Have We Surrendered To Collapse?

[TRANSCRIPT and Screenshots from URL: hps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G96PUbxxR2w By: Our

Changing Planet]

The world is descending deeper and deeper into climate chaos. As res rage and storms churn,

we’re about to blow past 1.5°C of warming, which sciensts and global leaders cite as the rst point of

no return for the planet. Past that mark irreparable catastrophes might ignite like a row of dominoes.

And it seems as if we are spinning our wheels on climate acon. It's not just 1.5°C, under current

fossil fascists like Trump, the illusory cons of carbon capture, all the way to the pernicious ideology

of overshoot. Today, we examine how the world surrendered to climate collapse.

Towards Collapse and the Rise of Fossil Fascism The damage of our current 1.3°C of global warming

Collapse and the Rise of Fascism has already been catastrophic. Wildres raged through Los Angeles

in early 2025 killing 29 and forcing over 200,000 people from their homes. Tropical cyclone Daniel

decimated Libya in 2023 killing almost 6,000 and with over 8,000 missing. Generaonal oods in

Pakistan, Spain, and the US have decimated towns and livelihoods, while drought in Somalia, Kenya,

and Ethiopia forces millions on the move. And as we burn more and more fossil fuels, these

catastrophes will only become more numerous and devastang. This makes the task ahead of us clear.

To avoid even more death and planetary destrucon we need to cut emissions to zero, which

dismantling of the fossil fuel industry is nowhere in sight. Indeed, the world, especially the imperial

core, seems to be doing the exact opposite. Fossil fuel companies are locking in infrastructure that

won’t be exhausted unl as late as 2090. In 2022 alone, 477 gas pipelines, 432 new coal mines, and

coal plants were slated for or under construcon. These assets, this xed capital, mean potenally

trillions of dollars in prot for fossil capitalists or, if climate acon is taken seriously, trillions in losses.

As this review of carbon lock-in explains, the xed capital of the fossil fuel empire represents “the

largest network of infrastructure ever built, reecng tens of trillions of dollars of assets and two

centuries of technological evoluon.” But, to reap maximum prots from this massive network of

infrastructure, fossil capital must ensure its connued survival. They must relentlessly guard and

and climate deniers to head the Department of the Interior and Energy. Cut down regulaons for fossil

fuels, and has hacked at renewable and electricaon subsidies. Essenally, while he scapegoats

immigrants and people of color for America’s problems, he’s leng fossil capital set re to the planet.

And we’re seeing this outside the US with the rise of Germany’s far-right party AFD and Sweden’s far-

right party.

Trump and his fossil fascist counterparts across the globe mark a new low in the descent into climate

chaos and the consolidaon of power in the hands of fossil capitalists. But the problem is that the

current capitalist alternave to fossil fascism has also worked hand in hand to facilitate business as

usual. Perhaps in a far less obvious way, liberal capitalist gureheads like Biden or Macron have

spearheaded a response to global warming that has meant decades of inacon and the connued

But as we will soon see, they are just paying lip service to acon while acquiescing to business as

usual– to the relentless drive of fossil capitalism. The Biden administraon, for example, oversaw a

massive expansion of oil drilling on public lands– a fossil fuel build-out that outpaced even Trump’s

rst presidenal term. During his presidency, Biden expedited pipeline construcon and facilitated

record US oil producon, and as a result under his administraon, the US retook its place as the global

leading exporter of liquied natural gas. In short, Biden, while championing his administraon’s

environmental purity, was avoiding confronng and indeed aiding fossil capitalists. We even saw this

in Germany as its Green Party approved the destrucon of the hamlet of Luzerath to expand a lignite

coal mine, and in 2022, the Green Party’s economy minister was elated aer securing a 15-year liquid

natural gas deal with Qatar, explaining “Fieen years is great… I wouldn’t have anything against 20-

supposed to be overseeing the renewable energy transion they’ve claimed so many mes is on the

horizon? The key piece to this contradicon, this doublethink, this failure of the Paris Agreement, the

failure to contain global heang to 1.5°C, is the mythical promise of overshoot. An insidious tool of

capitalist climate governments that allows world leaders to set goals and claim climate acon, while

actually acquiessing to business-as-usual. But what is overshoot? The co-author of the book

Overshoot, Andreas Malm, explains in an interview with the BreakDown, [“the idea of overshoot is

basically that you can set a limit to global warming and uh you can respect that limit by exceeding it

and then returning to it”]. Essenally overshoot claims that the world can hurtle past 1.5°C of

warming, hit some determined peak of warming, and then in the future, when technologies are more

developed and cheaper, use carbon capture to drawdown emissions from the atmosphere bringing

in Overshoot, out of the 578 scenarios included in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s

special report on 1.5°C of warming, 568 included some amount of overshoot. So, just 10 scenarios did

not rely on some future scaling up of carbon removal to save us from disaster.

commonly known as COP. A yearly climate summit where fossil fuel barons can claim that 1.5C is sll

the goal while they lock in more and more oil and gas infrastructure [play clip]. These conferences

have come to reveal the pageantry that is liberal capitalist climate acon. Lacking any sort of binding

legislaon or contracts, the yearly COPs have become theater for world leaders to claim that they are

“doing the work.” As Malm and Carton argue, “The annual summits became occasions for the

incantaon of opmism about a win-win low-carbon transion already underway…what maered is

not what anyone did, but what these leaders appeared to be doing, as seen from the audience oor.”

temperatures, our landscapes will be transformed, extreme weather events will become more

frequent and intense, and ecosystems will collapse. Not to menon, sea levels will rise, displacing

millions.

The core of the overshoot ideology is decidedly roen. Because faith in the success of overshoot

means a belief in the power of carbon capture. Whether through bioenergy carbon capture and

storage or through direct air capture, the champions of overshoot and indeed the majority of climate

acon pathways claim that we need a mass scale-up of carbon removal technologies. The problem is

that these technologies are untested and unproven at a mass scale. Bioenergy carbon capture and

storage, for example, would require land 1 to 2 mes the size of India, as it relies on growing carbon-

removing crops to burn and use for fuel, and as of 2023, there are only 6 plants in operaon.

Meanwhile, directly capturing carbon out of the air is essenally a pipedream. While there are a few

operaonal plants, they are just that, few. The current, very opmisc rollout of direct carbon capture

with carbon removal? And we would need a massive scale-up of carbon capture technology. This

paper esmates that up to 400 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide would need to be removed from the

atmosphere by 2100 to limit warming to 1.5 °C… “In emissions terms, that is equivalent to running the

US energy industry in reverse for around 80 years.” Not to menon, these carbon removal

technologies should be focused on eliminang and quickly abang any lingering sectors that we’re sll

trying to decarbonize– not occupied with the emissions of business as usual and comparably easy

sectors to switch to zero carbon. Essenally, overshoot leans heavily on the fabricaon of carbon

capture. It claims that we can emit all we want now because someday down the road we’ll have

carbon removal at a scale that can turn back the clock on the climate. But those promised

deployment. Once we breach 1.5C of warming and head towards 2C, we increase the likelihood of

four irreversible pping points. As Malm explains in an interview with BreakDown there's a cluster of

same with the potenal collapse of the Amazon into a Savannah and the melng of the permafrost’].

So, overshoong 1.5C would mean the permanent death of coral reefs, the Amazon turning into

savannah, the complete meltdown of the Greenland, and West Antarcc Ice sheet, and the melng of

boreal permafrost, all of which are irreversible. Put another way, no amount of carbon capture will be

able to reconstruct coral reefs or the ice sheets. Again Malm argues [“the true extremism here is not

some kind of techno x towards the end of the century if these pping points are crossed there's no

going back”]. In essence, overshoot condemns us to a world drascally dierent than the one we

know and love today.

Not only does overshoot draw us closer to catastrophic pping points, but it also assures the

connued death and destrucon wrought by supercharged droughts, storms, oods, and res. It

means more storms like Daniel that decimated Libya or even worse wildres than those that hit Los

Angeles earlier this year. And these disasters will hit poor and marginalized people the hardest.

Leading Malm and Carton to claim that overshoot is an act of paupercide. The ruling class is choosing

business as usual and the pursuit of prots now in exchange for the immiseraon of millions in the

coming future.

And given this destrucon, why on earth should we put our faith in future capitalist leaders to do the

heavy liing when the current ones are avoiding the task of confronng fossil fuels at all costs? I’ll say

it again, overshoot is an immense gamble. One that ensures the deaths of millions and a cascade of

pping points in the hopes that untested technologies will someday save us. Overshoot exploits future

generaons so that the current ruling class may prot, plain and simple. Malm and Carton compare it

and emission will grow, making it even more dicult for future generaons to scrape back below 1.5C

of warming. Overshoot is not the answer nor is fossil fascism. The only way to avoid pping points and

prevent climate change is to directly confront fossil capital. To end fossil fuel use altogether.

We Must Strand Assets

We Must Strand Assets: In 2022, leist leader Gustavo Petro ascended to the Colombian presidency

renewables, but also bans and dismantles fossil fuel producon. Because, the soluon to climate

change is quite simple, we must end the fossil fuel industry, which at its core means stranding billions,

if not trillions of dollars in fossil fuel pipelines, rigs, mines, tankers, and so much more. This is an

economy-shaering and revoluonary task in a world where so much is reliant on fossil fuels. Indeed,

this paper esmates that stranding fossil fuel assets to meet 1.8C or 1.5C would mean a $13-17 trillion

loss for oil and gas producers. The authors then write “This implies a strong incenve for fossil fuel

producers to connue resisng climate stabilizaon.” Which is why we’re seeing the combinaon of

overshoot ideology and fossil fascism burst into climate polics. And when you consider the fact that

the biggest banks are heavily invested in fossil fuel companies, while everything from plascs to food

complete overhaul of the economy– a mass stranding of assets on a scale we’ve never seen. According

to the founder of the Carbon Tracker Iniave, halng fossil fuel extracon and producon could

mean economy-wide losses four or ve mes larger than the 2008 nancial crisis. But the longer we

wait, the larger the crisis will be. Fossil capitalists will connue to pour more money into xed capital

in the form of oil wells, pipelines, and rigs the longer we keep delaying the confrontaon. As Marxist

philosopher Theodor Adorno writes “The more the system expands, the more it hardens into what it

has always been.” So, the long we wait, the more drasc the bale with fossil capital will be.

It makes sense, then, why liberal capitalist leaders are so reluctant to confront fossil capital and end

fossil fuel producon. A 100% renewable world without fossil fuel emissions requires challenging the

foundaons of our capitalist economy. It means an escape from prot and capitalism. Overshoot

allows leaders to ignore that challenge for now. The ruling class can conveniently kick the can down

the road to later generaons. But this confrontaon must happen eventually. Otherwise, the world

will connue to heat up and descend further into climate chaos. There are historical parallels to the

every day there’s a new execuve acon striking, ring EPA workers, or censoring climate science, and

then the next day the moon is overturned in the courts. Like in the case of the USDA restoring

climate change-related pages to their website aer a lawsuit.

violaon of federal law and a harmful censorship eort, while center-leaning outlets adopt a neutral,

really important to see what arcles on both sides of the polical spectrum are missing. Which is why

Subscripon, which includes a feature called my news bias. It's basically a dashboard that visualizes

your news diet over me. It shows your top news sources, whether you engage with dierent