Imperialism has always come with a high body count. That remains true today with U.S.efforts to retain what is left of its hegemony. Sanctions, warfare (either direct or proxy), genocides, and exported class warfare all leave devastation in their wake.
In many ways US imperialism is similar to other colonial projects that came before it. Yet there is one obvious difference: our knowledge of climate change. Action to slow emissions was always going to be one of humanity’s greatest challenges, and efforts were slow in coming. Many have noted history’s cruel joke that at the moment global warming becomes widely accepted and as it accelerates, it is a hyper capitalist moment of human organization led by a nation dedicated to growth at any and all costs.
The US decision to go scorched earth as its empire crumbles is only making a bad situation worse.
Recent news items offer a stark reminder how the preoccupation of powerful factions in Washington with the destabilization campaigns of today are helping to guarantee the destabilization of the planet tomorrow.
The earth just officially passed its first climate tipping point with the die-off of global reefs, and more could be on the way as the Atlantic Ocean circulation is at its weakest in at least a millennium and evidence piles up that it’s approaching a breakdown.
Under hopeful conditions this news would be dominating coverage everywhere, and the five-alarm fire that is climate change would be leading to unprecedented moments of global cooperation to leave fossil fuels in the ground and rethink economic systems and social organization.
Sadly, we’re moving in the opposite direction. Climate tipping points are mentioned in passing —if they’re mentioned at all— and quickly pushed to the back pages by the latest nuclear brinkmanship in the New Cold War, approaching war in Venezuela and maybe Columbia too, US-Israel efforts to remake the Middle East through genocide. It’s not a coincidence that all these countries and regions being targeted by Washington also happen to sit on the largest known oil and gas reserves in the world as the US doubles down on a dystopian future filled with fossil fuels, climate chaos, and hierarchical class structures protected by a robust police state.
This path the economic elites are coalescing around not only precludes any action on global warming, but there are signs that they are actively embracing it as just another component of their imperial game.
As followers of the news, it’s often been a struggle to keep up in recent years as all the latest schemes, frauds, absurdities, bust outs, and incomprehensible violence accelerate along with the climate. I know I’m guilty of often missing the forest for the trees in my efforts to track Washington’s increasingly feral actions in the world.
So here’s an attempt to step back for a moment from all the micro-insanity and take in the macro, namely the destruction of the planet in the name of controlling it.
Rogue Empire
On October 18, Director of the Legal Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maxim Musikhin gave an interview to TASS discussing the ICJ’s recent advisory opinion on countries’ obligations regarding climate change. Musikhin draws attention to something often overlooked amid all the war maps and geopolitical impact of Arctic shipping routes: how an unnamed country’s illegal unilateral coercive measures (sanctions) make it impossible for world community to respond to the biggest threat facing humanity:
In the context of the obligation to cooperate, we drew the Court’s attention to the problem of illegal unilateral coercive measures (sanctions). We noted that such measures do not allow the world community to effectively respond to the challenges associated with adverse effects of climate changes. Unilateral coercive measures not only fail to contribute to the achievement of the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement goals, but also, in fact, cause damage to the environment, as well as violate the very obligation to cooperate, for which the States introducing them must bear responsibility under international law.
I’m not here to make the argument that Russia would be some sort of savior on climate if not for the US, but that’s beside the point. Mushikin is making the entirely reasonable argument that it’s ludicrous for there to be any expectations of action on climate change when one of the world powers is weaponizing everything and running around like an out-of-control serial killer. What’s Russia to do when it faces unprecedented sanctions and all sorts of other efforts to destroy it? Naturally, it is going to do whatever is necessary to survive—even if that means leaning on fossil fuels for economic reasons. The same could be said for Iran, Venezuela, and others.
So instead of, say, paying countries to leave it in the ground, the US through economic warfare is incentivizing the extraction of these nations’ most valuable commodities, which also happen to be cooking the planet.
Climate Change as Wild Card in the Global Great Game
As energies are consumed by international rivalry, climate change becomes just another bullet point in global trade competition and destabilization games.
China achieved what’s being described as a major breakthrough in “supply chain speed” earlier this month when the containership Istanbul Bridge made the 7,500 nautical mile China-UK voyage via the Arctic Northern Sea Route (NSR) in just 20 days. The trip causes heartburn in Washington because the NSR doesn’t offer the same multitude of opportunities for sabotage and other roadblocks that other trade routes do. That’s because it passes only through Russian waters on its way to Europe.
And so think tanks and analysts pump out tomes on strategies in this New Cold War arena. The fact that the NSR is becoming feasible because of global warming, which is reducing the amount of ice in the Northern Sea is usually reduced to a footnote.
Should it not be the reverse? Who cares whether China and Russia win or whether the US can find some way to counter when in the long run the very fact the route is now being used is a sign that we are all losing.
And in the end it could mean absolutely nothing in the logistics wars. China might be the world’s engineering, tech, and manufacturing powerhouse, but on their current course the UK and Europe could be an impoverished (and climate-ravaged) backwater that is hardly worth the effort of Middle Corridors and Arctic routes.
War Kills The Environment Too
In September the UN published its second assessment of environmental damage from Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its US-backed rampage through West Asia. It paints a picture of utter devastation to air quality, soil, and water. Recovery might never come.
Such action only adds to the survival crisis facing populations in some of the harshest terrain on the planet. As Countercurrents notes:
The middle-east region with its long coastal area and its vast deserts is particularly vulnerable to climate change and its various forms of extreme weather and worsening disaster situations. There have been several serious drought and other disasters in recent times which have not attracted the attention these deserved because of the preoccupation with conflict issues. Sandstorms can be a much bigger problem in this area, as is further desertification. Water scarcity and depletion of water natural sources is already a very big issue in many countries, and this can worsen the problem of land sinking and subsidence in several areas. The heat can get much more extreme with the passage of time and the protection of air-conditioning will not always be available everywhere. The resource base can be threatened with other kinds of disasters including cyclones and coastal floods.
And with more wars instigated by the US-Israel on the horizon—and a Middle East ruling elite that largely supports them— the problem is only expected to accelerate.
Embracing the Heat
An increasing amount of signs point to the fact that the US geopolitics of submission not only distracts from the urgent need to address global warming, but that the accelerationists in Washington are openly embracing it as a force multiplier in their endless destabilization strategy.
Notorious for their short term thinking, the “intelligence” apparatus in DC seems to believe that climate change can be a US regime change ally. The thinking seems to be that even if the world, say, continues to run out fresh water in the process, well there are benefits to that. That’s because the spooks at the National Intelligence Council estimate that states like Iran and China will be hit harder than the US and this will present “opportunities.”
Here’s the NIC on how increased water strain:
…we judge that transboundary tensions probably will increase over shared surface and groundwater basins as increased weather variability exacerbates preexisting or triggers new water insecurity in many parts of the world. Forecasted climate change effects on local and regional weather—including loss of glaciers and more frequent and extreme droughts and floods—will make water management, resource allocation, and service provision more complex and difficult, and probably more contentious. Although scientific forecasts are not precise enough to pinpoint likely flashpoints, we assess that several areas are at high risk.
Anyone familiar with US imperial strategy will recognize similarities to long-utilized divide-and-rule practices. And with climate change, the US won’t even need to expend the considerable effort and expense for destabilization and installation of proxy regimes. And some of the US target nations conveniently coincide with spots estimated to be at the center of climate change struggles.
The NIC goes on to note how nations like China and Iran will be—and already are being— hit by climate change.
Iran probably will face more frequent droughts, intense heat waves, and expanding desertification that, combined with poor water management, will lower food production and increase import costs during the coming decades, increasing the risk of instability, localized conflict, and displacement.
These also create opportunities that the US and its proxies in the region could try to exploit in an effort to kill and displace millions. The Institute for the Study of War, run by the Kagan crazies, is particularly interested in Iran’s water supply
The American institute for the study of war ISW, has published a detailed map of Tehran’s water supply
They have to know: Water for Water.. pic.twitter.com/CRgg67qM35
— Soureh 🇮🇷🇵🇸 (@Soureh_design2) October 1, 2025
And here’s the NIS on China:
More variable precipitation is likely to widen China’s south–north water disparity, challenging its ability to irrigate agricultural areas in its water-deficient northeast and further drive its dam construction on rivers upstream from neighboring countries. However, it is likely to have the financial and technological resources to compete successfully in markets for solar and other clean energies and limit the damage from climate impacts, such as more intense cyclones and river flooding.
So full speed ahead!
She’s an icon
She’s a legend
And she is the moment✨ pic.twitter.com/MDkIj71JZf— U.S. Department of Energy (@ENERGY) July 31, 2025
Of course nobody knows with any certainty what havoc will be unleashed once more climate tipping points fall.
The US happens to be blessed with plenty of fresh water (as does the “51st state” to the north)—for now—but all of global warming’s other forces will do plenty of damage to America and cause destabilization there as well.
The problem here is that the economic elite in the US believe that their money will always allow them to buy a solution, and many are embracing a future in which they believe they can build an empire-by-contractor system where ruling clans do no more than oversee weapon systems, AI data centers, and mercenaries. Quinn Slobodian with a useful summary:
Right-wing accelerationists imagine existing sovereignty shattering into … a “patchwork” of private entities, ideally governed by what one might call technomonarchies. Existing autocratic polities like Dubai serve as rough prototypes for how nations could be dismantled into “a global spiderweb of tens, even hundreds, of thousands of sovereign and independent mini-countries, each governed by its own joint-stock corporation without regard to the residents’ opinions.” These would be decentralized archipelagoes: fortified nodes in a circuitry still linked by finance, trade, and communication. Think of the year 1000 in Middle Europe but with vertical take-off and landing taxis and Starlink internet.
While the US doesn’t have the hard power nor the economic clout to maintain a global empire, these nihilists believe it can do enough damage in order for them to rule over some Mad Max hellscape from the comforts of their Elysium. And they’re forcing their delusions on us all.
Not to forget that CC policies pushed in the Global South have been resulting on more debt slavery. I don’t care if intended or unintended but we apparently no longer know, or want to know, any other way of doing things. This of course results on very bad results and less commitment by those who suffer the consequences.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the AMOC collapsing in the next 2 or 3 decades, though it will continue to slow.
The coral reef dieback is much more immediate and the knock on effects are going to be unpredictably complex. The recent reports that oceanic absorption of CO2 is reducing look to have pretty serious knock on effects too.
Stefan Rahmstorf reckons the odds of AMOC collapse have gone from 10 to 1 to 4 to 1 by 2100.
Mind, he was giving odds of 300 to 1 25 years ago.
Globally, the USA has always been seen as being a major part of the problem but contributing relatively little to climate change solutions.
A continued rush to fossil fuel expansion plus data centre / AI growth under 47 is only going to make that worse.
“I wouldn’t worry too much about the AMOC collapsing in the next 2 or 3 decades, though it will continue to slow.”
Based on what exactly? So far, almost all scientific estimates on the speed and scope of climate change have been horribly incorrect, and in the wrong direction. I see no reason to think AMOC predictions are any different.
More importantly, it is the worst message to say “don’t worry too much” as that is exactly what allowed these tipping points to be reached in the first place.
Would you take the same attitude if you were playing Russian Roulette?
All I can do is refer you to the world expert Stefan Rahmstorf at the Potstdam Institute for Climate Change Research.
If you read my comments in full you might note my own qualifications.
I have followed Stefan Rahmstorf’s work for over 25 years now, and can assure you of his credibility.
Don’t you think it is as important to avoid highly speculative clickbait and uninformed media coverage as it is to be realistic on tipping points ? – most of which are not currently capable of accurate modelling.
You might recall the ammunition provided by some of the content of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” then deliberately, but still damagingly, exaggerated by denier propagandists to rubbish climate change not even 20 years ago.
I don’t doubt his or your expertise/credentials, but so far most climate scientists have been wildly of the mark. Just like I can accept Paul Krugman is a knowledgeable economist, I can still take his statements with a huge grain of salt based on how things are versus how they were predicted.
Credibility? Yet you posted this: “Stefan Rahmstorf reckons the odds of AMOC collapse have gone from 10 to 1 to 4 to 1 by 2100. Mind, he was giving odds of 300 to 1 25 years ago.”
I don’t doubt his sincerity, but I do doubt he has a good handle on what is happening. Not a failing of his, but we only know what we know.
Finally, to your points of clickbait, speculation, and the fallout of Al Gore’s foray intro climate change, how would you address the fact that many climate scientists have gone on the record saying they cannot publish, post or even fully discuss some outcomes of their research because it would kill their funding sources or sound too depressing? Which is worse: a weather prediction that was wrong and caused people to evacuate when it wasn’t needed, or one that was wrong and hundreds died? Because that is exactly what we are dealing with here, only on a global and irreversible scale.
I recommended actually reading Rahmstorf simply because he is a real scientist, not a dismal scientist like Krugman whose claims to rigour have a considerably lower bar.
“Wildly off the mark” really does fail to recognise the full range of IPCC scenarios plus the phenomenal growth in empirical data in the last 20 years.
As for weather predictions…. I get hourly forecasts. These are rarely more than a few knots of breeze out and satellite data and modelling of pressure systems and jet streams is highly sophisticated.
The problem is lack of action by politicians not inadequate science. The expected failures at COP30 will definitely not be at the level of climate science but entirely down to US corporate and Middle East petrostate lobbying.
How does this address my point? Just because he is a “real” scientists does not make his predictions any better if the underlying data is lacking.
“Wildly off the mark” does an accurate job of describing what we have been told would/could happen, versus what is really happening.
I think you misunderstand my point – it had nothing to do with weather but how one deals with risk. The point I was making is that it is better to err on the side of caution than worry about people getting upset that you caused them an inconvenience. Better safe than dead.
Yes, and the lack of action by politicians is helped by people not caring or thinking that everything will work out in the end. Maybe what we need is for people to be worried. Certainly the cheery optimism isn’t working.
If you question the vires, credibility and work of the top climate scientists, as you are doing, then you have zero basis for any form of risk assessment, let alone for currently incalculable tipping points.
For half my working life I was engaged with environmental projects for which the precautionary principle applied, but this was often conveniently sidelined where commercial interests (ie profit ) dominated.
Until such time as the rules of the game are changed – and Pigou did his work on externalities a century ago, and scientific data now allows these costs to be better calculated, then you are just pissing into the wind.
Media scares (often ill informed) achieve nothing but clicks. They certainly don’t act to motivate change agents.
To actually remove the risks of AMOC cessation would require net zero or a close approach. That is not in the power of any environmental scientists.
Calling out the world expert on this who has consistently warned of the consequences of inaction is classic ‘shoot the messenger”
You really are blaming the wrong people for lack of action on climate change. And the ones with power neither scare nor GAF.
A recent poll suggested that the American people don’t want to hear about climate change either and Trump’s denialism is one of the things that got him elected–just as Jimmy Carter in his sweater may have elected Reagan.
As I maneuver my car through the monster trucks this I can believe.
So it’s not just Trump who is unserious about climate change. Perhaps the next hurricane will wipe out Mar a Lago and give him something to think about.
One can hope
Seems to me that since it is the US that is the major culprit in this predicament, it is the “Americans” and their democracy that needs to correct course.
“Sadly, we’re moving in the opposite direction. Climate tipping points are mentioned in passing —if they’re mentioned at all”
That’s the problem in a nutshell. Climate change is disappearing from the news, replaced by reporting the daily lunacies seen around the globe. Chalk to this up to that great human tradition of denial.
And the power-drunk oligarchs apparently believe that they can survive climate/environmental collapse, as well as a global nuclear war in their fashionable billionaire bunkers, so no worries eh. For us “little people” things don’t look so rosy.
And on top of the astute observations of Mr. Gallagher, we have the heightened likelihood of global nuclear war (yeah, I know it’s all hyperbole, because the mass media barely mentions it). After repeatedly expressing interest in renegotiating START and other treaties, the US tells Russia to f-off. The DT1 regime already tore up (“unilaterally withdrew”) the INF treaty in 2019, yet many still naively clung to the hope that the DT was a man of “peace”. Nothing to worry about though, our competent and skilled leaders will find a solution to the climate/environmental collapse.
The dark humor joke is that Nuclear Winter can mitigate Global Warming. So maybe there is a solution after all
All great civilisations have collapsed so far. The reasons have varied from prolonged droughts or rains, to invasions to economic collapse due to wars such as Spain and the UK, which are shadows of their former selves.
Rome is an example. The country grew due to conquest, and this resulted in a class of looters who became insanely rich and then could only think of two things – how to protect their wealth and how to increase their wealth by more looting.
I have lived a few decades and remember when ordinary people in the US could look forward to a standard of living that was improving year by year. Many kids were the first in their families to get a higher education! They took it for granted that by the time the new millenium rolled around US rocket ships would conquer space and we would all visit Mars and beyond.
Now they are sinking into poverty while the looters own everything not tied down, causing wars across the globe to keep control. Any ordinary kid can see decay and rising prices and no space travel and they are all going to die through climate change.
Apparently in the Permian, which had a similar massive increase in CO2, temperatures were 70 degrees C. The looters don’t have the brains to consider how they would live on such a world. Of course they would die.
I think it will have to run its course, because we can’t fight the people who own the military, the media, the government, the money, the food and the water.
But this time the looters are going to take civilisation and humanity down too and they are too stupid to notice. Like drug addicts shooting up in the middle of a highway in pitch darkeness.
Thank you, Conor.
Great stuff, thank you, Conor.
On the topic of water-shortages-as-a-means-of-maintaining-hegemony-and-undermining-adversaries, it seems typically deluded of the National Security State to get excited over prospective water shortages in China (however real they might be on a regional basis) when you consider that, given their control of Tibet, China is the Water Tower of Asia.
And China will use its control over the Water Tower of Asia to make itself the most hated country in Asia for decades after America has become a fading bitter memory.