TThe poor and middle class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the very rich pay lawyers, and the super rich pay politicians. This is not an original statement, but it’s worth repeating until everyone has heard it. The more money billionaires accumulate, the more control they have over the political system. That means billionaires will pay less taxes and accumulate more money, increasing their control.
They rebuild the world to suit their needs. One of the symptoms of the pathology known as “billionaire brain” is an inability to see beyond one’s own short-term interests. They will plunder the earth to get a few more stones to add to their worthless pile of riches. And you can see it happening. Last week brought us the biggest news of the year so far, and perhaps the biggest of the century. But most people have never heard the news, partly because billionaires own most of the media. We may be caught up in an event that ends civilization before we know that such a thing is possible.
News that scientists have reassessed the state of a critical ocean circulation system. Some now believe it is likely to collapse as a result of changes in seawater temperature and salinity due to climate change. This system, known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc), transfers heat from the tropics to the North Atlantic Ocean. Recent studies suggest that if the river were to close, it could significantly lower average winter temperatures in Northern Europe and lead to dramatic changes in the Amazon’s water cycle. This could lead to the gradual collapse of the rainforest and cause further disasters.
Amok’s closure could accelerate sea level rise along the U.S. East Coast, threatening cities. It would also raise temperatures in Antarctica by about 6 degrees Celsius, releasing vast amounts of carbon currently stored in the Southern Ocean and potentially accelerating climate catastrophe.
A further paper proposes that even after taking into account the offsetting effects of general global warming, the net impact in Northern Europe will be a period of extreme cold, including temperatures dropping to -19C in London, -30C in Edinburgh and -48C in Oslo. Sea ice in February will extend as far as Lincolnshire. Our climate will change dramatically, with the potential for much larger and more extreme events, such as major winter storms. Rain-fed arable farming would become impossible almost everywhere in the UK.
This change is irreversible on a realistic human scale. Its speed will likely outpace our ability to adapt. Amoc closures due to natural climate change have occurred before. However, this is not the era of large-scale human civilization.
The first paper to propose that Amoc could have on and off states was published in 1961. Since then, many studies have confirmed that finding and investigated potential triggers and possible effects. Until recently, Amoc collapses caused by human activities were in the category of “high-impact, low-probability” events: catastrophic but unlikely to occur. Research over the past few years has prompted a reassessment, and it’s starting to look like a more “high-impact, high-probability” event. Now, in response to last week’s paper, Professor Stefan Rahmstorff, perhaps the world’s leading authority on the subject, said that the chance of closure appears to be “more than 50%.” A tipping point could be crossed “by mid-century,” he says.
So why isn’t this in the news? Why isn’t it a top priority for governments that claim to protect us from harm? Well, the main reason is that oligarchic powers support climate impact models that have little to do with reality. That is, they have hypotheses about how the world works that are completely divorced from scientific findings. This model underpins government responses to the climate crisis.
It began with the work of economist William Nordhaus, who sought to assess the economic impact of global warming. His modeling suggests that the “socially optimal” heating level is between 3.5°C and 4°C. Most climate scientists view this type of temperature increase as catastrophic. Nordhaus suggests that heating at 6°C would only result in a loss of 8.5% of GDP. Climate science suggests it will look like a curtain of civilization.
As prominent economists Nicholas Stern, Joseph Stiglitz, and Charlotte Taylor have argued, the modest effects predicted by Nordhaus are simply a product of the model he used. For example, his modeling assumes that there are no catastrophic risks and that climate impacts increase linearly with temperature. No climate models suggest such a trend. Rather, climate science predicts nonlinear impacts and significantly increased risks. Potential effects of high levels of heating include the flooding of major cities, the closure of the human climate niche (the conditions that support human life) across much of the planet, the collapse of global food systems, and cascading regime shifts, or rapid changes in ecosystems that could lead to the release of naturally stored carbon and a “hothouse Earth” in which few can survive. There’s no need to worry if GDP drops a few points. There is no way to measure it, and little economics to measure it.
Oddly enough, this model also applies the discount rate to future people. That is, their lives are assumed to be of less value than ours. In other words, we applied the method of calculating return on capital to humans. As three economists point out, “it is very difficult to find a justification for this in moral philosophy.” Furthermore, although climate impacts disproportionately affect poor people, their lives also become cheaper under the model.
Stern, Stiglitz, and Taylor rightly point out that this type of model has been used by “special interests” such as the fossil fuel industry to argue for a minimal response to the climate crisis. And it’s not just oil companies. Bill Gates, who claims he wants to protect the living planet, has donated $3.5m (£2.6m) to a junk tank run by Bjorn Lomborg, who has made a career promoting the Nordhaus model, helping to downplay the need to tackle climate change. Mr. Nordhaus won the Nobel Prize in economics for his vicious nonsense, but it is deeply embedded in government decision-making.
A billionaire death cult is going after humanity’s throat. It both provokes and trivializes our existential crisis. The oligarchy is not only the enemy of class, but also, as always, the enemy of society. Thousands can destroy civilization. It’s billions versus billionaires, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.
This article was amended on April 23, 2026 to remove incorrect temperature conversions added during the editing process.
