The game is rigged as far as the ‘Green Transition’ is concerned, with specific technologies and companies receiving support from international institutions and governments to ‘transition’ the surplus value of the working and middle classes to themselves. For now, this has involved highlighting some environmental issues over others (like CO2 emissions over microplastics).
However, the rigging is only partial and, like much of what comes out of Brussels, haphazard. There remains plenty of room for citizen initiatives to siphon off funds and build entities that would add value to the European economy, employ Europeans, and result in genuine community-level resilience in the face of global supply chain vulnerability.
The following is not intended as a well-researched proposal or assesment of the viability of specific innovations, but as a thought experiment of what our future could look like, if we wrestle the ‘Green’ banner from the technocratic oligarchs presently wielding it as a weapon against the purchasing power and political autonomy of average citizens.
A Green Europe
From Europe’s Atlantic ports, a fleet of I-Sak ships departs, destined for the Sargasso Sea. Encircled by ocean, this body of water is hemmed in by the currents around it: the North Atlantic Current, the North Atlantic Equatorial Current to its south, the Gulf Stream rising at its west, and the Canary Current, which Europe’s I-Sak fleet will sail past, to its east.
Their name, I-Sak, is short for ‘Ideonella Sakaiensis 201-F6,’ an enzyme from the Ideonella Sakaiensis bacterium. They carry it across the ocean, at once precious cargo and ammunition. The purpose of this expedition is to dissolve the Sargasso’s foetid scrap island of discarded plastic, one of the largest accumulations of waste sullying the earth’s oceans.
Powerful engines draw in an artificial tide through voluminous gulps of vacuum suction, pulling the garbage into container units beneath the hull, where the enzymic loadstar is sprayed on the soon-to-be disintegrated store of plastic.
First identified by the Kyoto Institute of Technology, the potential of humanity’s bacterial ally was further refined by researchers at the Centre for Enzyme Innovation and other initiatives.
Funding for development and large-scale deployment of the new technology followed a campaign on the ‘plastic question’ and its relation to larger issues. This popularized the research of environmental and reproductive epidemiologist and professor of Environmental Medicine and Public Health Dr. Shanna Swan. She found that the presence of phthalates—a group of chemicals commonly used to increase plastic durability—in female humans, affected the genitalia and sexual function of their male offspring, pointing to a concerning trend:
It is serious. If you follow the curve from the 2017 sperm-decline meta-analysis, it predicts that by 2045 we will have a median sperm count of zero. It is speculative to extrapolate, but there is also no evidence that it is tapering off. This means that most couples may have to use assisted reproduction.
Indeed,
The very process allowing us to produce volumetric amounts of “stuff” in an array of colours and shapes, is the same process which also reduces our ability to reproduce ourselves …. The consequences of our overindulgence in plastic production and use reminds us that, from the depths of life, from the bounty available to us, represented by that vast reservoir hidden in the earth—crude oil—we may do great things, obtain a great boon. But if we pursue it vainly, it may well turn against us. When we lose our desire for stable forms, for permanent anchors, we produce a culture of constant flux and constant waste, of excessive plasticity, until the very biosphere begins to suffer. Yet now, nature has given us a remarkable lifeline.
Having transitioned away from plastic by means of alternative materials, including algae (polyhydroxy-butyrate) substitutes, and having cleared the Mediterranean Sea, Europeans have turned to collaborating with others in an Oceanic “Clean-up Crusade.”
Back on land, apartment owners co-own their building’s rooftop power-nests: wind and solar energy-harvesting installations that were originally proposed by architect Alexander Suma. These constitute an element of a renewed commons, which, combined with advances in battery storage, render apartment units nearly energy self-sufficient.
With regard to these batteries, Europe has mostly opted for sodium-ion technology. Sodium and lithium are both alkaline metals, but the former is far more abundant. Chinese companies innovated the use of sodium for energy storage, also increasing battery efficiency for electric cars in general, with U.S. companies doing likewise, using silicone to store lithium by overcoming the problem of silicone-swelling and cracking. In this context, Europe began developing its own versions of this technology, rather than characteristically resting on its laurels.
Energy storage efficiency has rendered wind and solar more viable than they were, but it has not, put an end to liquid fuel—an area in which there have been great advances to do with algae-harvesting, including for heating purposes. The very organism, whose sediment locked away the material that would become our fossil fuels under seabeds across the world, is now poised to serve as at least a partial replacement for those fuels. Algae grows quickly, needs less water than other crops, and doesn’t require the use of existing forests or large amounts of arable land to be cultivated.
The task at hand, the pursuit of an alternative ‘Green Transition,’ is perhaps more within reach than it seems, given that the technologies in question are neither speculative nor merely nascent.
Popularizing and pursuing specific promising avenues in plastic breakdown, plastic replacement, energy storage efficiency, community-level energy independence, and renewable energy sources are all very much possible. (This last point being desirable even apart from the climate change debate, as a means for reducing pollutants from combustion and developing energy independence).
In this way, opponents of globalism may articulate their own environmentalism, and adapt certain aspects of the energy transition to their own ends, running interference against the dominant discourse around these issues.
A Green Transition of Our Own
The game is rigged as far as the ‘Green Transition’ is concerned, with specific technologies and companies receiving support from international institutions and governments to ‘transition’ the surplus value of the working and middle classes to themselves. For now, this has involved highlighting some environmental issues over others (like CO2 emissions over microplastics).
However, the rigging is only partial and, like much of what comes out of Brussels, haphazard. There remains plenty of room for citizen initiatives to siphon off funds and build entities that would add value to the European economy, employ Europeans, and result in genuine community-level resilience in the face of global supply chain vulnerability.
The following is not intended as a well-researched proposal or assesment of the viability of specific innovations, but as a thought experiment of what our future could look like, if we wrestle the ‘Green’ banner from the technocratic oligarchs presently wielding it as a weapon against the purchasing power and political autonomy of average citizens.
A Green Europe
From Europe’s Atlantic ports, a fleet of I-Sak ships departs, destined for the Sargasso Sea. Encircled by ocean, this body of water is hemmed in by the currents around it: the North Atlantic Current, the North Atlantic Equatorial Current to its south, the Gulf Stream rising at its west, and the Canary Current, which Europe’s I-Sak fleet will sail past, to its east.
Their name, I-Sak, is short for ‘Ideonella Sakaiensis 201-F6,’ an enzyme from the Ideonella Sakaiensis bacterium. They carry it across the ocean, at once precious cargo and ammunition. The purpose of this expedition is to dissolve the Sargasso’s foetid scrap island of discarded plastic, one of the largest accumulations of waste sullying the earth’s oceans.
Powerful engines draw in an artificial tide through voluminous gulps of vacuum suction, pulling the garbage into container units beneath the hull, where the enzymic loadstar is sprayed on the soon-to-be disintegrated store of plastic.
First identified by the Kyoto Institute of Technology, the potential of humanity’s bacterial ally was further refined by researchers at the Centre for Enzyme Innovation and other initiatives.
Funding for development and large-scale deployment of the new technology followed a campaign on the ‘plastic question’ and its relation to larger issues. This popularized the research of environmental and reproductive epidemiologist and professor of Environmental Medicine and Public Health Dr. Shanna Swan. She found that the presence of phthalates—a group of chemicals commonly used to increase plastic durability—in female humans, affected the genitalia and sexual function of their male offspring, pointing to a concerning trend:
Indeed,
Having transitioned away from plastic by means of alternative materials, including algae (polyhydroxy-butyrate) substitutes, and having cleared the Mediterranean Sea, Europeans have turned to collaborating with others in an Oceanic “Clean-up Crusade.”
Back on land, apartment owners co-own their building’s rooftop power-nests: wind and solar energy-harvesting installations that were originally proposed by architect Alexander Suma. These constitute an element of a renewed commons, which, combined with advances in battery storage, render apartment units nearly energy self-sufficient.
With regard to these batteries, Europe has mostly opted for sodium-ion technology. Sodium and lithium are both alkaline metals, but the former is far more abundant. Chinese companies innovated the use of sodium for energy storage, also increasing battery efficiency for electric cars in general, with U.S. companies doing likewise, using silicone to store lithium by overcoming the problem of silicone-swelling and cracking. In this context, Europe began developing its own versions of this technology, rather than characteristically resting on its laurels.
Energy storage efficiency has rendered wind and solar more viable than they were, but it has not, put an end to liquid fuel—an area in which there have been great advances to do with algae-harvesting, including for heating purposes. The very organism, whose sediment locked away the material that would become our fossil fuels under seabeds across the world, is now poised to serve as at least a partial replacement for those fuels. Algae grows quickly, needs less water than other crops, and doesn’t require the use of existing forests or large amounts of arable land to be cultivated.
The task at hand, the pursuit of an alternative ‘Green Transition,’ is perhaps more within reach than it seems, given that the technologies in question are neither speculative nor merely nascent.
Popularizing and pursuing specific promising avenues in plastic breakdown, plastic replacement, energy storage efficiency, community-level energy independence, and renewable energy sources are all very much possible. (This last point being desirable even apart from the climate change debate, as a means for reducing pollutants from combustion and developing energy independence).
In this way, opponents of globalism may articulate their own environmentalism, and adapt certain aspects of the energy transition to their own ends, running interference against the dominant discourse around these issues.
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