RIP #BrunoLatour:
"We need a term, an invocation rather, that designates the state of dependence rather than emancipation and the plan to repair conditions of habitability that have been devastated."
ht @picharbonnier who brought together his last article geopolitique.eu/en/articles/is…
2/"Being a child of the baby boom, I spent my life feeling the threat of nuclear holocaust and without any transition, I have moved on to the threat of ecological collapse. I will therefore not analyze the arrival of war in Ukraine as a breakdown of peace" geopolitique.eu/en/articles/is…
5/ my first introduction to Latour was in a physics class where we mocked him (read the wickedly funny Sokal hoax article about the gibberish of social constructionists ). Read him on nature-society divide much later physics.nyu.edu/sokal/afterwor…
7/ RIP #BrunoLatour:
"Drugs, sex, cybernetics, the conquest of space, the Vietnam War, computers, and the nuclear threat: this is the matrix from which Gaia [hypothesis] was born, in violence, artifice, and war." lareviewofbooks.org/article/bruno-…
Relative peace between rich nations "so long as things go well, competition effects an operating fraternity of the capitalist class"
However, now that it is no longer a question of sharing profits but of limiting losses "competition then becomes a fight of hostile brothers"
Accelerating inflation, labour strikes and nations at war. A global recession and debt crisis now thanks to central banks raising interest rates.
In every county, there is talk of 'national unity' and 'national crisis'... back to the 1970s?marxists.org/subject/econom…
"Stability at the core of the global dollar system will be countered by tremendous instability in the global South. That will propel its own terrifying dynamics of perpetual conflict and immiseration made worse by climate change." phenomenalworld.org/analysis/regim…
NSA's declassified history of Suez Crisis - who knew what, when. Eyeopening on extent of British-French-Israeli deception of Eisenhower about their plans to invade Egypt. Denied US dollars & oil, UK/Fr give up. European dependency reappears 1973, 2022... nsa.gov/portals/75/doc…
2/ 1956 Suez Crisis caused a catastrophic loss of confidence in sterling reserve currency & the end of British & French empires. They lost control of middle eastern oil to US & Arab states & entered permanent dependency.
3/"Among other things, the crisis accelerated the shift toward dollar oil (which would harden in the 1960s...) & marked the beginning of the end of sterling as a competing reserve currency"
Thread on Suez, origin story of current European import dependency
"why we have failed to even bend the emissions curve (despite over 30yrs of scientific warnings!) compellingly reveals the role of the power of vested interests in blocking action
Need movements to overcome this!" Collective action+ Power->#TippingPoints
3/ Read Meadows on the Exponential CO2 Stick:"It shortens the time for effective action. It loads stress on a system faster & faster until coping mechanisms that have been able to deal w slower rates of change finally begin to fail" donellameadows.org/archives/lever…
Climate crisis & Debt crisis are two sides of the same coin. Many developing countries face a lost decade just as Climate crisis worsens. They can't invest in green if they are broke & paying high interest rates. Thread prospect.org/world/developi…
IMF board met today & acc to Pakistani officials, revived stalled loan program approved in July 2019 to disburse $1.17 billion to reduce burdens of the economic-ecological crisis. Will IMF impose conditions of removing subsidies?hrw.org/news/2022/08/2…
Europe is experiencing its worst drought in at least 500 years! Hot and dry climate fueling wildfires, reducing crop yields & worsening electricity shortages edo.jrc.ec.europa.eu/documents/news…
2/ Europe and China's historic heatwaves and drought are hurting firms, farms and factories. We are in the grips of a Rossby wave, a planetary wave causing simultaneous crisis across the northern hemisphere.
4/ Europe is exporting its crisis to the rest of the world. By willing to pay high prices for energy, it is sucking energy - whether LNG or Coal - away from developing countries.
Exactly like 2020's bidding war for Masks or 2021's bidding war for Vaccines