Re: <nettime> What is a global energy regime shift?

[Max Herman <maxnmherman@hotmail.com>]

Hi Brian,

I've been hoping for something like this since I saw William Janeway speak about it here in Minnesota a year or two ago.  This is a video at Brown sort of like his talk here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJoY6YJNhLE

He said that the US was falling behind in green tech, capitalism was not innovating, and the climate was well warming up.  He explained that massive new infrastructure spending requires a state, but states have been delegitimized by libertarian "we don't need you any more" tech billionaires chasing unicorns and the nationalist populism fueled by the great financial crisis.

He said we would need something like a disaster to restore belief in the need for states and the basic R&D they alone can fund.  He said historically this disaster has been wars, but ideally now could be a climate agenda.  Of course then Covid-19 arrived.

We also have a very disastrous current administration in the US, so perhaps that could be a motivator for change?  Kind of like slingshotting around a planet to gain momentum for a very different direction.

Financial Times had pieces about the same state-funded plan for green infrastructure earlier this spring, by James Baker and George Schultz on the progressive side and Podesta on the conservative side.  This is obvious code for "bipartisan."  So, this was also cause for optimism.

I think Biden will make this part of his platform and campaign once it goes mainstream.  Trump will try, but he is tainted on all such things.  Trump might win, you never know what can happen, but this agenda will go forward anyway because Trump is so compromised and circumstances are so dire that he has to do what he's told to survive (historically his modus operandi at bankruptcy time i.e. "when the jig is up").  It could even be a "only Nixon could go to China" deal but to me that doesn't apply here.  Trump simply cannot lead this type of effort effectively, so rather than figurehead he will more likely be the scapegoat for all that has been done wrong recently.

This "green revolution" as Janeway calls it will require some compromise, negotiation, alas bipartisanship, some saving of face (not to be dismissed as an essential ingredient of game theory and de-escalation), and "public/private" cooperation.  I personally see the world economy already as heavily hybridized between "socialist" and "capitalist" so this wouldn't even really be new by that logic.  I mean, what can one call it other than hybrid when capitalism functions by massive stimulus spending?

To your final point, a "market-friendly" green revolution is much better, in my opinion, than the nationalist-populist graft and drift agenda helmed by Donald and Boris which is funny in a way but so incredibly damaging at the same time that it's not really funny at the end of the day.

I do think that innovative ways of doing art, literature, and philosophy etc. could be helpful to the success of the green revolution (in the sense of Industrial Revolution and Digital Revolution, not the American or French).  The main help "cultural" innovation could bring is to reduce the needless mistakes and unforced errors bred by hate, extreme stress, miscalculation, lost opportunities, "failure to communicate," and so forth.

So here's hoping!  🙂

Max



________________________________
From: nettime-l-bounces@mail.kein.org <nettime-l-bounces@mail.kein.org> on behalf of Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, June 19, 2020 12:52 AM
To: a moderated mailing list for net criticism <nettime-l@mail.kein.org>
Subject: <nettime> What is a global energy regime shift?

Here it is:

https://www.iea.org

Along with excellent reporting from the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/18/world-has-six-months-to-avert-climate-crisis-says-energy-expert

Read the main site, eye-popping. This is Green Capitalism in the energy
sector. It's backed by the World Bank and it feeds directly into the EU's
last-chance Green Deal - as well as a US presidential campaign. The
technique is maximum reduction of CO2 through job-creating government
subsidy in all directions (including home retrofitting, for instance, a
brilliant proposal). The avowed aim is to seize the crisis to create a new
hegemony. These are the folks with their hands on the pump. It's all
supposed to happen in the next six months.

The finance to do this is available since the Central Banks realized they
could release infinite amounts of liquidity into the economy, for whatever
end.

And despite all the revulsion you may feel if you look into that website,
isn't this direction a lot more viable than whatever the Trump/Brexit years
have produced? How are we to stand with respect to this new wave?

Where does everybody see this thing going?



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