Ian Welsh

A lot of people lump all environmental issues under “climate change.” It’s the big bad boogeyman, the easiest to observe, and the first that’s likely to cause catastrophe. This also leads some to think that the problem is relatively easy to deal with. We can simply do aerosol injections into the upper atmosphere, and that will reduce the temperature. (Once we start, however, we can’t ever stop.)

But this isn’t the case, the environment is under assault in many ways, and simple solutions may help, but won’t deal with the issue as a whole and may even make parts of it worse. Sulfate Aerosol injections would reduce the temperature, but actually cause acid rain and increase ocean acidification. That means phytoplankton still die off, algal blooms still happen, and we still lose most of the phytoplankton oxygen production.

Cirrus cloud thinning, in which we inject ice-nucleating particles into high altitude cirrus clouds to thin them, allowing more solar radiation to escape is less effective, probably damages the ozone layer, increases UV radiation (which damages phytoplankton, again) and deposits chemicals into the ocean whose effects are probably not benign.

And, again, once we start, we can’t stop, unless we have reached a point where we’re pulling significant CO2 from the atmosphere first.

There’s no free lunch here. This is a system with complicated feedback mechanisms which was more or less in homeostasis (it was actually tending to cool down very slowly and the long term trend was to another ice age. A little bit of extra CO2 was a good thing, but only a little.)

But the real issue is that climate change is only one issue out of a large number. The Earth has a bunch of systems in homeostasis, which have been that way since the end of the last Ice Age, or much longer. Each of them is required to sustain life. When they get knocked out of balance too much, mass extinctions follow and in every mass extinction, the top predator dies.

The”planetary boundaries” system is one way of thinking of it. Here’s the 2025 visualization:

7 of 9 planetary boundaries crossed

You’ll notice that biosphere integrity is actually worse than climate change right now and that’s why I say “environmental collapse” in the same breath as climate change. The ecological web of life, from microbes to apex predators, if it collapses, leads to a huge die-off very fast. Think of the famous example of “what if all the bees die?” But humble organisms which renew soil like various microbes and earthworms and insects matter. (We’ve lost most of the world’s insects already.) Those phytoplankton which produce most of the world’s oxygen. The Amazon and Congo rainforests which used to produce so much oxygen and store so much carbon.

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This stuff is complicated. We don’t understand it, not really (something denialists use to try and prove there are any problems.) When we tried to create simple biospheres, in which nothing is allowed in or out, they devolved into slime.

What that means is that if we fuck it up, we don’t know how to fix it.

Let me repeat, if we screw up biosphere integrity, we can’t fix it. We just don’t know how.

We can’t remake and seed all the creatures we extincted, from unicellular organisms to predators to plants to insects. Every one which goes extinct loses us unique biological information and resources. In most cases we haven’t even catalogued species going extinct, let alone analyzed their DNA.

Just continuing with “damn the torpedoes” is beyond stupid. I have lived a life in a society determined to self-destruct. Much of this blog’s output over the last few years has covered the end of Western hegemony, a colossal fuck up on the part of Western elites (and grats to China for playing our elites like the pathetic losers and suckers they are.)

But that issue really only matters to humanity as a whole if it descends into nuclear war. Hegemons change. It happens. Living thru it sucks if you’re on the losing side or get caught in the collateral damage, but whatever, humanity goes on.

Environmental risk is truly existential. Despite what some very bright people believe, it could kill us all. That risk, I think, is low, but it’s not zero. A two percent risk of extinction is not be sneezed at and it could be much higher. We don’t really know.

Further environmental risk is, let me repeat, essentially incalculable because we do not understand the systems involved very well. I have been right far more often than most climate scientists in my predictions because I have assumed feedback loops. My personal assessment is that we’ve reached the point where it’s self sustaining. If we haven’t, we’re close. Arctic permafrost melting is one of the atomic bombs of climate change and we also have, for example, the Amazon passing the tipping point: it will go away now, and that won’t and probably can’t be stopped and it no longer absorbs carbon but produces it.

The Amazon and Congo rain forests are also major repositories of biodiversity. (The loss of medical advances we’ll never even know about from losing so many species is absolutely massive, put aside environmental concerns.)

From the point of view of humanity as a whole, for the medium run (not even the long run now, if you’re 20 you’re going to see Hell, if you live thru it) environmental/planetary issues are by far and away number one. Nothing else even comes close.

And while I salute the Chinese shift to cleaner tech, I also see the 38 lane superhighways. Electric vehicles are better than gas ones, but they aren’t environmentally neutral, let alone good. When cars remove more harmful chemicals than are required to produce and run them, then “everyone has a car” societies will make sense. Till then, just more insanity. “Let’s have the same lifestyle as Americans, but more and with flying cars” is admirable, but mass suicide.

We’re past the point where we can stop this without massive change, and far past the point where we aren’t going to be hurt badly by it. That doesn’t mean nothing could, in theory, be done, and some of it will be. I’m sure we’ll see stratosphere injections for example. If we don’t do it before the first massive famine to hit a country with enough launch capacity, we’ll do it after.

And it’ll help, but as we discussed at the start of this article, it won’t help enough. It’s a tourniquet on a bleeder, not a cure. A palliative that still allows the patient to become sicker.

And that, my friends, is where we are. If you’re old, you may die before the worst of it. We’ll talk about this more, including what proper solutions would look like. The weird thing about those solutions is that they produce much nicer worlds for the majority of the world’s population.

We’ll also look at what failing to deal with the problem means. That’s the more likely path, alas, and it starts with billions of dead people.

More later. Be well.

EU Leaders Determined To Win “Most Supine Slave Award”: Nexperia Edition

By Ian Welsh

On October 15, 2025

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A couple days ago I discussed the Dutch taking over Nexperia, a Chinese owned but Dutch domiciled company making commodity semiconductors. The company became Chinese owned because it was almost bankrupt, the Chinese bought it, fixed it and kept many jobs in Europe, including the headquarters.

What I didn’t know about the story on Monday is that the Dutch were between a rock and a hard place. The Americans threatened to put Nexperia on the entity list, and thus kill it with sanctions, if it remained Chinese owned. So if the Dutch didn’t kick the Chinese out, it was doomed.

But the Chinese have put a ban on any exports to or from Nexperia (it has facilities in China.) Which means it won’t be able to manufacture anything. So it’s doomed.

Now the important part here is that Nexperia mostly sold semiconductors in Europe. And American sanctions could stop a Dutch domiciled company from selling to other European countries.

That is how supine the EU is. They haven’t put in place a way to resist American sanctions on intra-European trade. That’s hilarious pathetic and servile.

Other Chinese companies will simply produce the chips Nexperia used to, and none of the money for that will go to Europe. This is a loss for the Dutch.

It should also be noted that the Dutch have more companies in China than vice versa. So if China really wants to retaliate, well, they can.

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Europe is being ground between America and China, and ground to dust. The only way to avoid winding up third world nations (I am not being hyperbolic about this) is to get out from in between. All the GDP numbers are fake, they mean NOTHING of importance. All that matters is what you grow, dig up, refine and make. Everything else is nice to have, but ultimately if you can’t produce what you need, you are at the mercy of those who can. Germany, the industrial heart of Europe, is de-industrializing furiously. Everyone else’s industry was already gutted by Germany’s use of the Euro to inflate their costs and move production to Germany.

China has no reason to love Europe, but they’re happy to do business. They offer a better deal than America does right now. Statesmen (of whom Europe has zero) would re-orient and tell America to go take a long leap off a short pier.

And yeah, that means accepting that Russia is going to win the Ukraine war, but, y’know what? It is anyway. And yes some of the Eastern Euros will scream, but who cares, they’re all welfare recipients who couldn’t make a budget without Germany and France subsidizing them. If they want to prioritize hating Russia over saving Europe, kick them out of the EU. Most of them should never have been let in in the first place. Start with the Baltics and Poland.

This is the great power shift, a historic switch of hegemonic powers which only happens every hundred to hundred and fifty years. You can align with the new hegemon and have a chance at prosperity, or you can choose to remain with the old order and suffer serious decline. This is especially true with America, whose current policy amounts to “loot the vassals while we still have them.”

European leaders need to stop being a bunch of supine wimps, and if they won’t, the European population needs to replace them, by whatever means necessary.

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Revisiting Original Sin and Identity Politics In the Age of Woke Backlash

By Ian Welsh

On October 14, 2025

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If you’re anything like me every time you hear the word woke used you wince. Conservatives don’t know what it is and just use it as a hobgoblin, Liberals created it but pretend they didn’t and the left is forced to reluctantly defend basic principles like “everyone should be treated equally”, and “people should have control over their own bodies” after Liberals made doing so noxious.

All of this is based on two thing: cold hard economic math, and the ideology of identity politics as original sin. We’ll look at both, but let’s see some of the results first:

But it’s not just the Youngs:

Now some of this is straight up economic competition. Women get most of the college degrees, they dominate in multiple professions including law, and despite the wage gap, they’re bringing home the bacon. When I was at an elite all-male school in the 80s some of us mentioned to Mr. Skinner, the resident socialist history Prof, that we thought having girls around would be marvelous.

“If we had girls, half of you wouldn’t be here.” And he pointed some fingers.

Chilling.

The bottom line is that there are men who would be more successful if women were restricted to various pink collar ghettos like they were in the 50s and 60s. There’s no denying it and pretending otherwise is stupid and dishonest. So some of “get back in the kitchen” is pure self-interest, whether or not most men will admit it.

But part of it is the original sin of identity politics. I was first introduced in a big way in the early 90s, when I went back to university. As it was explained to me, repeatedly, since I was white, I was racist, and since I was male I was sexist and apparently being heterosexual was somehow dubious. I was willing to accept the first two: I grew up in a somewhat patriarchal (it wasn’t Republican Rome) white society, and sure, I’d taken in some of the values. (As for heterosexuality, well, women are wonderful and no, I’m not changing that preference.)

So, OK, if you’re male you’re probably sexist and if white probably racist (though they would have said 100% for sure.)

OK. I’m bad. It’s not my fault, really, I was raised that way. How do I fix it.

And this is where the problem came in. Apparently no matter what you did, or said, or however much you were re-educated, if male you’d always be sexist and if white you’d always be racist.

“Wait, so you’re saying I’m a bad person, and that I can never be a not bad person?”

“Yes.”

“Uh, I don’t think I want to be part of your movement.”

Here’s the thing, folks, if your religion (and ideology is religion without the appeal to the supernatural) insists people are bad, it has to give them a way out. Even Catholics, obsessed with the original sin, allow that it is possible for humans to become good and wind up in Heaven. Evanglicals, with their “born again” shtick, offer forgiveness for anything.

First you make people feel bad, then you offer a way for them to feel good about themselves. Many will jump thru quite a few flaming hoops to “not be a bad person” and “be a good person.”

Identity politics didn’t offer that. You were bad. You would always be bad. There was no salvation, no good deeds, thoughts or words cold ever truly cleanse of you of your sexism or racism or whatever. (-Isms expanded over the years, till everything had an -ism.)

Identity politics did have its victories, for sure, as with Catholic guilt, people will strive even against the impossible. “Can I be a male feminist, please?” “I’m an ally, right, not one of the bad ones?”

But it also alienated a lot of people with its message of “you’re bad and you’ll always be bad.” The explosion of -isms, of various disadvantaged groups which, as epistemological given, could never really understand each other created a flock of interest groups, some small, some medium sized and all of them undercutting the mass solidarity required to pursue shared interests. (Like not letting the rich impoverish us all.)

Mass political movements are about solidarity, shared interests and an agreement not to make separate peace. I’m 57 and male, but I still care passionately about abortion rights, even though it’s an issue which is unlikely to ever effect me personally. I’ve defended trans people, even though I’m not trans, because I feel they should have the right to bodily autonomy and that they’re being picked on because they’re weak and an easy wedge to use against the larger LGBTQ movement. I’m happy for China that they lifted a billion people out of poverty, even though I’m not Chinese and it’s probably going to fuck me over personally as a Canadian. (That’s mostly the fault of US and Canadian politicians, not Chinese, so I don’t blame the Chinese.)

Identity politics was political malpractice on an epic scale. “Don’t break solidarity” is the first and last rule of mass politics, especially any sort of real populism which seeks to make the weak strong by forming them into a mass capable of demanding their interests be met, or else.

This is the reverse of the rule of the powerful. “Keep the masses divided and fighting themselves, so they can’t fight us.”

Anyone who destroys solidarity is working for the masters, not for the people, whatever they personally believe.

We’ve spent 50 years destroying the political basis of New Deal prosperity. It’s dead, Jim, with about a thousand stab wounds. Identity politics pressed a lot of those daggers home.

Let’s hope we can find something better, a way that unites us and takes care of all of us (well, except for the oligarchs). The world’s looking mighty dark in the West these days, and if we don’t pull together, most of us are assuredly going to hang separately

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The West Cannot Win A Trade War Against China

By Ian Welsh

On October 13, 2025

Comments

So, the Dutch seized a Chinese owned semiconductor company:

The Dutch government seizes control over Nexperia, one of Europe’s biggest chipmaker, owned by China.

Nexperia’s Chinese operations pose a “threat to the continuity and safeguarding on Dutch and European soil of crucial technological knowledge and capabilities.” – 🇳🇱 Gov. pic.twitter.com/0PXmFIVvKp

— NXT EU (@NXT4EU) October 13, 2025

Mistake. Big mistake. And the Dutch will pay for it.

This is a clear escalation in the US/China trade war (the EU are on a leash, they have no independent trade policy.)

Here’s what I want everyone to understand. The Chinese make everything that matters. Not the end products, but the parts. They make the parts required for almost every industry to operate. For decades I inveigled against international trade logistics and the idea that “it doesn’t matter where something is made.”

China spent the last 9 years, since Trump kicked off the trade war era in 2016 with his absolutely moronic Huawei and chip bans, making sure that their supply chains are domestic or in completely trusted allies. (Vietnam is not going to start a trade war with China.) They make everything they need for most of their industries, with only a few exceptions, like commercial jet engines. (They’re working on that, but two or three years out.)

It used to be, for example, that they bought almost all their helium from America. They fixed that, and now make it domestically. This has been systematic. The Chinese looked at their weaknesses in a trade war and fixed almost all of them.

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America did little of significance, though Biden did start a small amount of rare earth and magnet industry. US industries almost all need parts or materials they can only get from China.

If China decides to seriously go to trade war, Western economies will collapse. They will have to shutter most factories, you won’t be able to get parts for household appliances, cars, planes, air conditioners, drying machines. Practically anything. And the West has given away so much basic industry that we’d be rebuilding almost from zero, in many cases. Even the expertise is gone in many industries, or those who have it are in their sixties or older.

If we fight a trade war with China we will be horrifically hurt.

China doesn’t want a trade war, because it will hurt them too. They still sell a lot to the West. But they will survive it far better than we will.

Stop being morons, and make trade-peace.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 12, 2025

By Tony Wikrent

On October 12, 2025

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by Tony Wikrent

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

Trump Stuns By Saying ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked Directly NBC’s Kristen Welker ‘Don’t You Need to Uphold the Constitution?’

Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [mediaite.com]

What is Stephen Miller trying to accomplish in Portland and Chicago?

Dan Froomkin, October 7, 2025 [presswatchers.org]

…as we have all learned over the last several months, Stephen Milller is Trump’s operational lead – if not his puppeteer. Miller, the white nationalist who is Trump’s deputy chief of staff in charge of increasingly everything, is the one who makes things happen in Trump’s White House.

Unlike Trump, Miller is not stupid, nor does he suffer from dementia. He knows full well that what Trump is saying is not true. (He may well be the one encouraging Trump’s demented fantasies.)

So we know the answer for him is No. 3: He’s knowingly, intentionally lying.

And given what we know about him, from his own words, it’s not hard to figure out why: He wants a national cleansing.

He wants MAGA and the state to wipe out the opposition. He wants, in short, a civil war. And he thinks he can start one in Portland and Chicago.

“The issue before [u]s now is very simple and clear,” he tweeted on Saturday. “There is a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country. It is well organized and funded. And it is shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general. The only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks.” ….

New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall (with whom I have had my differences) asked several experts about Trump and Miller’s intentions. The answers, published this morning, were revelatory.

“If Trump, Miller & Co. are not hoping to provoke violence, they sure act as if they are,” Sean Wilentz, a professor of history at Princeton, wrote in an email to Edsall. “It’s not simply about provoking violence, though, but inflicting it, as ICE has been doing all along. The spiral of violence usually begins with official violence.”

Barbara Walter, a political scientist at the University of California-San Diego and the author of “How Civil Wars Start, explained:

”The quickest way to piss people off is to send soldiers into their neighborhoods especially when there’s no reason for them to be there. It’s inherently provocative, and Trump and his team understand this. Research by the political scientist Robert Pape shows that the single most powerful predictor of suicide terrorism is the presence of foreign troops on local soil. People hate, hate, hate that. They hate the humiliation, the powerlessness, the feeling of being occupied.

“Once citizens begin to view their own government’s security forces as an occupying army, violence becomes inevitable. Trump’s team knows this. In fact, that’s the point. They are not trying to restore order; they’re trying to trigger the very unrest that would justify further crackdowns. In the end, violence serves their ultimate end: They want to create the illusion of disorder so they can tighten control and stay in power indefinitely.” ….

Sinister, Malevolent, Venomous: Stephen Miller Is Like No Other White House Aide in Modern US History

John Harwood, Oct 09, 2025 [Zeteo]

Over four decades as a journalist, I’ve covered seven presidents, 20 Congresses, and thousands of staffers. I’ve never encountered one as sinister as Stephen Miller.

I see it in the darkness of his eyes, the venom of his words, the malevolence of his affect. And also by the deliberate brutality of his campaign from the White House to deport immigrants and crush dissenters….

The Dilemma: Do or Do Not — In the mind of our Stephen Millers, the time may be now

Thomas Neuburger, Oct 08, 2025 [God’s Spies]

The Tiny Dictate to the Large

By Sean Paul Kelley

On October 12, 2025

Comments

After reading this article at @RStatecraft by @connor_echols I am more convinced than ever that admitting the Baltic States into NATO was the biggest mistake NATO ever made: three miniscule states with three tiny militaries dominate policy yet contribute nothing but acrimony and accusations towards Russia.

Just read the stridency of their claims towards Russia. Former Latvian PM: “Putin acts the way he acts, and the only options for the West are either to submit or to resist.” Or the present Estonia FM: “Russia’s war against Ukraine is driven by one thing and one thing only: its refusal to accept the Soviet Union’s collapse and its unrelenting imperialist ambitions.”

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Look, I get the Baltics are paranoid about chimerical Russian irredentism towards the three republics. NATO can’t and shouldn’t allow alliance policy to be dictated by its three smallest members, who are tiny, paranoid and are lead by some critically undereducated fools, like Kaja Kallas, who said, “Chinese are very good at technology but they are not that good in social sciences . . . . The Russians… are not good at technology at all, but super good in social sciences.”

I’ll let that one go without comment. The bottom line is tiny states are dictating the policy of huge institutions and nations, just take a look at how the Israeli tail wags the American dog.

We’re supposed to make peace with enemies, folks, not friends.

Dialogue is essential more than ever. Not paranoia.

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Is Trump Going To Purge Democrats, Seize Power and Rewrite the Constitution?

By Ian Welsh

On October 12, 2025

Comments

What can I say, it’s just the perfect Trump picture.

It’s for sure that there are those with great influence on him who want him to. Thomas Neuburger has the quotes, starting with Stephen Miller:

[This is] Legal insurrection. The President is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, not an Oregon judge. Portland and Oregon law enforcement, at the direction of local leaders, have refused to aid ICE officers facing relentless terrorist assault and threats to life. (There are more local law enforcement officers in Oregon than there are guns and badges in the FBI nationwide). This is an organized terrorist attack on the federal government and its officers, and the deployment of troops is an absolute necessity to defend our personnel, our laws, our government, public order and the Republic itself.

“Legal insurrection … an organized terrorist attack on the federal government”. There are laws against that. Another example, Miller to Hannity:

The Democrat party … is an entity devoted exclusively to the defense of hardened criminals, gangbangers, and illegal alien killers and terrorists. The Democrat party is not a political party. It is a domestic, extremist organization.

Noem and Hegseth agree (see here and here) and seem to be willing, as commanders of government forces, to fight by his side. Trump also agrees:

[T]hey’re throwing bricks at full force into the window and into the car. It looks like it’s a war zone. And I said, never let that happen again. From now on if that ever happens, and I say it here, you get out of that car and you can do whatever the hell you want to do …

Last month, I signed an executive order to provide training for a quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances. This is going to be a big thing for the people in this room [the Pentagon’s generals] because it’s the enemy from within and we have to handle it before it gets out of control.

So, Thomas thinks this might be the start of a new civil war, or at least that’s what Miller wants and Trump may agree. (I think Trump is too fickle to be sure. But by all accounts Miller is the consummate Trump-whisperer.)

But what I see happening is something else. Just declare the Democratic party a terrorist organization and add in RICO penalties. Send law enforcement after them. Some may not be willing to, but ICE will do the job if no one else does, and other cops or military won’t fire on them, they’ll get the pols. Then put them in an ICE controlled prison. If really smart, set up an administrative court with executive appointed judges to try them, and either have the Supremes ratify it, or if that’s too far even for them (unlikely, but possible), ignore them.

Then, with full control of all legislatures, call a Constitutional referendum and change any and all amendments and the Constitution as Trump (or the smart lads who really do the work, like the 2025 crowd) desire, essentially changing America’s form of government permanently.

Trump’s not smart enough for this, but Miller and various backers are, he’s got a Cabinet full of yes-men and women to back him, he’s purging the military and the three letter agencies of those who might try to stop him, and there’s no particular reason to think it might not work. There’d have to be a massive uprising, or enough soldiers and various types of police who resist to stop him.

If there are, it’s civil war. If there aren’t, well, it may be a low grade civil war anyway, or he may just get it thru. Hard to see most Democrats actually fighting back effectively, or fighting back at all.

Not saying this will happen. I don’t think they have the guts for it, and Trump is fickle. But there’s a large faction with a lot of influence who want it to happen, and they’re working hard to make it happen.

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