Climate Conquest and the Right to Nope Out

On melting ice, hegemonic derangements, and liberty.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Greenland’s so hot right now.

Temperatures and tensions rise. Neta Crawford reported in Pentagon Fuel Use, Climate Change, and the Costs of War that the Department of Defense War emitted more greenhouse gases than any other institution back in 2019.¹ This carbon bootprint exacerbates the climate chaos melting Greenland, and could tread upon its sovereignty should “grab ‘em by the pussy” grand strategy continue to be applied at the international level. The raging mentality of petty tyrants and their “anti-war” political base brings Norse sagas to mind.

Ah, the escapades of Erik the Red, who for his violent killings over batshit insane property disputes, was banished from Iceland, so he had to move abroad. Relatable. He founded Greenland after embarking for its fertile-ish southwestern fjords with other settlers, whose resolve was sorely tested as several ships were lost or turned back along the way. They were plausibly pissed off upon learning Erik had embellished the “green” part.

. . . men will desire much the more to go there if the land has a good name.

— Direct quote from The Saga of Erik the Red, Chapter 2

It’s far less of an embellishment today; Greenland is greener than ever, having shed 4,890 billion metric tons of ice from 1992 to 2020.²³ Colonization of an increasingly verdant landmass would be arguably rational — if it weren’t already inhabited and claimed. There’s no evidence that Greenland was simultaneously occupied by anyone else when Erik discovered it, in contrast to our barbaric present. Where there’s mass starvation and death, there’s a “master plan” to build a luxury resort.⁴ With sights set on Greenland, casino bankruptcy extraordinaire Donald the Orange seems enticed by runaway feedback loops that raise alarm in private circles yet are publicly lampooned.⁵ One of these is the weakening Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).

While it’s easier to fling a hamburger at a wall than to remember whatever AMOC stands for, it’s one climate tipping point of many instigating our Age of Climate Conquest.⁶⁷ This age is defined by two strategies: coercion and cooperation. Only one works in the long-run, whether you’re imagining luxury hotels along your neighbor’s melting coastline, or an individual deciding where to put down roots.

Back to AMOC: as the Atlantic’s heat pump, it continuously transfers one million large nuclear power plants worth of energy from the tropics to the North Atlantic, warming northwestern Europe in the process.⁸⁹ Well, for now. As Greenland’s ice melts, freshwater dilutes the salty North Atlantic, making the water less dense. This diminishes the sinking action that sustains the whole cycle. If the circulation stops, then bye-bye heat. As Western Europe resultantly cools by 1.5 °C per decade, its climate shifts precipitously. Precipitation, specifically, shifts southward, effectively freeze-drying the continent and diminishing the African and Asian monsoons that billions depend on for agriculture. The US East Coast, meanwhile, would endure rising sea levels as the current stops tugging water away from the shore.¹⁰

This, by the way, is already happening.

The long-term sea level change [at the US East Coast] was found to be ~two times faster than the global averaged rate. Dynamic sea level changes due to a weakening of AMOC are mainly responsible . . .

According to whom? Why… Zhang et al. of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at NOAA, of course.¹¹ You haven’t heard of them? These happen to be extremely intelligent scientists who should make Americans proud of their country. How do I know that? I mean, who the fuck else works at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory? It’s distinctly possible these bookworms might deserve acclaim and recognition for their contributions to humanity… erm, wait a second.

Uh-oh. That lab was disrupted by cuts thanks to the people who should, under no circumstances ever, make decisions for anyone else.¹² I’m not even including Erik the Red in that grouping. Maybe we can pray the climate change away — even if the science, conducted by the sharpest minds in the world, implies beyond a reasonable doubt that prayer is as ineffective as Sharpies for controlling atmospheric and oceanic systems.¹³

Noping out of America & Americanisms.

There’s an old saying about not being the one who pisses in the punchbowl. You can kindly ask the pisser to stop, but when more pissers show up to prove to you how cool it is to piss on everything, what do you do? You try to ignore it, but piss is dripping all over the floor. It’s on your shoes. Eventually, you’re just swimming in piss. You try calling attention to the piss, but everybody’s like, “Piss everywhere is normal, bruh.”

I noped out; I moved to Spain, where that’s no longer the case. We flush our piss here. Or hose it off the street, in any case.

[lights carbon-emitting cigarette] Whew, “dodged a bullet there,” another idiom you can take literally. But did I? Moving abroad involves risk exchange. “A discerning emigrant acknowledges privilege while reducing net risk over time, a deeply personal calculus of factors prioritized situationally and by preference” — this is a “politically correct” way to describe moving abroad. Can’t stand living somewhere because the social contract demands pissing in the punchbowl? How dare you exercise your personal autonomy, invoking your right to leave, without demonstrating your purity or capacity for nuance to the Personal Decision Police? Go forth and self-flagellate.

It’s popular to lambast individuals pursuing freedoms and opportunities under threat by the very systems that pushed them away in the first place. This “discourse” stems from one of two mutually inclusive Americanisms: attention-farming ragebait, and a marketing strategy of condescension intended to convince prospective emigrants that they are helpless without a consultation. Thankfully, that’s all bullshit. This blog, Bebop Libre, offers an alternative — mind the Libre.

⚠️ CONTROVERSIAL TAKE ALERT: Unlike some people, I believe in liberty. We are citizens of circumstances, but also citizens of the world. Liberty — libre — is the freedom to move between these modes. It can be expressed as free association; self-determination; embarking for another city, region, or country; building an earthship in the middle of the desert; joining an ecovillage; living in a large jar; or squatting inside an abandoned missile silo. The weirder, the better. Personally, I love when people do whatever they want as long as they don’t tread upon others.

You have the right to nope out. You don’t have to explain yourself to anyone. Now, if there’s anybody who has some explaining to do, that would be the people actively destroying our world — and who make decisions for us, on our behalf, without our consent. They didn’t corrupt our world without first corrupting our systems of governance. I, as an American, don’t recall voting to subsidize the fossil fuel industry by $34.8 billion in 2025.¹⁴ Is a free market, like, when you give taxpayer money to Scrooge McDuck? Or is it when your banana republic invades another banana republic for crude oil nobody wants?

Coercive petrostates, cooperative electrostates.

Either way, taking things from others like the schoolyard bully doesn’t build resilience. Strife and instability don’t help anyone. In the cynical game of climate conquest, saber-rattling at an allied sovereign territory — and well-functioning democracy — isn’t the winning strategy. So, who will win?

The countries that nope out of coercion will win — those cooperating, and minimizing their emissions through electrification. Are we gonna blow past some climate tipping points anyway? Yeah, shit seems fucked. Is the outcome less bad if we electrify? Probably. At the very least, resiliency by way of renewable power generation is wise, not just to weather ensuing climate chaos, but to minimize costs and dependency on petrostates — these are the advantages of electrostates. To that end, a 2024 report showed that photovoltaics were on average 41% cheaper than the lowest-cost fossil fuels.¹⁵

Plummeting photovoltaic costs have prompted many countries to go all-in on renewables, including my host country. Having squandered centuries and vast resources on colonial conquest only to lose what was stolen, Spain has learned that building resilience at home beats extraction abroad. In fact, at the end of 2024, solar accounted for one quarter of Spain’s installed generation capacity.¹⁶ Even better news: one of Greenland’s neighbors is already fully renewable — Iceland is conveniently situated for geothermal and hydroelectric power generation.¹⁷

Wanting to nope out to any country that puts its people ahead of quarterly profits is not a sick impulse. For those with the means, opting out of a coercive culture that will result in millions of climate refugees shouldn’t be treated as a guilt-inducing transgression. Integration into a new culture and the learning — or re-learning — involved is about as cooperative as it gets. Disingenuously framing structural problems as personal ones is not an American habit I’m exporting abroad.

No thanks, my neighbors deserve better.

I admit, it’s a privilege paying taxes that contribute to projects other than conquest. Most people can’t just leave, which is why those with options shouldn’t waste them on performative hand-wringing. You know what’s worse than privilege? Squandered privilege. Having observed so many squander theirs, I try not to squander mine. After all, I come from the country with the most squandered privilege in the world. If only we could learn from any number of historical examples.

Finally — Erik the Red exaggerated the ‘green’ in Greenland to compel others to follow him there. A thousand years later, the people living there don’t need to be colonized — they deserve the same liberty Iceland has: to run on renewables, host no foreign bases, and export electronic music the world actually wants. No conquest required. Some countries just get it.

Reese here from Bebop Libre: Thanks for joining me. Unless you hate-consume my content, I have a favor to ask of you: please hit that like button. Here’s why: it increases the odds that Bebop Libre will reach other people, some of whom may be looking for permission to no longer seek permission from the Permission Givers.

1. Pentagon Fuel Use, Climate Change, and the Costs of War by Neta C. Crawford, Watson Institute of International & Public Affairs at Brown University (November 13, 2019)

2. Scholars generally agree that the source text of The Saga of Erik the Red in its original form recounts events interspersed with fictional elements for dramatic effect. Since sagas such as this were recorded long after the events took place, it’s reasonable to assume that the dialogue serves as a literary device, not actual words spoken by Erik or others. The cited text was translated into English by J. Sephton in 1880.

3. NASA Study: More Greenland Ice Lost Than Previously Estimated, Jet Propulsion Laboratory at NASA (January 17, 2024)

4. Trump’s multi-billion Gaza Strip luxury resort masterplan revealed as huge questions remain by Hannah Broughton, The Mirror US, MSN (December 21, 2025)

5. How Donald Trump Bankrupted His Atlantic City Casinos, but Still Earned Millions by Russ Buettner & Charles V. Bagli, The New York Times (June 11, 2016)

6. President Trump got so angry at Attorney General Barr, he threw his lunch, Cassidy Hutchinson testifies by Caitlin O’Kane, CBS News (June 28, 2022)

7. Exceeding 1.5°C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points by McKay et al., Science (September 9, 2022)

8. Is the Atlantic Overturning Circulation Approaching a Tipping Point? by Stefan Rahmstorf, Oceanography Magazine (April 10, 2024)

9. 1 PW = 10^15 W = 1,000,000,000 MW

1,000,000,000 MW / 1,000 MW (large reactor) = 1,000,000 reactors

10. Extreme Climate Impacts From Collapse of a Key Atlantic Ocean Current Could be Worse Than Expected, a New Study Warns by Bob Berwyn, Inside Climate News (February 9, 2024)

11. Influence of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation on the U.S. extreme cold weather by Jianjun Yin & Ming Zhao, Communications Earth & Environment, Nature (October 13, 2021)

12. NOAA layoffs threaten weather, climate forecasts by Andrew Freedman, Axios (February 28, 2025)

13. Trump Displays Altered Map Of Hurricane Dorian’s Path To Include Alabama by Brian Naylor, NPR (September 4, 2019)

14. Paying for Climate Chaos: U.S. Federal Subsidies for Fossil Fuel Production, Oil Change International (September 9, 2025)

15. Renewable power generation costs in 2024, International Renewable Energy Agency (2025)

16. Electricity generation from renewable energies in Spain grows by 10.3% in 2024, reaching record levels, Red Eléctrica (March 18, 2025)

17. Energy system of Iceland, IEA (accessed January 18, 2025)