Each New Year prompts us to think about hope. As we enter 2026, how might we think about our prospects for hope?
Just as we witnessed the latest in a series of disappointing CoP meetings on climate change (November 10-21,2025, Belém), the International Energy Agency (IEA) presented a World Energy Outlook[1] which aligns itself with President Trump’s energy policy and predicts accelerating emissions of carbon dioxide from the combustion of fossil fuels over the next three decades. It is ironic that one of the greatest drivers of increasing energy consumption (and thus global warming) is the expansion of air conditioning. Another major climate threat is investments in digital infrastructure for Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Also in November 2025, the White House presented a National Security Strategy[2] that confirms the unabashed ambition of the current U.S. administration to expand the American economy at the expense of lesser nations. The document is explicit about making claims on resources and markets throughout the Western Hemisphere and barring economic interests from outside the Americas. It also aims to expand business with nations in the Middle East and Asia quite regardless of their modes of government or the extent to which they respect human rights, and it justifies the “outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations [as] a timeless truth of international relations.” Finally, it rejects all talk of climate change. Of course, nothing in this is surprising, given Trump’s previous record of threats against Canada, Greenland, Mexico, Panama, Colombia, and Venezuela, his aspirations for ‘developing’ Gaza and exploiting mineral-rich Ukraine, and his abandonment of the 2015 Paris Agreement. But it does suggest an apocalypse in the original sense of apokalyptein (Greek for ‘unveiling’). The new American administration has arguably revealed the true face of capitalism.
This revelation is a bewildering experience for those of us who have spent decades trying to convince people that the global economy is precisely as unfair and destructive as is now confirmed.[3] Trump verifies our understanding of capitalism without making any effort to embellish it. Most so-called ‘liberal’ people tend to dismiss dystopian perspectives on capitalism as leftist extremism, but how shall we henceforth understand their congenial rhetoric on peaceful global development, free and fair trade, environmental protection, democracy, and human rights? What does it mean to find them shocked by a politician who does not bother to be politically correct, but exposes the naked truth of the world order they have been endorsing?
Ever since the French Revolution, the dominant historical narrative has been a story of progressive emancipation: the abandonment of despotism, slavery, colonialism, and aggressive imperial expansion. Today, fifty years after the liberation of the last large colonies in Africa, Trump and Putin shock us by unapologetically reinstating autarchy and imperial aggression. Not least Europe has been baffled by the sudden return of colonialism. History seems to have been turned on its head. Or have we just begun to see beyond the postcolonial veil? Is neo-colonialism no improvement on colonialism? Is there really a pre-Trump version of capitalism, as liberals would claim, that is morally superior to the world he advocates? And what is henceforth the task of leftist critiques of capitalism, if there is nothing left to expose and unbridled avarice is now the official doctrine, embraced even by parliamentary majorities?
The lofty ideals of Western liberalism have been shattered. In an uncanny way, they are beginning to sound like George Orwell’s ‘Newspeak.’ We can now see that ‘free trade’ is exploitation,[4] ‘democracy’ is manipulation, and ‘environmental protection’ is environmental load displacement (generally to the global South). The official position that the main political battle line is the opposition between mainstream ‘liberal-centre-left’ and ‘far right’ is deluding, given that the former largely represents a mystification of what the latter are overtly endorsing. After all, what is the point of criticising Trump for abandoning the Paris Agreement when much of the rest of the world unflinchingly keeps increasing its use of fossil energy and emissions of carbon dioxide? Every new CoP meeting on climate change confirms that the struggle against global warming is largely imaginary – a symbolic politics apparently designed only to reduce climate anxiety.
It is even arguable that the rise of movements like MAGA has in part been produced by the hypocrisy (“no more bullshit!”) and cognitive dissonance generated by the politically correct mainstream. PC and MAGA people generate each other through what Gregory Bateson called schismogenesis, the former by expressing embarrassment and indignation over the system that is granting them global privileges, the latter by extolling it. The contradiction remains a polarisation of identities and rhetoric, while both camps continue to enjoy the material privileges they take for granted. Although ideologically divided, both belong to the same global elite. Average consumption in the US, measured in dollars, is more than three times the average for the whole world. In terms of global social metabolism, whether a middle-class American loves or hates capitalism is literally immaterial.
What conclusions can we draw from the climate impasse other than that sustainability is incompatible with our concept of democracy? If ever there was any doubt, it should now be abundantly clear that an overwhelming majority of people in the global North are unwilling to reduce their levels of consumption, their comforts, and their mobility for the sake of a sustainable biosphere. Even the idea of adopting consumption levels that approximate a global average – which for Americans would mean a reduction by over 70% – is unthinkable. As President Bush said already back in 1992, “the American lifestyle is non-negotiable.” Whatever is driving ‘the system,’ it is obviously blind and relentless enough not to stay clear of disaster.
The pervasive opposition to immigration, increasingly widespread in nations in the global North and actively endorsed by the White House’s National Security Strategy, should in part be understood as efforts to safeguard the privileged consumption levels of the citizens of these countries, particularly when under threat. Although denounced by leftists and liberals as bigotry and far right ‘populism,’ it illustrates the limitations of democracy in an unequal world.
At this disturbing moment in world history, the World Inequality Lab adds to our despair by issuing its World Inequality Report 2026,[5] which shows that the wealthiest 0.001% (less than 60,000 people) control three times more wealth than the bottom 50% of humanity (over four billion people), and that such inequality is rapidly increasing. The report also shows that the poorest 50% of the world’s population account for only 3% of carbon emissions deriving from private capital ownership, while the top 10% account for 77% of such emissions. It continues, “The wealthiest 1% alone account for 41% of private capital ownership emissions, almost double the amount of the entire bottom 90% combined.” What these figures make clear is that the issue of climate change is not merely a matter of sustainability, but very much also a question of justice.
Although no doubt the most alarming issue, climate change is but one of several interrelated processes of global environmental degradation deriving from human activities. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) continuously publishes global assessments assembling a vast range of data on various aspects of global environmental change. Its Global Environmental Outlook (GEO) 7,[6] released in December 2025, is presented as “the most comprehensive scientific assessment of the global environment to this day.” The document, which spans 1,242 pages, is authored by 287 experts from 82 countries and has been checked by over 800 reviewers. Like so many other assessments over the past decades, it offers a peculiar mixture of profound pessimism and cheerful policy proposals. It describes the current trajectory of the global environment as “trending towards catastrophic climate change, the collapse of nature, and growing deadly pollution,” yet highlights “the enormous potential of sustainable policies, technologies, and community-driven change.” We are once again told that “the window of opportunity is closing fast,” but that the “good news is that the economic benefits of [the proposed] transformation will outweigh the costs.” The scope of the assembled data and policy proposals in the report is impossible for a single reader to fathom, but Damian Carrington, environment editor for The Guardian, has captured the immensity of the problem by citing what appears to be the bottom line: the “unsustainable production of food and fossil fuels causes $5bn of environmental damage per hour” (emphasis added).[7]
This may seem a convenient shorthand for the undigestible mass of depressing global statistics, but it exemplifies the pervasive delusion of trying to assess ecological collapse in the language of money. The optimistic title of GEO7 is “A future we choose: Why investing in Earth now can lead to a trillion-dollar benefit for all.” Do these 287 scientific experts and 800 reviewers really believe that future investments might save us from the repercussions of all the investments humankind has been making so far? To invest money in a sustainable future is like throwing fuel on a fire, as illustrated by how the production of infrastructures for renewable energy is creating additional demand for fossil fuels.[8] Do the scientists not see that money and growth is the problem, not the solution? It is the continuous pursuit of higher profits from economic processes that drives the accelerating production of entropy on Earth.[9]
Have the GEO7 experts really been persuaded by mainstream environmental economists that problems can be mitigated by pricing “externalities” into energy and food to shift consumers towards greener choices? To believe that negative “externalities” can be internalised in prices is to contradict the Entropy Law. The feasibility of capitalist business is contingent on not compensating for the environmental disorder it generates, even if it were possible to do so. More fundamentally, of course, there is no way money can compensate for entropy.
This is not to belittle the heroic work of the researchers recruited by the UNEP, but the requisite reference to a still-open “window of opportunity” is no longer credible. It serves the same comforting function as the liberal trust that capitalism is conducive to peaceful global development, fair trade, democracy, and the universal recognition of human rights. Such illusions must be dismissed if we are to confront our global predicament head-on. We must ask what purpose is served by the meticulous monitoring and documentation of our course toward disaster, if our recipe for alleviating problems is merely to propose more of the same? We urgently need a discussion, even among economists, about the social and ecological consequences of money itself.
We humans need to feel security and trust. For most of our history as a species we have found security and trust in small-scale social groups of kin and neighbours. Then appeared money. The commercial civilisations of antiquity left many of us exposed to daily contact with unfamiliar and unpredictable strangers. For millennia, trust in God filled the existential void of anonymous urban life. Religion was a strategy for coping with the social repercussions of money. Three hundred years ago, science and technology in the global North began to eclipse God as our source of security and trust. This is the essence of modernity. But the modern condition is now revealing itself to be based on exploitation of other people and degradation of the biosphere. What we thought of as technological progress did not as much solve problems as displace them. Faced with global polycrisis, we are beginning to envisage the end of modernity. As our trust in technology must fade, we can expect a resurgence of religion. And as our trust in money evaporates, our only hope is a return to small-scale social life. In the long run, history may bring us full circle.
[1] International Energy Agency (2025) World Energy Outlook.
[2] The White House (2025) National Security Strategy of the United States of America. Washington, DC.
[3] Hornborg A (2001) The Power of the Machine: Global Inequalities of Economy, Technology, and Environment, Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press; Hornborg A (2025) Liquidate: How Money is Dissolving the World, London: Routledge.
[4] Dorninger C, Hornborg A, Abson DJ, von Wehrden H, Schaffartzik A, Giljum S, Engler J-O, Feller RL, Hubacek K, and Wieland HP (2021) Global patterns of ecologically unequal exchange: Implications for sustainability in the 21st century. Ecological Economics 179:106824. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106824
[5] Chancel L, Gómez-Carrera R, Moshrif R, Piketty, T, et al. (2025) World Inequality Report 2026. World Inequality Lab.
[6] United Nations Environment Programme (2025) Global Environment Outlook 7: A Future We Choose – Why Investing in Earth Now Can Lead to a Trillion-Dollar Benefit for All. Nairobi.
[7] Carrington D (2025) Food and fossil fuel production causing $5bn of environmental damage an hour. The Guardian 9/12/2025.
[8] Fressoz J-B (2024) More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy. London: Allen Lane.
[9] Georgescu-Roegen N (1971) The Entropy Law and the Economic Process. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
