The first of many "pauperies" after a long break.
The Invisible Fist
One of the most famous passages of modern writing comes from Adam Smith. From his Wealth of Nations:
By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.
The phrase 'market' doesn't find a place in this quote, but it's often Exhibit A in the case to leave the market alone and free from nasty governmentses. Governmentses have been struggling to control the market ever since, but I am not here to talk about them. I have been tasked with another responsibility: to reveal the traces of another invisible hand, or rather, an invisible fist: the invisible fist of the planet.
Smith was prescient in talking about the choices made by the common man, whether trader or artisan. My hope is to similarly reveal the invisible fist of the planet in the actions of a heterogenous bunch of actors, from the man on the street to the whale in the ocean. The “paupers” as I called them.
Planetary Politics
In his introduction to the latest print issue of Noema, Nathan Gardels talks about the need for a new planetary politics:
This new condition calls not for the old “realpolitik” that seeks to secure the interests of nation-states against each other but for a “Gaiapolitik” aimed at securing a livable biosphere for all.
In another recent Noema production (I am a fan of what they are putting out), Jonathan Blake says:
New institutions of planetary governance are necessary because our existing ones are unfit to tackle planetary challenges. The preeminent institution of governance in the world today is the national state. Yet the national state, because its authority, by definition, is limited to the space within its borders, is structurally incapable of acting on planetary scales. As a political form, moreover, it is conceptually limiting: It constrains the political field of vision, structuring our political imagination along national lines....The result is that planetary problems spiral beyond the control of any government or collective body of national states. Addressing planetary challenges across scales of cause and effect and time and space requires strong institutions: a new general architecture for planetary governance.
For the sake of argument, let's agree that we need a planetary politics. My personal opinion: it's the only politics worth doing, but I am generous enough to acknowledge there are other reasonable political concerns 😁. What are the prospects for the planet as a political subject?
There's good news and there's bad news.
The good news is, the recognition of our condition of 'Planetarity' is spreading fast. This recognition, however, can come in many forms. It can take its marching orders from the original Club of Rome report, of human societies existing against the backdrop of a finite planet, or an updated version that talks about planetary boundaries. At the other end of the spectrum, there's geoengineering in service of climate goals.
I would like to think the condition of planetarity has seeped into our consciousness because of the sweat and tears of environmental and climate activists, but whether its their hard work or serendipity or just the unending parade of one disaster after another, the energetic and ecological and informational foundations of our civilization are clearer than ever. Lot’s of people are willing to accept that human activity is ordered by these three features on a finite planet. Soon it may become the orthodoxy.
Prediction: Economics will give way to Bhumics.
That's the good news.
The bad news: just because our planetary condition is widely understood doesn't mean we will successfully address the challenges posed by the previous system. In particular, I don't think climate action and the reduction of carbon in the atmosphere will ever be a shared goal of all societies. Even when they buy into planetarity. The more likely future is one where planetarity is helmed by two authoritarian complexes that differ in their energy ideologies.
In this dystopian future, there will be the fossil fuel authoritarian complex with the United States at its core (and Russia as a frenemy), going head to head with a renewable authoritarian complex with China at its core. Many parts of the developing world, which want to develop, but don't want to burden themselves with quaint notions such as human rights - and see their developmental trajectories as being post-carbon, may sign on to a solar authoritarianism. Perhaps in the old style of Chinese hegemony - acknowledgment of social superiority combined with tribute in lieu of conquest.
Energy Ideologies Stacks
Energy ideologies are an important backdrop to polyconflict. The shift from one energy source to another can be assessed in terms of some abstract collective good, like the shift to renewable sources because of climate change. But equally importantly, they may be seen as strategic advantages. And if an energy ideology is a mechanism by which elites of a society capture wealth and exert control, they will be unwilling to undercut the sources of their power.
But first, we need a change in terminology; we need to replace 'ideology' with 'stack.' More generally, the language of computing-cybernetic systems will pervade Bhumics. I am not going to explain why we need that shift of terminology in this essay, except to say that:
The combination of design principles, communication protocols, interoperability and security measures that come together in a stack are better suited to understanding planetarity than 19th century political categories.
Which explains why the US has been so reluctant to decarbonize, because the American military industrial complex understands that it is a Carbon Superpower, that a future which is not carbon-based may not be one in which at least that elite holds power whether the United States itself stays in that role or not.
We shouldn't underestimate the stickiness of energy stacks. Suppose you had gone to Genghis Khan in 1221 and said, ‘your horses are like gobbling up all the grass on the plains and if you have too many of them, they will overgraze and all of us are going to die a horrible death.’ Was GK likely to tell you, yeah, you're right, I'm going to shift from horses to mules?
No, of course he wouldn't.
He would have your head cut off and displayed on one of his tent poles. The Mongols' power depended on their capacity to be fantastic archers on horseback. Don't expect your bosses to give up on their primary sources of power! Power is Power: wattage leads to dominion.
But there’s another reason why the US might not give up on fossil fuels - its ascendant planetary tech stack is not energy first, but information first, with AI as its most prominent exemplar. Internet cables are a model of the planet in the same way power lines are. Or to put differently, Silicon Valley is as planetary as the Power Construction Corporation of China.
Don’t assume there’s only one way of grasping planetarity!
In contrast, the Chinese might think: we have the opportunity to be the first movers in a new energetic order, that the renewable energetic order is one in which we control the know-how, the scale, the distribution capacity and all the soft power that comes with all of this. They might well think: we can assert our ascendance on the back of this new energetic regime.
But a new 'renewable' energy stack doesn't mean it will automatically solve climate change. China might bank on its advantages in the renewable sector to become relatively more powerful but it wouldn't stop burning coal any time soon. Neither will India. And of course, not the United States. Not gonna happen.
Our consumption of the previous form of energy doesn't have to reduce in order for a new form of energy to become dominant. We consume a lot more wood today than people did in the 18th century (there are a lot more of us, for one) before coal became the dominant source of energy. Let's not assume that the material intensity of future use is going to decrease - even for the materials whose consumption/emission we want to reduce, such as carbon dioxide or plastics.
The reduction of material use is not a given conclusion in this polyconflict world.
The Pauper revisited
So far I have only talked about the planetary politics of the powerful; what about the rest of us, the river of humanity and the vast ocean of the nonhuman world who suffer the outrages of the powerful? Is there a planetary politics of us paupers? What shape should it take?
Before we embrace that question, let's be clear that the pauper's politics can't be a feel-good performative politics. We are talking about matters of life and death, about politics that ensures the possibility of life on earth. Yes, there's a need for a politics of care, of empathy towards all beings, but there's equally a need for ruthless clarity, of the immense struggle it will take to dislodge the current system.
Bhumics as planetary politics requires us to be hyper-machiavellian, hyper-utopian, hyper-smithian, hyper-marxian and hyper-gandhian at once.
I don't know what that means as a fleshed out theory. I am going to use this series of pauperies to think aloud.
