General Commentary

13 January 2026 Ruminations about Big Nations

What is the mood of the nation and what is contributing to it? This is a question I often ask Phoebe, my youngest sister living in Germany for the last 45 years. One of unease and discord. Being aghast, appalled. Could they have done that now. What is next?

A backdrop is the immediate post New Year 2025/26 news of USA paratroopers decapitating the Venezuela government by kidnapping Maduro and his wife, who were taken to New York to stand trial for alleged Narco Terrorism. The backstory is a virulent Trump throwing his hefty weight around. Another meme doing the cyber news rounds pending which algorithm draws your attention, is by Jeffrey Sacks a renowned US economist asserting USA is in the throes of Empire decline and displaying flailing behaviour to try to reverse the impossible.

I to look for memes, stories, pictures to interpret the world. As we are in a phase of family accumulation (rather than depletion) I am not personally anxious. I have means and responsibility and agency and the process is fascinating. I am trying to understand the trajectory and apprehend my own souls response. Layout and analyse the facts and possibilities before me and try to make sense and act sensibly.

A key narrative I have believed and been burdened by over the last 20 years is that of climate change. Having grown up in the 70s South Africa I recall perceived changes - it was always at times hot and dry or wet and cold but the dangerously hot dry conditions resulting in wildfires now effects each summers day from November to March. If days between rain and a slightly cooled earth get too long, with drying winds, the winter growth turns to bracken and will burn. So, a lot of your energy goes into wildfire awareness, where are they, are you or your people or property immediately threatened? What action must you take?

For example, on Sunday 1330 a WhatsApp message reported a fire with a location pin. Messages follow with photos, and who is responding. Is it close to your fire maintenance group? What are the conditions, do you have resources to spare from farm activity and can you deploy them? E.g., A Bakkie with two men each with 16 L backpack water canister, a shovel and fire beater while suitably attired with some water and food to hold out for a few hours. Your contribution then joins other teams to the firefighting coordinators who focus on who needs to be placed where. This used to happen every few years now in one season you go through this drill 4 to 5 times in your local context only. I won’t add to this the effects of potential excess winter or spring rains but you get the picture.

Climate is changing, we are adapting and mitigating and it is costing but we carry on.

In in the background the bigger players are acting out and interpreting their collective roles. What is interesting about two big players and potential role models is the different strategies of China and USA. Both are Homo sapiens, supposedly the wise ones, but weary and with their interpretation of trying to act in such a way now, that their chance of survival projects into the future.

It is the same species with similar conditions reacting and preparing.

The 20-year worry window I claim for myself is of course a predicament seen much earlier (before the 70s) by key players: fossil fuel majors and government think tanks.

For now, no comment on the long history of those nations - but just naked manifestations evident - from reports, podcasts, (The Economist Drum Tower a favourite) reading and in the case of the US local travel.

While Biden was still in his short term wedged between T1 and T2 we travelled in parts of California and Nevada where Philip and Abby now live.

I was warned but still shocked, by the physical very clear empirical manifestations of this fossil fuel civilisation. Energy flowed like water. There appeared to be few barriers to driving very large fuel heavy vehicles or to tweak all human environments into a narrow temperature zone by fossil fuel driven heating or cooling. There seemed to be no behavioural evidence of a species grappling with an existential threat.

Surely Homo sapiens on both sides are experiencing what I do. I have not added the sense of ecological grief a person born before 2000 may experience. This is a universal human challenge across the eons and it may be best for the old to remain quiet and support the young to embrace and interpret the future. It is said the old always refer to the past as being Rosier than it objectively was. There always is a Future. I fully concur.

That is good and well but we know direction is given by those who direct whether we asked them to or not. I am fascinated by reports emerging from China and what I see and touch myself. The green energy revolution we South Africans have benefited from is enormous. I give recognition initially to scientific and idealistic Germans, many within the Fraunhofer Institute who pioneered the efficiencies of solar panels, only to extend the gratitude to China for their ability to work as a collective to make it affordable.

2023 was Anno Horribilis in South Africa but since large renewable energy project builds have started, we are out of the zero electronic flow doldrums and now this behaviour is collectively translating into many fields of recovery.

Besides some clear historic and geographic differences, the best explanation for the Galactic difference between USA and China was a comment that the former is led by lawyers and the latter by engineers. This makes sense. There are several superficially observable phenomenon I admire about China - sheer scale. Once an idea takes hold and is followed there are consequences. Their bet on renewable energy is an example. We know part of the reason is not having fossil fuels in their national energy Arsenal. There is the strong communitarianism: what is good for one is good for all and an there is an expectation to suffer as an individual for the ultimate good of the whole. A downside is a potential robotic group think and obey mentality.

A weakness of the US and the West is demand for individual rights above the collective. Company law and shareholder logic attests to this. To me this is the Nexus of the conflict. “Drill baby drill” mentality, encouraged consumerism and business as usual. Use fossil fuels as low-cost base to continue to build empire.

Having read the Vaclav Smil: “How the world really works”, I appreciate the long tail of fossil fuels. Plastics industry, cement manufacture, fuels for transport and urea fertiliser from the Haber Bosch process all our predicated on abundant and cheap fossil fuel and being embraced by all nations to avoid crippling poverty.

So, watching China increase food production with high-tech solutions next to renewable energy is another example of engineering power and thinking. They seem able at speed to solve huge circular dilemmas, training engineers in state of the art know how and applying this. It looks like both their inheritance (land and low fossil fuel) and politico-cultural outlook (state-controlled capitalism with a communitarian ethos) shapes them to thrive, be self-sustainable, live within their borders and export ideas and goods to the rest of the world who benefit from it.

The US on the other hand is behaving in an ethically devious way where might is right and showing off with consumerism is revered and enforced upon the populous in this age.

A deeper dilemma in comparing these two Giants is to put my money where my mouth is. I also have to deal with my inheritance from family, the country I grew up and live in and the lessons we have learnt.

So, the blatant question if you do have the privilege of having money: where do you invest it, where it grows, where you are not taxed to heavily, where it is safe and can continue to thrive, where you believe it appears to adhere to the principle: Primum Non Nocere, that is, first do no harm. Where is this place and to what degree do I have choices?

And to be more specific, had you bought US equities e.g., Nvidia share 5 years ago it may be pertinent as of 17 January 26 this company made significant profits for many investors. It is the possible that the value drops if a proposed US to China sale of H 22 chips is blocked and this is pulled back.

To the question of how big nations can affect small players. Even though I admire China for its current stance on renewable energy, we have invested in US stock and can live with profits we have made on that risk. In short I am a small player but collectively we, the thousands of small players do have a large influence. The anonymous power of investor force is not neutral.

I am still unsure of how to feel and think about China and the USA. In talking to my friend Hoffie on the weekend, he opened my eyes to look beyond the political and pecuniary. On posing my dilemma on how to think about these two nations he had clear ideas of the differences. China is still embedded but emerging from a century of humiliation, yet the pain is this unstoppable fire driving the force that will prevail. Not only is there a huge individual capacity to take on pain to be forever distant from poverty. In addition, the collective force makes it work like compound interest in the long-term. The future belongs to China and this may be a good thing if you can position yourself to take a multilateral stance.