Category: freedom

bookmark_borderFrom Climate Denial to Climate Authoritarianism: Fossil Fascism, Ecofascism, and Petro-Masculinity

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by Daniel Brouse

Introdution

🌎 FROM CLIMATE DENIAL TO CLIMATE AUTHORITARIANISM

Climate politics is evolving.

As outright denial becomes harder to sustain, the narrative can shift from:

“Climate change isn’t happening.”
→ “Fixing it will cost too much.”
→ “Blame the outsiders.”
→ “Protect our resources.”

This article examines four related concepts:

🔹 Climate denial & climate delay
🔹 Ecofascism
🔹 Fossil fascism
🔹 Petro-masculinity

These aren’t interchangeable terms. Each describes a different way climate change, energy, identity, economics, and political power can become intertwined.

The central question is increasingly not simply whether the climate is changing—but how society explains the change, assigns responsibility, and responds to it.

Who gets to survive climate change?

Read the full report:

Fossil Fascism, Ecofascism, and Petro-Masculinity

Climate misinformation is no longer limited to simply denying that the planet is warming. As climate change becomes increasingly difficult to dismiss, the political narratives surrounding it have evolved—from outright denial, to attacks on climate science, to opposition to climate policy, and, in more extreme forms, to narratives that blame immigrants and other marginalized populations for environmental decline.

These narratives are not identical. They operate through different mechanisms and identify different enemies. But they can overlap, creating a broader political strategy in which climate science, energy policy, immigration, race, gender, and national identity become interconnected.

The International Panel on the Information Environment’s 2025 assessment concluded that powerful actors—including corporations, governments, and political parties—intentionally spread inaccurate or misleading narratives about anthropogenic climate change, contributing to declining public trust and political inaction.

Four concepts help describe different parts of this landscape: climate denial and delay, ecofascism, fossil fascism, and petro-masculinity.

1. Climate Denial and Climate Delay

The most familiar form of climate misinformation is outright denial: rejecting the existence, severity, or human cause of climate change.

Political rhetoric has also attacked renewable energy through claims that wind turbines, solar power, or other clean-energy technologies are inherently dangerous or economically destructive. Some of these claims have been challenged by scientific evidence, while others involve legitimate questions about environmental impacts that require quantitative comparison rather than political rhetoric.

As public acceptance of climate change has increased, however, the political emphasis has increasingly shifted from denying the problem to opposing proposed solutions. Researchers commonly describe this strategy as climate delay.

The basic argument changes from:

“Climate change isn’t happening.”

to:

“Climate change may be happening, but addressing it will cause even greater economic or social damage.”

This framing can emphasize immediate costs—higher energy prices, job losses, grid reliability, restrictions on vehicles or industrial activity—while giving less attention to the long-term economic costs of continued warming.

Government-sponsored challenges to climate science

A prominent recent example was the U.S. Department of Energy’s July 2025 publication of A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate. The report was produced by five scientists assembled by Energy Secretary Chris Wright and argued, among other things, that the economic damages from CO₂-induced warming may be smaller than commonly believed and that aggressive mitigation policies could be more harmful than beneficial.

Carbon Brief subsequently conducted a detailed fact-check with climate scientists and reported more than 100 statements it characterized as false or misleading, including claims involving the economic consequences of climate change, extreme weather, and the interpretation of scientific literature.

The significance of such disputes is not simply whether individual claims are correct. It is also about which scientific evidence is selected, which uncertainties are emphasized, and how those choices are translated into public policy.

2. Ecofascism: Climate Change as a Scapegoating Narrative

Ecofascism represents a fundamentally different approach.

Rather than denying climate change, ecofascist narratives accept environmental collapse but attribute it to supposedly undesirable populations—particularly immigrants, refugees, or people in the Global South.

The “overpopulation” narrative

One recurring theme is the claim that environmental degradation is primarily caused by population growth among poorer or non-white populations.

This can obscure the enormous differences in consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions between populations. High-income populations have historically produced far greater per-capita emissions than the world’s poorest populations.

The political transformation occurs when legitimate concerns about ecological limits are converted into arguments about which people supposedly deserve access to resources.

Blaming immigrants for environmental degradation

A related narrative links immigration directly to pollution, resource depletion, or greenhouse-gas emissions.

This is sometimes described as eco-bordering: using environmental concerns to justify more restrictive borders.

The danger of this framing is not the discussion of the environmental consequences of population growth or migration itself. Those are legitimate subjects for analysis. The problem arises when immigrants are treated as the primary ecological threat while the much larger effects of industrial energy systems, fossil-fuel consumption, land use, and unequal resource consumption are displaced from the discussion.

“Lifeboat ethics”

At its most extreme, ecofascist thinking adopts a form of “lifeboat ethics”: the assumption that resources are becoming so scarce that societies must protect their own populations by excluding outsiders.

Climate disasters can intensify this mentality. As droughts, floods, heat waves, sea-level rise, and food insecurity increase displacement, refugees can be portrayed not as people affected by climate change but as the cause of further environmental decline.

In its most extreme forms, this worldview has intersected with white-supremacist and accelerationist movements. Researchers have documented cases in which perpetrators of mass violence invoked “Great Replacement” ideas alongside environmental or resource-based fears.

The resulting political question changes from:

How do we respond to climate change?

to:

Who gets to survive climate change?

That is a profound shift in the political meaning of climate change.

3. Fossil Fascism: Protecting Fossil Capital

Fossil fascism is related to, but distinct from, ecofascism.

The term has been used by scholars studying the intersection of fossil-fuel dependence, authoritarian politics, nationalism, racism, and opposition to climate action. Recent scholarship defines fossil fascism as a political, legal, and cultural system centered on an ultra-nationalist defense of fossil-fuel extraction while suppressing opposition to it.

In simplified terms:

Ecofascism accepts ecological crisis but blames the “outsider.”

Fossil fascism protects the fossil-fuel system and attacks those who seek to change it.

From “Blood and Soil” to “Black Fuel”

The historical roots of ecofascist thought are often connected to European romantic nationalism and the “Blood and Soil” tradition, in which land, national identity, and racial identity became intertwined.

Fossil fascism has a different historical lineage.

Political scientist Cara Daggett and other scholars have used the concept to examine the relationship between fossil fuels, authoritarian politics, nationalism, and racialized power. Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Collective further developed the concept in White Skin, Black Fuel, connecting fossil-fuel development to the history of European imperialism, colonialism, and racial hierarchy.

The underlying argument is that fossil fuels are not simply an energy source. They can also become embedded in political institutions, economic power, national identity, and cultural ideas about social hierarchy.

Two different responses to ecological crisis

FeatureFossil FascismEcofascism
Climate positionOften characterized by denial, obstruction, or minimizationAccepts the reality of ecological crisis
Primary targetClimate scientists, activists, regulators, and opponents of fossil extractionImmigrants, refugees, minorities, and supposedly “overpopulated” populations
Economic orientationDefends fossil-fuel production and associated economic powerOften hostile to aspects of industrial globalization
Environmental visionNature treated primarily as a resource for economic and national powerNature portrayed as a homeland requiring protection from perceived outsiders
Political expressionDeregulation, fossil-fuel expansion, political obstruction, and suppression of oppositionAnti-immigration politics, exclusionary nationalism, and, at its extreme, violent white-supremacist movements

These categories are analytical concepts, not descriptions that apply automatically to every politician, government, or person who opposes a particular climate policy.

4. The Dangerous Crossover

Although fossil fascism and ecofascism can be distinguished conceptually, they can also overlap.

A political movement can simultaneously defend fossil-fuel extraction, oppose climate regulation, promote authoritarian nationalism, and blame immigrants or minorities for environmental problems.

As climate impacts become increasingly difficult to deny, the political narrative can therefore move through several stages:

Denial → Delay → Scapegoating → Authoritarian Protection

The first stage says the problem does not exist.

The second says the problem exists but solving it is too expensive.

The third says the problem exists because of particular groups of people.

The fourth argues that extraordinary political power is necessary to protect the nation and its resources.

This does not mean every instance of climate skepticism follows this progression. Rather, it illustrates how different narratives can reinforce one another.

5. Petro-Masculinity: The Cultural Engine

A related concept helps explain the cultural dimension of fossil-fuel politics: petro-masculinity.

Political scientist Cara Daggett introduced the term in her 2018 paper Petro-Masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire. Daggett argues that fossil-fuel systems can become connected not only to economic interests but also to identity, masculinity, authority, and resistance to social change.

The central idea is that fossil fuels can represent more than energy.

They can represent:

  • independence
  • personal freedom
  • economic security
  • traditional gender roles
  • national power
  • resistance to perceived cultural change

Fossil-fuel identity

During the twentieth century, American masculinity became closely associated with breadwinning, industrial employment, suburban development, automobile ownership, and inexpensive gasoline.

As a result, challenges to fossil-fuel consumption can sometimes be interpreted culturally rather than simply economically.

An electric vehicle, public transportation, reduced meat consumption, or restrictions on fossil-fuel use can be portrayed not merely as policy choices but as attacks on traditional identity.

This helps explain the cultural significance of behaviors such as “rolling coal,” in which modified diesel vehicles deliberately produce large quantities of exhaust smoke. The behavior can function as a form of political or cultural expression rather than transportation alone.

Petro-masculinity and authoritarianism

Daggett’s framework connects fossil-fuel dependence with authoritarian desire, particularly where climate action is interpreted as a threat to established gender roles, economic autonomy, or social status.

The connection to fossil fascism can therefore be understood at two levels:

Petro-masculinity is the cultural and identity dimension.

Fossil fascism is the political and institutional dimension.

The former can help create emotional resistance to changes in the energy system; the latter describes political structures and movements that defend fossil-fuel power.

6. Putting the Concepts Together

The four concepts describe different mechanisms rather than four interchangeable labels.

Climate denial rejects or minimizes the underlying science.

Climate delay accepts some degree of climate change while arguing against effective or rapid responses.

Ecofascism accepts ecological crisis but redirects blame toward immigrants, minorities, or other supposedly threatening populations.

Fossil fascism describes the fusion of fossil-fuel interests with authoritarian, nationalist, racialized, and anti-climate-action politics.

Petro-masculinity describes one cultural mechanism through which fossil-fuel dependence can become tied to identity, masculinity, autonomy, and authoritarian desire.

The concepts can overlap, but they should not be treated as synonyms.

The broader pattern is important because climate change is not merely a scientific problem. It is also a struggle over how societies interpret risk, distribute responsibility, allocate resources, and respond to disruption.

The critical question is therefore not only whether people acknowledge that the climate is changing.

It is also how they explain why it is changing, who they hold responsible, and what solutions they believe are legitimate.

That is where climate science, economics, energy policy, nationalism, race, gender, and political power increasingly intersect.

bookmark_borderClimate Denialism, Obfuscation, Suppression and Normalization

Posted on by admin

By Daniel Brouse

Simplified Introduction

UK Climate Security: From Suppression to the Domino Effect

Climate change is increasingly moving from the category of environmental problem into the category of systemic risk.

A recently reported UK national-security assessment warned that climate and ecological disruption can cascade across borders—affecting food security, economies, migration, and political stability.

The problem is not simply the initial climate shock.

It is what happens afterward:

Climate shock → food disruption → economic shock → migration → political instability → conflict → reduced adaptive capacity

That is the Domino Effect. Denialism has become part of the feedback loop—delaying recognition, obstructing action, weakening resilience, and ultimately amplifying the consequences and accelerating the climate crisis.

The four stages of climate information failure are also important:

Denial — “The risk isn’t real.”
Obfuscation — “The risk isn’t clear.”
Suppression — “The evidence isn’t shown.”
Normalization — “The risk is real, but nothing fundamentally changes.”

When systemic risks are fragmented, delayed, or hidden from public discussion, society loses valuable time to prepare.

Climate risk is no longer just about what happens to the climate.
It is about what climate disruption does to everything connected to it.

🌎 Climate change → systemic risk → cascading consequences

Read the full report:

From Climate Shock to Food Disruption, Economic Shock, Migration, Political Instability, and Conflict

The climate crisis is increasingly being treated not simply as an environmental problem, but as a national-security and systemic-risk problem.

On September 23, 2026, UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband briefed foreign ministers from the European Union, Kenya, and other countries at the United Nations General Assembly on the findings of a UK intelligence assessment concerning climate change, nature loss, and national security. The assessment, prepared by the Joint Intelligence Committee, had reportedly been withheld from publication under the previous government and later released only in redacted form.

The assessment warned that the degradation of natural systems could cascade across borders through food shortages, migration, economic disruption, and conflict. Miliband specifically warned that the emerging El Niño could intensify these pressures, saying that climate shocks can “compound and cascade across borders,” threatening food and water security, displacing communities, putting pressure on markets, and damaging economies.

The significance of this assessment is not simply that climate change creates individual hazards. It is that climate shocks can propagate through interconnected physical, economic, and political systems.

That is the foundation of the Domino Effect:

Climate disruption
↓
Ecosystem degradation
↓
Crop losses and food disruption
↓
Food-price shocks
↓
Economic instability
↓
Migration
↓
Political instability
↓
Conflict
↓
Reduced adaptive capacity

The critical point is that none of these systems operates independently.

Denialism Depends on Fragmentation

Climate denialism often works by fragmenting a systemic problem into isolated questions.

Someone might argue:

“Climate change isn’t going to destroy my country.”

But that is not the relevant question.

A drought in one agricultural region can reduce global commodity supplies. A crop failure can increase prices in food-importing countries. Food-price inflation can destabilize governments. Migration can create political pressure far beyond the original climate impact. Conflict can disrupt energy, food, fertilizer, and commodity markets.

The original climate shock does not have to occur everywhere to produce consequences elsewhere.

That is precisely what the UK assessment is describing when it warns that climate and nature shocks can compound and cascade across borders.

The appropriate unit of analysis is therefore not simply the individual country—or even the individual climate hazard.

It is the coupled system.

The Domino Effect

The basic sequence is straightforward:

Drought
→ lower agricultural production
→ higher food prices
→ inflation
→ economic stress
→ political instability
→ migration
→ conflict
→ infrastructure destruction
→ reduced adaptive capacity
→ greater vulnerability to the next climate shock

Each stage can amplify the consequences of the previous one.

This creates a feedback loop between the physical Earth system and the socioeconomic system.

Climate disruption damages ecosystems and infrastructure. Economic disruption reduces the resources available for adaptation. Political instability makes coordinated adaptation more difficult. Conflict destroys infrastructure and institutional capacity. Those losses increase vulnerability to subsequent climate shocks.

The result is not simply:

climate change → damage

It can become:

climate shock → socioeconomic shock → reduced resilience → greater vulnerability → larger subsequent shock.

This is the essence of the Domino Effect.

The Weakness of the “Adaptation Only” Argument

If climate change were essentially linear and locally contained, adaptation could theoretically remain local:

warming → local impact → local adaptation

But a coupled system behaves differently:

warming
→ ecological disruption
→ economic disruption
→ geopolitical disruption
→ reduced adaptive capacity
→ greater vulnerability to subsequent climate disruption

At that point, adaptation is no longer simply a matter of building a seawall, installing air conditioning, changing crops, or relocating infrastructure.

The system’s capacity to adapt is itself being affected.

A country experiencing repeated crop failures, food inflation, infrastructure damage, capital losses, migration pressures, and political instability has fewer resources with which to prepare for the next shock.

Adaptation therefore has a socioeconomic limit.

Denial, Obfuscation, Suppression, and Normalization

Denialism does not always require an explicit rejection of climate science.

It can operate through several forms of information failure:

Denial:
“The risk isn’t real.”

Obfuscation:
“The evidence isn’t sufficiently important to discuss.”

Suppression:
“The evidence exists, but it should not receive public attention.”

Normalization:
“The evidence is real, but nothing fundamental needs to change.”

These mechanisms have different forms but can produce a similar result: society fails to recognize the systemic consequences of a known risk.

Climate denialism can therefore be understood broadly as systematic rhetorical, institutional, or informational behavior that prevents scientifically supported climate risks from being accurately recognized, communicated, or acted upon.

That definition shifts attention away from whether an individual literally believes climate change exists.

The more important question is whether society is capable of recognizing the consequences of climate change as an interconnected system.

The Irony of Climate Denialism

There is an important irony in the way climate risk is often framed.

Climate policy is frequently presented as a potential threat to:

  • economic growth
  • national sovereignty
  • energy security
  • food security
  • employment
  • military strength
  • financial stability

But the emerging national-security analysis increasingly identifies climate disruption itself as a threat to those same systems.

The causal relationship is therefore reversed.

The question is no longer simply:

“Can we afford climate action?”

It becomes:

“What happens to the economic, social, and security systems we are trying to protect if climate disruption continues to intensify?”

That is the central problem exposed by the Domino Effect.

Climate change is not merely an environmental externality.

It is becoming a systemic economic, social, and security risk.

From Climate Shock to Conflict

The most important feature of the Domino Effect is that the final outcome does not have to resemble the original cause.

A climate shock may begin as a drought.

The drought becomes a crop failure.

The crop failure becomes a food-price shock.

The food-price shock becomes inflation and economic instability.

Economic instability can contribute to migration and political unrest.

Political instability can increase the risk of conflict.

Conflict then destroys infrastructure, institutions, and productive capacity—reducing the ability of affected populations to adapt to the next climate shock.

The original climate event has therefore propagated through the socioeconomic system and returned as greater vulnerability to future climate disruption.

This is why climate risk cannot be assessed solely by examining temperature, precipitation, sea level, or any other individual physical variable.

The relevant question is also:

How does the shock propagate through the systems connected to it?

Denialism and Ecofascism

Denialism attempts to preserve existing systems by denying, minimizing, delaying, or obscuring the consequences of climate disruption.

A more extreme response is ecofascism: accepting environmental or ecological crisis while responding through authoritarian, exclusionary, or coercive ideas about who should receive resources, security, or protection.

The distinction matters because the two responses can appear opposite while sharing a failure to address the underlying systems problem.

Denial says, in effect:

The crisis is not serious enough to require fundamental change.

Ecofascist responses say, in effect:

The crisis is unavoidable, so survival must be allocated unequally.

Neither addresses the central systemic challenge: climate disruption affects interconnected populations through interconnected systems.

Conclusion

Climate change is increasingly moving from the category of environmental problem into the category of systemic risk.

A climate shock can become a food shock.

A food shock can become an economic shock.

An economic shock can contribute to migration and political instability.

Political instability can contribute to conflict.

Conflict can destroy infrastructure and institutions, reducing adaptive capacity and increasing vulnerability to the next climate shock.

Climate shock → food disruption → economic shock → migration → political instability → conflict → reduced adaptive capacity.

That is the Domino Effect. Denialism has become part of the feedback loop—delaying recognition, obstructing action, weakening resilience, and ultimately amplifying the consequences and accelerating the climate crisis.

The emerging national-security response is significant because governments are beginning to recognize that climate and nature loss can propagate through the systems on which economic and political stability depend. The UK government’s September 2026 statement explicitly described climate and nature crises as security risks and emphasized the need to prevent shocks from feeding through to food prices, supply chains, and security.

The challenge for climate policy is therefore larger than reducing emissions or adapting to individual hazards.

It is preserving the capacity of interconnected human systems to absorb shocks without cascading into systemic failure.

Denialism delays recognition of that problem.

Exclusionary responses attempt to decide who survives it.

The alternative is to recognize the interconnectedness of the Earth and socioeconomic systems—and build resilience before individual shocks become cascading crises.

bookmark_borderHow Is Climate Energy Hitting You? Sea Level vs. Private Property Rights

Posted on by admin

by Daniel Brouse

Simplified Introduction

How Is the Climate Energy Hitting You?
SoCal Coastal Armoring
Sea Level vs. Private Property Rights = Managed Retreat

🌊 Climate energy is hitting the coast.

When waves encounter a hard structure instead of dissipating their energy across a gradually sloping beach, some of that energy can be reflected back toward the ocean.

That can increase scour at the base of the structure and accelerate the loss of sand immediately in front of—and adjacent to—the armored shoreline.

A difficult feedback loop can develop:

Loss of sand → greater wave energy → erosion → emergency armoring → altered wave & sediment dynamics → further beach loss

The result is a fundamental conflict:

Protect individual properties — or preserve the beach as a public resource.

🌊 Climate Change Changes the Equation

This isn’t simply a dispute over seawalls.

It’s a preview of a much larger problem.

As sea levels rise, coastal storms and extreme-wave events interact with a progressively higher baseline ocean. More energy can reach vulnerable shorelines, while the loss of beaches and dunes removes natural buffers that once absorbed part of that energy.

The physical equation is changing.

🏖️ Managed Retreat

Managed retreat may ultimately become the long-term strategy for some coastal properties.

The fundamental physical reality is simple:

You can build a wall against the ocean.
You cannot build a wall against a changing climate.

The Beach Road conflict is therefore about much more than a temporary rock wall.

It is about what happens when accelerating climate change collides with private property rights, public resources, and the physical limits of coastal engineering.

The ocean doesn’t recognize property lines.

🌎 How Is the Climate Energy Hitting You?

Read the full report:

Sea Level vs. Private Property Rights

The Battle Over Coastal Armoring

The situation along Beach Road in Dana Point, California, illustrates an increasingly difficult collision between rising sea levels, intensifying coastal hazards, private property rights, and the public’s right to California’s beaches.

Powerful southern swells associated with Hurricane Marie, combined with an anticipated record El Niño season, have stripped away much of the protective sand buffer along the shoreline. Several multimillion-dollar beachfront homes have been severely damaged, with some collapsing directly into the Pacific Ocean.

At least 10 beachfront homes have been red-tagged, meaning they have been declared unsafe to inhabit, while another seven have been yellow-tagged, restricting their use. Facing the loss of their homes and investments, residents have taken matters into their own hands.

The Battle Over Coastal Armoring

To protect what remains of their properties, a group of homeowners pooled their own money, contributing between $50,000 and $120,000 per household, to construct a massive temporary rock barrier, or riprap wall, extending across 17 vulnerable properties.

The California Coastal Commission granted temporary emergency permits for the barrier. But the decision has opened a much larger legal, environmental, and property-rights debate.

The Homeowners’ Position

The homeowners argue that they have a constitutional right to protect their homes and private property from destruction.

Many of the affected properties were built in the 1950s, long before today’s coastal development regulations were established. Residents point out that they pay substantial property taxes and argue that government agencies have failed to provide promised or expected beach-sand replenishment and other protective measures.

From their perspective, they are being asked to absorb enormous private losses while being restricted from taking reasonable measures to protect property they legally own.

The Environmental and Regulatory Position

The Coastal Commission and coastal scientists emphasize that hard coastal armoring—including seawalls, rock revetments, and similar structures—can alter natural coastal processes and contribute to beach erosion.

When waves encounter a hard structure rather than dissipating their energy across a gradually sloping beach, wave energy can be reflected back toward the ocean. This can increase scour at the base of the structure and accelerate the loss of sand immediately in front of and adjacent to the armored shoreline.

The result can become a difficult feedback loop:

Loss of sand → greater wave energy at the shoreline → erosion → emergency armoring → altered wave and sediment dynamics → further beach loss.

That creates a fundamental conflict between protecting individual properties and preserving the beach as a public resource.

The 120-Day Problem

The emergency permits for the rock barrier are temporary, lasting only 120 days.

If the homeowners cannot obtain permanent authorization—which is highly restricted for certain coastal properties, particularly homes constructed after 1977—they could ultimately be required to remove the expensive barrier.

That creates an extraordinary dilemma: homeowners may spend hundreds of thousands of dollars attempting to save their properties, only to face the possibility that the protective structure must be dismantled just as the most damaging winter storms arrive.

State authorities are instead encouraging communities to consider longer-term adaptation strategies, including cobblestone berms, elevating structures, and, where necessary, managed retreat.

Climate Change Changes the Equation

This conflict is not simply a dispute over seawalls.

It is a preview of a much larger problem.

As sea levels rise and coastal storms and extreme-wave events interact with a progressively higher baseline ocean, the amount of energy reaching vulnerable shorelines can increase. The loss of beaches and dunes removes natural buffers that once absorbed part of that energy.

That means yesterday’s shoreline protections may not be adequate for tomorrow’s climate.

The fundamental problem is that private property rights operate within a physical system that does not recognize property boundaries. The ocean does not distinguish between private property, public beaches, or political jurisdictions.

As climate change accelerates, coastal communities will increasingly have to confront the difficult question of where—and how—private property can realistically be protected.

Managed Retreat

Managed retreat may ultimately become the only sustainable long-term strategy for coastal properties.

A fundamental physical reality:

You can build a wall against the ocean, but you cannot build a wall against a changing climate.

The Beach Road conflict is therefore about much more than a temporary rock wall.

It is about what happens when accelerating climate change collides with private property rights, public resources, and the physical limits of coastal engineering.

bookmark_borderInflation’s Fiscal Engine: How Government Spending Keeps Price Pressures Alive

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How Fiscal Policy Is Becoming a Driving Force of Inflation

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its August 2026 Producer Price Index (PPI) report on September 10, revealing a renewed acceleration in wholesale prices. According to the report, headline PPI rose 0.4 percent month over month and climbed 5.4 percent over the year, with a significant increase in final-demand goods helping drive the advance. The PPI measures prices received by domestic producers and therefore provides an early look at price pressures moving through the production and distribution system.

The important question is not simply why did producer prices rise this month? It is a larger question:

Why does inflation continue to find fuel in an economy that has already experienced years of elevated prices?

One increasingly important answer is fiscal policy.

Inflation is not produced by a single variable. Energy prices, tariffs, supply disruptions, wages, housing costs, commodity prices, exchange rates, expectations, and monetary policy can all affect the price level. But fiscal policy determines another fundamental component of the inflation equation: how much purchasing power the government injects into the economy relative to the economy’s ability to supply goods and services.

When government spending persistently exceeds government revenues, the resulting deficit represents a substantial fiscal impulse. That impulse can support economic activity—and that is sometimes exactly what policymakers intend. But if demand is already strong, additional fiscal stimulus can also intensify competition for labor, materials, transportation, construction capacity, housing, and other scarce resources.

In other words:

Fiscal policy can become an inflation engine.

The Government Is Part of Aggregate Demand

It is easy to think of inflation as something caused primarily by consumers spending too much money.

But consumers are only one component of aggregate demand.

Businesses spend. Consumers spend. State and local governments spend. And the federal government spends.

The Federal Reserve defines aggregate demand as the combined demand for goods and services from households, businesses, and governments. Government purchases therefore enter the economy alongside private consumption and investment.

That matters because a government does not need to increase taxes to spend more money.

It can borrow.

When federal expenditures exceed federal revenues, the government finances the difference through borrowing. The resulting deficit does not automatically create inflation—particularly when the economy has substantial unused capacity. But persistent, large deficits can become inflationary when they add demand faster than the economy can expand its real supply of goods and services.

The distinction is crucial:

Deficit spending is not synonymous with inflation.

But under the right—or wrong—economic conditions, deficit spending can be an important source of inflationary pressure.

America’s Fiscal Imbalance Is Enormous

The scale of current federal deficits makes this more than an abstract theoretical issue.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated in August that the federal government had accumulated a $1.8 trillion deficit during the first ten months of fiscal year 2026. During that period, federal revenues increased by about 3 percent while outlays increased by about 5 percent. CBO subsequently estimated that the full-year 2026 deficit would reach approximately $2.1 trillion.

CBO’s longer-term projections similarly show deficits remaining historically large. Its February baseline projected a 2026 deficit of $1.9 trillion, equivalent to 5.8 percent of GDP, compared with a 50-year historical average deficit of 3.8 percent of GDP. Federal outlays were projected at 23.3 percent of GDP, substantially above their 50-year average of 21.2 percent.

That is a fiscal environment in which policymakers need to take seriously the possibility that government demand is contributing to persistent price pressure.

And there is another complication.

Fiscal Policy and Monetary Policy Can Pull in Opposite Directions

The Federal Reserve controls monetary policy. Congress and the Administration control fiscal policy.

These are different policy levers, but they interact.

The Federal Reserve explicitly notes that fiscal policy affects the economic outlook and that the Fed considers current and projected fiscal policy when determining the appropriate stance of monetary policy.

Consider the policy feedback:

Government spends more → aggregate demand increases → resource competition increases → prices rise → inflation persists → Federal Reserve faces greater pressure to maintain restrictive monetary policy.

This can create a peculiar policy conflict.

Fiscal policy may be pushing demand upward at the same time monetary policy is attempting to restrain demand.

The Fed can raise interest rates to cool borrowing, investment, housing, and consumption. But monetary policy cannot directly decide how much Congress spends or how much revenue the federal government collects.

Consequently, monetary policy can be forced to compensate for fiscal policy.

That is an important reason why blaming the Federal Reserve alone for inflation can miss half of the equation.

The Fiscal Multiplier Matters

Government spending does not necessarily have a one-for-one effect on economic activity.

Money spent by the government becomes income for someone else. That recipient spends some of it, creating income for another person or business, which can generate another round of spending.

This is the basic idea behind the fiscal multiplier.

When the economy has substantial unused capacity, that multiplier can increase real output without producing an equivalent increase in prices.

But when the economy is operating close to capacity, the same additional demand can produce a different result.

There may simply not be enough additional workers, factories, trucks, construction crews, housing, electricity, raw materials, or other productive resources available to satisfy the additional demand.

At that point, more nominal demand begins chasing a relatively constrained supply.

The result can be higher prices rather than proportionately higher real output.

That is the fiscal-inflation connection.

Deficits Can Also Keep Pressure on the Economy Longer

There is another reason persistent deficits matter.

A temporary fiscal expansion can be appropriate during a recession, emergency, war, financial crisis, or other period of severe economic weakness. The government can deliberately borrow and spend to prevent a collapse in demand.

The problem arises when emergency-style fiscal policy becomes structurally embedded after the emergency has passed.

If spending remains elevated while revenues remain insufficient to finance it, the government continues injecting fiscal demand into the economy.

The issue then becomes less about one year’s stimulus and more about the persistent fiscal stance.

That persistence matters for inflation expectations, interest rates, government borrowing costs, private investment, and the Federal Reserve’s policy response.

Government Spending Can Also Raise the Cost of Producing Things

Fiscal policy does not affect inflation only by stimulating demand.

Government policy can also affect the cost structure of the economy.

Government borrowing contributes to demand for credit. Large and persistent borrowing needs can put upward pressure on interest rates, particularly when private borrowers are competing for the same pool of financial resources.

Government spending can also increase demand for construction, engineering, defense production, transportation, technology, health care, energy, and other services.

When government becomes a very large buyer, private-sector buyers may have to compete for the same resources.

The result can be higher wages, higher input costs, higher financing costs, and higher prices.

In that sense, fiscal policy can influence both sides of the inflation equation:

More demand + constrained supply = greater price pressure.

The PPI Is an Important Warning Signal

This is why the August PPI deserves attention.

Producer prices are not consumer prices, and a single monthly PPI increase does not prove that fiscal policy caused the increase. Prices can move because of commodity markets, tariffs, energy shocks, supply disruptions, weather, transportation costs, exchange rates, or changes in margins.

But the PPI provides a useful window into the price pressures confronting businesses before those pressures are fully transmitted through the economy.

The July PPI data already showed that producer prices remained elevated: final-demand prices were up 4.7 percent over the year, while final-demand goods were up 6.5 percent and final-demand services were up 3.9 percent.

The August acceleration therefore raises a broader question about whether inflation is merely experiencing temporary disturbances—or whether the economy continues to contain structural forces capable of sustaining price increases.

Fiscal policy belongs prominently in that discussion.

Inflation Is a Policy Interaction, Not a Single-Agency Failure

It is tempting to divide economic policy into simple categories:

The Fed causes inflation.

Or:

Government spending causes inflation.

Or:

Tariffs cause inflation.

Or:

Corporations cause inflation.

Reality is considerably more complicated.

Inflation is an interaction among monetary policy, fiscal policy, supply, demand, expectations, financial conditions, international trade, energy markets, labor markets, and productivity.

But acknowledging complexity should not obscure responsibility.

If fiscal policy continually stimulates demand while monetary policy is attempting to suppress it, the two policies are working at cross-purposes.

And if the government repeatedly runs enormous deficits while the economy is operating near capacity, fiscal policy can become a persistent contributor to inflation rather than merely a temporary response to economic weakness.

The Fiscal Policy Question

The central economic question should therefore be expanded beyond:

“What is the Federal Reserve doing about inflation?”

It should also be:

“What is fiscal policy doing to inflation?”

That question is especially important when federal spending is growing faster than federal revenues and when deficits are measured in trillions of dollars.

The Federal Reserve can raise interest rates.

It can reduce them.

It can tighten.

It can ease.

But the Fed cannot balance the federal budget.

Congress and the Administration determine the government’s spending and taxation policies. As the Federal Reserve itself explains, fiscal policy is fundamentally the government’s tax-and-spending policy, while monetary policy is conducted independently by the central bank.

That division of responsibility matters.

If fiscal policy continually pushes aggregate demand upward, monetary policy may have to work harder to restrain it.

And that creates a potentially damaging cycle:

Large deficits → stronger aggregate demand → persistent inflation → tighter monetary policy → higher borrowing costs → greater federal interest expense → larger deficits.

The last step is particularly troubling because rising interest costs can themselves enlarge future deficits.

Inflation’s Fiscal Feedback Loop

This creates the possibility of a fiscal feedback loop:

Deficits increase → debt increases → interest expense increases → federal spending increases → deficits increase further.

CBO’s projections already show the importance of this mechanism. In its 2026 baseline, net federal interest costs were projected at roughly $1 trillion, or 3.3 percent of GDP. CBO projected that interest costs would continue rising as a share of the economy over the following decade.

That does not mean interest expense itself automatically creates consumer-price inflation.

It means that debt service becomes another claim on federal resources and another component of federal spending that must ultimately be financed through taxes, borrowing, or reductions elsewhere.

The larger the debt burden becomes, the less fiscal flexibility policymakers have when the next recession, financial crisis, war, pandemic, or climate disaster arrives.

The Bottom Line

The August 2026 PPI report is more than another monthly inflation statistic.

It is a reminder that inflationary pressure remains embedded in the U.S. economy.

Some of that pressure comes from supply-side forces. Some comes from international events. Some comes from tariffs, energy markets, labor costs, and other factors.

But fiscal policy should not be treated as an innocent bystander.

Government spending is demand.

Deficits finance spending that exceeds current revenues.

Persistent deficits can sustain aggregate demand even when inflation is already elevated.

And when that fiscal expansion collides with constrained productive capacity, the result can be continued upward pressure on prices.

The United States therefore faces a policy problem that cannot be solved by monetary policy alone.

If policymakers want durable price stability, they eventually have to address not only the price of money, but also the size and composition of government spending, taxation, borrowing, and deficits.

The inflation debate should consequently move beyond the familiar question of whether the Federal Reserve is tightening enough.

The harder question is:

Is fiscal policy itself helping to keep the inflation fire burning?

In 2026, the evidence says that question deserves considerably more attention.

bookmark_borderWhere’s the Beef? Tariffs, Inflation, and the Climate Cost of Meat

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On August 21, 2026, President Donald Trump announced a temporary 90-day waiver of out-of-quota tariffs on imported ground beef, allowing up to 300,000 metric tons to enter the U.S. market tariff-free in an effort to reduce grocery prices. The president said he had secured a commitment that the imported meat would be sold at 25% below current market prices, providing relief from persistent food inflation.

The move is intended to address a dramatic increase in the cost of ground beef, which has risen roughly 57% over the past five years. But the policy immediately drew backlash from domestic cattle ranchers and rural-state Republicans, including Senator Tim Sheehy, who warned that flooding the market with cheaper foreign beef could undermine American cattle producers.

There is another problem that may be even more important to consumers: much of the imported beef affected by the policy is frozen beef destined for commercial and restaurant use, rather than the fresh ground beef consumers typically purchase at the grocery store. That means the immediate impact on household grocery bills may be considerably smaller than the headline numbers suggest.

More importantly, the tariff waiver does little to address the underlying forces driving higher beef prices.

Climate Change Is Becoming an Inflation Problem

The cattle industry is increasingly exposed to the economic consequences of climate extremes. Drought, extreme heat, wildfires, water scarcity, degraded pasture, and volatile feed supplies all increase the cost of raising cattle. When these pressures become severe enough, ranchers may be forced to reduce their herds, further constraining beef supplies and pushing prices higher.

This creates a feedback loop. Climate extremes increase production costs and reduce the supply of cattle. Reduced supply raises beef prices. Higher prices then encourage producers to rebuild their herds, but rebuilding takes years. Another drought or extreme-weather event during that process can once again force herd reductions.

This is why simply importing cheaper beef may treat the symptom without addressing the disease.

The larger economic issue is what I call climate inflation: the gradual—and increasingly rapid—incorporation of climate-related costs into the prices of food, energy, insurance, housing, transportation, and other necessities.

For the past several years, inflation discussions have focused primarily on monetary policy, supply chains, labor costs, tariffs, and government spending. Those factors certainly matter. But climate-driven disruptions are becoming an increasingly important component of the cost structure of the economy.

And unlike a temporary tariff or a change in interest rates, climate pressures can compound over time.

The Beef Problem Is Bigger Than Beef

A 90-day tariff waiver may provide some temporary relief. It may even benefit restaurants and commercial food purchasers if imported frozen beef reaches the market at substantially lower prices.

But it does not create more water, restore drought-stricken grazing land, prevent wildfires, reduce extreme heat, or rebuild cattle herds that have been lost to climate-driven conditions.

Nor does it address the increasingly expensive insurance, infrastructure, agricultural, and supply-chain consequences of a changing climate.

If climate extremes continue to intensify, we should expect more of these conflicts. Policymakers will repeatedly face the same choice: temporarily suppress prices by opening markets to cheaper imports, or address the underlying conditions that are making domestic production increasingly expensive.

Where’s the beef?

It may increasingly be somewhere else.

And that is the larger warning. Climate change is no longer simply an environmental issue. It is becoming an economic variable—and climate inflation may prove to be one of the most consequential economic developments of the next decade.

bookmark_borderThe Future of Energy Is Not Static

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By Daniel Brouse
Economist & Climatologist
Membrane Domain USA
August 10, 2026

I’m not certain what the future holds. I don’t think anyone can be.

But I’m also not convinced that the future of fossil fuels can be projected simply by looking at today’s production levels and assuming they will continue indefinitely.

There is a very real possibility that economics, energy security, technological substitution, and even economic disruption could phase out fossil fuels much faster than most people expect.

In fact, some of the data already point in that direction.

The Energy Transition Is Already Moving

The International Energy Agency estimates that global renewable capacity will increase by roughly 4,600 GW between 2025 and 2030—an extraordinary expansion roughly equivalent to the combined current power capacity of China, the European Union, and Japan.

Solar PV is expected to account for almost 80% of that expansion.

Even more significant is what this means for the growth of electricity demand. Renewables are expected to provide more than 90% of the increase in global electricity generation through 2030.

This is not simply a distant prediction about some hypothetical future energy system. It represents an enormous investment already underway.

And the transition is happening particularly rapidly in China.

China is now responsible for nearly 60% of global renewable-capacity growth. In 2025 alone, it added roughly 314 GW of solar capacity and is on track to reach its 2035 wind-and-solar target approximately five years early.

Whatever one’s views on climate policy, these numbers are difficult to dismiss.

The global energy system is changing.

And it is changing rapidly.

This Isn’t Just About Climate Policy

There is another factor that deserves considerably more attention: energy security.

The transition away from fossil fuels is not being driven exclusively by environmental concerns. Increasingly, it is also becoming an economic and strategic imperative.

The disruption of oil and gas flows through critical transportation routes such as the Strait of Hormuz demonstrates the vulnerability inherent in an energy system dependent upon globally traded fossil fuels.

For Europe and Asia in particular, domestic renewable generation, energy storage, electrification, and efficiency increasingly represent something more than climate policy.

They are energy-security assets.

A solar panel or wind turbine doesn’t need to be transported through a geopolitical chokepoint every time it generates electricity. Once installed, domestic renewable resources can reduce exposure to international fuel-price shocks, supply disruptions, and geopolitical conflicts.

That changes the economic calculation.

And it is one reason I believe the energy transition may prove considerably more nonlinear than many conventional forecasts assume.

The Future May Be Nonlinear

I agree that we shouldn’t pretend we know exactly what the future holds.

My point is almost the opposite.

The future may be much more nonlinear than either of us can confidently predict.

Technologies don’t necessarily replace one another gradually. Once a technology becomes sufficiently cheap, reliable, scalable, and convenient, adoption can accelerate rapidly.

The same thing can happen with infrastructure.

Battery storage becomes cheaper. Electric vehicles become more capable. Solar becomes less expensive. Transmission improves. Heat pumps become more efficient. Businesses discover that electrification can reduce operating costs. Consumers begin choosing technologies that save them money.

Each development can reinforce the others.

And once enough pieces of the system change, the economics of the entire energy system can change with them.

This is why simply extrapolating today’s fossil-fuel production into the future can be misleading.

Could “Drill, Baby, Drill” Backfire?

There is an irony here.

Policies intended to expand U.S. fossil-fuel production could potentially accelerate the transition they are intended to slow if they contribute to greater volatility, geopolitical exposure, or investment in alternatives.

Consider what could happen during a serious economic downturn.

A major recession could cause substantial demand destruction. Businesses would consume less energy. Consumers would drive less and purchase fewer goods. Industrial production would decline.

Fossil-fuel consumption could fall sharply.

That would potentially undermine the very industry that policies designed around expanding fossil-fuel production are intended to strengthen.

There is no guarantee this will happen. But that’s precisely the point.

The future contains feedback loops.

Economic conditions affect energy demand. Energy prices affect technology adoption. Technology affects investment. Investment affects infrastructure. Infrastructure affects energy prices and security. Geopolitical events affect all of them.

The result is a system capable of changing much faster than a simple linear projection would suggest.

This Isn’t an All-or-Nothing Choice

I’m not trying to create another online debate.

I’m simply pointing out that the data show a transition already underway—and its speed is anything but static.

And perhaps the most important point is that this isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition.

Every increment of transition matters.

Every electric vehicle displaces some gasoline consumption. Every solar panel replaces some electricity that otherwise might have come from fossil fuels. Every efficiency improvement reduces energy demand. Every battery installation makes intermittent renewable energy more useful. Every business that electrifies reduces some exposure to fossil-fuel prices.

The more we transition, the more reasonable—and manageable—the future becomes.

We don’t need to transform the entire energy system overnight.

We need to keep moving.

Technology Is Changing More Than Energy

There is another reason I remain optimistic.

Ironically, AI and rapidly advancing technology are accelerating climate science at a pace that may eventually rival the acceleration of climate change itself.

Research that once took years can increasingly be explored in hours.

Large datasets can be analyzed in ways that weren’t previously practical. Relationships between variables can be identified more quickly. Models can be tested, refined, and compared at extraordinary speed.

I’ve been able to identify hundreds of interacting feedbacks and relationships that weren’t even being seriously considered just a few years ago.

That doesn’t mean every hypothesis will be correct.

It means our ability to investigate complex systems is expanding extraordinarily quickly.

And that gives me reason for optimism.

Humans have an extraordinary capacity to adapt, innovate, and solve difficult problems—especially when we are sufficiently motivated to do so.

The future is not predetermined.

What we do now can still make an enormous difference in what comes next.

The 80% Question

A final thought concerns something that initially struck me as particularly concerning.

Roughly 20% of Americans appear to be actively fighting the energy transition.

At first, I found that almost dumbfounding. I expected the number to be closer to less than 2%.

But there is another way to look at it.

That still leaves roughly 80% of the population.

And if that 80% chooses to act—through voting, investment, purchasing decisions, business decisions, and simply choosing where to spend their dollars—the market can move remarkably quickly.

We don’t necessarily have to fight the remaining 20%.

We can vote with our dollars.

Markets respond to demand.

If enough consumers and businesses choose alternatives, capital will follow. Manufacturers will respond. Infrastructure will change. Companies will adapt.

And eventually, the fossil-fuel industry will have to adapt as well—or gradually lose market share.

That is the power of an energy transition driven not only by government policy, but by millions of individual economic decisions.

My Choice. Your Choice. Our Future.

I went net-zero years ago.

If I can do it, anybody can.

I don’t claim that my individual decision changed the world.

But my choice made the future a little better than it otherwise would have been.

And so can yours.

The future of energy isn’t predetermined by today’s production numbers, today’s political battles, or today’s assumptions.

It will be shaped by billions of decisions made by consumers, businesses, investors, engineers, scientists, and governments.

Some of those decisions will be political.

Many will be economic.

Some will be technological.

And countless others will be personal.

That’s why I don’t think the question is whether we can predict exactly what the energy system will look like in 10, 20, or 30 years.

We can’t.

The more important question is:

What direction are we moving—and how much can our choices influence where we ultimately arrive?

The transition is already underway.

Its speed is accelerating.

And the future is still ours to shape.

bookmark_borderScience Is Science: Confronting Denialism and Ecofascism

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About Denialism and Ecofascism: Science Is Science

The Observation
Glad to know you’re watching out! At the same time, this divisiveness—when we desperately need everyone to pull together because it’s a CRISIS, right?—makes me somehow deeply sad.

That’s a big job right there… How do we reach those who seem furthest away from any kind of understanding? We need both a Winston Churchill and a Mahatma Gandhi in this endeavor…

The Response
Agreed. Both denialism and ecofascism are ideologies that ultimately defy logic. In very different ways, they can become a kind of combination of self-destruction and destruction of others.

I’ve spent years battling misinformation, propaganda, and rhetoric. To the best of my knowledge, neither Sidd nor I have successfully converted—or even educated—a single committed denier. Climate science has somehow been transformed into a “belief” system. But science has nothing to do with belief. 1 + 1 = 2. If someone refuses to “believe” that, what exactly can you do?

From the beginning, our work has been based on observations, data, mathematics, and the laws of physics. So yes, I think this is at the heart of the crisis. When we started this work, we genuinely believed humanity would eventually take action. We thought we had thousands, if not tens of thousands, of years to adapt. That was the one thing we got wrong.

A couple of years ago, after explaining my continuing attempts to reach climate deniers, I asked Sidd what we could possibly do. His response was essentially, “Dude, just tell them to look out their window.” It sounds simplistic, but there is profound truth in it. The consequences are becoming increasingly difficult to deny.

Since then, we’ve had to rebuild much of our modeling. A +4°C world within thousands of years is no longer the worst-case scenario we worry about. The possibility of 4–7°C of warming within a century has become a much more serious concern in our work.

And then there is the political dimension. The rise of white-nationalist and authoritarian governments in the U.S. and elsewhere has made an already difficult problem considerably harder. Paradoxically, though, history offers one small reason for hope: fascism ultimately fails. It is inherently self-destructive.

The “drill, baby, drill” mentality is economically and environmentally self-defeating. A severe economic contraction could, ironically, buy humanity some time for adaptation while drastically reducing emissions. That is hardly the future anyone should want, but history has repeatedly demonstrated that systems built on extremism and authoritarianism eventually consume themselves.

So yes—we desperately need both the Churchill and Gandhi dimensions: the willingness to confront reality without flinching, and the willingness to keep reaching for people rather than giving up on them. I’m just not sure humanity has ever faced a crisis where we needed both quite this badly.

bookmark_borderStrategic Petroleum Reserve Falls to Lowest Level Since 1983

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As of July 31, 2026, the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) held approximately 304.8 million barrels of crude oil, its lowest level since March 1983.

From its historic peak of roughly 726 million barrels in 2009, the SPR has experienced a cumulative drawdown of approximately 421 million barrels—about a 58% reduction. The decline has been driven primarily by major emergency releases following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and subsequent supply disruptions associated with instability in the Middle East in 2026.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that the reserve could eventually fall to approximately 243 million barrels as currently authorized emergency release schedules conclude.

Strategic Risk: Erosion of U.S. Energy Security

The primary risk of reducing the SPR to approximately 243 million barrels is a severe loss of national energy security and geopolitical leverage during a major global crisis.

At that level—near the lowest inventory in more than four decades—the United States would have substantially less capacity to respond to an extended disruption in global oil supplies. A depleted reserve could also reduce the credibility and effectiveness of the SPR as a deterrent against supply shocks, geopolitical coercion, or major disruptions to global petroleum markets.

Structural and Infrastructure Risks

Cavern Structural Integrity

The SPR is stored in underground salt caverns that require careful management of pressure, oil levels, and cavern conditions. Repeatedly moving crude oil and fresh water into and out of these caverns can alter the physical characteristics of the salt formations and potentially increase operational and structural risks.

Maintaining the integrity of the caverns becomes increasingly important as the reserve is drawn down because the SPR’s ability to rapidly refill or sustain emergency withdrawals depends on the continued reliability of this underground storage infrastructure.

International Energy Agency Compliance

A substantially reduced SPR could also complicate U.S. compliance with International Energy Agency (IEA) emergency-stockholding requirements.

IEA member countries are generally required to maintain emergency oil stocks equivalent to at least 90 days of net oil imports. The relevant measure, however, is based on a country’s total qualifying emergency stocks—not simply the number of barrels held in the SPR. Therefore, the U.S. position must be evaluated using the full national stockholding calculation, including other qualifying inventories.

The Strategic Concern

The SPR was designed as a national insurance policy against severe and prolonged disruptions in petroleum supplies. Reducing the reserve by more than half from its 2009 peak fundamentally changes the country’s ability to absorb a major energy shock.

If inventories approach 243 million barrels, the United States would enter a period in which rebuilding the reserve could become increasingly important but potentially difficult. Large-scale purchases to replenish the SPR would require substantial funding, available crude supplies, suitable market conditions, and sufficient time.

The central strategic issue is therefore not simply how many barrels remain, but whether the United States retains enough readily deployable petroleum reserves to withstand a prolonged global supply disruption while simultaneously preserving the infrastructure, flexibility, and geopolitical leverage needed to respond to the next crisis.

bookmark_borderThe Two Sides of the Climate Crisis: Consumption and Production

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by Daniel Brouse

Climate change is often discussed as a problem of emissions, but emissions are the result of two interconnected forces: consumption and production.

Q: What are the greatest drivers of climate change?
A: Consumption and production.

At present, I would rank our addiction to consumption and ecofascism as the two most significant drivers of the climate crisis. While they operate in different ways, both reinforce the systems that accelerate environmental degradation.

The Consumption Problem

The United States, Western Europe, Canada, and Australia represent some of the world’s most consumption-driven economies. When self-interest, materialism, and short-term economic incentives dominate decision-making, consumer demand becomes one of the primary drivers of climate change, influencing not only greenhouse gas emissions but also land-use change, deforestation, habitat destruction, water consumption, resource depletion, and biodiversity loss.

This is why consumption-based accounting provides a more accurate picture of climate responsibility than production-based accounting alone.

For example, if a smartphone is manufactured in Asia using coal-generated electricity and then shipped across the Pacific to a consumer in Los Angeles, the emissions from mining, manufacturing, transportation, and delivery are ultimately driven by the purchasing decision. Under consumption-based accounting, those emissions are attributed to the American consumer rather than solely to the country where the phone was manufactured.

Read the full explanation and view the rankings here:

http://membrane.com/global_warming/Accounting-for-Climate-Responsibility.html#the-carbon-we-own

The Production Problem

The production side of the equation is likewise influenced by self-interest and economic incentives, but it is also shaped by ideological movements that obstruct effective climate action.

Two distinct, though sometimes overlapping, ideologies are particularly important:

Denialism is characterized by the rejection of scientific evidence, refusal to engage with empirical data, and reliance on misinformation or rhetorical distraction. Its primary objective is often the protection of political, ideological, or economic interests by undermining the scientific consensus.

Ecofascism combines elements of denialism with authoritarian, exclusionary, or extremist beliefs. In its most extreme forms, it portrays environmental collapse as acceptable—or even desirable—because it is viewed as reducing populations or preserving resources for groups considered more deserving than others. This ideology has historically been associated with racist, xenophobic, or eugenicist beliefs and rejects principles of equality and shared human responsibility.

The distinction is important. Traditional denialism primarily seeks to delay or prevent climate policy. Ecofascism goes further by framing unequal human survival as an acceptable or even desirable outcome — eliminationist logic.

Why This Matters

Climate change is not simply a technological or economic challenge. It is also a question of values.

On one side, excessive consumption drives demand for fossil fuels, resource extraction, and emissions. On the other, ideologies that reject science or rationalize unequal human suffering weaken society’s ability to respond effectively to the crisis.

Both sides must be addressed if meaningful progress is to be made.

Further Reading

While investigating climate change denialism, I examined material that I believe illustrates the intersection between denialist narratives and extremist environmental ideologies. A summary of that research is available here:

http://membrane.com/global_warming/Ecofascism-and-Denialism-101.html

bookmark_borderAmerica’s New Tariff Landscape: Who Gets Taxed—and Who Really Pays?

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Introduction

The latest U.S. tariff framework is now in place, and while tariffs are collected at the border, it’s American families who ultimately pay most of the bill.

📊 Highlights:
• Average household: +$2,000–$2,700 per year
• Buying a new home and a new car? The added cost from tariffs on steel, aluminum, lumber, vehicles, appliances, and other goods could exceed $30,000–$50,000.
• New tariffs now cover nearly 99.4% of U.S. imports from 60 trading partners, while additional 50% tariffs on many Canadian products are scheduled to begin in August.

The article explains what changed, which goods are affected, who legally pays the tariff, and who ultimately bears the economic burden.

Read the full analysis and decide for yourself: Are tariffs protecting American industry, or are they becoming one of the largest hidden taxes on American consumers?

1. Newly Enacted Tariffs: Section 301 Forced Labor Framework

Effective July 24, 2026, the United States implemented a new tariff regime targeting imports from approximately 60 trading partners, representing 99.4% of all U.S. imports. The tariffs are based on supply-chain forced labor investigations.

Tariff Rates

  • 10% Base Rate
    • Canada
    • Mexico
    • United Kingdom
    • India
    • Argentina
  • 10%–12.5% Blended Rate
    • European Union
    • Japan
    • South Korea
    • Taiwan
  • 12.5% Flat Rate
    • China
    • Vietnam
    • Australia
    • Singapore
    • 34 additional economies under investigation

Exemptions

Several strategically important commodities remain exempt, including:

  • Crude oil
  • Natural gas
  • Fertilizer
  • Selected primary food products

These tariffs also do not stack with existing Section 232 national security duties.

2. Upcoming Canadian Tariffs: Section 338

Beginning August 19, 2026, the United States is scheduled to impose 50% retaliatory tariffs on approximately $20 billion of Canadian imports under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930.

Products Subject to the 50% Tariff

  • Dairy products
  • Wine and other alcoholic beverages
  • Automobiles
  • Auto parts
  • Cement
  • Hockey equipment
  • Plywood
  • Particleboard
  • Paper products
  • Clothing
  • Furniture

These tariffs bypass normal CUSMA (USMCA) preferential treatment.

Exemptions

The following Canadian exports are excluded:

  • Energy products
  • Potash
  • Fish
  • Critical minerals

3. Existing Tariffs That Remain in Effect

Several major tariff programs adopted during 2025 and 2026 continue unchanged.

Section 232 National Security Tariffs

These duties continue to apply to steel and aluminum imports, including tariffs reaching 50% on certain Canadian steel and aluminum products.

Existing Canadian Import Tariffs

Additional tariffs remain in place on:

  • 25% on non-CUSMA-compliant auto parts
  • 25% on upholstered furniture and kitchen cabinets
  • 10% tariff on Canadian softwood lumber, with combined anti-dumping and countervailing duties pushing the effective rate to approximately 45%

Section 301 China Tariffs

Long-standing tariffs on Chinese imports also remain active, with rates reaching 25% on numerous products, including:

  • Industrial machinery
  • Technology equipment
  • Electronic components
  • Strategic manufacturing inputs

Current U.S. Tariff Framework

Tariff ProgramPrimary TargetRateStatus
Section 301 – Forced Labor60 trading partners10%–12.5%Active (July 24, 2026)
Section 338 – CanadaAutos, dairy, wine, cement, consumer goods50%Begins August 19, 2026
Section 232 – National SecuritySteel & aluminum25%–50%Active
Section 301 – ChinaIndustrial & technology productsUp to 25%Active

Who Really Pays Tariffs?

Legally, tariffs are paid by the U.S. importer when goods enter the country through Customs and Border Protection.

Economically, however, that is only the beginning of the story.

Importers generally recover those additional costs by increasing the prices they charge wholesalers, retailers, manufacturers, and ultimately consumers. Numerous economic studies of recent U.S. tariffs have found that most of the cost is passed through to American businesses and households rather than absorbed by foreign exporters.

In some industries, foreign suppliers may reduce prices to remain competitive, meaning they share part of the burden. But the overall trade data and pricing evidence show that the majority of tariff costs are ultimately borne within the United States through higher prices, reduced business margins, or both.

In other words, while tariffs are collected at the border from importers, they function much like a domestic consumption tax. The final bill is usually paid by American businesses and consumers—not by foreign governments.

Conclusion

For the average American household, the new tariff regime is expected to increase costs by approximately $2,000–$2,700 per year. For families purchasing a newly built home and a new vehicle, the cumulative tariff burden can easily exceed $30,000–$50,000 through higher prices on construction materials, automobiles, appliances, and other imported goods. While tariffs are collected at the border from importers, they are ultimately borne by American businesses and consumers in the form of higher prices—a tax paid not to foreign governments, but by U.S. households.