Paying for Our Own Destruction: A Collective Suicide Pact

By Rob C.

Art by Matt Davies

TL;DR: The “Oil King of Mar-A-Lago” is back to his favorite pastime—burning our future to stay out of an orange jumpsuit. While the “Epstein Class” counts their war profits from the $4-$6/gallon gas spike caused by Trump’s Iranian crusade, the planet is literally cooking. From Exxon’s 50-year-old cover-up to the 175,000 heat-related deaths in Europe or the climate enhanced wildfires burning across the US, we are financing our own extinction. While China builds $10,000 EVs, we’re subsidizing coal and oil to the tune of $20 billion. While our demented President thinks windmills cause cancer and batteries cause shark attacks. It’s time to stop the heist and invest in a grid that doesn’t rely on the “Big Mac Messiah.”

Good morning. Grab your gas masks and your checkbooks, because today we’re talking about the ultimate “pay-to-play” scheme: our own destruction.

Whether it’s the nuclear saber-rattling or the fact that it now costs a small fortune to fill up your SUV, the reality is the same—we are the ones paying for the end of the world. And for those of you still sipping the oil-flavored Kool-Aid and shouting that “Climate Change is a hoax,” let’s clear the air. It’s a hoax in the same way the Epstein Files were a “hoax”—meaning it’s a verified reality that the elite would prefer you didn’t look at too closely.

The Exxon Files

Here’s the uncomfortable truth that corporate media and fossil fuel propaganda have spent billions trying to obscure: The overwhelming scientific consensus is clear. We are warming the planet by burning fossil fuels. This isn’t a debate. This isn’t “both sides have valid points.” This is settled science being deliberately muddied by the same people who profit from your confusion.

And here’s the oily truth: Exxon’s own scientists warned the company in the 1970s that the continued use of their product would heat the planet and cause an existential crisis for humanity. They knew. They had the data. They forecast the warming with terrifying accuracy—roughly 0.2°C per decade—matching exactly what we’re seeing today. They understood the consequences. And what did they do? They buried the research, they chose profit over the survival of the species, then spent millions on “uncertainty” campaigns to make sure you’d keep buying what they were selling. These corporations didn’t see a crisis; they saw a shareholder opportunity. Because, hey, shareholder profits are clearly more important than the survival of human civilization.

🌡️ The Silent Slaughter

Heat isn’t just something that makes you crank the AC and complain about your electric bill—it’s a weapon of mass destruction. In the U.S., roughly 4,000 people die every year from heat-related causes. That’s more than die from shark attacks, plane crashes, and terrorism combined. In Europe— you know, that place Trump hates because they won’t fight his illegal war—heat kills a staggering 175,000 people annually. One hundred seventy-five thousand people. Every year. Dead from heat that wouldn’t be this extreme if we’d acted on Exxon’s own scientists’ warnings fifty years ago.

And what kind of coverage does this crisis get from corporate media? Barely a peep. But let a so-called “terrorist” attack happen—one that kills a fraction of the people heat kills every single day—and it’s 24/7 coverage, breaking news graphics, terrorism experts, military analysts, fear-mongering on loop. But when millions die from pollution and heat? The corporate media gives it a shrug. It’s not “sensational” enough.

Why? Because terrorism serves the narrative. It justifies military budgets, surveillance states, and wars that enrich defense contractors. Heat deaths? Those implicate the fossil fuel industry that buys billions in advertising on the same networks that would have to connect the dots.

And it’s not just heat. Millions die each year from pollution—air pollution from burning fossil fuels, water pollution from extraction and refining, environmental degradation from mining and drilling.

And we barely notice. We barely care. We fill up our SUVs, drive solo to work, idle in drive-throughs, and complain when gas prices go up—all while paying the companies that are killing us to continue killing us even faster.

The cognitive dissonance is staggering. We’ll lose our minds over a hundred deaths from terrorism and demand trillion-dollar wars. But millions dying from pollution? Thousands dying from heat? “Just the cost of doing business.” Just the price of maintaining our lifestyle. Just what happens when you let corporations externalize the costs of their products onto the planet and everyone who lives on it.

America’s Epic Electric Vehicle Fail

The EV Gap: China vs. The “AhMerika” - While America’s Big 3 automakers—Ford, GM, Stellantis—made a halfhearted effort to manufacture electric vehicles. They produced a few overpriced models, barely marketed them, made sure dealers steered customers toward gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs (higher profit margins), then quit faster than a white guy picking vegetables in a field when Trump oozed back into office.

Meanwhile - China is eating our lunch. Massive solar farms covering areas the size of small countries. Battery technology advancing faster than anywhere else in the world. Electric cars that are actually affordable—in China you can buy a very nice, well-built EV like the Wuling Mini or the BYD Seagull, for $8,000-$10,000. Here in America, land of innovation and free markets and all that bullshit? You’ll need a second mortgage to buy a Tesla.

A Promise Immediately Broken

It was a historic moment. Global consensus. A framework for action. A commitment to future generations that we would stop destroying the planet they would inherit.196 countries signed onto the Agreement—a treaty aimed at limiting global warming to well below 2°C, preferably to 1.5°C, above pre-industrial levels. The Paris Agreement was a legally binding promise to save our kids, and the world’s governments have treated it like a Terms of Service agreement—they just clicked “Accept” and went back to their oil addiction.

The United States—one of the largest emitters and historically the biggest contributor to cumulative CO2—pulled out under Trump, rejoined under Biden, and is now being gutted again under Trump 2.0.

Hooked on Oil

Like any junkie, the world has become addicted to oil. And like any addiction, it’s killing us while we desperately rationalize why we can’t quit. Energy production, transportation, agriculture—the entire global economy has become dependent on the very thing that’s killing the planet. We’ve built systems where quitting fossil fuels feels impossible even though continuing to use them is literally suicidal.

Some parts of the world have taken the crisis more seriously than others—probably because their land is literally sinking into the ocean. Island nations facing extinction tend to be highly motivated to address climate change. Coastal cities watching sea levels rise tend to invest in adaptation. But the large industrial nations—the ones doing the most damage, the ones with the most resources to transition—are going in the opposite direction. Burning more and more fossil fuels even though renewable energy is now cheaper.

We are currently financing a system that is making large parts of Florida uninhabitable and turning the Mid-West into a tinderbox. Insurance companies are already pulling out of these regions; they aren’t MAGA-hat-wearing ideologues—they’re bean counters, and they know the “Extraction Bomb” is about to go off.

Biden’s Progress, Trump’s Destruction

During the Biden administration, the U.S. made some serious moves to help people adopt clean energy solutions. The Inflation Reduction Act included massive investments in renewable energy, electric vehicle tax credits, home energy efficiency upgrades, and clean manufacturing. And what did Trump do? He not only dismantled much of what was accomplished but also began using your money to subsidize coal companies. The dirtiest and most expensive form of energy on the planet—and Trump is giving them taxpayer dollars to keep operating.

Trump’s obsession with destroying renewables isn’t about “saving whales” or “preventing bird deaths”—claims that have as much scientific weight as his “bleach-injection” medical advice. His hatred for wind energy is famously personal: Scotland dared to install wind turbines off the coast of his golf course, spoiling his view of the North Sea. So now, the rest of us have to suffer through “rolling coal” and $20 billion annual subsidies for the dirtiest fuel on Earth because a narcissist didn’t like the look of a turbine near his ninth hole.

Enslaved to Dirty Fuel

So here we are, folks. Enslaved to dirty fuel because Trump and Exxon chose profit over the survival of the planet. We know what needs to happen. The science is clear. The technology exists. Renewable energy is cheaper. Electric vehicles work. Battery storage is improving. Solar and wind can power the grid.

The only thing stopping the transition is political will captured by fossil fuel money.

Oil companies spend billions on lobbying. They fund climate denial think tanks. They buy politicians. They run propaganda campaigns. They deliberately confuse the public about settled science to protect their profit margins. And it’s working. We’re still subsidizing fossil fuels to the tune of $20 billion per year in the United States alone while the planet burns.

Still in the Fight

We aren’t dead yet, but the planet is being altered beyond repair. We can still limit warming to levels that, while catastrophic, are survivable. We can still transition to renewable energy before complete civilizational collapse. We can still build resilient systems that allow humanity to adapt to the changes we’ve already set in motion.

But it requires us to demand change. Not hope someone else fixes it.

It is time to demand our government stop handing our money to the oil oligarchs and start investing in distributed solar, geothermal, and a grid that doesn’t collapse every time the wind blows. Otherwise, our children will be the ones paying the ultimate price for our addiction.

F*CK ICE, RELEASE ALL THE FILES!

Please like, share, and subscribe—because we’re literally paying fossil fuel companies to destroy the planet.

Visit us at: democracy4sale.substack.com / democracy4sale.com

— Robert Cain, author of Democracy for Sale: How Corporate Greed Is Corrupting Democracy and Endangering the Planet.