Metabolism wars are geopolitical fights over metabolic capacity - the energy, information and materials that power a civilization. Ideology still makes noise. The chips and cables do the work.
How the word moved
In September 2025 I read chips, the ecological Cold War, urban metabolism and COVID as one metabolic transformation. That's the only sense so far, and it's a big one. Nothing in society makes sense except in the light of the planet, as I like to say after Dobzhansky.
In my words
"Nothing in society makes sense except in the light of the planet."
from The Weekly Planet #3: Metabolism Wars, 8 Sep 2025
"The empires of the future will exert control through chips and cables."
from The Weekly Planet #3: Metabolism Wars, 8 Sep 2025
Related
- Related Metabolics - the concept essay that came two weeks later.
- Related Electrostate - one side of the fight.
- Related Petrostate - the other side.
- Related Metabolic Sovereignty - it's the political unit these wars are fought over.
Still open
I said at the time that the empirical backbone of this intuition needs fleshing out. It still does.