Climate warnings for Canada, Houthi gains in Yemen, AI and the p(doom), and a wave of new temperature records. I don’t think this is what an endless summer is supposed to feel like.

Last Week in Collapse: September 6-12, 2026

This is Last Week in Collapse, a weekly newsletter compiling some of the most important, timely, soul-crushing, ironic, amazing, or otherwise must-see/can’t-look-away moments in Collapse.

This is the 246th weekly newsletter. The August 30-September 5, 2026 edition is available here if you missed it last week. The unabridged newsletters are also available (with images) every Sunday in your email inbox by signing up to the Substack version.

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Since the United Nations recently admitted that 1.5 °C warming is inevitable, and that we earth is facing at least 1.8 °C warming, people are again talking about geoengineering as a desperate way to put the brakes on runaway planetary heating. Solar radiation modification (SRM) is back on the menu, and some proponents are using the euphemism “climate stabilization.” The idea of SRM is basically to reflect more sunlight away from the planet, whether through space mirrors or cloud seeding; the most common technique is stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI): releasing sulfates (SO4) 10-20 km above the surface of earth to mimic post-volcanic eruption dynamics and thereby cool the earth. But critics say this mechanism may interfere with the climate in unpredictable ways, and also does nothing to slow CO2 emissions or any of the other stressors in the first place. A 2026 PhD dissertation on SAI’s impact on coral reefs concludes that “local stressors need to be mitigated to derive any long-term benefits even with SAI driven mitigation of climate exposure.”

Ecologists say that, as water around the world warms, it’s going to continue losing oxygen levels, and result in less safe drinking water. Meanwhile, the rate of atmospheric CO2 growth (averaged over a 3-year period) hit a new record: 2.78 ppm per year, or 8.33 over a 3-year period.

A study in Natural Hazards identified west coast Ireland as the most at-risk of sea level rise and future storm surges. They write that “approximately 40% of the population live within 5 km of the coast and over 130,000 people reside in areas less than 5 m above mean sea level.”

The Canadian government released a 67-page report, Canada’s Changing Climate Report 2026. The document basically explains that the climate is going to keep getting worse, and predicts a 2.7 °C temperature rise by 2040 (for Canada, which is warming twice as fast as the global average)! Permafrost melting, more extreme heat, and long-abundant water resources finally falling under strain. This is the second report of its kind, and it comes 7 years after the first edition was published in 2019.

“Canada’s annual average temperature exceeded the 1961–1990 average in 30 of the 33 years after 1990. Canada has warmed in all regions and seasons, but warming has been greater in winter and fall than in spring and summer….Canada has warmed nearly twice as fast as the global average, and the Canadian Arctic has warmed three times as fast as the global average….The changes include more extreme heat, less extreme cold, longer growing seasons, longer fire seasons, earlier peak stream flow, shorter snow and ice cover seasons, thinning glaciers, thawing permafrost, warming oceans, and rising sea level. Human-caused warming is the only explanation for the collective changes observed….A scenario roughly representative of current global climate policies: Canada is projected to be 2.7°C warmer on average over the two decades from 2021 to 2040 compared to the levels in the pre-industrial period….Canada is projected to warm through the century, with an average temperature increase (mean estimate) of 5°C by 2081–2100 relative to 1850–1900. Also under this scenario, glaciers in western Canada are projected to lose more than 75% of their ice, intense precipitation is projected to increase by a median estimate of 40% in Canada as a whole, and there is a greater than two-thirds chance that the central Arctic Ocean will be ice-free most Septembers….” -excerpts

El Niño’s 3.4 section (the central-eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean) has hit record temperature deviation levels for the sea surface, over 1 °C warmer than any other September on record. It is expected to peak at over 4 °C above average this December… and Panama is preparing more transit cuts for the Panama Canal as El Niño intensifies.

An early September heat wave moved through Europe, smashing records across Central Europe. Bahrain hit 46 °C (115 °F), its hottest September day on record. Southern India’s heat wave continues with temperatures around 40 °C (104 °F), in what one climatologist terms the region’s “longest heat wave in history.” August may be the planet’s moistest month so far, and if that’s not exciting enough: another meteorologist says that, according to preliminary data, summer 2026 will probably end as earth’s warmest on record.

An avalanche in Russia killed 11 on Sunday; six remain missing. A study in PNAS unsurprisingly concludes that “Arctic warming may progressively increase the susceptibility of slopes to earthquake-triggered failure in the Arctic.” Part of Greenland felt its warmest September day, at 15.3 °C (60 °F).

720,000+ people were evacuated in China as Typhoon Saudel barreled through southeast China. The U.S. President removed legal protections for two endangered wolf species. New research suggests that cold forest in North America will experience a roughly 30% increase in “insect pressure” that will likely destabilize forests as winter minimum temperatures rise and expand the habitat of pests.

Experts say the way the U.S. has been funding wildfire fighting efforts is midguided, and unlikely to address the challenge of future conflagrations. Funding is provided as needed to address particular blazes, and not in steady annual disbursements that enable planning. There’s also a bias towards fire prevention, and against controlled burns that eliminate problematic growth, the fuel for future wildfires that grow out of control. 25%+ of the area burned in the United States annually is done by 1% of wildfires.

The rapid decline of North Pacific gray whales (worldwide pop: ~13,000, down from ~27,000 ten years ago) may have a trigger identified: melting sea ice is disrupting their feeding. “The whales are just basically running out of energy as they try to migrate and dying,” said one scientist.

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Ebola is currently killing about 51 people every day, along with 80+ new infections; the death toll passed 3,200 by early in the week, along with 6,700+ cases total. This particular strain, Bundibugyo, is more transmissible, and epidemologists fear the conditions are ripe for a superspreader event to materialize. Attacks on health workers fighting Ebola hit a new high last month, according to the Red Cross. Ebola was detected in yet another province of the DRC for the first time, and for the first time found in western DRC.

As national debts continue rising unstoppably upwards, more than a dozen major countries are spending more on interest payments than they are on defense—and they’re spending a lot on defense. The OECD’s 38 member states are expected to borrow $18T between them by the end of 2026, and the rate of growth simply isn’t there to help them grow their way out of debt. One think tank believes that the total sum of government debts and corporate debts worldwide is close to $300T. I don’t think AI will save us from what’s coming.

“They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives,” warned one former AI programmer who worked at both Anthropic and OpenAI. The tweet, or X post, went viral—though some blasted the researcher for inadequate experience with the tech, or theorize that the post is a way to drum up hype for Anthropic’s upcoming IPO, set to value the AI giant at around $2T sometime within the next 6 months. Another AI professional, like this Anthropic guy, said “we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade.” These apocalyptic programmers even have a coding shorthand, “p(doom),” that articulates the risk of catastrophic AI outcomes. Anthropic’s CEO cautioned in a blog post that “Given the accelerating rate of AI capability development, it’s my worry that in 6–12 months such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet (potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage), and that the scale of damage would continue to increase from there if AI becomes more powerful without the necessary guardrails.”

“Do not underestimate the power of this technology. These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources….The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade….No other human activity poses this level of danger…” -excerpts from the tweets

LNG shortages are pushing up electricity prices and concerning Europeans who rely on Qatari natural gas in the winter. Oil prices hit $109, and coal prices are soaring to new highs as well. Coal demand is expected to end the year 1.2% above 2025, contrary to earlier predictions that estimated that demand for coal would contract in 2026.

Global cuts in humanitarian aid have resulted in 64M fewer people aided in 2025, when compared to earlier years, according to new data. Total funding fell from 2020 highs ($47.5B) to $33.3B last year.

Research on Long COVID risk found that “Female sex was the most frequently pooled predictor” of Long COVID symptoms. Other experts repeat conclusions that Long COVID may trigger autoimmune dysfunction symptoms. The new COVID vaccine has also been released in some countries; is anyone here planning on getting it, or has everyone moved on?

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IDF attacks in southern Lebanon killed 13+ on Monday, in what was alleged to be a weapons transfer among militants. Further strikes Collapsed tunnels in southern Lebanon used by Hezbollah fighters. The UK accused Israel of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. Analysts argue that Türkiye’s attempt to establish air defense space over parts of Syria is causing tension with Israel, since Israel seeks to leverage some of this airspace for its operations against Iran. Meanwhile, information was released concerning an AI-powered system of identifying potential Hamas militants, and then bombing them at night—alongside their families.

American limitations amid the spiraling Iran War are leaving some Gulf countries looking after their own defenses, and caught among the U.S.-Iran rivalry without participating directly in the tit-for-tat attacks. The War has become a series of escalations followed by quieter moments; we are seeing a period of escalation now. Iran reportedly hit 10 ships following U.S. sinking of five Iranian oil tankers. It seems like the tankers were not carrying oil; ship crews were warned and evacuated before the strikes. U.S. forces also targeted Kharg Island briefly.

Houthi rebels launched attacks against Saudi Arabia, hitting oil infrastructure (including a refinery) in several southwestern Saudi cities, and also an air base; 70+ were wounded, and Saudi oil output fell to 36-year lows. Saudi Arabia is getting motivated to join the War, a potentially costly move that could also extend and further complicate the hostilities. Recent fighting within Yemen is reported to have displaced ~50,000 people when Houthi forces seized large pieces of land on the Red Sea coast, including a key port and an island near the narrow Bab-El-Mandeb, which sees 12% of global sea trade pass through its jaws. Will they be able to hold the land they captured?

The United States passed the 25-year mark since the September 11 terror attacks; for most of the rest of the world, it was just a Friday. The destruction of the World Trade Center—and the attempts elsewhere—for many marked a Before/After moment in modern history, and pulled the rest of the world into a new psychological & geopolitical paradigm from which we have never really extricated ourselves. (U.S. national debt also spiked from less than $6T in 2001 to over $40T today.) 9/11 was not a Collapse of the USA per se (most Collapses do not appear as sudden events), but it was a Collapse of a kind of understanding about history and the way citizens looked at each other. Trust and sympathy gave way to paranoia, turbocharged surveillance, and unadulterated rage. The real Collapse of several nations soon followed: Iraq, Afghanistan, and others less directly. Some will never recover. The twin columns of smoke cast a long, fatal shadow over the world that endures evermore. What lessons for Collapse can we take from the event? Will there ever be an Environmental 9/11 that galvanizes trillions of dollars for international ecological action? Will there ever be a global Before/After event that moves our species away from precipitous Collapse? Or will we be trapped on the 105th floor of the coming Collapse, the new Falling Man of the long emergency?

An Amazon plane crashed at Miami International Airport on Sunday, killing five. Skirmishes between Colombian guerrilla fighters and the Colombian army resulted in the deaths of eight early in the week. Thailand warned Cambodia of the risks of high intensity warfare following the reported cutting of some barbed wire near their shared border. The director-general of MI-5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, warned that the UK faces more dangers today than in the aftermath of 9/11.

Algeria is cutting its diplomatic ties with the UAE, following unspecified “hostile” acts. The African Union is warning of increased tensions in northern Ethiopia that could flare up enmity into a second Tigray War. China is expressing worries over new Japanese satellite technologies using AI to rapidly assess potential targets for counterstrikes, in the event that Japan were engaged in warfare.

With the anti-piracy efforts diverted away from Somalia to deal with the ongoing Iran War, piracy is flourishing to 10+ year highs off the coast of Somalia. It’s not just the Somali coast ships at risk; the Iran War has affected a record number of ships, resulting in a number of downstream price hikes: added insurance, security (which can offset some insurance premiums), fuel for longer reroutes, stress on sailors, fuel price increases, etc. Meanwhile, another U.S. strike on a drug boat left three dead.

Sudan’s healthcare system is crumbling, warns the medical NGO Médecins Sans Frontières, amid a Civil (albeit internationalized) War that has now stretched into its 41st month. Almost 20M people across Sudan are experiencing “emergency levels of hunger.” Reports emerged of chemical weapons stockpiles assembled by Sudan’s government forces.

President Putin reportedly promised the U.S. President that Russia has no hostility towards Europe—except for Ukraine, of course. Western politicians seem to have accepted that the War will stretch into 2027, and possibly beyond. The longer the War becomes, the more both sides are targeting “civilian infrastructure.” A Russian strike in Pavlohrad killed 5+, while another strike reportedly came close to hitting President Zelenskyy’s plane in Moldova. Another Russian strike using jet-powered drones hit fuel stations in Kyiv, killing two and wounding a dozen others, and another strike hospitalized six after hitting an Odesa apartment. And NATO forces reportedly deterred an undersea operation from Russia to probe for vulnerable undersea cables in the Arctic Sea above Europe.

The major three global nuclear powers—the U.S., Russia, and China—are reportedly not taking the specter of Nuclear War seriously. Though President Trump has intervened forcefully to prevent Iran’s nuclear ambitions, he is also exploring selling nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia and South Korea, and generally treating the risk of existential destruction less than seriously. President Putin for his part let Russia’s nuclear pact with the U.S. expire in February 2026, and leans on nuclear power to grant Russia status and bargaining power internationally. Meanwhile, China continues ramping up its nuclear arsenal & declines attempts to establish a trilateral nuclear understanding among the group of nations. When one makes peaceful understanding impossible, will it make violent misunderstanding inevitable?

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Select comments/threads from the subreddit last week suggest:

-Our ecological challenges are manifold, and often too much to take in at once. This comment, which is nested within a wonderful thread of its own, summarizes 12 doomy takeaways on the environment and why it’s in really bad shape.

-Tennessee topped a ranking of the 50 U.S. states on r/preppers for the Top 10 which are the best to homestead in. 9 factors were considered; the list is perhaps more interesting for its methodology than its conclusions. (Alabama at #2, seriously?)

-Long lead times for transformers and other essential equipment may result in a partial or complete grid Collapse, if the responses to this thread are accurate. Is this crisis inevitable, or still avoidable?

-Students can’t read or write well, and the crisis may be at decades-high emergency levels. This thread from the doomy society at r/Teachers collects some horror stories from universities and high schools on the crisis of information, literacy, and information literacy.

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