this is because the solutions are completely unpalatable to almost everybody. There's a narrative on the left that climate change is caused by the rich and inflicted on the poor. And that's true. But what people often leave out is that when it comes to climate justice in a global sense, even the poorest American is Petite Bourgeois.
... The tyranny of the automobile and of the airplane must end. Animal agriculture and commercial fishing must end completely. No half measures. Consumerism must end. We can do it. We have scalable technologies today that can transport feed, and supply 7, 8, nine billion of us equitably without trashing the planet.
- MAGA as a symptom of class anxiety following the 2008 financial crisis, used by elites to scapegoat immigrants and minorities to deflect anger away from the economic system
- The real threat Global Biodiversity Loss and national security, stating that climate change-driven food insecurity is already fueling migration and instability
- To avert catastrophe, he suggests extreme measures like ending animal agriculture, commercial fishing, and reliance on automobiles, replaced by scalable technologies like precision fermentation
It can be dangerous to believe things just because you want them to be true. - Sagan
Cynicism is acceptance
Trump last night: „We are helping NATO with Ukraine, so NATO should help the US to keep the Strait of Hormuz open.“
This is a lie. Trump suspended all help to Ukraine with his inauguration. Not a single cent is going to Ukraine. European countries are buying US weapons. This is not helping, this purchasing. When I buy my goods in a store, then the store is not „helping“, it is making business.
Trump threatened allies around the globe with invasion and denigrated them at every step, including fallen soldiers in Afghanistan. Putin on the other hand got a pass, received a warm welcome in Alaska and even got sanctions lifted.
Those are the facts.
It can be dangerous to believe things just because you want them to be true. - Sagan
Cynicism is acceptance
BREAKING: The world spent fifty years and hundreds of billions of dollars building Strategic Petroleum Reserves so that no geopolitical shock could starve civilization of energy.
Nobody built the equivalent for fertilizer.
That is the most expensive oversight in the history of modern statecraft, and you are about to pay for it at the grocery store.
The Strait of Hormuz does not merely carry 20% of global oil. UNCTAD estimates roughly one-third of all seaborne fertilizer trade passes through it. The Fertilizer Institute estimates that conflict-exposed exporters account for nearly 49% of global urea exports and nearly half of global sulfur trade.
Since February 28, daily ship transits have collapsed by 97%.
Here is what almost nobody understands about why this is not "just another commodity spike."
It was not the missiles that closed the strait. It was the insurance. Multiple P&I clubs cancelled war-risk extensions for the Gulf after 26 months of Red Sea losses had already depleted their Solvency II capital buffers. War-risk premiums surged from 0.25% to as high as 5% of hull value per transit. A urea cargo cannot absorb that. The economics of fertilizer shipping through Hormuz became impossible before a single mine needed to detonate.
The Trump administration announced a $20 billion sovereign-backed reinsurance facility with Chubb as lead underwriter. There is no confirmed public evidence that a single fertilizer vessel has used it. Insurance pays for financial loss. It does not intercept anti-ship missiles. Physical security remains the binding constraint, and the US Navy confirmed on March 12 it is "not ready" for commercial escorts.
Now here is the part that should terrify every allocator on Earth.
Agriculture runs on biological deadlines. Corn Belt farmers need nitrogen applied by mid-April. Indian Kharif season prep starts in May. Australian winter crop needs urea by June. These are not financial deadlines that reprice. They are photosynthetic deadlines that, once missed, produce irreversible yield loss. A diplomatic breakthrough on April 15 does not help a farmer who needed fertilizer on April 1.
And the yield math is nonlinear. Wall Street models fertilizer-to-output as proportional. It is not. The response is quadratic. In developed systems that over-apply nitrogen, a 15% reduction costs 2-5% of yield. In the Global South where farmers already under-apply, the same reduction pushes crops off a biophysical cliff. Sri Lanka proved this in 2021 when a sudden fertilizer ban collapsed rice production 40% in a single season and brought down the government.
The market is pricing a 45-day disruption. The insurance architecture says 120 days minimum. Even after a hypothetical ceasefire, Solvency II capital rebuild, reinsurance treaty renegotiation, and vessel re-underwriting take months. The Red Sea precedent: 26 months after Houthi attacks began, war-risk premiums never returned to pre-crisis levels.
Both sides are rejecting negotiations. Trump rebuffed ceasefire mediation March 14. Iran's foreign minister on March 15: "We never asked for a ceasefire."
Meanwhile: 51% of US corn areas in drought. El Nino favored by June at 62% probability. Skymet assigns 60% chance of below-normal Indian monsoon. Bangladesh has shut five of six urea factories. India formally asked China for urea on March 12. Egypt faces $28 billion in debt repayments while importing 12.7 million tonnes of wheat. WFP identifies 318 million people already at crisis-level hunger.
The world stockpiled oil but forgot to stockpile the molecules that produce half its food.
The clock is the position.
Full analysis in the link!
open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…
It can be dangerous to believe things just because you want them to be true. - Sagan
Cynicism is acceptance
JUST IN: Saudi Arabia is being bombed by Iran, rerouting its entire oil economy through a pipeline to the Red Sea, and its Crown Prince is privately telling President Trump to hit harder. The New York Times reported it. Riyadh has not denied it. And the pipeline is the proof that MBS means every word.
The NYT published on 15th March, citing several US officials, that Mohammed bin Salman has been privately urging Trump throughout the war to “keep hitting the Iranians hard.” The two leaders remain in regular contact. This echoes the Washington Post’s pre-war reporting that MBS made multiple private calls in February advocating strikes before Epic Fury launched. The Crown Prince who publicly maintains neutrality is privately running the most hawkish backchannel in the conflict.
The backchannel has a price. Saudi Arabia intercepted 4 ballistic missiles and 6 drones targeting Riyadh and eastern hydrocarbon facilities on 15 March alone. IRGC attacks have hit Saudi territory repeatedly since 28th February. Patriot and THAAD batteries are catching most of it. But “most” is not “all,” and the eastern oil fields that generate the kingdom’s revenue sit within range of the same Shahed drones that set a fuel tank on fire at Dubai International Airport hours ago.
MBS’s response to being bombed is not de-escalation. It is a pipeline.
Aramco CEO Amin Nasser confirmed the East-West Petroline, running from the Abqaiq processing hub to the Red Sea terminal at Yanbu, is being pushed to its full 7 million barrel per day capacity. Yanbu loadings have tripled in early March. Bloomberg tracked at least 50 supertankers heading to Yanbu with 25 already loading. Western port exports hit approximately 5.9 million barrels per day in a single week, up from a normal 1.7 million. The pipeline that Saudi Arabia built as a contingency for exactly this scenario is now operating as the kingdom’s primary export route because Hormuz, which carried 19.5 million barrels per day before the war, is running at 0.5 million.
Saudi Arabia did not wait for the war to build its bypass. The pipeline exists because decades of Saudi strategic planning assumed Hormuz could be closed. The assumption proved correct. The pipeline is the insurance policy, and it is paying out in real time at 7 million barrels per day through a Red Sea terminal that the Houthis, Iran’s own proxy, could theoretically threaten from Yemen.
The MBS-Trump alignment is not new. Trump publicly stated he “saved his ass” during the Khashoggi crisis by blocking congressional action. MBS has operated under that debt ever since. The 2026 war is the repayment: American and Israeli strikes degrading Iran’s military, nuclear programme, and proxy networks while Saudi Arabia maintains public neutrality, privately urges escalation, and reroutes its oil through a pipeline that keeps revenue flowing regardless of what happens to the Strait.
Saudi demands are specific: permanent Iranian nuclear and missile rollback, ironclad US security guarantees, and stable high oil prices. Every bomb on an IRGC facility advances the first. Every Patriot that intercepts a Shahed over Riyadh justifies the second. Every barrel through Yanbu at war-premium pricing delivers the third. MBS is not enduring this war. He is profiting from it while someone else pays the military cost.
The Crown Prince who tells Trump to keep hitting hard is the same Crown Prince whose pipeline ensures the kingdom survives the hitting. The public neutrality is the brand. The private backchannel is the policy. And the 7 million barrels per day flowing through Yanbu are the proof that Saudi Arabia planned for this war long before it started.
Full analysis in the link.
open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…
7 is better than .5 (current) but worse that 19.5(peacetime) and that’s the shortfall
It can be dangerous to believe things just because you want them to be true. - Sagan
Cynicism is acceptance
Poland is on the verge of "Polexit"—leaving the European Union, according to Prime Minister Tusk.
Years of disinformation and lies emanating from Russia, without resistance from the EU, are taking their toll.
The Prime Minister declared that Poland's exit from the EU is no longer hypothetical. This is due to the actions of internal Eurosceptic forces, which he believes are working for external actors, including Russia, the American MAGA movement, and the European right wing led by Orbán. In particular, the Confederation factions and the majority of the Law and Justice (PiS) party are effectively pushing Poland toward a break with Brussels.
The situation worsened after President Karol Nawrocki blocked a law on obtaining €43.7 billion in defense loans from the EU, jeopardizing the financing of the army, whose expenditures are supposed to reach 5% of GDP.
Experts note that despite widespread support for the EU, one in four Poles is already prepared to vote to leave, reminiscent of the dynamics in the UK before Brexit.
It can be dangerous to believe things just because you want them to be true. - Sagan
Cynicism is acceptance
