Opinion

WITH a shrinking population and a collapsed property market, turning to a technology-led growth strategy was a logical step for China. The model has surpassed expectations, even with the fundamental flaw of being unable, for now, to create enough wealth to lift the fortunes of a broad slice of society. 

Resolving that paradox will be key to the success of the 15th five-year plan, a roadmap for economic development introduced on March 5 at the opening of the National People’s Congress, the annual gathering of the legislature. 

Though it would be tempting to coast on the achievements of industrial giants like BYD Co and Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd, the leadership shouldn’t just let things run their course. 

It’s time for Beijing to live up to its new slogan of “investing in people” after decades of backing manufacturing sectors like electric vehicles (EVs) and battery making. 

The current approach of betting that the tech sector will eventually scale up enough to provide more jobs won’t cut it anymore. That transition has already created structural unemployment. The youth jobless rate has hovered above 15% for the past six months, threatening to produce a lost generation of young people outdoing each other to work less. 

Still, the desire to “lie flat,” a term coined to describe doing the bare minimum to get by, usually results from a lack of opportunity, not personal preference. Beijing should be doing all it can to address this kind of nihilistic ennui. 

The only solution is to tackle reforms to rebalance the economy, giving greater weight to consumption as a percentage of GDP. For decades, Beijing has said it wants households to spend more. 

But building a true consumption-led economy will require expensive upgrades to public services — essentially creating a stronger social safety net so people are willing to save less and spend more. 

The consequences of not doing so are evident. During a speech to mark the opening of the congress, Chinese Premier Li Qiang announced a growth target in the range of 4.5% to 5%, the lowest since 1991. 

Without directly saying so, he was acknowledging what anyone living in China already knows: The economy has pockets of strength but is unable to offer the current generation the same level of opportunity as their parents. 

An examination of government finances shows why officials have been reluctant to engage in the costly reforms necessary to reorient toward consumption. The malaise has strained the governments’ financial health. China’s fiscal position and therefore its ability to spend public money, continued to decline last year. 

Though tax revenue rose marginally, it was offset by a plunge in non-tax revenue, according to analysis by research firm the Rhodium Group. That category — which includes some extremely unpopular ways of raising cash, such as fining noodle shops for serving shredded cucumber without a raw-food licence — declined after a public uproar. 

Revenue from land sales, a major way that regional governments raise money, stood at less than half the amount in 2021 when the property sector crashed. 

Looking at the fragile state of government finances, it’s understandable why Beijing may want to put off tough changes. But that would be misguided. Placing all its eggs in the industrial basket allowed China to win a trade war with Washington due to its dominance of critical minerals. 

But that’s come at the expense of people at home. Even a series of programmes since 2024 to offset the prices of new cars and appliances through consumer subsidies were just another way to help manufacturers dealing with low demand. 

There are many effective ways to start the reform process. I’ve written before about the need to unleash the spending potential of 200 million gig workers, many of whom are part of an even larger group of migrant labour. 

This transient group saves at roughly double the rate of urban dwellers because they aren’t entitled to the same public services. But if they are able to fully integrate into urban life, they will spend their earnings, unlocking a major potential source of consumption. 

Economist Liu Shijin, former VP of the State Council’s Development Research Centre, has advocated for investing 10 trillion yuan (RM5.7 trillion) over several years through the issuance of special bonds to expand healthcare, housing and education to this population. 

These types of proposals often circulate during the congress. Lawmakers should take them seriously. 

China’s support for its industrial base was on display last month at the Spring Festival Gala, a four-hour variety show broadcast on the eve of the Chinese New Year (CNY) with an audience of more than 600 million viewers. 

Much has been written about the viral dancing robots from Hangzhou Unitree Technology Co. But a far more insightful performance came hours later. A group sang about its desire to excel in a range of professions from plumbing to aircraft manufacturing. 

It felt not only like a rebuttal to the “lie flat” movement, but also a plea: That people are worth investing in, too. Delivered on the country’s biggest stage, it was an important message that Beijing should heed. — Bloomberg

• This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. 

• This article first appeared in The Malaysian Reserve weekly print edition

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They manoeuvred politically, built alliances, and tried to weaken each other’s networks of support while preserving their own strength 

A CHINESE-CANADIAN educator who runs the popular YouTube channel Predictive History made three striking predictions in 2024. First, that Donald Trump would win the race for the White House. Second, that the president who campaigned on a “no more wars” platform, would nevertheless end up launching a conflict with Iran. Third, that the US would lose that war. 

Fast forward to 2026, and the first two predictions have already come to pass. That alone has turned the Beijing-based Yale graduate into something of a minor sensation across social media and TV commentary circuits. 

Prime Minister (PM) Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and his Madani team might well pick up a lesson or two from this analyst as they navigate their own political terrain — both externally and within their own ranks. 

The battles have been many. Among the most visible is the increasingly public clash with his former deputy, Datuk Seri Rafizi Ramli. 

I have been following Jiang Xueqin’s work for some time. A Yale graduate who has worked in journalism and Chinese school reform, his analyses often appear on my online feed. Through his channel Predictive History, he uses game theory and historical patterns to analyse current events and project future geopolitical trajectories. 

In a recent broadcast, Jiang — popularly referred to online as “Prof Jiang”, though there is no clear record of a tenured academic appointment — examined what might be guiding Iran’s leadership as it faces pressure from the US, the world’s most powerful military force with the largest defence budget on the planet. 

His central theme was endurance. 

Powerful states, he argued, often avoid direct military confrontation not because they lack the will to fight, but because they understand such conflicts rarely end well for either side. The Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union offers the clearest example. Both possessed nuclear arsenals capable of destroying civilisation many times over, yet neither side used them. 

They understood the consequences. From that reality emerged the doctrine of MAD — mutually assured destruction. Total war meant nuclear catastrophe, with neither side left standing to enjoy whatever victory they might have been fighting for. 

“So they competed indirectly,” Jiang explained. They manoeuvred politically, built alliances, and tried to weaken each other’s networks of support while preserving their own strength. 

He suggested that Iran might now be applying a similar logic. Iran’s leaders, he argued, see a world undergoing significant change. Global energy markets are shifting, while the strategic rivalry between the US and China is consuming enormous amounts of American attention and resources. 

Strategic restraint, Jiang added, is often misunderstood. 

“The idea that restraint means abandoning your goals is one of the most common misreadings of geopolitics,” he said. “The state that survives today retains the ability to influence tomorrow.” In the long game of geopolitics, tomorrow is where the real contest always takes place, he added. 

That idea provides an interesting lens through which to examine the increasingly visible rift between Anwar and Rafizi. Four themes stand out: Endurance, confrontation, restraint and patience. 

The relationship between the two men was forged within PKR, the reformist party founded by Anwar. By the early 2010s, Rafizi had emerged as one of his most capable young strategists — a loyal operative with a reputation for political combat. 

His rise was swift. Between 2010 and 2013 he moved from activist to national figure. In 2013, he entered Parliament as the MP for Pandan and quickly became one of PKR’s most prominent leaders. A year later, he was appointed the party’s secretary general, placing him at the centre of its political machinery. At the time, he was widely regarded as one of Anwar’s most trusted lieutenants. The partnership appeared to reach its peak after the 2022 general election. When Rafizi became PKR deputy president while Anwar assumed the premiership. Rafizi was then appointed minister of economy. 

But the alignment did not last. In May 2025, Rafizi lost the PKR deputy presidency to Anwar’s daughter, Nurul Izzah. As he had pledged earlier, he resigned from the Cabinet and soon began voicing criticisms of the party leadership. 

Both sides, in their own way, passed the endurance test. Each holding their ground until the 2025 party elections. 

Rafizi later revealed that he had avoided direct confrontation in public for some time, even though disagreements had already been brewing within the party. Some of those tensions revolved around figures such as Datuk Seri Mohamed Azmin Ali and Datuk Seri Farhash Wafa Salvador Rizal Mubarak. 

Azmin’s break with PKR had already shaken Malaysian politics in 2020, when his faction joined Opposition parties in what became known as the Sheraton Move, collapsing the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government. 

Farhash, who once served as Anwar’s political secretary, has also drawn Rafizi’s criticism. Their dispute appears rooted largely in PKR’s internal factional politics and competing visions of leadership within the party. 

Now 43, Farhash has largely shifted into the business world after stepping away from active politics. Yet even there, he has remained a target of Rafizi’s sharp remarks, particularly where business ventures are perceived — fairly or otherwise — to be linked to Anwar’s political network. 

At this stage, both Anwar and Rafizi appear to have abandoned any notion of strategic restraint. It is not a full-scale political war, but the sniper fire has begun — and it is intensifying. 

Rafizi believes patience carries little value if wrongdoing is perceived. He has said he will not remain silent simply to protect his political future. 

Anwar, however, may also have taken a strategic risk by not stopping (or probably giving the green light to) his daughter to challenge Rafizi for the party’s deputy presidency. The move may have strengthened loyalty within the leadership circle, but it may also have weakened party cohesion at a time when PKR must prepare for the next general election. 

In a recent podcast, Rafizi delivered a pointed criticism. 

“What exactly does he (Anwar) want to present to the people as his reason to remain prime minister for another term?” he asked. “People can already see that even coalition partners are no longer fully listening to him.” 

That, Rafizi suggested, is the real challenge facing PKR’s leadership today. 

The question now is whether Anwar chooses the strategy Jiang described. In geopolitics — and perhaps in politics — patience is often the weapon that determines how the story ends. 

• Habhajan Singh is the corporate editor of The Malaysian Reserve.

• This article first appeared in The Malaysian Reserve weekly print edition

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STROLLING through the Ramadhan bazaar, inhaling the heavy, sweet smoke of ayam percik and feasting on the neon-coloured displays of agar-agar, the carnage to the West feels like a hallucination. 

For most of us in Malaysia, this war is still just a grainy video on a TikTok feed, a distant tragedy happening in a time zone that doesn’t disrupt our sleep. But for those wishing to ignore the morality of the thing: Don’t hold your breath. The impact is already here. 

History is a cluttered chest full of “brilliant” generals who planned for a 100m dash, only to find themselves wheezing through a marathon in lead boots. This current “surgical” outing against Iran — a three-week spree of high-tech chaos — is proving a bitter truth: You can start a fire with a laser-guided lighter, but you can’t tell the wind where to blow the smoke. 

While a manic Trump screams “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER” in all-caps into the digital void, the view from the local kopitiam is more grounded. We aren’t just watching the news; we’re watching the invoice for someone else’s midlife crisis arrive at our petrol pumps. 

A War Without Honour, A Bill Without End

Any claim that this conflict held the “moral high ground” was vaporised in the opening minutes. It’s hard to play the knight in shining armour when your opening move involves bombing a girls’ primary school in Minab and sinking the IRIS Dena — an unarmed vessel — in international waters. It isn’t the Charge of the Light Brigade; it’s a drive-by shooting at a playground. 

Tehran has told the White House to “fly a kite” regarding surrender. Having been betrayed by international agreements more times than the US has vetoed the United Nations (UN) resolutions, Iran is now demanding a total American exit from the neighbourhood and an end to Israel’s hobby of warmongering. 

The Chokehold on the Morning Commute

For years, the “Strait of Hormuz” was just a scary phrase used by think tank financiers to secure funding. Today, with the waterway clamped shut, it’s a cold reality at the Petronas station. When 25% of the world’s oil is stuck behind a naval minefield, “maximum pressure” becomes a two-way street and the global consumer is the one getting run over. 

While Putrajaya tries to keep the lid on via subsidies, US$100 (RM394)-per-barrel oil is a guest that refuses to leave. We’re told the West is “winning,” yet ordinary Malaysians are facing a world where a Grab ride costs more than the meal it’s delivering. When Washington and Jerusalem settle a score, the rest of the world gets stuck with the service charge. 

Pouting in the Shelters 

In Tel Aviv, we see the bizarre spectacle of a nation pouting as it rushes to bomb shelters. There is a palpable sense of shock in the Israeli press that the world’s supply of sympathy has finally run dry. After two years of what has been done to Gaza, the international community is watching the sirens in Haifa with a collective shrug. You cannot spend 24 months turning a neighbour’s city into a graveyard and then expect a standing ovation for your own “suffering” when the retaliation finally clears the fence. 

The Digital Jugular 

The most terrifying part of this mess is Iran’s decision to aim for the “digital jugular”. They’ve stopped trading shots at tanks and started aiming at the stuff that actually makes our world spin: Banking, information and the Cloud. 

The strikes on Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centres represent a Rubicon crossed with a sledgehammer. By declaring server farms legitimate targets, Tehran has edefined the front line.

In places like Cyberjaya and Johor, where US tech giants have planted massive data centres, the “front line” is no longer a distant desert. These gleaming boxes of silicon — our “digital future” — now look less like investments and more like lightning rods. 

The Bill for the End of the World 

Let’s stop pretending. We never signed up for this. We didn’t vote for a digital apocalypse, yet we’re the ones watching our ringgit shrivel at the Petronas pump and our e-wallets twitch in the shadow of a US-led suicide pact. The bravado leaking out of Washington isn’t “strategy” — it’s a cheap mask for a very expensive brand of desperation. They expected a three-week victory parade; instead, they’re dismantling the global status quo with the grace of a drunk with a chainsaw. 

The “peace” that eventually limps across the finish line won’t look like a handshake; it’ll look like a smoking server rack. We are entering a world where a data centre is considered as much of a target as a trench in the Arabian sands. The front line isn’t “over there” anymore. It’s in your pocket, it’s in your bank account and it’s screaming toward us at the speed of light. 

Washington and Tel Aviv decided to play God, and they’ve left the rest of us to sweep up the glass. Frankly? Nobody’s looking forward to the bill, but the invoice has already been signed in blood and silicon. Welcome to the new reality. Hope you enjoyed the show, because we’re all paying for the tickets. 

• ZB Othman is an editor of The Malaysian Reserve.

• This article first appeared in The Malaysian Reserve weekly print edition

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Backed into a corner by his self-inflicted Epstein files and the illegal war on Iran, Trump turned to religion to save himself and drag the world into conflict 

BLOOD froze upon seeing Donald Trump receiving his so-called blessings from evangelical pastors in the Oval Office on March 5. 

It was not the first time these pastors had gone to the White House to offer prayers for the US president, but this time it was made under very different circumstance. These are not normal times. And those were not normal prayers. 

On Feb 28, Trump, together with the criminal prime minister (PM) of terrorist state Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, launched an illegal war against Iran. As of March 13, at least 1,348 Iranians have been killed, mostly innocent civilians. Among the first casualties were 175 children and caretakers of Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in the city of Minab, in southern Iran, who were brutally butchered in a double-tap missile strike. 

Trump, who always struggles to complete a sentence without uttering a lie, again claimed — without providing any proof — that it was a misfire from Iran’s own munitions. A US Tomahawk was later recovered and confirmed to have struck the school. 

Mind-numbing Excuses For War

Even a pathological liar like Trump struggled to justify a public case for the war. He initially claimed that Iran was posing an imminent threat to the US, arguing that a “nuclear war” would have broken out if Tehran had not been confronted. However, this claim was debunked by the US’ own intelligence agencies, which denied that such a danger existed in the near future. 

In another public appearance, Trump argued that negotiations to scale back Iran nuclear programme had been fruitless, but officials repeatedly affirmed that they had been close to reaching a deal. At yet another public function, he was recorded attributing the decision to his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s hunch. Classic Trump. 

The clearest explanation, however, was given by his state secretary. Marco Rubio was recorded on camera, confidently saying that the US launched an attack because “we knew there was going to be an Israeli action” against Iran, so the US made a pre-emptive strike. He backtracked the next day, but the evidence remains on the official record. 

Trump is rattled, as the US public is overwhelmingly against the war on Iran. A week after the first strike, surveys — including those by Quinnipiac University and the research firm Ipsos — found that only 29% of Americans, approved of the attack on Iran. An even higher proportion, 74%, vehemently rejected the idea of starting ground operations at all. 

Casualties among US military personnel and damage to assets following Iran’s retaliatory fire are also being hotly discussed online. The American media and the traditional Zionist mouthpieces BBC, CNN, Sky Media, etc, are toeing the official Israeli propaganda talking points.

Zionist need to assuage the American public to continue manipulating the White House and the US Congress into using the US military to destabilise countries deemed as threats, including Iran, in pursuits of their ultimate wet dreams of “Greater Israel.” Netanyahu reportedly said that the joint US-Israel attack allowed him to do what he had “hoped to do for 40 years” — to strike Iran. 

As at press time, the US army has claimed that only eight servicemen were killed in action, but videos circulating online show extensive damage at American diplomatic offices in the region. US embassies in Riyadh, Kuwait and Baghdad were reportedly hit, with most personnel evacuated. American military installations in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and Jordan were reportedly struck by drones, missiles or both. 

The Zionist Censorship 

Since Israel has imposed a blanket ban on media reports on Israeli casualties, we can safely assume that all US media outlets — and selected international media outlets known to be Zionist mouthpieces — are also playing down the American death count. 

According to former UK MP George Galloway, quoting acquaintances from US and Israel, the casualty numbers were running in the hundreds but were purposely suppressed and delayed to align with Zionist propaganda. On Iran’s WANA news agency, an Iranian general claimed that around 650 American personnel had perished in the first five days of the war. 

Pressure on the economic front is also building up. Global energy prices have increased by 22%. The national average price for a gallon of petrol in the US hit US$3.57 last week, up from US$2.94 in February. Crude oil spiked by over 66% in the second week of the strikes on Iran and has been hovering above US$100 per barrel since. It would have been higher had the International Energy Agency (IEA) not released 400 million barrels of emergency oil reserves last week. 

Apex Epstein Files 

But Trump has to keep going, as what we are seeing is the apex of Epstein files scandal. Jeffrey Epstein was a man of many hats and, among other things, has been exposed running honeypot operations, most likely to entrap numerous powerful individuals mentioned in the files. 

Epstein was overwhelmingly linked to clearly linked to Israel. He received payments from the Rothschild family; his partner Ghislaine Maxwell, is the daughter of Robert Maxwell, one of Israel’s spies; he contributed numerous times to the Israel army and photographed wearing their t-shirt; former Israeli PM Ehud Barak was among his closest friends; and in court he was represented by Alan Dershowitz, a prominent Zionist lawyer. 

Despite the lies and spins in the American media, the fact is that Trump’s name was mentioned so many times in the files (reports varied from hundreds of thousands to as many as a million times in the six-million-plus documents expose) that anyone even with a slight iota of intelligence would immediately point a finger at him in the paedophile-sex-murder-trafficking scandal of the century. The US Department of Justice (DOJ), directly under Trump’s enormous presidential power, is still vehemently fighting tooth and nail to prevent the full release of the files. 

Since day one, Trump was desperate to show that he is Israel’s biggest toady. In his first term in 2018, he already caused an international uproar by moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It was despite the United Nations’ (UN) classification of Jerusalem as a “corpus separatum”, an independent region belonging to the international community. 

Just connect the dots and all will be revealed — on why and how the terrorist state Israel wields so much power over US presidents and congress. The Israeli lobby is powerful, yes — as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has publicly admitted to buying most of Congress — but this level of control over Trump points to an almost omnipotent leverage. 

Trump, therefore, has to continue serving his master. And to continue, he now probably has to use his final card — the evangelical Christians bargaining chip. 

Evangelical Christians live for a single heinous purpose: To clear a land of a set of people, so that another set of people could congregate, allowing their saviour to return, take some of them to heaven, kill all of the second set of people, and later rule the world in perpetual peace and prosperity. 

GHF Brutal Weaponisation of Food 

The brutality of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) weaponising food against hungry Gazans last year was a clear example of the savagery of evangelical Christians extremism. Trump appointed his former religious advisor, Johnnie Moore, a well-known extremist evangelical pastor, to lead the GHF, which worked alongside the Israel army and mercenary groups, including evangelical Christian militias. 

From late May to early October 2025, GHF hijacked nearly all food and medical aid distributions in Gaza, centralising it at four nodes with deplorable, inhumane distribution methods, which created a brutal man-made famine across the strip. GHF operators, along with Zionist soldiers, shoot unarmed civilians — men, women and children — on a daily basis. There were authentic clips circulated showing these operators shooting freely at will at the Palestinians. In a period of just over four months, more than 2,615 hungry Palestinians were butchered by these GHF operators. Another 19,177 Palestinians were injured. 

No one was brought to justice. 

On March 5, an unperturbed Moore was there together with 19 other pastors, praying over Trump. In his X account he wrote: “Today, at the White House, we expressed our profound gratitude to the president of US for handling the Ayatollah in Iran once-and-for-all so that our children don’t have to deal with these lunatics for another generation. His actions have been historic & heroic.” 

Trump does not seem to care though. By the way things are going at the White House, he already appears prepared to tread down this unholy path. 

In the week of March 1, a group of Democrats in the US Congress demanded an internal investigation into hundreds of complaints by US personnel that the US-Israeli war on Iran has been framed to them as a biblical prophecy meant to hasten the return of Jesus Christ. Trump’s Secretary of War, Peter Hegseth, himself a self-proclaimed evangelical Christian, has publicly framed US’ Middle East policy in explicitly religious terms. 

The Democrats’ demand letter was signed by, among others, Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, Washington state Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They claimed that commanders had invoked “religious prophecy and apocalyptic theology to justify the US’ military actions in Iran.” 

Hegseth, however, was unapologetic about it. In an interview with CBS News on March 8, he said Iran should not doubt US resolve because it is backed by “the higher power.” He claimed, time and time again, that the Christian God is on his side. Asked whether he views the war in a religious context, Hegseth claimed: “Obviously, we’re fighting religious fanatics who seek a nuclear capability in order for some religious Armageddon.” 

This is rich coming from an overtly extreme religious fanatic himself, whose belief is blatantly abet the killing of children and push the world to the brink of Armageddon. 

And because of that, the war, contrary to Trump’s claims, will not end in two or eight days. 

• Asuki Abas is the editor of The Malaysian Reserve.

• This article first appeared in The Malaysian Reserve weekly print edition

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Scientists warned that an approaching El Niño could temporarily boost global temperatures past 1.5°C above pre-industrial average 

A SCIENCE-FICTION trope is the time traveller who visits the present day with a dire warning about the future only to be tragically ignored. It resonates because it’s so believable. In fact, Earth had just such a visitor recently and we dismissed it completely. 

Three years ago, scientists warned that an approaching El Niño in the Pacific Ocean could temporarily boost global temperatures past 1.5°C above pre-industrial averages, offering a taste of what the world would be like if we breached that long-term limit set by the Paris accords in 2015. 

Naive climate columnists wondered whether this would be enough to scare people into doing more to avoid that future. 

As expected, the El Niño of 2023 and 2024 delivered record-smashing temperatures. It was indeed frightening. 

And Americans responded by putting a virulent climate-change denier back in the White House, one whose stated goal was to burn more of the fossil fuels heating up the planet. Meanwhile, the political will to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions flagged elsewhere in the world. 

El Niño is likely to return this year, threatening even higher temperatures. It seems foolish to think that this time will be different, that the experience will motivate voters to minimise future environmental chaos. 

But it would also be remiss to ignore the fact that the full, devastating effects of this new El Niño will be plainly obvious by 2028 — the year of the next US presidential election. 

El Niño and La Niña are phases of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, a climate pattern in the tropical Pacific. 

El Niño occurs when a large swath of the ocean is warmer, often boosting global temperatures temporarily. La Niña, when the water is cooler, is the phase we’re in now. 

There’s a 60% chance La Niña will end by April, according to the National Weather Service and a 50% to 60% chance of a new El Niño forming by early fall. 

The next El Niño might not heat the planet quite as aggressively as its predecessor, which was one of the strongest (meaning warmest) in recent decades. 

Nevertheless, it still raises the risk of a record temperature, probably in 2027, topping 2024’s mark of nearly 1.6°C above preindustrial averages. 

“If El Niño develops and if it’s moderately strong, then 2027 would be the odds-on favourite to be the warmest year on record,” Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at the nonprofit research group Berkeley Earth, told me. 

This year is already on track to be the second-hottest in recorded human history. The current forecast is for an average global surface temperature of 1.48°C above pre-industrial averages in 2026, according to the Climate Brink dashboard that Hausfather helps maintain. 

The influence of El Niño and La Niña on global temperatures is small and temporary. They can’t affect the long-term trend, which is inexorably higher thanks to the planet- heating gases humans pump into the atmosphere. 

The Earth has been in relatively cooler La Niña phases for most of the past 30 years, but heating has continued apace. Last year was the third hottest in human history — hotter than in any El Niño before 2023 — despite prevailing La Niña conditions. 

Nonetheless, even small nudges can have big impacts. Past El Niños have led to widespread coral bleaching, devastating African droughts, South American floods and more. 

And 2026 and 2027 will probably be the fourth and fifth consecutive years in which global temperatures have been about 1.5°C hotter than pre-industrial averages, the most optimistic limit of the Paris accords. 

Five years of flirting with that limit don’t necessarily mean we’ve failed to meet that goal. Such targets are measured over many years, not just a handful. But at this point, it would take a miracle to avoid overshooting 1.5°C. 

Unfortunately, that 1.5°C figure isn’t arbitrary, no matter what you might hear from certain quiet-quitting environmentalists. It’s the minimum level at which several climate “tipping points” risk being triggered, noted a new study in the journal Environmental Research Letters. 

The “tipping point” concept is fraught with uncertainty, but it refers to crucial Earth systems that might be permanently altered at certain temperatures, causing severe knock-on effects, which could include even faster warming. Coral reefs, permafrost and the North Atlantic subpolar gyre (a vital circular ocean current) are all at growing peril at 1.5°C of warming. 

And a breach of 1.5°C doesn’t have to be permanent to trigger some of these tipping points, said researchers in a recent study in the journal Nature: Communications Earth & Environment. 

They called the heat from the 2023-2024 El Niño “a warning that the Earth is within range of entering a period of hazardous climate change.” 

The author and activist Bill McKibben recently suggested the 2026-2027 El Niño will be significant enough to put to rest the unwelcome revival of climate denialism accompanying US President Donald Trump’s reelection. 

It might even convince scientists that warming has accelerated and rev up talk of geoengineering, McKibben warned in his newsletter. 

Lived experience would suggest American voters have the memories of goldfish. But 2027 temperatures won’t be official until early 2028, when Americans will be voting in presidential primaries. 

At that point we may still be cleaning up El Niño’s wreckage after years in which the Trump administration has killed climate research, stymied clean energy and protected fossil fuels all while home-insurance premiums soared. 

Predicting the future is hard, but it’s also hard to imagine a better moment than 2028 to finally heed El Niño’s warning. — Bloomberg 

• This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

• This article first appeared in The Malaysian Reserve weekly print edition

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STRATEGIC conversations often revolve around resources. Leaders discuss budgets, staffing levels and the capacity required to move initiatives forward. These conversations are understandable. Every organisation wants the means to achieve its ambitions. 

Before asking for additional resources, however, a useful reflection may arise: How clearly are the resources already present within the organisation being used? 

Resource optimisation begins with this reflection. It encourages leaders to look carefully at the people, capabilities and relationships already entrusted to their organisation. 

In many situations, the challenge lies less in scarcity and more in clarity. When leaders understand how existing resources connect to meaningful outcomes, hidden capacity begins to surface. 

Seeing Resources Across the Organisation 

Resources are commonly discussed in terms of budgets and headcount. Organisations, however, operate through a broader ecosystem of capabilities. 

Different teams hold specialised knowledge. Individuals contribute networks and experience developed over years of work. Partners and collaborators outside the organisation may also bring expertise that strengthens important initiatives. 

When leaders step back and view resources across the organisation, connections begin to appear. Work that once seemed separate becomes part of a wider effort. 

Recognising these connections allows collaboration to take shape more deliberately. 

Clarity of Roles 

Resource optimisation requires clarity about contributions. 

In many initiatives, responsibilities are described in broad terms. Teams are encouraged to support projects or collaborate with other groups. When roles remain loosely defined, the relationship between effort and outcome can become difficult to trace. 

A more disciplined approach involves mapping the roles required to achieve a particular outcome and identifying the individuals or groups who can contribute to those roles. Some contributors may come from within the organisation. Others may be partners or stakeholders beyond it. 

When roles are visible, collaboration gains direction. People understand how their expertise contributes to the larger effort and how their participation strengthens the intended result. 

Anchoring Outcomes in Accountability

Clear roles naturally draw attention to a further question: Who carries responsibility for the outcome? 

Organisations often encourage participation while leaving accountability indistinct. Meetings generate ideas, tasks are distributed and teams work diligently, yet ownership of the final result may remain uncertain. 

Resource optimisation benefits from clearer anchors of responsibility. Roles support the work while accountability ensures that attention remains focused on the outcome. 

Leaders who hold accountability ensure that contributors understand their roles and that progress continues to move toward the intended result. Through this discipline, collaboration retains direction and momentum. 

Leadership responsibility also carries a moral dimension. 

A Deeper Dimension  of Responsibility

Reflection on accountability often reveals a deeper dimension of leadership responsibility. Authority, influence and organisational resources represent forms of trust placed in human hands. 

Within Islamic teaching, this trust is described as amanah. It refers to the responsibility to safeguard what has been entrusted and to use it with integrity and care. 

The Qur’an reminds believers, “Indeed, Allah commands you to render trusts to whom they are due.” (Qur’an 4:58) 

Viewed through this perspective, resource optimisation becomes an expression of stewardship. Leaders recognise that people’s time, expertise and commitment deserve thoughtful alignment toward meaningful outcomes. 

Discovering Hidden Capacity 

When roles are clearly defined and accountability is embraced with a sense of amanah, organisations often discover that their capacity extends further than expected. 

Contributors across teams coordinate their efforts more effectively. Expertise that once remained within particular groups becomes accessible to others. External relationships can be engaged more intentionally. Activities that previously overlapped can be aligned. 

The organisation begins to move forward with greater coherence. Leaders who approach resources with clarity of roles and a spirit of amanah strengthen both organisational effectiveness and the trust placed in their leadership. 

That trust, once honoured, becomes a source of enduring strength for the organisation. 

• Hasannudin Saidin
  CEO Coach, Rubah Associates and can be reached at hasan@rubah.my.

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