Re: <nettime> electro- vs petro-state

[Stefan Heidenreich via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Thank you for the link, Felix.
but I beg to disagree with your interpretation of the article. It's 
lacking the dimensions of history and finance which the writers of 
phenomalworld always keep in mind. Instead, you narrowly focus on a 
symptom (post-carbon) and blur out the rest of the picture.

Just for the facts: the US is by no means the largest exporter of fossil 
fuels (oil, gas, coal).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_exporters
Only for gas it is now leading, and we all know how it managed to get 
into that position by coercing the Europeans and disrupting Russians 
exports.

Adding the dimensions of finance and history the picture would lead to a 
different diagnosis - approximately:
After having turned the West's democracies and former 
colonial/neoliberal powers into oligarchies, their financial regime did 
no longer rest on R&D and progress but on rent extraction. Progress came 
to a standstill.
China took the decision to go for its own version cadre-communist 
techno-accelerationism. The result of these decisions is what you 
perceive as the centre of the competition (fossil vs electro). Seen from 
a larger historical perspective, this is only one the fields where 
rent-extracting oligarchies of the West clash with the BRICS souvereign 
states that refuse to bow to the declining hegemon. Which leaves western 
oligarchy (if they want to preserve their wealth resting on a financial 
Ponzi scheme) with no other option than war and "imperial gangsterism" - 
as McKenzie and Sahay have pointed out in an earlier text: 
https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/polycrisis-2025/

Best
Stefan



Am 01.09.25 um 09:54 schrieb Felix Stalder via nettime-l:
> This is one of the best articles on geopolitics that I've read in a long 
> time, not the least because it puts BRICS at the center, rather than the 
> US.
>
> https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/brics-in-2025/
>
> The basic argument is that the competition between China and the US is 
> now also a competition between two techno-political paradigms, one based 
> on (green) electricity and one based on fossil fuels, with China being 
> the largest producer of green energy (by far), while the US as become 
> the largest exporter of fossil fuels.
>
> And these are really two paradigms from which very different industrial 
> policies, geopolitics, eco-politics, and even cultures (think 
> petromasculinity) flow.
>
> There is now a fierce geopolitical competition between these two 
> paradigms, and the US has relatively little to offer, so it has to 
> revert to brute force to keep other countries in line. This works best 
> with allies (think Europe promising to buy LNG and scrapping tariffs on 
> US monster cars). Also domestically, the US uses brute-force to keep 
> fossil fuels competitive, cancelling almost finished green energy 
> installations and gutting the EPA to offload more of the costs to public.
>
> On the other hand, the China model (and cheap Chinese exports), allow 
> countries like Pakistan to leap-frog in terms of energy production, 
> installing 17GW of solar capacity in 2024 in a largely bottom-up process 
> (as a comparison, Germany installed about 20GW).
>
> As they write:
>
> "China’s package of automation, digitalization, and electrification 
> offers firms and nations not just carbon-reduction but also—more 
> persuasively—productivity, efficiency, and energy sovereignty. The 
> material basis of the global production, consumption and information 
> systems are being remade. One doesn’t have to be a Marxist to think that 
> will imply a radical transformation in global politics."
>
> They summarize this shift as "Diversify, dedollarize, decarbonize".
>
> And, interestingly, AI plays an important, but somewhat subordinate 
> role, as part of a new industrial infrastructure, which underpins the 
> electrification and digitization in all its aspects. No AGI necessary.
>
> The article even contains an update of Carlotta Perez famous chart on 
> techno-economic paradigms, with the IT/software paradigm in decline.
>
>
>
> I came across this article via Paris Marx's Tech Won't Save US podcasts, 
> where the two authors. Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay, were interviewed.
>
> https://techwontsave.us/ 
> episode/291_how_chinas_renewable_push_upends_geopolitics_w_kate_mackenzie__tim_sahay

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