Big oil’s $3,000-a-second game of chicken is already killing us

People sit on a hill near damaged houses following the deadly flash floods and mudslides, in Betrawati, Nuwakot district, Nepal, September 6, 2026.

In the last weeks of August, a valley in the Himalayas and a post-industrial city in the U.S. Midwest found tragic commonality. In Gary, Indiana, a powerful “derecho,” a fast-moving band of damaging thunderstorms, tore across Lake Michigan producing straight-line winds as high as 110 mph. The widespread destruction left tens of thousands of peoplewithout electricity for over two weeks, bringing global relief organizations like World Central Kitchen to the area for the first time. In Nepal, an enormous 2,000 foot wide chunk of glacier ice sheared off a mountain and plunged to the river 7,000 feet below, tearing everyone off the mountainside with it, killing over 1,000 people.

Scientists agree that both catastrophes were caused by the rise in global temperatures.

Eight thousand miles apart, as historically and culturally distinct as two areas can be, both Nepal and Gary emerged as pawns in the same oligarchs’ game of chicken: Can big oil squeeze another decade of ROI on their sunk equipment costsbefore the earth’s post-industrial temperature increases by 3.6°F (2°C)? Scientists have warned since the 1970s that an increase of 2°C will be the tipping point beyond which life on earth will change irreversibly, yet the same game of chicken persists. Fossil fuel profits have continued to soar despite the warnings— now tipping $3,000 a second— with the costs of climate change projected to hit $38Trillion annually.

The inhabitants of Gary and Nepal, like millions of people living in Miami, New Orleans, Houston, Asheville, Jakarta, Delhi, Lagos, and thousands of cities, towns, and rural communities around the world are sitting pawns in a deadly game they didn’t sign up for. No one other than industry titans, fossil fuel investors, and the politicians whose campaigns they bankrolled signed up for what is happening.

Gary’s steel still runs on coal, but it doesn’t have to

I used to live in Gary; full disclosure I ran for U.S. Congress in 2020, primarily to address climate change, and got my ass kicked. Although Gary is known as a post-industrialist steel mill town with an outsized carbon footprint, Gary is also home to rare and unexpected natural habitats and exceptional beauty. The sand dunes, lagoons, and oak savannahs are as pristine as they were when Potawatomi and Miami tribes lived there.

I ran for Congress with climate change urgency most residents weren’t happy to hear. Although Gary’s steel manufacturing relies on coke and coal to fuel blast furnaces, churning out 10 million metric tons of carbon every year, those furnaces could be converted to run on hydrogen produced via electrolysis powered by solar or wind, replacing coke as the reducing and heating agent. The steel could then be melted in an electric arc furnace (EAF). The whole process would produce water vapor instead of CO2 as a byproduct, which would save the steelworkers’ and the planet’s lungs.

Renewable-hydrogen steel plants also benefit from price stability, since sunlight and wind aren’t subject to the kind of volatility Trump is spreading throughout the Middle East. Early movers like Sweden’s HYBRIT project and Boston Metalhave proven that as the costs of renewable electricity keep falling, green steel will become not just cleaner but genuinely cheaper to produce at scale. This is especially true in areas with abundant solar or wind resources, and Gary is rich in both vacant land for solar and onshore winds from Lake Michigan. The only downside of converting to green steelmaking, outside the initial cost that will convert to profit in 10 years, would likely be to the local utility monopoly known as NIPSCO.

India also still burns coal, but Nepal does not

In the climate karma department, Nepal is as close to innocent as any emerging nation can be. Nepal contributes less than 0.1% of global greenhouse gas emissions despite bearing a disproportionate share of climate destruction. Nepal’s power grid is 95% supplied by clean hydropower, which is also supplemented by solar. Unlike neighboring India, the world’s third worst contributor to climate change after China and the US, Nepal does not operate coal-fired power plants.

In Nepal, traditional biomass including firewood and agricultural residue provide over 60% of overall primary energy. Biomass sources are the primary energy supply used for residential purposes including heating and cooking.

Despite their best efforts to burn clean fuel, the threat of renewed flooding still threatens Nepal, as scientists warn that debris and dammed up river channels could burst any day without warning, with over a thousand people still missing from the last event, including hundreds of foreign tourists.

Will we keep tuning out the obvious?

Every hurricane, flood, fire, disappearing habitat and river, and every sinking costal region, hastens big oil’s game of chicken toward its conclusion, one way or another. In the U.S., will the fossil-fuel aligned Supreme Court majority allow corporations to continue to destroy with no legal accountability? In India, will Prime Minister Modi continue to talk about climate justice, even as his policies create the opposite?

When my climate-focused run for office ended, a Chicago Tribune Metro editor asked if I wanted to write for them. I kept writing climate policy papers, why not use them to try to do some good? But I learned from the campaign that while many Americans are somewhat concerned about climate change, most don’t want to think about it. Six years, hundreds of columns, and a climate justice TedTalk later, an editor from a different national paper told me that climate change, as a topic, remains unpopular.

People tune out climate change because the human brain has evolved to react to immediate, visible threats rather than slow-moving, abstract problems. The lack of personal urgency convertsit to a future problem, while fossil-fuel backed organizations blame “nature” for their own malfeasance. Contemplating what’s happening to the planet also causes cognitive dissonance: it requires acknowledging uncomfortable truths about modern lifestyles, which leads to more psychological numbing, and emotional shutdown instead of action.

Maybe this psychological numbing is the earth’s kindness, her way of anesthetizing us while she reduces our number. And maybe sending up a vindictive anti-scienceimbecile, a grotesque sadist hellbent on destroying everything— the planet, world peace, and the rule of law— is just nature’s way of thinning the herd.

Sabrina Haake is a political analyst and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. She writes the free Substack, The Haake Take.

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