Notes from the edge of civilization: February 9, 2025

Trump declares war on paper straws; geo-engineering is getting rebranded; zit cream to the White House, stat!

As inflation soars, geopolitical instability worsens, and civil liberties are further eroded, Donald Trump has identified the real enemy: paper straws.

He just announced he will sign an executive order to ban Biden’s push for biodegradable straws and bring back plastic, because apparently, America’s future hinges on the ability to sip without soggy inconvenience.

Here’s the reality: Plastic straws were never the problem. They make up just 0.025% of the eight million tons of plastic that flow into the ocean each year. Paper straws are largely a virtue signal that still require energy-intensive production, often using more resources than plastic in manufacturing. And metal straws are just as dumb. Unless you carry one around at all times and use it dozens of times a year, the carbon footprint just can’t be justified.

The truth, of course, is that this isn't about saving the turtles on one side, and the freedom to choose on the other side. It’s about performance politics at its finest. Trump sees an opportunity to rally the base with a common-sense, “anti-woke” agenda and both sides are being highly manipulated.

At the end of the day, if you’re upset about straws, maybe zoom out a little. This is not the battle you think it is.

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When an idea gets too much bad press, it doesn’t disappear — it just gets a makeover. Meet the latest term being used in place of geo-engineering and marketed as a climate-friendly farming fix.

A new study in Nature touts the idea of spreading crushed basalt on farmland to suck carbon from the air — potentially removing up to 490 million metric tons of CO2 annually by 2070. Researchers call it “enhanced weathering” and claim this method could help meet net-zero targets, improve air quality, and even boost rural economies (because nothing says job creation like mining and pulverizing rocks. Even better if by hand!).

But let’s not forget: It’s still geo-engineering, just new and improved, with a name that sounds more like an organic soil amendment. Scaling this up will take decades, and there are massive uncertainties. Even the researchers admit real-world carbon removal rates remain largely theoretical. They also examine the need for a “social license to operate,” saying:

When enhanced weathering is described in detail to people, concerns include environmental risks (especially to wildlife and oceans), alongside a worry that carbon dioxide removal represents a temporary fix when the main need is to arrest rising greenhouse gas emissions.

The big takeaway? The climate industrial complex never lets a bad idea die — it just slaps on a fresh coat of branding and pitches it as the next "breakthrough."

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Just a few weeks ago, we asked whether Mike Judge might actually be a prophet. We think we’re getting closer to an answer because today we find ourselves once again referencing Judge — this time his satirical masterpiece, Office Space. Weeks ago we were lauding the predictive nature of his 2006 comedy-turned-documentary, Idiocracy. (We implore you to watch both, the former a different type of comedic genius from the latter!)

In the clip embedded in this post, the two “Bobs” — management consultants brought in to root out waste and redundancy at the high-tech firm, Initech — ask employees: “What would you say… you do here?”

The swift-moving DOGE team have been asking federal employees the same question for three weeks.

A group of pimply-faced geniuses, guided by their spiritual guru Elon, have unleashed incredible AI tools and myriad Excel spreadsheets to root out waste, corruption, and the general state of evil that has infected the federal bureaucracy, a rot that has not just cascaded into American society, but has tainted the globe. The achievement of this small, mighty team in such a short time has been remarkable, to be sure.

The more poignant question we collectively need to ask ourselves is: how did this happen? And maybe even: how did we get here? What we are witnessing is a historical aberration and one that we here at Collapse Life suspect does not bode well for the future.

In scripture, Job 32:7 says: “Days should speak, and many years should teach wisdom.” And it’s not just a Judeo-Christian thing, but in all cultures throughout history, elders were the arbiters of wisdom, knowledge, and judgement by virtue of having seen and done things that lent a weighty credence to their lives. We used to revere elders.

The polar opposite is happening right now. We are seeing a bunch of high school and college kids use the collective “wisdom” of the Internet and machine learning to reshuffle the order of things. In doing so, they have laid bare the deep perversion of the times we live in, and the dereliction of duty by our elders to their employees, their organizations, and their society.

We are living through the end of an orgiastic immorality that has ruined all that we have come to know and trust in a society that we in the West have broadcast to the rest of the world as the pinnacle of morality and decency.

A handful of tech savvy, still-green computer geniuses are rewriting everything we know about ourselves. Sadly, your future ‘wise elder’ will very likely be a machine, and that’s a humiliation for all of humanity.

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