I have been interested in social illusions for a long time. However, I never expected to discover the extent to which they drive the terminal trajectory of the industrial/militarist era toward oblivion today. I’m not saying that we are destined to collapse and never recover as a species on this planet, although that is possible, given the intransigence of the global power elites. But the danger increases daily as key illusions continue to prevail.
Reality of Global Chaos
About one in three persons on the planet now suffer from extreme heat and drought to the extent that they cannot work outside—which is necessary for so many people around the world. Most scientists have assumed a steady (linear) increase in planetary temperature, But in a recent study G. Foster and S. Rahmstorf demonstrated in their March 6 article in Geophysical Letters, that the effects of “global warming” on atmospheric and oceanic temperatures is accelerating. As they put it, “we subtract the estimated influence of El Niño events, volcanic eruptions and solar variations from the data, which makes the global temperature curve less variable, and it then shows a statistically significant acceleration of global warming since about the year 2015.”
Another accelerating global risk is the increasing likelihood of the disruption of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) much sooner than had been previously estimated by climate scientists. It is currently at its weakest flow in the last 1600 years. The growing risk was demonstrated almost a year ago, yet what is being done?
In January 2026, the British government report, with contributions by MI5 and MI6 intelligence services (the UK equivalent of the U.S.) described how global biodiversity loss and the collapse of critical ecosystems could affect the UK’s resilience, security and prosperity. The report, called National security assessment on global ecosystems, outlined the growing risks to the nation resulting from climate and ecological disruptions and consequent damage to food production and life in the UK. It explained “how global biodiversity loss and the collapse of critical ecosystems could affect the UK’s resilience, security and prosperity.” Yet, Parliament has essentially done nothing, despite having failed to suppress exposure of the report to the public. This is the typical pattern of industrial nations and their attempts at interdicting scientific knowledge that demonstrates the necessity of drastically changing the fundamental processes of industrial civilization for societal survival.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government is systematically interdicting scientific studies by cancelling funding for many National Science Foundation projects, along with suppressing reports of the work of the National Institutes of Health (blocking publication of research findings that show that COVID and Shingles vaccines are safe), and by gutting the Environmental Protection Agency, and every other federal agency that supports research that might contradict full speed ahead of the fossil-fueled predatory economy and the financial oligarchy that drives it.
At the same time, global processes of extraction, industrial production, consumption, and waste, and, oh yes, extremely polluting WARFARE, have continued to accelerate their emissions of carbon, other ‘greenhouse gases,’ and toxins, accelerating not only planetary heating but also ecological destruction and numerous forms of ill-health.
Imaginary Progress in a World of Material Denial
We moderns have been trained well to believe that human progress is represented in the latest gadget, devise, or new technology that seems to give us new functionality but just as easily surveils us and manipulates our personal feelings and choices. The mass media and social media as well, continue to maintain the illusion that “progress” is defined by forms of production and consumption that isolate us from one another, breeding anxiety, loneliness, fear, and hatred, rather than by the enriching human experience in social relations and our relations with the rest of Nature.
The current imaginary progress sustained by the dominant ‘post-colonial’ powers is the same as foisted against the subordinate societies that the formal colonialist nations controlled directly via conquest and occupation during the ‘colonial period.’ One creative African constructed a “Glossary of Empire” listing 100 terms used to ‘sanitize’ the brutal oppression of colonial peoples and nations. The dominance today remains but is implemented by financial relations of extraction and by debt imposed by those relations. (Thanks to Erin Remblance and Kasper Benjamin Reimer Bjørkskov for the reference.) Here is one example. (There are 99 more terms “deployed by the west… and what they actually mean when translated from diplomatic language into historical fact”):
“Nationalisation: government ownership of strategic industries. The most reliable trigger for Western hostility. When an African government takes ownership of its own oil, minerals, or land, it becomes a ‘rogue state’ almost immediately.”
The underlying interdiction here takes the form of interference of the natural relationship of a people with their environment by institutionalized theft. That is the story of the history of domination by the “Global North” of the peoples and land of the “Global South.” It is also, on an even broader scale, the interdiction that disrupts the natural relations of humanity with the rest of Nature itself.
The Imperative Interdiction of Business as Usual
That relation of domination of people and the rest of Nature by the industrial-consumer political economy is what we refer to by the term, “business as usual.” It is a destructive interdiction of the natural order of things. As a consequence of that ongoing process, we observe (if we allow ourselves to) the deep disturbance of most of the elements of the Earth System itself. That is why it is now imperative that humans interdict the system that caused all the chaos we see accelerating today. One of the latest reports on that chaos is expressed in the following figures from the report by Jim Hansen, Pushker Kharecha, Dylan Morgan, and Jasen Vest on the latest research involving the relations of the imminent El Niño weather oscillation to increasingly probable severe weather in late 2026 and 2027. [The report is regularly updated, so you will see new information there.]
Global surface temperature anomaly in GISS analysis[1] relative to 1880-1920 mean
Global surface temperature (relative to 1880-1920 base period)
The trends shown in these two charts represent the highly likely but intolerable conditions that will be experienced in the near future. They can be dampened at least some if we take radical collective action to constrain the ecological destruction that the global industrial political economy and its wars are forcing on the Earth System. Maybe interdiction is not a strong enough word to describe the New Great Transformation of the global political economy we need to accomplish before it’s too late. That will require the democratization of current capitalist provisioning systems in order to supply whole populations with the basic necessities for the wellbeing of all.
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 