From short-term escalation & de-escalation spirals to necessary re-patterning for Collapse Resilience … Biodiversity as a National Security Risk

The Lighthouse Keeper | Edition 34 | February 2026

What a year this past month has been, don’t you agree ;-)? The amount of (geo)political whirlwind just in January 2026 was a lot to take in. One can hardly keep up with the pace, and for most of us, fear about the future is more and more creeping in. What helps is to see the obstruction pattern behind most of what is happening. First, there is an escalation to levels that are nearly unthinkable, highly oppressive, extortions to a degree that are ethically or morally devilish and corrupt, creating immense pain and energy drain of the subjects that are targeted, to then see the obstructor de-escalate a tiny bit, so to reach a level of normalization in which the new situation then is still worse than before, but somehow less horrible than the original oppression or extorsion. It’s nothing else than power over tactics by the powerful exploiting the powerless. Need examples?

Donald Trump’s crusade of ‘we need Greenland, we need to own it to defend it’ (or was it Iceland? … whatever): panic in Denmark and Greenland, panic in NATO’s headquarter. A military occupation would have invoked article 5 of the NATO statutes, and would have practically meant the end of NATO. The ‘deal’ now discussed, giving Trump whisperer Mark Rutte a success story that nobody knows what it entails, just some ‘framework arrangements’ including American bases, security of the Arctic and resource exploitation, while not scratching Greenland’s autonomy as a part of Denmark, is still prey to negotiators and can escalate any moment again, depending on the daily mood of orange humpty-dumpty. It looks less worse than the original threat, but nothing is inked yet.
The announcement of trade tariffs for countries supporting Greenland’s autonomy, to stir up the World Economic Forum, giving Donald Trump all the limelight he needs, to then just hold an unbearable 75 minutes speech (+15 minutes of Q &A) that was nothing but narcissism on steroids, often sounding like a 3-year old toddler having a temper tantrum, spitting out one insult after the other, full of lies and unbelievable spins of documented history, while showing his inferiority complexes to justify new cruelties. Then, in the end de-escalating by letting go of the tariffs to play his ‘Daddy Cool’ role he loves so much. It’s de-escalation with no guarantee of new escalation.·
The Mercosur Trade Treaty, 25 years in the making, escalated by not passing the European Parliament, and sending it to the European Court to see if it is according to the European Constitution, again, 25 years in the making. A huge outcry of anger, especially to the 8 members of the European Green Party, having voted with the right wing against its ratification. Other parties polemically slaughtered the Green Party, while dozens of ‘no’ votes, much more than the 8 votes from the Green Party, came from the Conservatives themselves (more than 40). Ugly blame games added another scar to the already bleeding back of the contorted European citizen’s belief in these institutions. The de-escalation came by still letting the deal start and implementing it while the Court is still busy with it. But all trade carried out under the new treaty is still in a limbo stage until the final verdict is here, and that, as we hear, can take quite some time.
The Iranian people being slaughtered by the thousands in the streets of Iranian cities, while the regime cut off the internet and much of telecoms. A part of the documentation still made it and showed the cruelties. Body bags lying on the streets and relatives searching their loved ones inside the bags. Trump tweeted ‘stay strong, help is on the way’, to then just let a couple of war ships come nearby, but not intervening – for now. Not yet another war zone, Venezuela just happened, already without Congress approval. A level of de-escalation just happened by itself as the atrocities of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps were so brutal that Iranian citizens feared to take to the streets, despite the immense earlier courage. That doesn’t mean that a US military operation with precision and granularity won’t happen. But we can be sure that Trump thinks in deal terms.
The typical COP pattern of escalation of oil-rich countries to block any deals and arrangements, on climate, biodiversity or plastic, despite all the negotiating work post summit, to then agree (de-escalate) in a last minute burning the midnight oil agreement that is far from what’s necessary, but then sold as success and delaying decisions into the future. We see this for nearly a decade, allowing the oil-rich countries to continue to exploit.
And last but not least the attacks of the US administration, of ICE and DHS Boarder Control Agents, shooting American citizens in the streets during bright daylight, to then smear their reputation as ‘domestic terrorists’, and defining their own ‘truth’ beyond any evidence. The American Gestapo-Chief Greg Bovino, plus Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller and others constructed an 1984 Orwellian ‘truth is wrong’ and ‘wrong is truth’. De-escalation was forced by the brave Minnesotians that couldn’t dig it, and solidarity notifications came in from all over the country. Now Bovino is gone, Holman is in to ‘get the job done’ and parts of ICE are supposed to leave Minnesota. That doesn’t mean that the problem is solved, just a bit de-escalated.

Identifying examples of this escalation / de-escalation ‘hopium’ pattern is to a certain degree due to being a collapse aware and acknowledging observer. What we see is a downward spiral on nearly all topics, while understanding there are all sorts of interrelations between these topics, cause and effect correlations, and overlays. It’s simply a massive Overton Window manipulation.

Also, through discussions about the collapse resilience continuum in our work at r3.0, my colleague Bill Baue and I (with the help of others), while playing with collapse transcendence as a marker for what collapse resilience would actually result in (and received pushback on transcendence as a too broad and overused term), arrived at ‘de-patterning’ as part of collapse acknowledgement and ‘re-patterning’ as the actual challenge in collapse resilience work needed to arrive at social and ecological integrity. This seemed to find more agreement. You can observe the posts and discussion threads here and here.

Another source of understanding of de-patterning stems from having read Luke Kemp’s book ‘Goliath’s Curse’ and Peter Turchin’s book ‘End Times’. For me they are the meta-explainers for understanding long arc patterns, so that we drill deeper in granularity on short-term patterns. And this is how I came up with the escalation / de-escalation downward spiral pattern as part of the meta-analysis of Kemp and Turchin.

As a quick primer of Luke Kemp’s book and Turchin (Kemp also refers to Turchin in his book), the following is sort of the gist:

Luke Kemp argues that large hierarchical societies—what he calls “Goliaths”—are inherently fragile and prone to collapse. He defines a Goliath as a collection of power hierarchies where elites dominate others to control energy, labor, and resources. Over time this concentration of power and extraction creates instability that ultimately leads to societal breakdown. He delivers historical narratives for that.

Kemp identifies several processes that make Goliaths fragile:

Elite Overproduction & Factionalism: Too many elites competing for limited power positions leads to conflict and instability (link to Turchin’s analysis)
Extraction Spiral: Elites extract increasing wealth from the broader population, causing inequality, ecological depletion, and social immiseration.
Institutional Fragility: The legitimacy of institutions erodes as inequality grows; when crises hit (drought, wars, disease), support for the state collapses quickly.

Kemp also notes that major systemic failures show how tightly connected systems (trade, agriculture, politics) can cascade into rapid, widespread breakdowns. For elites collapse is catastrophic—they lose status, authority, and wealth. For ordinary people Kemp controversially argues that collapse can improve conditions, e.g. pending forced labor, heavy taxation, and extractive oversight, sometimes leading to better health and autonomy at local levels. I have doubts on this last point, as the consequences of collapse are first more dire and the positive conditions need active ‘re-patterning.’

I agree with Kemp that humanity now lives within a single, global Goliath—a hyper-connected set of political, economic, and technological systems. Risks unique to this era include: climate change, nuclear weapons, artificial intelligencenge, surveillance technologies, and pandemics. These threats, combined with interconnected infrastructure and supply chains, mean a modern collapse could be far more catastrophic and irreversible than past societal breakdowns.

How can this be solved according to Kemp? He has three main inroads: First, open and more participatory democracy, including citizens’ assemblies and sortition (lottery-based decision makers), to counter elite capture. Second, wealth redistribution and taxation to reduce extreme inequality. And third, stronger checks on powerful institutions (big tech, military-industrial complexes, fossil fuel interests) to slow extractive pressures. Or to sum it up: reducing inequality, democratizing power, and building systems resilient to catastrophic stresses. We at r3.0 see these as ingredients for a bioregional re-patterning weaving, cultivating and governing the commons.

This summary should make you understand that all the mentioned examples of the escalation / de-escalation downward spiral are meant to obstruct collapse awareness, collapse acknowledgement and the view on collapse resilience strategies. They are meant to keep power structures alive, keep the wealth distribution from bottom to top, and disregard topics like climate change, biodiversity, resource availability and displacement. It’s all sort of ‘oh thank god, it’s all less bad than first feared’, and should make us feel better, while in reality collapse continues. Elite overproduction as called out by Turchin and analyzed in what he callsn Cliodynamics: a data-driven, quantitative science of history, claims that we can identify recurring patterns that make political instability predictable, namely here and now squeezing the economic system up to the point where it has eaten itself up. Bill Baue would add his own interpretation that elite overproduction essentially means competition for limited power and status.

Biodiversity as a National Security Risk

In the shadow of all the Davos hysteria and Trump’s second retreat from the Paris Climate Accords (and 60 other treaties), a rather unusual report was published: The UK Government’s Department on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs released a ground-breaking assessment that is not just simply an environmental report, but a ‘National Security Assessment’ on global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and national security. Let that sink in for a moment!

The general take: wildlife populations down 73% since 1970. Six (now seven) planetary boundaries crossed. Critical ecosystems – the Amazon, boreal forests, SE Asian coral reefs – on pathways to collapse, some potentially by 2030. What does all of that have to do with the UK? Here’s what the National Security Assessment says:

The acknowledgement of collapse of biodiversity is all over the place, and the report very eloquently draws its conclusions on all parts of national security, painting a grim picture of cause and effect and interrelatedness: climate, water, weather, food production, supply chain resilience, and many more as outlined in the next visual:

This report could serve as a blueprint for all countries on Planet Earth. And it could even be enhanced if collapse resilience strategies could be worked out in general, and in more granularity, as the report remains flat on addressing the benefits of bioregional management, sensible degrowth strategies, social cohesion building, relationalized finance, bioregional knowledge commons, bioregional governance, just to name a few. It doesn’t analyze the root causes for biodiversity loss, namely the exploitative nature of our existing economic system and our financial system dependencies.

And this is where the 2026 edition of the UNEP State of Finance for Nature Report comes in again handy, clarifying that in2023, finance directly harmful to nature reached US$7.3 trillion, while investments in nature-based solutions (NbS) amounted to only US$220 billion – a ratio of more than 30:1. To meet global commitments under the Rio Conventions, NbS investment must increase by two and half times to US$571 billion by 2030, while harmful flows must be phased out and repurposed. This highlights the urgent need to get the wheel turning on the ‘Big Nature Turnaround’.

Globally, finance flows continue to be heavily skewed toward nature-negative activities, which threaten ecosystems, economies and human well-being. Nearly half our global economy significantly depends on nature, and yet governments, business and finance continue to erode our collective nature bank account. Business-as-usual locks us deeper into further degradation of ecosystems, but governments, corporates, consumers and investors have the power to redirect flows and unlock resilience, equity and growth.

Asked for what’s at stake the report says: ‘The transition requires leadership, policy reform and coordinated action across governments, financial institutions and companies in the real economy. Turning the wheel towards nature-positive finance is essential: to meet 2030 targets under the Rio Conventions, to safeguard ecosystems and livelihoods and to build resilient, inclusive and sustainable economies for the future.’

Well, like with the UK Governments National Security Strategy, it relies on all of the players that caused the problem to solve it. A conceptional and transformative thinking towards bioregionalism doesn’t take place. But again, both reports are useful to describe the magnitude of the transformation needs.

Sunday Thoughts

Eight more Sunday Thoughts to mention in this last section of the Newsletter, as always full of diverse topics and sharing my views. Enjoy if you haven’t read them already.

A Sunday Thought (#173): ‚The Transparent Citizen‘ – how a fully datafied Alex Pretti lost his life (February 1, 2026)

A Sunday Thought(#172): ‘Back To The Future’ – a Davos Retrospect (January 25, 2026)

A Sunday Thought (#171): ‘WEF Risk Perceptions’ – what’s blatantly wrong? (January 18, 2026)

A Sunday Thought (#170): ‘Serendipity’ – A Way To Mentally Adjust In Times Of Collapse (January 11, 2026)

A Sunday Thought (#169): ‚ESG is dead‘ – and other bullsh** memes of 2025 (January 4, 2026)

A Sunday Thought (#168): ‚Being A Catalyst‘ – Am I? (December 21, 2025)

A Sunday Thought (#167): ‚Autocracy Takeover‘ – Signs Of Continued Ethical Decay in Times Of Collapse (December 14, 2025)

A Sunday Thought (#166): ‚From ESG Professionals To Bioregionalism Contributors‘ – A 6-Step-Process for Starters (December 7, 2025)