Prophet vs. Profit: When Winds Collapse and Empires Rise
The Gulf Trade Winds and the Silent Seas
The oceans are speaking, and their voice is thinning.
In July 2024, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned that under high-emissions scenarios, many of the world’s oceans will suffer more than 10% declines in exploitable fish biomass by mid-century, with some nations facing losses of 30% or more [FAO report, 2024]
Already, over one-third of global fish stocks are officially overfished.
[FAO, 2025assessment]
These aren’t distant warnings, they’re present griefs. Fisherfolk return with empty nets. Coastal towns watch their livelihoods vanish. Children inherit plates once filled with abundance, now scraped thin.
The Prophet says: tend to the waters, care for the life within them.
The Profit says: engineer protein, patent feeds, sell scarcity as opportunity.
Panama: A Canal in Drought
The Panama Canal, which carries nearly 5% of global trade, has been choked by record drought. In fiscal year 2024, vessel transits dropped by nearly 29%, from about 12,638 ships the year before to just 9,936【Seatrade Maritime, 2024】.
Gatún Lake, the freshwater reservoir that feeds the canal, hit its lowest January water level on record in 2024…nearly six feet lower than the year before【Woodwell Climate, 2024】.
At times, the number of daily ship crossings fell from around 36 to just 22【Seatrade Maritime, 2024】.
When a great artery of trade falters, empire doesn’t stop. It reroutes.
Gaza: A Corridor Through Ruin
For decades, Israeli strategists and foreign investors have floated the idea of the Ben Gurion Canal, a 160-mile (≈257 km) waterway linking the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, bypassing the Suez【Israel Hayom, 2024】.
Once dismissed as fantasy, the idea resurfaced in 2023–24, with new reports speculating on routes and geopolitical leverage【Times of Israel, 2024】【New Arab, 2023】. In this vision, Gaza is not a wounded place but a passage. Not rubble, but raw material.
War clears the land. Displacement opens corridors. What was “impossible” becomes “inevitable.”
Here again, Profit drowns out Prophet.
War and Climate as Profit Machines
This is the brutal parallel:
War is profitable. The same firms that sell weapons win contracts for rebuilding.
Climate collapse is profitable. The corporations that extracted oil now dominate “green” monopolies and disaster insurance.
Trade instability is profitable. As Panama falters, Gaza’s canal grows attractive.
The ordinary person pays twice: once at the checkout counter, consuming goods that fuel collapse, and again through taxes funding wars and militaries.
Prophet vs. Profit
The Prophets of old, Isaiah, Amos, Jeremiah, Muhammad, Jesus, all warned consistently:
“Do not exploit the land until it breaks.”
“Do not grind the poor into dust.”
“Do not worship gold above life.”
But the world has tuned its ears to Profits instead: quarterly reports, GDP curves, stock upticks, and the numbing comfort of endless consumption.
The Prophet says: life.
The Profit says: market share.
The Prophet asks: what is enough?
The Profit answers: more.
A single letter divides them. A whole civilization depends on which one we choose.
A Choice Point
The collapse of the Gulf trade winds. The choking of Panama. The bombardment of Gaza. These are not separate tragedies. They are the same pattern, wearing different masks.
Destruction is not the opposite of business… it has become business.
Yet the voice of the Prophets has not gone silent. It calls us back to abundance measured not in billions but in life itself:
Fish returning to the seas.
Children inheriting safety, not rubble.
Rivers running clean.
Communities that measure success by the songs they sing, not the stocks they hold.
Closing
We are living at the hinge of history, where Prophet and Profit stand face to face.
One offers the comfort of numbers.
The other the discomfort of truth.
One consumes life.
The other defends it.
The question before us is simple, though its cost is great: which voice will we heed?
Because if we continue to choose Profit, the winds will collapse, the seas will empty, and the canals will run red.
But if we choose Prophet, we may yet discover a wealth the markets could never buy.
References
FAO, “Climate risks projected to affect fish biomass around the world’s ocean,” July 2024.
FAO, “Most detailed global assessment of marine fish stocks to date,” 2025.
Seatrade Maritime, “Panama Canal transits drop 29% in FY2024,” Oct 2024.
Woodwell Climate Research Center, “Drought at the Panama Canal,” Jan 2024.
Times of Israel, “The Ben Gurion Canal: Vision Amidst Upheaval,” Feb 2024.
New Arab, “What is Israel’s Ben Gurion canal plan and why Gaza matters,” Nov 2023.
Israel Hayom, “The Ben Gurion Canal Project,” May 2024.