that current rates of biodiversity loss put every critical ecosystem on a “pathway to collapse,” creating cascading global consequences that will inevitably impact the UK.

        Strategic Ecosystems: The report identifies six global ecosystems of “particular strategic significance” to the UK due to their roles in regulating global climate, water, and weather cycles:

        • The Amazon rainforest
        • The Congo rainforest
        • Boreal forests
        • The Himalayas
        • South East Asia’s coral reefs
        • South East Asia’s mangroves

        National Security Threats: Ecosystem collapse is projected to drive food shortages, sharp price rises, and increased global conflict.

        Health and Pandemic Risks: Evidence suggests that ecosystem decline increases the risk of zoonotic transmission—where infections spread from animals to humans—raising the likelihood of future pandemics.

        Domestic Food Vulnerability: The report warns that UK food supplies are at high risk without significant increases in domestic production and a reduction in reliance on imports.

        Summarize unreleased redacted portions of the report:

        While the official 14-page version of the “Nature Security Assessment on Global Biodiversity Loss, Ecosystem Collapse and National Security” was published in January 2026, investigative reports (notably by The Times) and whistleblowers have revealed that the original version was significantly longer and contained more alarmist “Reasonable Worst Case Scenarios” (RWCS).

        The redacted or “abridged” portions primarily focus on the direct political and military consequences of ecological failure, which were reportedly deemed “too negative” by Number 10.

        Summary of the Redacted Scenarios

        1. Geopolitical Conflict and Nuclear Tension
          – Himalayan Water Wars: The unreleased text explicitly warns that the loss of Himalayan glaciers will reduce river flow to the point of “almost certainly” escalating tensions between China, India, and Pakistan. Because all three are nuclear-armed, the report categorizes ecosystem collapse in this region as a potential trigger for nuclear conflict.
          – NATO Involvement: Redacted sections assess a scenario where NATO could be drawn into conflicts to secure “stable breadbaskets”—regions that remain capable of reliable food production while other global agricultural hubs fail.
        2. Destabilization of UK Domestic Politics
          – Mass Migration to Europe: While the public report mentions “displacement,” the original version details how deforestation in the Congo Basin and desertification in Africa would drive unprecedented numbers of migrants toward Europe.
          – Rise of Populism: The report links this migration directly to UK security, warning it would lead to “more polarized and populist politics” and internal social fragmentation within the UK.
        3. Extreme Food Insecurity
          – Dietary Mandates: The full report reportedly contains a starker assessment of the UK’s land use. It suggests that current animal farming levels are “unsustainable” without massive imports and that a “wholesale change in consumer diets” (reducing meat consumption) would be a national security necessity, not just an environmental choice.
          – Global Competition for Food: The redacted text sets a specific timeline, warning of a “realistic possibility” of intense global competition for food by the 2030s, where the UK may be outbid by larger economies for essential calories.
        4. Radicalization and “Eco-Terrorism”
          Surge in Extremism: The intelligence assessment predicts that as the “true danger” of climate change becomes apparent and government responses are perceived as inadequate, there is a high probability of a surge in eco-terrorism and radicalized domestic activism targeting infrastructure.

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    31. Why is the US reluctant to extend the New START treaty that expires on Feb 5 by one year as proposed by Russia?

      1. The “China Factor”
        The U.S. (particularly under the Trump administration) has long argued that the bilateral nature of the treaty is outdated. Washington is concerned about China’s rapid nuclear modernization and wants Beijing included in a new, trilateral framework. A simple one-year extension of the status quo is seen by some U.S. officials as “kicking the can down the road” without addressing the reality of a three-way nuclear competition.
      2. Concerns Over “New” Weapons
        Russia has developed several “novel” delivery systems—such as the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile, and the Poseidon underwater drone.

        – The U.S. Stance: Washington wants these new technologies explicitly capped.
        – The Conflict: Extending the current treaty for a year often means maintaining the old definitions, which allows Russia to continue developing these unconstrained systems.

      3. Verification and “Cheating” Concerns
        Arms control is only as good as its verification. The U.S. has expressed deep frustration that:
        – On-site inspections were suspended (originally due to COVID-19 and later due to the war in Ukraine).
        – Russia officially suspended its participation in 2023. From the U.S. perspective, agreeing to a one-year extension without a return to intrusive, on-site inspections is seen as providing Russia with “legal cover” while the U.S. lacks the data to ensure Moscow is actually adhering to the limits.
      4. Tactical Nuclear Weapons
        New START only limits strategic (long-range) nuclear weapons. It does not cover Russia’s massive stockpile of non-strategic (tactical/battlefield) nuclear weapons, where Russia holds a significant numerical advantage. U.S. negotiators have often refused short-term extensions unless they are paired with a “freeze” on all nuclear warheads, including tactical ones.
      5. Leverage and the “Better Deal”
        There is a persistent school of thought in Washington that Russia needs the treaty more than the U.S. does because of the high cost of a new arms race. By refusing a simple extension, the U.S. attempts to maintain leverage to force Russia into a “better agreement” that includes more types of weapons and stricter verification.

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    33. Dr. Tim Morgan today…

      #318: The Surplus Energy Economy, part one

      It takes no great intuition to recognise that the financial system is headed for a crisis that will make the events of 2008-09 look like a stroll in the park, or that the AI bubble will burst, leaving us with very little recoverable value from burned-out and time-expired GPUs, vast, single-purpose buildings “in the middle of nowhere”, and debt collateralised against assets with minimal recoverable value.

      Beyond sheer scale, though, the big difference between the previous GFC and the looming “GFC II” sequel is that, this time, it’s not the banking system, but money itself, that will be in the eye of the storm.

      Starting in the 1990s, we put banking at hazard in order to pursue the dream of infinite economic expansion on a finite planet. This time, we’ve gambled with the credibility, and hence the viability, of money itself.

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    34. Should we add @DepletionCurve aka Max, to the list of people who might be paid off by the Chinese? (joke not really) With this one I think he is not depressed, but seems like he’s having a lot of fun. It’s very funny and accurate, I watched it a couple of times.

      In the city where I live, we have a phrase to describe the climate, 4 seasons in one day, (and a Crowded House song to go along with it, though not written about Melbourne)

      lately this sums up my emtional state, rolling btw dread/panic to glee and hilarity, back to morbid depression, onto quiet and calm resolve.

      Within it all, I continue to notice that I can’t control any of it, and the life of the emotions and the mind happens automatically, like the physical processes of this body as well, all on auto pilot and none of it personal.

      Also to pass on a funny – satire/humour is probably the best way to cope of all.

      The 6 stages of grief.

      Denial
      Anger
      Bargaining
      Depression
      Acceptance
      Do a podcast

      My partner made this one up last night – sounds about right.

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    35. Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder uses her PhD in physics and her brilliance to explain why light exists.

      Dr. Ajit Varki’s MORT theory explains why Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder does not understand any physics that confirms cactus.

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