Scary German aristocrat lady for a green transition
I was looking through some notes again this weekend, when I came across a clip that I saved of Ursula von der Leyen, member of a class that has been ruling Europe for centuries and is now president of the European Commission (aka the executive arm of the neoliberal technocratic European Super State). In it, she’s being verrrrrrry scary and menacing when she’s actually supposed to be talking about something good and positive: Europe’s transition to green energy. Our civilization’s only hope!
The clip made the rounds almost two months ago and it kinda stuck with me. Not sure exactly why. I guess probably because of the comical Nazi-like vibes of the speech. But also because it’s yet another example of the sinister side of this global push for “green” technology — wrapped up as it is with more extraction and consumption and yet another global race for resources.
When when I noticed it in my notes I couldn’t help but look into a little further — even though I should be working on other things.
The clip above was cut together from a much longer speech that von der Leyen gave in Brussels in October. The background to all this talk about “securing access” to mining and “working” with “new partners” is that the EU is basically dependent on China for most of the precious metals it needs for its fabled “green” transition. But now, after having been burned by its reliance on this cheap Russian gas, many in Europe have been freaking out about China. Here is yet another country that Europe sees as an adversary and it also controls access to vital resources that Europe needs for its next-gen energy plans. So there’s bee a scramble to diversify Europe’s reliance on these dirty and destructive mining operations and that’s what a big part of von der Leyen’s speech is about: getting its own supply from other places and showing China the finger.
All this imperialist jockeying for rare metals is great on its own. But what interests me even more here is the bigger politics of tech and “green” energy. If you spend even a bit of time looking in the issue, it won’t take long to realize that all this talk about “net zero” and “green” is just a whitewash continued growth and a new resource extraction race.
No one is talking about changing society or using less energy or even just deaccelerating growth a bit. All people want to do is switch out one energy input and replace it with another — pretending we can keep running things as they were and expanding forever.
There’s nothing net zero about this approach because this new “green“ energy has to be built from scratch and requires constant inputs of metals and minerals — resources that have to be mined and processed shipped around the world using fossil fuels. All this comes with huge energy and environmental costs—not just in terms of green house gasses and other types of industrial pollutants, but the continued degradation and destruction of the natural environment.