Re: <nettime> Strom vs Morozov: knockdown punch

[Jean-Noël Montagné <jnm@autistici.org>]

Dear all,

I have just finished both Morozov's and Ström's texts, thanks to the 
automatic translators, and I am very surprised to find almost no 
reference to climate change, nor to the finitude of resources. Not once 
does the word "climate" appear in Ström, and only twice does "climate 
change" appear in Morozov.

It seems to me that one cannot analyse the current developments of 
capitalism or cybernetics towards techno-feudalism, or other forms, 
without integrating the beginnings of the collapse induced by climate 
change and the end of low-cost energy and mineral resources.

Capitalism is directly dependent on the laws of thermodynamics, and 
relies on the availability of low-cost energy and resources. 
Cyber-capitalism is extremely fragile, because it is directly based on 
the globalisation of the economy and on flow-tension strategies. It 
cannot survive for very long the technological, economic and social 
collapse induced by the climate crisis and the end of resources.

How can we imagine that the cybernetic system will continue to grow or 
even exist with more than a billion annual climate migrants within 30 
years? [compared to 280 million in 2021, source UN]. These migrations 
due to climate disasters will cause major unrest in all countries, rich 
or poor, industrialised or not.

Another example: the digital industry consumes an enormous amount of 
water, whether for the extraction of rare minerals, the production of 
semi-conductors, or even data centres, and the UN predicts a 40% 
reduction in water resources within 8 years (2030) while the population 
will increase at the same time!

As far as energy is concerned, i.e. the driving force of capitalism, its 
rarefaction, at low cost, due to various geo-political or climatic 
problems, but also due to the depletion of resources, will induce an 
inescapable recession, which will impact both extractivism and the 
logistics of the real and virtual flows on which digital technology and 
its profits are based.

As far as temperatures are concerned, we have entered the Decade of the 
Forty, the era of extremes at more than forty degrees Celcius, but let's 
not forget that in ten or fifteen years' time, we will be entering the 
era of extremes at more than 50 degrees Celcius, like in India or 
Pakistan now. In these periods, it will be very difficult to produce 
electricity, and impossible to run data centres. Economic activity will 
be totally paralysed.

It is worth remembering that some insurers have announced that they will 
no longer be able to insure against climate risks within the next ten 
years, as the current cost of catastrophes is becoming unmanageable for 
their business model. Can you imagine an Amazon warehouse or any other 
commercial activity without insurance, while danger lurks at every 
climate event?

So we have to realise that capitalism, in all its forms, is collapsing, 
not because of internal forces, but because economic globalisation and 
associated extractivism have no resilience in the face of profound 
climate change and the end of certain essential resources.

We did not want to engage in a chosen degrowth, so we must now navigate 
the violent storm of suffered degrowth. Digital wolrd cannot survive 
this. Arms and brains will be required for agriculture.

Our current preoccupation must be adaptation and resilience, i.e. how to 
organise the degrowth of the Internet in such a way as to keep only the 
essentials necessary for the most peaceful management of the disaster.

Jean-Noël

(automatically translated, from french)
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