Artur Troost: A large break with a green transformation It's just an empty rhetoric, like you suggested before.? We're not expected to worry about American. Drill, baby, Drill?
Edwin Bendyk: In the United States, the game is different from in the European Union. The Americans have a large stock of fossil resources, in an energy strategy they can trust on 2 legs. It is just a question of the cost-effectiveness of oil and gas extraction and the economical account, not the deficiency of natural materials alone, as in Europe.
We, regardless of climate, inactive request to gain energy, and if we gotta buy it, we have political consequences. You can see at the minute that Trump addiction can be as dangerous as Putin's earlier addiction. The Americans prove that they are not individual to trust on, including in terms of guaranteeing access to fossil fuels.
In this context, should American attempts to guarantee control of Ukrainian deposits be considered as part of competition for natural materials alternatively than as Trump's game for interior use?
At this point they are pears on willow, due to the fact that nobody knows precisely how many of these most valuable resources in Ukraine, or uncommon minerals, and especially uncommon earth metals. We know the deposits in the occupied areas, there is besides something in the areas under Ukrainian control, but it is not known whether there is adequate and adequate concentration to make the extraction meaningful.
I read the Ukrainian expert reports on lithium – that it most likely is, but in concentrations not profitable for use. Unlike a titanium which Ukraine has second after Norway resources in Europe. In total, however, these are not any gigantic resources on which key political decisions would be worth depending.
Then why did they become addicted to them?
It's hard to tell what Donald Trump's intentions are. The proposal for a contract has changed; the first option was like a neocolonial conquest prescription and almost full waiver by Ukraine of control over natural resources and logistics infrastructure. The version, which was to be signed on 28 February after the gathering at the White House, was already clearly softened and more general. Then there was an escalation and a return to the variant, let's call it neocolonial, which is inactive being negotiated, due to the fact that Ukrainians are putting up apparent resistance.
The signed master agreement and supporting papers seem to be based on a compromise that the Ukrainians can accept and that satisfies Donald Trump. Ukraine is "binding" the United States, in exchange for the current war engagement promising heavy uncertain revenues in the distant future. The agreement is clearly more political than economic.
And that the investment would return.
Yeah, at least that's how the contract was expected to be signed on February 28th. For Ukraine it was a good deal, even the critics of Zelenski praised him for it, due to the fact that she had American and Ukrainian interests, but it was alternatively symbolic. This seems to be the main point of this agreement and would possibly open the way for peace negotiations with Russia. However, the agreement fell through the mentioned Zelenski's conversation with Trump and J. D. Vance.
Did she decide the difference between temperaments or was there a second bottom in this meeting?
One might wonder about the objectives of the individual interviewors, but I don't think it's Trump's setup, I think he actually wanted this deal. However, Vice president Vance should not have participated in the presidents' conversation at all, he broke protocol and may have deliberately acted for the escalation. It's hard to tell precisely what business this was. But, as I said, present the discussion of that event makes no sense, besides much has happened, Trump has even managed to return Russia to Crimea, although it is not even clear what he actually said or wanted to say.
Sometimes it is said that a transactional look at global policy, connected not only with the satisfaction of American voters, but besides with the mindset of businessmen and billionaires who make a fresh administration. To what degree is this increasing oligarchy a threat not only to the United States but besides to the world?
I think this is 1 of the most crucial problems right now. There are studies showing that Trump's current alliance with digital oligarchy is an expression of the emergence of a strategy that can be called technofascism or somewhat milder, technofeudism. These relationships were already highlighted after Barack Obama was elected for a second term. Then many Silicon Valley tycoons, and current Trump supporters, became active in Obama's support. As we remember, inactive in 2020 Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg resented the current president. Then they discovered that he was the 1 who gave the best chance of an effective alliance of power and capital.
This is not just about specified systemic corruption and gaining political impact in exchange for financial and infrastructure support. Many analyses show a strong ideological component, with references to concepts dark enlightenment and anti-democratic technocracy based on a culture of efficiency supported by the usage of the latest management and social control technologies. The fascist component is to reject any restrictions in the name of recognising that only effectiveness and strength are important, including, where necessary, police and military violence.
This approach fits well with the promotion of conservative values affirming the alleged conventional division of social roles, consisting of cult of manhood and subjection of women. Even Zuckerberg, 1 day at a time, was talking about the request to return to the male spirit. This process is called "depussification" of the planet of technology and politics.
Why do these demands fall on susceptible ground?
Many researchers point out that today's popularity of many ideas that could be included in this macular strategy is due to their systematic improvement with the improvement of digital capital. George Gilder, an investor and a right-wing thinker with a strong influence on conservative environments can be identified. Already in the 1970s he led an anti-feminist crusade, in 1994 he co-authored Magna Carta for the cognition Age, the manifesto with which the Republican organization then competed in the legislature elections. Gilder wasn't and is not the only one. The influence of ideas on reality, however, determines not only their attractiveness, which is the belief that they respond well to the challenges of reality.
These challenges do not arise from the alleged crisis of values, feminization and sex ideology, the spread of the woke, multi-culti culture and akin fears that traditionalists have.
So, what's behind all that cotton candy?
The challenges are primarily structural. Maintaining the current economical model based on unlimited growth with the promise that it will bring improvement to everyone on Earth is impossible. Humanity crosses further planetary limits that find the conditions for the safe functioning of the Earth's ecosystem. The common objectives adopted, specified as the fight for climate, are not met.
That's all we know. Jarosław Lipszyc wrote any time ago that Trump was just the first to talk loud – the planet is not adequate for everyone. So at least adequate for Americans, and the rest, like global solidarity, doesn't matter. Therefore, US President's announcements about expansion to Canada, Greenland and the like should be taken seriously, not as paranoid rhetoric.
So there's any rationality in Trump's actions? rather gloomy, but the consequence to the climate crisis and the current global improvement model?
Many years ago Bruno Latour, a French sociologist and philosopher, has come to akin conclusions. It introduced the concept of a fresh climate regime, the symbolic beginning of which was the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. It was then that the global climate process to combat global warming began nominally under the name of the UN. At that time, U.S. president George Bush stated that “the American way of life is unnegotiable. Period’.
Latour interprets this event and later history, especially the "great acceleration" of the usage of material resources and the production of contamination on Earth after 2002, as an expression of the reorganization of capitalism under the name of environmental goals. Only that the logic of capitalism cannot be reconciled with sustainable development.
And regardless of ecology, it is impossible to keep a global economical model based on a continuous increase in logistical, organisational, technological complexity. What Trump proposes is to uphold Bush's rule and at the same time recognise that it needs to be implemented under fresh global conditions, which will consequence in decomplexing the simplification of complexity – by including. Deglobalisation, and within the country by reducing the complexity of the state, i.e. reducing its functions.
Notice that this is besides nothing new. The request to shorten the value chains, return the economy to local sources, and so on the left, says environmentalists. Trump offered his solution.
Privatizing public infrastructure, among others?
Privatisation takes place, but reducing complexity besides means changing the social structure, due to the fact that if we destruct any social services that were the basis of emancipation policies, for example, made it possible for women to take up employment, then, of course, individual will gotta replace these services.
Some women will return to their homes and conventional roles. Not due to the fact that they want to, just due to the fact that no 1 else will take the essential functions to reconstruct society unless it is in the public service system. You can already see the normative effects of conservative expression in the form of limitation of the right to abortion, etc. Somewhere in the end, the needs of a functional social strategy with little complexity can be full aligned with the ideology of technofeudalism.
We're going to go back to the situation that my husband's going to work in a corp and my wife's taking care of the house?
The wife will take care of the house, the man will gain and from the position of specified a reduced state it will be functionally compatible. The problem is that left-wing liberal environments have no consequence to specified changes. Progressive policies envisaged continuous improvement to respond to fresh needs, to increase complexity, to make social services and infrastructure. Of course there was, too. Degrowth, but he never full found the answer to the question of how to reconcile the depravity and the ensuing resignation from the provision of part of social services with the fact that the needs will not vanish and yet fresh ones will emerge.
In the end, the answer is only the right...
...and it assumes Back to the Past. Women left forced to vanish from the streets of AfghanistanAnd now a akin script in the United States or elsewhere in the West is no longer just a fantasy.
The worst part is that it's not just an ideological twist. These right-wing ideologies are proposing to respond to real structural problems, to which there is no alternative, equally strong proposal, due to the fact that Liberal environments are inactive convinced that they can keep the world’s order to date. The reasons for the deficiency of political legitimacy are either looking in the incompetence of politicians, or they blame the media due to the fact that the ways of communication have changed.
They're just symptoms. But I'm afraid it's more serious. It is impossible to return to the canons of liberal democracy only through civic education, media care and fair information to citizens about what the planet looks like.
Is Europe doomed to a akin script as the US?
It's already happening. The turn to law in Europe besides responds structurally to this challenge, but only here is the social strategy understood differently, otherwise legitimised. However, it is harder to dismantle, so it will take longer, which in turn gives a chance to make an alternate answer.
The concepts of eco-socialism or this growth have been developed since the 1970s, as a consequence to the fuel shock, the first specified natural material and energy crisis. André Gorz and others showed up, you can fight for ecology, greening, taking into account the position of socialist thought and translate it into economics and political ecology.
This has never penetrated the mainstream, but the accomplishment is and is waiting for use. But can political tools be built on this effectively in line with democratic principles? hard to say. The trials are few, and at this point the election is improbable to win.
Maybe it's a good thing we don't have Silicon Valley, but at least technofascism will be harder too.
One can be comforted by the fact that there are advantages to peripherality. We are a peripheral country, so we do not have Silicon Valley or any another centre with capital and fresh technologies that can control the economy, especially its segments forming the alleged technological boundary. However, it condemns us to buy technology and imitate organizational designs based on these technologies. So you can see how rapidly attempts to imitate Americans and their fresh administration appear.
Like deregulation?
We have the Confederate chief force to rise specified slogans, but Prime Minister Tusk bid on it, including Rafal Peach for Deregulation game and becoming its advocate in the EU. I realize his political motivations, but I fear the long-term costs.
Deregulation will not replace the deficiency of investment, and this is now the main improvement problem, alongside the demographic collapse. I do not question the sense of rationalisation, but if it is to reduce the functions of the State, I have already presented a possible script for further development.
What about the darkest scenarios of the civilizational collapse that Jarosław Lipszyc presented in these texts?
There are many indications that the temperature of the atmosphere will not emergence so much, due to the fact that the socio-economic strategy will break down and the consumption of natural materials and the production of waste, including carbon dioxide. This is simply a pessimistic variant of this decomplexification, which is to reduce complexity in conditions of failure of control. In the book In Poland, that is everywhere I presented him as a fall from Seneca's cliff. However, this would be the worst option of "responsibility" to the climate crisis.
The question is, are we able conduct the full operation in a controlled manner, in addition to getting at the end a strategy based on values that are so costly to us today, let's call them liberal-democratic? Or else: whether the mark strategy based on these values, in accordance with Earth's resource capabilities, will be able to supply food to about 10 billion people and the energy needed to keep civilizational functions and standard of life in accordance with the rule of justice?
Historical experience suggests that most transformations based on the change in the energy strategy were accompanied by revolutionary and counter-revolutionary movements utilizing little or more violence. possibly what is happening now is specified a violent expression of the beginning of transformation.
The scale of force will depend on how rapidly we will find political answers to the challenges. Answers better than Trump, Putin, Xi today.
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Edwin Bendyk − journalist, journalist, writer. president of the Management Board of the Stefan Batory Foundation. Publicist of the weekly "Politics". Author of books Poison well. The Thing of Power and Freedom (2002), Antimatrix. Man in the net maze (2004), Love, war, revolution. Sketches during the crisis (2009) and Network rebellion (2012). In 2014, he published a book together with Jacek Santorski and Witold Orlovski. How to live in a planet that's crazy. At the University of Warsaw he runs the DELAB laboratory of the City of the Future. He teaches at Collegium Civitas, where he heads the Future investigation Centre. At the Centre for Social Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences he conducts a seminar on fresh media. associate of the Polish PEN Club.
