In today’s world of broken tech/content cultural cycles where oligarchic, tech billionaire or strongmen rule, unchecked megalomania and institutionalized greed tends express itself nowadays as “concern” about freedom or fighting against PC and censorship but ends in layoffs and users migrating from one temporary heaven to another. It is as Ada Palmer put – getting meta, a place where one used to tweet about various meltdowns – Twitter – is itself tweeting about its own meltdown. Well TW was itself stuck in the verbal and textual (if minute and 200 character limit) turn. People move to Mastodon and this is not something that should surprise us.
There is even talk about returning to Tumblr and who knows, maybe a renewed interest in worn-out formats such as WordPress. With that in mind I will post a few short talks on various subjects related to green transitions from fossil fuel as East /West manifold, climate justice, the Capitalocene, resource depletion and greenwashing from the #AfterExtractivism series an appendage to the Berliner Gazette. I participated with an article and a video in one on these, but I urge you to check the others too – they are dense, interesting and quite urgent. They range I said from the history of empires, system of sacrificial (based on human sacrifice) economy – of vegetal greases in the Atlantic Slave trade and British Industrial and Colonial history or today’s infamous petro-states of the Gulf and their futuristic imagery. They are quite short, ~ 10 minutes to 18, and quite to the point, so they might be worth your while, even if it’s talking heads – a situation I also often find annoying.
More info: after-extractivism.berlinergazette.de
Stefan Tiron 1989 / 2147
Connecting post-1989 worker struggles in Romania’s coal mining region with Captain Power and a group of guerrilla fighters who oppose the machine forces that dominate Earth in the 22nd century following the so-called Metal Wars, artist, author, and curator Stefan Tiron inquires in his contribution to the Berliner Gazette’s video talks series “After Extractivism” into the political potential of science fictional transitioning in the 1990s.
Max Haiven · Palm Oil
While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has triggered a global shortage of sunflower oil, propelling palm oil to rise again, a critical look at the global history of the palm oil industry reveals both the imperial violence of extractive capitalism as a system of human sacrifice and the challenges for a transition into a just world, social thinker Max Haiven argues in his contribution to the Berliner Gazette’s video talks series “After Extractivism.”
Stoyo Tetevenski · European Green Deal
The case of Bulgaria reveals: what is sold as the ultimate way out – namely, the “green” transition – opens new spaces for accumulation. The cost of this is to be borne by society, especially by workers in old industries. Thus, the challenge is to advance post-capitalism, as environmental justice activist Stoyo Tetevenski argues in his contribution to the Berliner Gazette’s video talks series “After Extractivism.”
Manuela Zechner · Earthcare
While ecological and economic systems are collapsing, a battle for white supremacy is raging; it is not least a class war for (controlling) access to the shrinking living space on the planet. It is high time to counter this development with a radical politics of earthcare, as feminist researcher, facilitator, and artist Manuela Zechner
Katarina Kusic · The Yugoslavia Lesson
The suffering caused by extractive capitalism has people looking back to Yugoslavia’s modernization project. While aiming to dominate nature, it also created cooperative platforms for social togetherness, enabling sustainable ways of living and organizing economy.
Julio Linares · Climate and Debt
Fighting for debt cancellation and environmental justice in the Global South, the question is how we can wager our future on the legacies and claims of those who – then as now – have been plunged into existential hardship by the ecological-economic complex. In his contribution to the Berliner Gazette’s video talks series “After Extractivism,” economic anthropologist Julio Linares is looking for answers in Latin America.
Özgün Eylül İşcen · Gulf Futurism
After the Gulf boom propelled the growth both of the region and of oil-devouring economies in the West, new realms of capitalist expansion are being developed along the lines of green capitalism’s smartness mandate, ultimately reproducing the lasting systemic crisis of which Dubai is somewhat representative, media theoretician Özgün Eylül İşcen argues in her contribution to the Berliner Gazette’s video talks series “After Extractivism.”
TimeSpace Warps 