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.
  • Six of nine planetary boundaries critical for survival have already been crossed including climate change, biodiversity, deforestation, fresh water, nitrogen cycle, and pollution.
  • 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 responds:

  • 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.

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.

645 thoughts on “The Cactus Lens: A Clearer View”

  1. First news of 2026 from China.

    A 13% tax has been placed on contraceptives in the hope of increasing the birth rate.

    As of January 1, 2026, China has officially ended its 30-year tax exemption on contraceptives. Products like condoms and birth control pills are now subject to the standard 13% value-added tax (VAT).

    This change is part of a broader shift in China’s demographic policy as the government moves from decades of population control (the “one-child policy”) to aggressively encouraging higher birth rates.Key Details of the New Tax Policy

    • The Rate: A 13% VAT is now applied to contraceptive drugs and devices.
    • The Reversal: These products had been exempt from VAT since 1993, a move originally designed to make birth control affordable and support the one-child policy.
    • The Goal: While the tax is expected to generate roughly 5 billion yuan ($700 million) annually, experts view it as a symbolic gesture. By removing the “special” tax-exempt status, the government is signaling that birth control is no longer a state-prioritized activity.

    Related “Pro-Birth” Tax Incentives

    To balance the new tax on contraceptives, the updated VAT law introduced several exemptions for services that support families:

    • Childcare Services: Daycare and kindergarten services are now VAT-exempt.
    • Marriage Services: “Marriage introduction” (matchmaking) services are exempt.
    • Elderly & Disability Care: These services also receive tax-exempt status to reduce the financial burden on young couples who are often the primary caregivers for their parents.

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  2. It might be propaganda, but it’s got a lot of substance.

    Today’s episode by the BRICS AI explains the mBridge replacement for SWIFT that is the biggest threat to the US empire since the cold war (assuming of course you’re cactus blind).

    We are witnessing the Napster moment of the US dollar.

    Gemini: The BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and recent members like Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the UAE) have developed a multi-layered strategy to create an alternative to the Western-led SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) system.

    Their efforts focus on reducing reliance on the U.S. dollar and insulating their economies from Western sanctions.

    1. The Primary Alternative: BRICS Pay

    BRICS Pay is the flagship project designed to be a decentralized, multi-currency payment system.

    • Decentralized Messaging: Unlike SWIFT, which is a centralized messaging network, BRICS Pay uses a Decentralized Cross-Border Messaging System (DCMS). This means there is no central “kill switch,” making it much harder to disconnect a specific country.
    • Retail & Commercial Use: It aims to allow users to pay via apps (similar to Apple Pay or AliPay) using their national currencies directly, bypassing the need for U.S. dollar conversion.
    • Current Status: A prototype was demonstrated in late 2024. As of 2026, it is moving into pilot stages, though full global adoption remains a long-term goal.

    2. The Institutional Backbone: BRICS Bridge

    While BRICS Pay is the user-facing platform, BRICS Bridge (or the “Bridge” project) is the wholesale infrastructure intended for central banks.

    • Technology: It leverages Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs).
    • Function: It acts as a “bridge” between the various national digital currencies (like the Digital Yuan or Digital Rupee) to settle international trade instantly without using U.S. correspondent banks.
    • mBridge Connection: It is heavily influenced by “Project mBridge,” a multi-CBDC platform involving China, the UAE, and Thailand, which reached its Minimum Viable Product (MVP) stage in 2024–2025.

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  4. I posted this comment on George’s site. Nothing new for you guys, I’m just tinkering around with the Wrangham/Ligotti thing.

    How Christianity Committed the Ultimate Eco-Blasphemy

    Great article George.

    The creation of all these religions along with our deep contempt for nature makes perfect sense. We are freaks of nature with an unnatural awareness level making us separate from nature. Being “human” means being a creature that can no longer survive as a “normal” animal.

    IMO, combining these two books is the best way to understand it. Richard Wrangham’s ‘Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human’ & Thomas Ligotti’s ‘The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror’. 

    While both books belong to different genres (evolutionary anthropology and philosophical pessimism, respectively) they share a central preoccupation with the biological mistake or anomaly that defines humanity.

    Both argue that humans are fundamentally unnatural creatures whose existence depends on a specific, irreversible departure from the rest of the animal kingdom. Both agree that humans have crossed a “point of no return” that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Wrangham via the stomach and Ligotti via the mind.

    1. The Core Argument: Humans as Biological Anomalies

    Wrangham’s Anomaly – The Biological Freak: He argues that humans are the only species that cannot survive in nature on a raw diet. By inventing cooking, we externalized our digestion, which allowed our guts to shrink and our brains to grow. We are “the cooking ape,” a creature that has evolved to be biologically dependent on a technological process. Our uniqueness isn’t just intelligence; it is a physical commitment to fire that makes us more like domesticated versions of our ancestors, trapped by our own innovation.

    Ligotti’s Anomaly – The Psychological Freak: He argues that human consciousness is a biological mishap. In his view, nature over-evolved us, giving us a level of self-awareness that forces us to recognize our own mortality, suffering, and the essential meaninglessness of existence. Making us realize the futility and horror of existence. Like Wrangham’s “cooking ape”, Ligotti’s “conscious ape” is a freak of nature that can no longer live as a simple animal.

    2. The Trap

    Wrangham: Cooking trapped us in a cycle where we must continue to cook to maintain our massive, energy-hungry brains. It also trapped us into social structures, such as the sexual division of labor and marriage. He suggests that fundamental human institutions like marriage may have originated as a “protection racket” to safeguard cooked food, leading to a “not pretty picture” of male-dominated culture.

    Ligotti: Consciousness is a trap that forces us to seek meaning in a meaningless universe. We are burdened by the knowledge of our own mortality and the “conspiracy” of our biology to keep us alive despite this suffering. He views all human culture and “ego-maintenance” as a desperate attempt to distract ourselves from the horror of our existence. 

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      1. How dare you accuse me of that. LOL. Yes, performance enhancing drugs were involved. Still takes some time though. I have to figure out what to cut & paste from multiple AI inquiries and then add a little bit of my own stuff. I’d say that entire comment is 60% machine and 40% human.😊

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    2. This is a substantial refinement of your ‘these two books explain it all’ thesis! Well done – however it came about 😉

      With Ligotti, if we see that existence is meaningless, why does that segway to the futility and horror of existence? As that seems like a type of meaning drawn from the meaninglessness.

      I guess because this is in the context of our horror ending of it all, and an explanation that fits that. I feel that I will still maintain some impartiality or openess to whatever comes. Maybe no matter how good our explanations are for how we ended up here, then there still remains something that is untouched by it all? Some kind of clean slate so to speak. But even these types of wonderings are what Ligotti was getting at, our inablity to live with the simplicity of other creatures 🐶.

      Either way I think this comment left for George was excellent. Esp this bit as a clear summing up of where you are heading with it all up front.

      Wrangham via the stomach and Ligotti via the mind.

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      1. Thanks Renaee.

        Of all the preaching I’ve done over the years, this Ligotti/Wrangham angle is by far the most effective. It hooks people instantly.

        Will probably keep tinkering with it like this. Hopefully I can eventually craft the perfect essay out of it. With AI’s help of course.😊

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    1. Good one, thanks.

      What a species. We ruin everywhere we go.

      How many rockets were launched in 2025?

      Gemini: In 2025, the global space industry set a new historical record for activity, driven primarily by the unprecedented launch cadence of SpaceX.

      The total number of orbital rocket launches in 2025 reached 330, with 317 successful missions and 13 failures.

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    2. Now why are we allowing companies like Starlink to launch these megaconstellations, even though we are fully aware of the risk of Kessler syndrome? We also use satellites for scientific research, so, we really need international regulations on putting things in space, especially low earth orbit.

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      1. Normally we don’t use animals more than once. In a normal day to day operation in a hospital animals is used for experimentation and training. All big hospitals has departments for comparative studies. In my district pigs, sheep and divers rodents is in normal use. In Oslo puppies and cats are also in use. In Norway alone a million animals are used per year (small and big). In USA 65,000 – 100,000 primates is used per year. Supply bottlenecks have forced some trials to be delayed. The cost for breeding and feeding primates and supply bottlenecks as led to skyrocketing prices. China stopped exporting primates since 2020.

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          1. Unpleasantness, what about child labour in healthcare. Modern healthcare would be even more expensive without child labour. It is many parts of the world but Pakistan is most “famous”.

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  8. I’ve yet to catch the BRICS AI lying.

    South Korea has decided it will not be the Ukraine of Asia.

    Summarize recent meetings between China and South Korea leaders.

    Gemini: As of January 2, 2026, China and South Korea are in the midst of a major diplomatic “thaw.” Following a period of strained relations, the two countries have significantly ramped up high-level engagement.

    Here is a summary of the most recent and upcoming interactions between Chinese President Xi Jinping and South Korean President Lee Jae-myung:

    1. The Upcoming State Visit (January 4–7, 2026)

    President Lee Jae-myung is scheduled to arrive in Beijing on Sunday, January 4, for a four-day state visit. This is a historic move, marking the first state visit by a sitting South Korean president to China in over six years.

    • The Summit: Lee will meet Xi on Monday, January 5.
    • Key Goals: The “restoration” of bilateral ties, focusing on economic cooperation, the digital economy, and climate initiatives.
    • Shanghai Stop: Following the Beijing summit, Lee will travel to Shanghai to focus on historical bonds and business forums.

    2. The Previous Meeting (October 31 – November 1, 2025)

    The momentum for this week’s visit was built during the APEC Summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, where the two leaders met just two months ago.

    Outcome: The leaders agreed to a framework for a trade deal and a full restoration of relations, moving past the friction seen under the previous administration (Yoon Suk-yeol).

    Significance: It was Xi’s first trip to South Korea in 11 years.

    Why This Matters Now

    The unusually short two-month interval between summits indicates a high level of urgency. Beijing is keen to pull Seoul closer before President Lee’s scheduled visit to Japan, while South Korea is desperate to safeguard its economy—China remains its largest trading partner—amidst global geopolitical polarization.

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  10. I don’t recommend you watch (or listen) to this because Dave Collum is an arrogant prick that interrupts Chris Martenson every time he tries to say something, however Collum is the author of massive annual essay that has been published for the last 15ish years on Chris’s site that reviews all things financial plus the strange evil world of elites.

    My take-away from this year’s annual interview is that people smarter than me who spend much more time trying to understand what’s going on than I do, are certain there’s a lot of very dark stuff going on, but really don’t have a clue about anything for sure.

    P.S. Collum sees through the debt lens but is blind with the energy and cactus lenses, and Martenson hides his understanding of cactus however a little sneaks out at the end.

    https://peakprosperity.com/dave-collums-2025-year-in-review/

    https://peakprosperity.com/dave-collum-a-forensic-exploration-of-the-2025-train-wreck/

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  11. Just some stupid ramblings from a madman:

    1. Got sucked into a rabbit hole about clean, unlimited energy. Alien technology from Roswell exists and has been hidden from the public… or Nikola Tesla (or whoever) was able to figure it out but his work was destroyed/confiscated. Both come down to the elites suppressing it for the last 100 years in order to keep their status as top dog.

    It’s all BS but I’d like to think the Tesla one is legit. Because that would mean that of all the planets in the universe where the blob has reached fossil energy, Earth has got to be in last place as far as progress goes😂. And before Hideaway ruins it by explaining that we would’ve seen or heard from one of these civilizations by now… I say the golden rule still applies even to unlimited, clean energy; impossible to get out of your own solar system.

    2. Was looking at that damn Toba super-eruption from 70kya. I’ve seen estimates about human population being down to only a couple thousand. But most estimates are about 100k. Population at the start of the Holocene is believed to be around 1-10 million. Let’s go with the middle there. So after Toba we went from 100k to 5 million in just 60k years. Seems impossible without agriculture. But it only takes one double up every 10k years to get there. No way our population was moving at that speed in prior history, otherwise we’d have hit a billion a long time ago. I’m sure the somewhat faster than normal growth rate from 70kya to 10kya had something to do with the fact that we were now equipped with full consciousness.

    3. I hate the solar industry. My mom must be getting desperate because she let a solar salesman into our house a couple days ago (I wasn’t home otherwise I’d have kicked his ass out). She told me about his presentation. She was excited because they now include the battery storage so that even if the grid goes down, we’ll still have power. If we qualify, the whole package is free. She scheduled a follow up appt for next Monday. They better send their best liar cuz I’m gonna be an absolute pit bull during that meeting.

    All I can think is that the solar industry has upped their bullshitting game. They probably got enough data from their door to door reps to know that most customers were saying “no” as soon as they found out the power doesn’t work during outages. So now they’re overcoming that objection with some type of battery talk.

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    1. My older brother recently got a battery set up for his rooftop solar, and I have another friend who has gone ahead with it as well and she says her hubby is hooked on the app that tracks it all. i recall it was a toss up for aussies here too, for Gaia and Hideaway. The Just Have a Think guy did a video on Australia’s record uptake of subsidised batteries, so yes, they have upped their bullshitting game! But even with subsidy, they are still not cheap, so if you get the whole thing for free, well that’s pretty amazing. Is it an ethical dilemma?

      I watched the Kessler vid just now – how many new ways can I find out we are screwed?? Let me count the ways. No, maybe not. Also, the video channel for the depressed peak oil guy was good too, very short and to the point, and communicates a lot in that time. But as he admits, only to people who already know the stuff anyway.

      Alien technology from Roswell  – sounds entertaining! 😉

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    2. My two cents are you should think about what problem you’re trying to solve.

      If you want protection from the grid going down for a day batteries might help, but then again you’d be ok without power for a day, and could spend the money on something else that might be more helpful in an emergency.

      If you want protection from the grid going down for several days then batteries are probably going to be very expensive.

      If you want protection from the grid going down for a long time there will be much bigger problems to contend with.

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  12. A lot of people are waking up and sounding the alarm for an imminent financial crash.

    I’m thinking this means the wizards behind the curtain are going to surprise us with something else.

    War has historically been a good method of kicking the can and juicing the economy. But war takes a lot of energy and minerals so it’ll probably be something else.

    Perhaps it will finally become clear why they coerced a dangerous unnecessary gene therapy into billions of people.

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    1. zero-sum game strategies will reduce the time to collapse, or reduce the quality of the time that remains

      That amount, and quality, of time keeps shrinking. Poor Venezuela.

      I have just been re reading the Cactus essay. I realise that the amount of people who do see through this combined lens is tiny, as you say.

      On Substack, an essay written through the ecology lens of collapse, does not see what cactus explains, even though it is a great read and accurate in many ways, but it does not factor in all those materials/resources and the need for an increase in tech to access them and the intracies or dependencies of modernity. It does not see the supernova ending for this reason.

      https://substack.com/home/post/p-181609035

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    1. Super interesting, thanks.

      [In our silicon chips] performing a calculation costs one unit of energy. Fetching the numbers needed for that calculation from main memory costs ten thousand units. The computation itself is essentially free. Moving data is what costs energy.

      The brain solves the data movement problem with an elegance that borders on the miraculous. It simply refuses to separate memory from computation.

      The memory is the computation.

      In your laptop, the processor sits here, memory sits there, and data must flow between them for every operation. In your brain, each of your roughly one hundred trillion synapses is simultaneously a storage element and a computational element. The weight is stored at the synapse. The multiplication happens at the synapse. No data moves anywhere except the spike that triggered the computation, and that spike carries only a single bit of timing information, not the weights themselves.

      The energy implications are staggering. In silicon, fetching a weight from DRAM and multiplying it by an input costs roughly one thousand picojoules. In biology, triggering a synapse to perform the equivalent operation costs roughly ten femtojoules. That is a factor of one hundred thousand. This single architectural principle, colocating memory and computation, accounts for much of the brain’s efficiency advantage.

      The brain’s innovations extend far beyond mere colocation. It also employs a hybrid computing strategy that combines analog and digital processing, exploiting the strengths of each while minimizing their weaknesses.

      The brain uses analog computation locally, within neurons and along dendritic branches, where signals travel short distances and high precision is unnecessary. For long-distance communication between distant brain regions, where signals must traverse centimeters of noisy biological tissue, the brain switches to digital.

      The human brain contains roughly eighty-six billion neurons, counted directly by Suzana Herculano-Houzel using novel cell-counting techniques. If each neuron functions as a five-to-eight-layer network, the brain’s effective computational depth and complexity vastly exceed what simple neuron counts suggest. We have been underestimating the brain’s computational power by orders of magnitude.

      The brain achieves its computational sophistication not by connecting astronomical numbers of simple switches but by using a moderate number of extraordinarily sophisticated computing elements. Each neuron is itself a complex pattern detector capable of recognizing specific spatiotemporal arrangements of inputs and performing local computations before contributing to network-level processing. The wiring between neurons coordinates these local computations into global function, but much of the heavy computational lifting happens within each cell.

      There’s some discussion of complexity scaling limits in brains that may interest Hideaway.

      My interpretation is that we may not only be living at the peak of what is possible in the universe, we may also be living with peak possible brains.

      Suzana Herculano-Houzel discovered that primates evolved a different scaling solution. In rodents, neurons become larger as brains grow, with scaling exponents around 1.7 to 1.8, meaning that doubling neuron count requires far more than doubling brain volume. But in primates, neuron size remains relatively constant as brains scale up, with an exponent close to 1.0. This allows primates to pack dramatically more neurons into a given volume. The human brain contains eighty-six billion neurons not because human neurons are special but because primates found a more efficient packing strategy. If our brains followed rodent scaling rules, achieving human neuron counts would require a brain weighing tens of kilograms, impossible to support on a human neck and ruinous to metabolic budgets.

      Keeping most neurons silent most of the time is how the brain fits within twenty watts.

      This contrasts sharply with conventional digital systems. In a clocked computer, the entire processor transitions synchronously at each clock cycle regardless of whether useful work is being done. Clock distribution networks alone consume thirty to forty percent of a chip’s dynamic power. Even when portions of the chip are idle, transistors leak current, capacitors charge and discharge, power flows.

      The brain is event-driven and asynchronous. There is no global clock forcing all neurons to update simultaneously. Each neuron maintains its resting state with minimal metabolic cost, waiting for sufficient input to drive it over threshold. When it fires, it fires. When it does not, it saves energy. System power consumption scales directly with the amount of information being processed, not with hardware size.

      Perhaps the most counterintuitive aspect of neural computation is its relationship with noise. In conventional engineering, noise is the enemy. We expend enormous effort and energy suppressing it, boosting signals above the noise floor, using voltages that overwhelm thermal fluctuations. A digital system works precisely because it maintains clean logical states despite the chaotic molecular environment.

      The brain takes a fundamentally different approach. It embraces noise. In some cases, it actually exploits noise to improve performance.

      The brain does not waste energy fighting noise. It evolved to operate at noise levels, with noise levels, exploiting the physics of molecular fluctuations rather than struggling against them.

      Children learn language from perhaps one hundred million words over a decade. Large language models require trillions of words. The brain is roughly ten thousand times more data efficient. This gap remains poorly understood, but it likely reflects some combination of richer priors encoded through evolution, multimodal grounded learning connecting language to perception and action, and more efficient learning algorithms that extract more information from each example.

      A hint in support of Dr. Varki’s MORT theory: A small change was required to unlock an extended theory of mind, not a radical change to brain size and complexity.

      The human brain is not anomalously large for a primate. It is exactly the size you would expect from extrapolating primate scaling rules. Our cognitive powers emerge not from being outliers but from following efficient scaling to its logical conclusion.

      For decades, the semiconductor industry pursued faster transistors as the path to better computers. This strategy worked spectacularly while it worked. But the breakdown of traditional scaling, the end of the era when transistors got both faster and more efficient as they shrank, revealed that raw speed was never the whole story. Computers became faster but not proportionally more efficient. Power consumption exploded. Datacenters now consume meaningful fractions of global electricity production.

      The brain suggests a different path. Its components are slow, noisy, and imprecise by silicon standards. But its principles of organization are brilliantly suited to the physics of information processing. Memory and compute are unified, eliminating data movement. Analog and digital methods hybridize, exploiting the strengths of each. Sparsity in time and space minimizes energy expenditure. Learning happens locally, without global coordination. Noise is embraced rather than suppressed.

      None of these principles is mysterious or exotic. All can be implemented in silicon, and all are increasingly being implemented. What they require is willingness to question assumptions that have guided computer architecture for seventy years. The von Neumann model was appropriate for its era, when memory was expensive and unreliable and computation needed to be rigorously sequential to be correct. The constraints that shaped that design no longer apply. Yet we continue building in its image through sheer inertia.

      The Wonder

      Consider what we have learned.

      You are running, at this moment, on twenty watts. A fraction of the power consumed by the device displaying these words. With this modest energy budget, you sustain an inner universe of experience that no instrument can fully measure, no equation can fully describe. You recall a face from decades past. You imagine futures that do not yet exist. You grasp the meaning of these symbols and ponder their implications.

      The physical substrate accomplishing this, the grey and white matter between your ears, operates near the limits of what physics permits. Its ion channels function in a regime where thermal fluctuations are part of the mechanism, not noise to be suppressed. Its synapses encode information in molecular structures that persist for years while most of your body’s molecules are replaced. Its architecture solves problems in information processing that our best engineers are only beginning to understand.

      Four billion years of evolutionary pressure, organisms living and dying based on how well their nervous systems processed information, produced an optimization more powerful and more patient than any engineering project could achieve. The brain is not the product of genius. It is the product of relentless selection operating over timescales we can barely comprehend.

      And yet here we are, using these evolved brains to understand themselves, to build artificial systems that might eventually extend and surpass them, to reach toward forms of intelligence that transcend their biological origins. There is something vertiginous in this recursion. Minds understanding minds. Intelligence creating intelligence.

      The twenty-watt brain contemplating the megawatt datacenter. The slow neuron comprehending the fast transistor. The biological achieving what the artificial cannot, then teaching the artificial how to begin to approach it.

      Evolution solved the efficiency problem first. We are only now beginning to understand the solution. What we do with that understanding may shape the future of intelligence itself.

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  15. https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/12/1166582?hl=en-US

    UN sounds alarm over rising demands on water resources as scarcity increases

    Renewable water availability per person has declined by seven per cent over the past decade – from 5,326 to 5,719 cubic metres (m3), according to the 2025 AQUASTAT Water Data Snapshot.

    Regions such as Northern Africa, Southern Asia and Western Asia have the lowest freshwater resources per capita, with Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Yemen ranking among top countries with lowest total renewable water.

    Several regions have also seen an increase in freshwater withdrawals in recent years, which is adding to the strain on already stressed river basins and aquifers. “Northern Africa saw the largest increase, with freshwater withdrawals rising by 16 per cent,” the report said.

    Most withdrawals globally, nearly 70 per cent, were from surface water sources, while 23 per cent came from groundwater. Agriculture remains the largest water-using sector, accounting for some 72 per cent of freshwater withdrawals globally.

    The industrial and service sectors followed at 15 per cent and 13 per cent, respectively. Sixty-six countries allocated more than 75 per cent of their total freshwater withdrawal to agriculture. For Afghanistan, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Mali, Nepal, Somalia and Sudan the figure was 95 per cent.

    Someone posted this on discord.

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  16. Must watch.

    My favorite BRICS AI is providing news coverage in real-time at a quality level far higher than all the usual made-of-meat pundits. My hunch remains that super-smart meat is writing the scripts but I may be wrong.

    As always, they are showing you the circus so you do not look at the bank vault.

    The US produces champagne but its engines run on diesel.

    When the Strategic Petroleum Reserve hit critical lows the handshake turned into a fist.

    This attack occurred just as oil prices threatened to increase, and when the US realized it could not obtain sufficient oil on the open market.

    This act of desperation will not save the US dollar, it will accelerate its demise.

    The Venezuela raid will go down in history as the moment the US empire admitted it was bankrupt.

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      1. This clearly shows how dumb and unaware of the real world politicians are.

        Unless US has troops on the ground, inviting insurgencies all over the place, then the VP of Venezuela becomes the new leader, with the same policies as before..

        The USA could have just invited Venezuela to become the 51st state of the USA instead, allowing Maduro to stay as governor until the next election. Venezuela better of as all sanctions removed, US better off with all the mineral and oil assets of Venezuela, now in the USA.

        All it would have taken was an act of congress, a vote in favour in Venezuela and the US presidents signature.,, just like Hawaii and Alaska were admitted as states…

        It’s amazing how little people think before taking actions and the following implications of their actions.

        None of this surprises me at all, I’ve stated in the past to expect the unexpected. Maybe we are further down the resource/energy slope than even I expected. No matter what, within a year or 2 at most, even this breaking of international law and order, will look like a minor blip compared with what’s to come..

        Einstein was correct, there is only 2 things of infinite capacity, the universe and human stupidity, and he was not so sure about the first one.

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  17. What percent of China’s oil consumption was imported from Venezuela in 2025?

    Gemini: In 2025, oil imports from Venezuela accounted for approximately 4% to 6.7% of China’s total crude oil imports.

    China’s crude oil imports from Venezuela averaged approximately 568,000 barrels per day (bpd) for most of 2025.

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    1. It pisses me off that our news media never asks the most obvious questions.

      They seem to think news should have nothing to do with reality.

      What percent of oil exported from Venezuela in 2025 went to China?

      Gemini: In 2025, China remained the primary destination for Venezuelan oil, though the exact percentage shifted throughout the year due to fluctuating sanctions and geopolitical pressure.

      Based on trade data and market analysis for 2025:

      Average Annual Share: China absorbed roughly 80% to 85% of Venezuela’s total crude oil exports for much of the year.

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  19. I like this comment from C&E. The future is looking so bright… for the cactus supernova😉
    Will it be WW3 or the weather that takes us all out?

    At the risk of being tedious, I think I’m going to post this every year because it is so important and seems to be completely missed by the media. In bell shaped probability curves, as for weather events, as the mean increases linearly the extreme events change geometrically. By my non-statistical, anecdotal analysis I reckon this has shown up as an approximate 10 fold increase in extreme events for each degree of warming (e.g. 100 year droughts become decadal, yearly temperature records occur for ten days at a stretch). So by 2 degrees (probably early 30s) things will be 3.2 times worse, by 3 degrees 32 times (probably unsurvivable over more than a couple of decades) and at 4 degrees 320 times (the end of large animals).

    It may be worse because it looks like a) that the disruption to the hydrologic cycle is taking a bit of time to catch up to the temperature increase; and b) there are theoretical reasons and observational evidence to suggest the bell curve is flattening out as we warm up so extreme events become more common than predicted.

    Newspaper articles seem to have three responses to events: 1) things are bound to get better, 2) next year will be the same as this year (most common at the moment I think), or 3) things will go on getting worse linearly. In fact as a minimum things will keep on getting worse exponentially, plus there is a guarantee of quasi cyclic step changes from the likes of El Nino, and a good chance of sudden increases in the rate of acceleration (jerks or jounces?) as tipping points are passed.

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    1. I have found that trying to point this sort of thing out results in people declaring that “hockey stick” graphs have been debunked

      LMFAO

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  20. No alarms and no surprises… to see that indi’s fired up today.

    The US Is An Evil Empire and Always Was. Venezuela Proves It — indi.ca

    America has been robbing the Americas at gunpoint since America. That’s the whole point.

    I’m sorry (not sorry) but there are no good Americans anymore. America is just a bad idea, as bad as Nazis ever were. Worse. The Nazis only enslaved, genocided, and invaded for 12 years while Americans have been at it for centuries. You can’t be a good American any more than you can be a good Nazi, that’s just facts, be something else, I don’t care. Fuck America forever.

    ps. Of everyone in this audience, I bet I win the grand prize for safest smartest stealthiest homebase. I live in the desert so that assures me that we’ll never run out of resources. And I’ve got the security of being right next to the only desert nuclear power plant in the country.

    The Palo Verde Generating Station is a nuclear power plant located near Tonopah, Arizona about 45 miles west of downtown Phoenix. Palo Verde generates the second most electricity of any power plant in the United States per year, and is the second largest power plant by net generation as of 2021.

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  22. There are a pair of tawny frogmouth owls that have landed in the big gum tree in our backyard this evening – they seem quite tame. I know it’s probably not a good thing that they have to resort to living in suburbia, but I am so glad they are there. I have always loved owls. So it’s not all bad news today 🦉

    During the day I did an AI transcribe of that video about Venezueala invasion from Rob’s fav channel of the moment, I dont know what motivates me, the weird life of a doomer. That and back yard projects fill my days.

    It’s very well written, I really wish we did know who was behind it.

    https://ccfcommunitygardenblog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/the-end-of-the-petro-dollar-1.pdf

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    1. Hey Renaee,

      lovely bird the tawny frogmouth. Just so you know though, they are a nightjar not an owl.

      I have a family here that comes back every year to breed.

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      1. THanks Niko, so I have learned something new today too – I don’t know I have ever heard that name Nightjar, will look it up. We used to see another pair that were at the primary school where my daughter attended, and they did come back each year too – all the kids loved having them there and they were not phased by the noise it seemed.

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  23. Not totally related, but a show about the absurdities of modern life. The werld is mad. Modernity is not only unsustainable, but also produces absurdities.

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  24. https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/meet-the-mind-virus-wetiko-4bd

    Wetiko thus should not be treated as just another superstitious belief but as a very much real psychiatric condition, driven by the over-reliance on just one of the two hemisphere’s of the brain.

    In fact, wetiko has become so widespread and its roots went so deep in our culture (dating back to at least 4000 BCE in Mesopotamia), that it now goes largely undetected. The ‘evil cannibalistic spirit’ has been with us since the dawn of civilization. It has appeared then was forgotten as civilizations rose and collapsed.

    As resources began to grow thinner and thinner, yielding less and less profit, however, the system driven by the ‘evil cannibalistic spirit’ started to show its real face.

    It’s an ignominious end, I know, but if we manage to traverse along this long, winding road back to a much simpler life without setting the nuclear demons free, those coming out on the other side of the bottleneck might get another chance to start anew. This time, perhaps, without wetiko.

    What a sloppy mess. LOL

    That’s why I hate that word and want it retired. And let’s retire Iain McGilchrist’s bullshit as well. I wouldn’t mind his left/right brain stuff if it was matter of fact and there’s nothing that can be done about it. But no, Iain sells it in the same cop-out way as wetiko. 

    Both concepts are for weak doomers who can’t go all the way with it and instead need to fall back on the comforting thought that humans could be good if only we recognize our wetiko (or left-brain hemisphere) and then change our behaviors.

    If you really want to know about wetiko, skip B’s garbage essay and just read this comment:

    https://un-denial.com/2025/11/09/ai-on-collapse/comment-page-2/#comment-115051

    The true definition of wetiko is basically; the nightmare of having to live with full consciousness.

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    1. If only humans would stop being human…

      The USA raid on Venezuela, which has changed nothing BTW, tells anyone that is paying attention, that sitting around in a circle singing kumbaya just isn’t going to happen, so why bother.

      Apart from never happening, it also wouldn’t work.

      Playing devil’s advocate, or is it god’s advocate? for a second, and imagining the whole world did get together as one, relinquish all borders and necessity for any military at all, etc, with open easy business anywhere on planet Earth, at best it would buy humanity extra years until collapse, while making the natural world way worse off before and during the human civilizational collapse.

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  26. Art Berman is very good today debunking the “decarbonization is underway” and “nuclear is the future” myths.

    He argues overshoot is the key issue no one discusses.

    But he’s got a long way to go to catch up to the latest thinking.

    Berman’s not yet grasped cactus which explains you cannot have modernity without overshoot.

    https://www.artberman.com/blog/ecomodernism-modernity-without-ecology/

    Mainstream climate policy focuses primarily on carbon. The premise is that if we decarbonize energy, electrify transport, expand renewables (and perhaps nuclear), and improve efficiency, we can keep the basic structure of the current economic system intact. The emphasis is substitution: replace dirty fuels with clean ones, price carbon correctly, and growth can continue with fewer side effects.

    Ecomodernism offers a stronger version of the same claim. It argues that technology can ultimately liberate nature from the burden of human activity. Urbanization, agricultural intensification, and especially nuclear energy are expected to decouple human well-being from environmental damage. In that story, harm does not just slow. Nature recovers even as consumption and population rise.

    Overshoot thinking uses a system framework. The central problem is not which fuels we use, but the overall scale of the human enterprise: the metabolism of the system, the energy and material throughput required to maintain a complex global civilization. We are drawing down ecosystems faster than they can recover, and generating wastes, including carbon, faster than they can be absorbed. Climate change is a consequence of overshoot, not the cause of it.

    The first two approaches underestimate the dilemma. They frame it as a management challenge solvable through new technology, efficiency, and better policy. What remains largely unexamined are the underlying drivers: rising consumption and rising systemic complexity. The operative question becomes how to change the least while continuing roughly the same trajectory.

    Overshoot thinking is more uncomfortable. It challenges core economic and political assumptions and implies that our civilization’s relationship with energy and the living world must change. Incremental fixes are unlikely to be enough. Without confronting overshoot directly, most proposed solutions simply extend the dynamics that created the crisis.

    Also some info here on scaling laws that might interest Hideaway.

    Urbanization is central to the ecomodernist land-sparing claim: concentrate people in cities and the countryside is supposedly freed for nature. The main empirical support offered by Hannah Ritchie is that denser cities can have lower in-city transport emissions per person. That may be true in some cases. But it does not follow that urbanization reduces total throughput.

    Figure 6 summarizes a study of 60 large Chinese cities that evaluated how energy use scales with population. The result is close to linear: as cities get bigger, total energy use rises roughly in proportion, and per-capita use does not fall in the way the “bigger is inherently more efficient” story requires. Urban energy metabolism grows with urban mass. The leap from “density can help in-city transport” to “urbanization spares land and decouples us from nature” simply isn’t supported by the data.

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    1. Cities is worse than that. You cant have cities without rural people. Not only farmers and industrial forestry, but also mining, smelters, clothes factories, etc… Shouldn’t we include the indirecte use? It must scale supralinear. Rural people need energy to make tings for urban population. From the book urban dependecy: “.Urban Dependency investigates the risks of urban populations that cannot survive without the massive consumption of basic rural products like food, textiles, fossil fuels, and other energy-rich goods that are harvested by a shrinking rural base. Thomas and Fulkerson argue that though essential, rural workers and communities are poorly compensated for their labor that is both dangerous and highly exploitative. While the rural population is already shrinking, the authors predict that harsh political-economic conditions will only fuel further rural-urban migration, worsening the problem of urban dependency. The authors apply their theory of the energy economy to explore a balance between the supply and demand of energy resources that promotes rural justice.“https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/urban-dependency-9781793623102/

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  27. Putin is stuck and with his hands tied in his failed military operation, so he gave Assad and Maduro the thumbs down.

    The United States made the military leaders of both countries an offer they couldn’t refuse, and they stabbed them in the back. End of story.

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    1. Yes but it’s not the end of the story.

      Let’s watch how long it takes US oil companies to increase Venezuela’s oil exports. My bet is cactus occurs before they complete construction of the necessary infrastructure. Will they have the capital and supply chains to continue expanding Venezuela production after cactus?

      Let’s watch how BRICS responds. My bet is their response shortens the time to cactus crash.

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      1. I thought this person’s take on it was spot on. Venezuela’s reserves are just that, reserves. They are “Canadian Tar Sands” but deep underground, i.e. the majority is unrecoverable. Recoverable is 4 – 9%. And to get that may take $200 billion and 10 – 20 years building the infrastructure. Not something I would do in a country that may someday nationalize it again.

         Conclusion.

        1st) Venezuela’s current reserves reach 9,000 million barrels.

        2nd) If extra-heavy oil extraction tasks begin, the maximum reserve limit will probably range between 45 billion and 117 billion barrels, as long as the price of oil is much higher.

        3rd) The short and medium term impact is zero, due to the long period of time necessary to prepare the infrastructure. In the best of cases, they will try to recover, with minimal investment, the production of 2016 (before the collapse), in the coming years.

        https://futurocienciaficcionymatrix.blogspot.com/2026/01/una-revision-de-los-300000-millones-de.html

        AJ

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  28. quark explores what it will take to increase Venezuela’s oil production.

    Summary:

    • Current reserves are 9 billion barrels (90 days supply for the world).
    • After a lengthy (10+ year) and expensive ($200+ billion) investment, and assuming consumers are able to afford higher priced oil, and assuming cactus does not disrupt supply chains, reserves will increase to 45-117 billion barrels (1-3 years supply for the world).

    Looks to me like capturing the prime minister of Canada and charging him with transfecting children with an untested gene therapy (and therefore US should own Canada’s oil just as Maduro’s ownership of a machine gun entitles the US to own Venezuela’s oil) would be more profitable.

    https://futurocienciaficcionymatrix.blogspot.com/2026/01/una-revision-de-los-300000-millones-de.html

    The sandstone deposits have a depth of between 150 and 1400 meters (*) and contain heavy oil with a gravity between 4 and 16 degrees API. 

    (*) The depth factor is important because oil cannot be extracted using the mining method, as in Canada.

    This graph shows how Venezuela’s oil reserves evolved, according to the government.

    The development of reserves began with the increase of the OPEC countries in the 1980s (whose objective was to increase reserves to increase the respective quota, which caused a generalized bullish reevaluation). In 1986, Venezuela suddenly increased its reserves, as seen in the graph.

    From 1986 to 2007, reserves grew to 100 billion barrels. In February 2008, reserves increased to 172 billion. And in January 2011 stood at 297 billion barrels.

    The subsequent increase was very gentle until reaching the current 303 billion barrels.

    Venezuela’s 2P oil reserves (they are those that all oil companies have to officially communicate to the stock market authorities), they reach 9,000 million barrels at an average price of $80 (corresponding to the average for 2024, to which the tables belong).

    For example Canada has recognized 45,000 million, the USA 44,000 million and Arabia 177,000 million. 

    According to the consensus established by the experts, the recovery factor so far varies between 4% and 9%. – very far from the theoretical 38% established by the USGS.

    “Consequently, “if PDVSA were privatized and registered on the New York Stock Exchange, those 300 billion barrels of reserves would likely become a lower estimate”, because the audit requirements are more demanding.

    The academic emphasizes that there is a general consensus according to which in the Belt there are between 1.1 and 1.3 billion barrels with recovery rates of between 4% and 9%.”

    “The reality is that none of the projects in the Belt have reached – in a sustained manner – 10% recovery.

    He says that there is a small part of the Belt that is heavy crude oil – not extra heavy – that can be recovered easily, but otherwise “recovery rates are less than 10%”.

    This provides us with reserves between 44,000 million and 117,000 million barrels, which are already important if the price of oil rises enough to be able to extract them under conditions of economic profitability.

    Suppose the US provides capital, technology and specialized labor immediately, in the heat of Venezuela’s new political control.  How many barrels could be extracted in a reasonable period of time between 10 and 20 years?.

    We can only compare this extraction with that carried out over time through Canada, with some differences.

    a) Canada has its extra-heavy oil placed almost on the surface, which helps extract it through mining processes. On the other hand, Venezuela’s extra-heavy weight is too deep (as we have seen in the initial report) and can only be removed through the SAGD process or steam injection. 

    b) The extra-heavy from Venezuela contains impurities such as sulfur (very corrosive) which makes its refinement difficult. Only certain refineries can process this type of crude oil.

     “Extra-heavy FPO crude oil is known for its high sulfur content, heavy metals (especially vanadium and nickel) and a high percentage of asphaltenes.

    c) Oil is so heavy that it needs a diluent, normally light oil, which Venezuela must import from abroad.

    d) Since the mining method is not possible, this oil needs large amounts of gas to extract it. Venezuela has gas reserves, but needs a whole new infrastructure to extract and channel all that gas, making the process more expensive. Until now, the losses in gas production are enormous.   , due to infrastructure limitations.

    e) In Canada, the SAGD method has been imposed, the explanation of which can be seen here.

       And now let’s see how much it has cost Canada to get to its current bitumen production.

    The startup is extremely slow, until the infrastructure is completed. 

    From 1983 (200,000 b/d) to reaching one million b/d in 2004, it took no less than 21 years.

    Even if they accelerate procedures in Venezuela, a large increase in production (say 2 million b/d) cannot be expected before 10 or 15 years which implies no impact on the oil markets in the short and medium term.

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    1. Explain the US weapons charges against Maduro.

      Gemini: Maduro was captured during a U.S. military operation on January 3, 2026, and is currently facing a federal indictment in the Southern District of New York. Here is a breakdown of the specific weapons-related charges and the context behind them.

      While the indictment covers a range of narco-terrorism activities, the weapons-specific counts are particularly serious:

      Violation of the National Firearms Act: U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi explicitly cited violations of this 1934 act, which strictly regulates the possession of fully automatic firearms and explosives.

      Possession of Machine Guns and Destructive Devices: Prosecutors allege Maduro used and possessed military-grade weaponry to protect cocaine shipments and maintain power.

      Conspiracy to Possess Machine Guns and Destructive Devices: This charge relates to the coordination with groups like the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) to trade drugs for heavy weaponry.

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    2. Not a fan of military interventionism and I think this act will likely spell the end for US global hegemony.

      That being said, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if

      1) an OPEC state completely reliant on oil revenue was lying about its oil reserves to raise its quota and cover any potential budget shortfalls/shore up its legitimacy

      2) the trump administration is so incompetent and greedy that they just took those stated figures as a fact without any due diligence, and now the US is going to be stuck holding the bag of another disastrous forever war like Iraq and Afghanistan

      I wouldn’t be surprised at all if these oil companies go into Venezuela and realize that the best oil has already been drilled and there’s nothing left for them to export.

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  29. James Howard Kunstler, once a respected voice in the peak oil community, now a cranky old white guy focused on left-right politics, explains why capturing Madura and Venezuela’s oil was a good idea.

    I wonder when the US will stop considering the Strait of Malacca, the Taiwan Strait, and the Strait of Hormuz to be in its neighborhood?

    https://www.kunstler.com/p/badass

    “Pretending that ‘America First’ means ‘I only care about my house, not my neighborhood’ is as retarded as it sounds.” —Jesus Enrique Rosas

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    1. I can tell you as an American with friends and family members who range widely across the political spectrum that not a single person I’ve spoken with in the last couple of days is in any way comfortable or supportive of trump’s actions. The closest any of them have come to support is that some of the more right leaning people are proud that the US military was capable of abducting the leader of a foreign country as a sort of show of force, but even those people don’t support another forever war. I don’t think Trump has the political capital to actually take control of venezuela militarily, and that this will ultimately amount to a show of force and an attempt to install a more pliant government without a full scale invasion, which i doubt will work. trump’s going to get crushed in the midterms and the democrats are across the board against the regime change.

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        1. I don’t know about evil, but stupid and selfish? Absolutely

          Kicking myself for not going to grad school in europe and trying to get a job there. my parents even encouraged me to do that at the time. now i’m stuck.

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        2. I think it’s also important to remember that like a solid 1/3 to 1/2 of americans dislike trump more than foreigners do, if you can believe that.

          It’s actually funny to look back on now, but I moved to California during the reign of Bush the Second. My friend told me at the time “if you ever go to another country, don’t tell them you’re from America, they’ll think you’re an asshole. Tell them you’re from California so at least they don’t think you’re a complete dipshit”.

          Let me know if that’s still true

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          1. I don’t know. I haven’t traveled for over 15 years. I do remember 20+ years ago that many Americans traveled the world wearing a Canadian flag because we had a great reputation and were respected.

            Today there’s no difference between Canadians and Americans. We support the genocide in Gaza and the Nazis in Ukraine, we agree children should be transfected with mRNA, and many of us are obese.

            Today my leader is in Europe providing billions to the coalition of the willing, and my opposition leader is tweeting with joy that Maduro has been captured.

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  31. Colonel Larry Wilkerson explains that the US capture of Venezuela provides justification for China to capture Taiwan in a similar manner.

    You have to watch this with a powerful filter because Wilkerson does not see through the cactus lens.

    I ask, what’s more valuable?

    Oil that might be produced in 10 years after spending $200 billion, or the single source of advanced silicon chips needed to produce oil and to operate militaries?

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  32. What would an alien observing the recent behavior of civilizations like the US and EU that most enjoyed the fruits of modernity conclude?

    I think the alien would conclude they see an imminent cactus collapse and are panicking.

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  33. Copper on the Comex futures market just hit $6/lb a new record price. In the markets copper is often called Dr copper as it’s price has in the past tended to indicate the health of the economy.

    High price equals demand and growth in the industrial world, low price means recessionary conditions in the industrial world. At least that’s what it use to mean. A.I. centres use a lot of copper, but so do solar, wind and batteries, and all the rest of the industrial world.

    For me gold and silver have been in a bubble as the ratio between them and other commodities has gone way out of whack. This might be a sign of ‘other commodities’ starting to catch up and inflation ahead. All the gold and silver experts will expect this means higher gold prices, but it could also mean more stable gold and silver prices as the rest catch up in dollar terms and reduce the ratio back to more normal levels, if possible.

    In our highly complex world, we can’t think of any aspect by itself. The copper price going up, increases the cost of any new copper mine (and likewise for every other human activity), which means the resources in the ground that were profitable at $6/lb so might now get built, suddenly find the cost to build and operate the new mine when they get quotes to build it, are also higher than in the feasibility studies.

    There is a lot of highly complex copper wiring in a mine processing plant and if trying to look green, will install solar wind and batteries with govt subsidies to supply a bit of the power.

    Assuming the copper price goes higher and stays higher for a few months, in a range of up and down to confuse everyone, then some new mines that needed $5 copper prices will get commissioned. Usually some of these new resources are owned by junior companies without major funding backing them. They do capital raises as the stock price went up with the copper price, then borrow up to 50% and start building the mine (they already have all the permitting, they just needed higher copper and stock prices to raise enough capital).

    As they get well into the building phase a year later, they do another stock offering for the last $100M because of new growing costs, then another 6 months later they borrow a bit more as costs keep rising. Another 6 months later, they do another cap raise for $200M for commissioning and ramp up stage plus a few extra unexpected higher costs and inclusions by authorities. A year later when ramp up has been slower than expected, recovery rates below expectations etc, copper price now fallen etc, they need to raise capital again and the debt holders are getting nervous.

    At this point the best of the new mines can raise the capital, while the other new ones get taken over cheaply and some the debt is too high and a big company buys cheaper still.

    The overall result is that there are more new mines of lower grades and a lot of investors lost their money to get this all built, then the copper price goes higher again, so the survivors do well, the big companies that bought the little struggling guys did well and there is more copper supply..

    What did the big miners do during this and the slightly longer period? They mined the lower grade ores creating a squeeze on copper prices as this was profitable at the higher prices, but supply didn’t go up, so prices kept rising. Then after the new mines of others were being built, the big mines started to use higher grade ores, that increased their production and started to make the price of copper stall/fall, while not selling too much to make the price crash. Then when ‘enough’ new mines are built they increase the sales of stored copper, pushing the price of copper down further, causing debt troubles in the juniors, and cheap prices in others, then the big boys swoop and ‘save jobs’ etc…

    This game has always worked in the last couple of centuries as there has always been more energy to build more of industrial society in general allowing for all the extra industrial plant and equipment to be built. When less energy is available year after year, this game simply wont work, as the timelines for all the equipment to build the new mines will blow out, and the cost of all the parts go through the roof as more recessionary businesses that also made parts for the mines go bust from lack of other sales, which narrows to pool of companies that can possibly supply the parts to make equipment.

    The costs of building the new mines starts to go up faster than the price of copper is going up, likewise for every other commodity out there.

    It’s a complexity trap of mining the lower and lower grades of ores.

    With energy prices rising causing all the downstream concentrated energy of every part of industrial civilization, as in processing plants, copper wire, stainless steel tanks, trucks, excavators etc, all go up faster in price than the raw commodities we are close to the end.

    An acceleration of the trend of higher processing plant costs has been happening for quite a while, even as we are still mining greater quantities of energy. The world changes drastically on the downslope of energy mining production, very, very rapidly.

    The world civilization requires that Venezuelan heavy oil, but most will stay in the ground as it was never really ‘reserve’ it was always just a ‘resource’. The definition of ‘reserves’, are the resources that can be mined economically, as in make a profit from it, using current prices and technology. In a world of simplification, most of today’s reserves disappear off the books as we wont have the technology to make them economic.

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  34. What does based mean?

    Gemini: In modern slang, based is a term used to describe someone or something that is authentic, courageous, and unapologetically true to themselves—especially when their views are controversial or unpopular.

    It is often used as a one-word reply (like “facts”) to signal that you respect or agree with a bold statement.

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    1. Elon says “based” in response to someone claiming that the UN promotes the replacement of White people. Make of that what you will.

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      1. Yeah, Musk is predictable in some ways. What he did for/to Twitter/X was good in that it is now a much more open and free area for divergent opinions . . . BUT in many areas he has shown himself to be a typical oligarch supporting the rentier capitalist system that allowed him to accumulate obscene amounts of money and power to the detriment of the majority of humanity and the entire ecosphere (and the future of life on this planet).

        AJ

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  35. If countries really wanted to tighten the screws on the US, they wouldn’t even need to impose sanctions, they could simply drop their US treasuries.

    https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/RS22331

    How would Trump react if Brazil or Mexico dropped its holding of US treasuries? Canada and various European countries hold US treasuries too

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    1. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-05/worst-heatwave-conditions-since-black-summer/106197780

      Parts of Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia are bracing for extreme heatwave conditions that the Bureau of Meteorology is forecasting to be “the worst” since those experienced during the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires.

      Temperatures set to climb into mid-40s in some areas, including cities on the banks of the Murray River.

      The BOM is forecasting a maximum temperature of 40 degrees Celsius (104°F) in Port Pirie on Tuesday and 45C (113°F) on Wednesday.

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      1. Thanks Stellarwind for thinking of us during the heatwave 🥵

        My parents live close to the Murray River bordering VIc and NSW, and yes the next three days they have temps of low to mid 40s. It’s dairy country and I only hope the farmers provide some shade for all the cows outside. Extreme fire danger as well. All life grinds to a halt at these temps.

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    2. The AI explains that Greenland matters because it has the largest deposit of heavy rare minerals.

      Last week, the US Military launched a raid to secure oil in Venezuela. This week, leaked documents reveal a renewed push by Washington to “purchase” Greenland. The media calls it a real estate fantasy. But the Pentagon calls it survival.

      In this video, we expose the “Fortress America” strategy. We reveal the secret of the **Tanbreez Mine**—the massive deposit of Dysprosium that the US Air Force desperately needs to break its dependence on China. We analyze the “Project 2029” leak and connect the dots between the chaos in the South and the militarization of the North.

      The United States is retreating from the global stage and locking down the Western Hemisphere. It’s not about land. It’s about the resources needed to fight World War III.

      Fact check: Does Greenland have the largest deposit of heavy rare minerals?

      Gemini: Greenland is widely recognized for having some of the world’s most significant undeveloped deposits of heavy rare earth elements (HREEs). While China currently holds the largest proven and active reserves and dominates global production, Greenland’s deposits—particularly the Tanbreez and Kvanefjeld projects—are considered globally elite due to their high concentration of the more valuable “heavy” rare earths.

      Key Deposits in Greenland

      Greenland’s potential is centered in the southern Gardar Province, a geological rift zone rich in alkaline and peralkaline rocks.

      Kvanefjeld (Kuannersuit): A massive multi-element deposit containing rare earths, zinc, and uranium. It is considered one of the largest accumulations of rare earth oxides globally, though its development is currently stalled due to Greenland’s ban on uranium mining (as the rare earths are physically bundled with uranium in the ore).

      Tanbreez Project: Often cited as the world’s largest rare earth deposit. It is unique because it is exceptionally rich in Heavy Rare Earth Elements (HREEs), which comprise roughly 27% to 30% of its total rare earth content.

      Fact check: Is Dysprosium important?

      Yes, Dysprosium (Dy) is considered one of the most critical and “important” elements on the planet today, primarily because of its role in the global transition to clean energy and its scarcity.

      It is classified as a Heavy Rare Earth Element (HREE), and its importance stems from its unique physical properties that are difficult to replace.

      Why It Is Important

      The primary reason Dysprosium is essential is its ability to resist demagnetization at high temperatures.

      • Electric Vehicle (EV) Motors: High-performance neodymium magnets (NdFeB) are used in EV drive motors. However, these magnets lose their strength when they get hot. By adding a small amount of Dysprosium, the magnets can operate efficiently at the high temperatures generated by an engine [01:51].
      • Wind Turbines: Similar to EVs, large offshore wind turbines use massive direct-drive permanent magnets. Dysprosium ensures these magnets remain stable and powerful in harsh, high-heat environments [00:16].
      • Climate Change Goals: Because it is vital for green tech, the International Energy Agency predicts demand for elements like Dysprosium could rise sevenfold as the world moves toward net-zero emissions [02:16].

      Key Applications

      Beyond green energy, Dysprosium is used in several high-tech and specialized fields:

      • Nuclear Reactors: Because it is excellent at absorbing neutrons, it is used in nuclear control rods to help regulate or stop nuclear fission reactions.
      • Electronics: It is used in hard disk drives, sensors, and transducers [00:08].
      • Lighting and Optics: It is used in metal-halide lamps to produce intense white light and in lasers and phosphors for display screens [00:00].

      The “Criticality” Factor

      Dysprosium is often listed at the top of “Critical Materials” lists by the U.S. Department of Energy and the EU for two reasons:

      1. Supply Risk: China currently controls the vast majority of the world’s Dysprosium production [05:29].
      2. Lack of Substitutes: There are very few materials that can match its performance in magnets, making industries highly vulnerable to supply shortages or price spikes [09:24].

      Fact check: How many Kg of Dysprosium are required to build one F35 jet?

      Building an F-35 Lightning II requires a significant amount of rare earth elements (REEs), with total estimates typically cited around 417 kg to 418 kg (approximately 920 pounds) per aircraft.

      While there isn’t a single “publicly classified” exact number for Dysprosium specifically, we can calculate a high-confidence estimate based on the material composition of the high-performance magnets used in the jet.Estimated Dysprosium Requirement

      Based on aerospace magnet specifications, an F-35 is estimated to require approximately 5 kg to 10 kg of Dysprosium.

      Here is how that breakdown works:

      • Total Rare Earths: ~418 kg.
      • Magnet Usage: The majority of REEs in an F-35 are found in Neodymium-Iron-Boron (NdFeB) and Samarium-Cobalt (SmCo) permanent magnets used in flight control actuators, radar gimbals, and engine sensors.
      • Dysprosium’s Role: Dysprosium is added to Neodymium magnets to allow them to operate at the high temperatures (up to 200°C+) found in jet engines and high-friction actuators without losing their magnetism.
      • The Math: High-heat “SH” or “UH” grade magnets typically contain 3% to 6% Dysprosium by weight. Given that a substantial portion of the 418 kg consists of magnets (with about 22-25 kg being Samarium and the rest largely Neodymium-based), the Dysprosium content falls into the single-digit kilogram range.

      Where the Dysprosium Goes

      Dysprosium is vital for the F-35 because it acts as a “magnetic stabilizer” in extreme environments:

      • Engine Bay Actuators: These must move rudders and flaps while being subjected to massive heat from the F135 engine.
      • Stealth Coatings: Certain rare earths are used in the Radar Absorbent Material (RAM) that helps the jet remain “invisible” to enemy radar.
      • Electronic Warfare Systems: Dysprosium is used in high-frequency sonar and communication components that require stable performance under stress.

      The “Sourcing” Problem

      The reason this specific number is so closely watched by analysts is that China currently controls over 90% of the world’s Dysprosium refining. In 2022, F-35 deliveries were temporarily halted because a cobalt-samarium magnet in the Honeywell-built turbo-machine was found to use an alloy sourced from China. While a waiver was eventually granted to resume deliveries, the U.S. has since pushed to establish a “mine-to-magnet” supply chain that excludes Chinese Dysprosium.

      Fact check: Has China invested in Greenland?

      Here is the current status of Chinese involvement as of early 2026:

      1. Mining (The Primary Interest)

      China’s presence in Greenland is most visible in the mining sector, though actual operations are limited.

      • Kvanefjeld Rare Earth Project: This is the most controversial site. The Chinese company Shenghe Resources owns a 12.5% stake in the project. However, the Greenlandic government passed a law in 2021 banning uranium mining (uranium is a byproduct at this site), which effectively halted the project. As of 2025–2026, the project remains in a legal stalemate.
      • Citronen Fjord Zinc Mine: Located in far northern Greenland, this project involves the Chinese state-owned enterprise NFC (China Nonferrous Metal Industry’s Foreign Engineering and Construction Co.). While they have agreements to help develop and finance the mine, the project has faced delays due to the extreme remote location and financing hurdles.
      • Shift in Ownership: In recent years, Western interest (specifically from the U.S.) has actively crowded out Chinese bids. For example, the Tanbreez rare earth project, once targeted by Chinese investors, was instead sold to a New York-based firm.

      I wonder if Venezuela’s heavy difficult to extract oil is a secondary objective of the US?

      Compare rare earth extraction potential of Greenland versus Venezuela.

      Greenland: Holds the world’s 8th largest reserves, estimated at 1.5 million tonnes of Rare Earth Oxides (REO). Its deposits are “world-class” in terms of concentration, particularly in Neodymium, Praseodymium, and Dysprosium. Projects like Tanbreez (one of the largest in the world) are currently moving toward production, with offtake deals for 2027-2028 already being signed by U.S. and European firms.

      Venezuela: Possesses a massive but less “proven” resource base in the Orinoco Mining Arc. Government and early geological estimates suggest over 300,000 tonnes of REEs, with some speculative valuations reaching $200 billion. Venezuela’s unique advantage is its abundance of Coltan (Niobium-Tantalum) and Thorium, which are critical for advanced electronics and next-gen nuclear tech.

      Greenland is the “Safe Haven”: For the U.S., Greenland represents NATO-aligned security. It is a “northern flank” that can be protected by the U.S. Coast Guard and Danish Navy. It is seen as a long-term, stable alternative to Chinese supply.

      Venezuela is the “High-Volume disruptor”: Venezuela is viewed as a way to flood the market and break China’s price monopoly. Because it sits in the Western Hemisphere and has access to Atlantic shipping lanes, it could theoretically provide cheaper, faster supply to U.S. tech hubs—if the security situation stabilizes.

      If the US is planning to annex Greenland so it can be self-sufficient in the minerals needed to fight WWIII, then that implies WWIII is more than 10 years away because that’s how long it takes to build a new mine and refining facilities. My superficial understanding of rare earths is that refining is very difficult and so 10 years is probably optimistic.

      What is the probability that the cactus collapse is further off than 10 years? I’d say near zero.

      So this implies (drum roll please) that the AI and the US government are in serious denial of reality.

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        1. Adding to the comment above. It may be World War III that triggers CACTUS.

          However, I suspect the true trigger for CACTUS collapse will not be financial or geopolitical, but it will be the EROEI of fossil fuels declining to such an extent that mining low grade ores becomes economically unviable. This only needs to happen to one critical mineral such as iron or copper and then not to long after, manufacturing drops off precipitously as recycled metals are not enough to keep up with demand. At that point, (remaining) supply chains will start crumbling in accordance with Liebig’s law. I suspect that collapse will start off as a slow decline, but after this tipping point, collapse will greatly accelerate and the bottom will fall out from under modernity.

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    3. Chris, the depressed peak oil guy with a YouTube channel I’ve mentioned before turns out to be a movie geek and his last two episodes have drawn connections with films. Today he discussed Pluribus.

      Given that you’re a movie expert you might enjoy him.

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    4. Another ultra-complex machine built with surplus fossil energy by the only god believing species on this planet.

      This machine is a three football field sized laser used to explore fusion physics.

      My take-away: The probability of fusion being commercially viable before cactus kills further research is zero.

      The video drags a bit and is not information dense so a quick skim is sufficient to get the gist.

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    5. Russia has gone quiet since the US admitted its CIA helped plan a failed assassination attempt on Putin last week, while the US pretended to be negotiating in good faith with Putin, as the US did last year with Iran.

      Apparently there are high level Russian meetings underway to decide how to respond.

      Watching the US ignore its constitution and international law to kidnap the leader of another country will no doubt factor into their plans.

      Buckle up.

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      1. US admitted its CIA helped plan a failed assassination attempt on Putin last week

        Do you have a source for this? I tried to do a quick search about this and all I found were mainstream outlets denying this. Of course, Given what just happened to Nicholás Maduro, and other actions the CIA has taken, I wouldn’t put it past them to try something like that.

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    6. Ouch. Ford made a $20-30 billion dollar mistake. That’s a lot of money.

      They’re switching from pure EV’s to electric vehicles with a gas engine that recharges the battery.

      Why not diesel? Diesel is a much better fuel for running a generator at a steady RPM.

      I suspect governments have quietly told vehicle manufacturers to avoid diesel because of scarcity.

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