After Us the Deluge

What Americans justify theologically, Europeans practise politically and economically. Americans have Rapture theology — those who are taken from the earth (evacuated, so to speak) need not worry about climate change, national debt or nuclear winter. Europeans have no theology. But the same result.

I. Brussels, 20 March 2026

On Thursday 20 March 2026, the heads of state and government of the EU met in Brussels. On the agenda: growth impulses, bureaucracy reduction, dampening the price rises triggered by the Iran war. Europe faces a triple shock — the Iran war, the American tariff war, the Chinese import flood. Economists speak of a perfect storm.

The response: a weakening of the EU Emissions Trading System, the ETS. This is the central market-based instrument for reducing greenhouse gas emissions — the most important structural tool Europe has developed over the past twenty years to steer industry towards climate neutrality. It is now to be weakened, under the pressure of the moment.

Alicia García-Herrero, chief economist at Natixis, comments: it is understandable that the EU is looking for measures. Nevertheless it is a mistake — the EU is giving up an important instrument for transformation. But she has no alternative to offer that would be politically feasible. That is the real dilemma.

II. The Pattern

It is not the first time. In the winter of 2022, under the pressure of Russian gas throttling, coal-fired power plants were reactivated that were supposed to have been decommissioned. Climate targets were “temporarily” suspended. This state of affairs persists to this day. In 2011, after Fukushima, Germany’s nuclear phase-out was rushed forward — with the consequence that Germany burned more coal and emitted more CO₂ than necessary for years. Short-term political pressure forced the abandonment of a long-term steering instrument. The costs came later.

Now, in 2026, the same pattern: triple shock, empty budget, no room for large stimulus packages. So one reaches for the only tool that costs no budget — which happens also to be the most important transformation tool. One weakens it. Industry briefly breathes more easily. Emissions rise. The transformation costs that do not arise now will arise later — larger, more expensive, more urgent.

Nobody is lying. Nobody is sabotaging. Everyone is acting rationally — according to their planning horizon. The chancellor thinks until the next election. The CEO thinks until the next quarter. The Commission President thinks until the end of her mandate. Nobody is optimising for the problem that needs to be solved.

III. The Theology of the Short-Term Horizon

In the United States there is an influential Protestant current known as Dispensationalism, or popularly as Rapture theology. Its core claim: shortly before the end of the world, believers will be raptured — physically lifted from the earth and transported to heaven. The world that follows is not their problem. Those who are taken up need not concern themselves with climate change, national debt or nuclear winter.

This theology has real political consequences: environmental protection is pointless if the world is about to end anyway. Debt does no harm if one will be raptured before the collapse. Long-term investment is wasted money if the future is not one’s own.

Europe does not have this theology. But it has the same structure — just without the religious justification. The mandate cycle is Europe’s rapture. Those who are voted out in four years or lose their position are gone before the bill arrives. The special fund agreed today burdens the budget in ten years. The climate targets abandoned today impose costs in twenty years that nobody who decides today will have to answer for.

Americans say: “After us the deluge — God will rapture us beforehand.” Europeans say nothing. They simply act as if.

IV. The Empty Toolbox

The Commission President’s quote is telling: “An important lesson from the 2022–2023 crisis was that numerous measures were too undifferentiated and caused inefficiencies and considerable public costs.” That is correct. The consequence drawn from it: do not invent new instruments. Instead: weaken the old instruments because they are inconvenient, and hope that the market will sort it out.

Nobody in the Brussels summit room asks the question that needs to be asked: what would an instrument designed for this situation look like? Not a fuel rebate, not an ETS weakening, not a gas price brake — these are all tools from the last century, applied to problems of the 21st century.

The number and intensity of the problems are growing. Iran war, tariff war, climate change, AI disruption, demographic shift, national debt — not individual shocks, but a permanent state of overlapping crises. For this state there is no historical precedent and no proven instrument. The answer cannot be to blunt the available tools because they are inconvenient. The answer must be to invent new ones.

V. What New Tools Would Mean

A tool designed for permanent crisis would need to structurally break the short-term horizon. That is the hardest thing a democracy can achieve — creating institutions that think longer than their actors. There are precedents: central banks are such institutions. Constitutional courts are such institutions. Both are independent of electoral cycles, both think in longer time horizons, both are inconvenient for short-term-thinking politicians.

What is missing is the equivalent for climate policy, transformation policy, security policy. An institution that defends the forty-year time horizon against the four-year time horizon. One that cannot be voted out because petrol prices have risen. One that does not lose its mandate when the next crisis rolls in.

This sounds technocratic. It is — and that is not an objection but a precondition. Democracy is good at aggregating short-term preferences. It is poor at imposing long-term necessities against short-term preferences. Those who want to solve the problem must accept that not all decisions can be made democratically — without abandoning democracy itself.

VI. The Collapse as Perspective

One is steering with open eyes towards collapse. That is not rhetorical exaggeration — it is the sober description of what happens when the overlapping and intensifying crises meet empty budgets, exhausted instruments and short-term-thinking decision-makers confronting a powerless Europe.

The collapse will not be dramatic. It will not happen in a single day. It will be gradual — like the decay of a city that nobody repairs any longer. Roads that are no longer maintained. Infrastructure that ages. Institutions that lose their ability to solve the problems for which they were created. Companies that relocate. Talent that leaves. Trust that erodes.

And those responsible? Most will not live to see it. Or they will be retired. Or in a different position. The beauty of the short-term horizon: the bill always comes for someone else.

The American right believes God will rapture them before the deluge. The European centre believes the next government will solve the problem. Both have the same relationship to the future: it is not theirs, so they do not care for it.

VII. What Remains

There are people who think differently. The inventors who wait forty years until their ideas are accepted. The prosecutors who risk their pension to enforce the law. The economists who warn of straw fires even though nobody listens. They are the counter-structure — not powerful, not loud, not well connected. But they keep alive the knowledge of what would be right.

The history of civilisational renewal is always the history of these people — not of those who optimised within the short-term horizon, but of those who thought longer than their surroundings. They usually arrive too late. Sometimes they arrive just in time.

The deluge is coming. The question is whether anyone is building the ark.