While the effects of environmental destruction are becoming more and more obvious, because the staes of the Global North are also increasingly affected, capital is trying to paint itself green and use the ‘climate crisis’ to open up new markets. However, all the new (electric) technologies and “alternative” energies are not only about selling a better conscience to the consumer when buying, for example, a new electric car or switching to wind power, but, technologisation and digitalisation, which are now propagated as a solution to the “climate crisis” from politicians to activists, are about optimising “capital flows” (including data and money flows) – this through the expansion of infrastructures (fibre optics, 5G antennas, new satellites,…). While capitalists, states and corporations benefit from this, it increase the gap between rich and poor and increases the exploitation of the Global South by the Global North. Companies such as Amazon, Google and Facebook, whose power has only been made possible by the digitalisation of capitalism, make hundreds of billions in turnover, while workers have to work in precarious conditions. In the Global South, aren’t only the raw materials for all kinds of electrical appliances extracted under miserable conditions, but all the electrical waste from the Global North ends up there again – thus, a huge landfill was created in Agbogbloshie (Accra/Ghana).
The internet is a centerpiece of the new digital capitalism (or platform capitalism). Like other industrial technologies, the internet has a “military past”. Thus, the internet has largely developed from a military strategy to create a network, on the one hand to make the military infrastructure more efficient, and on the other hand to be able to continue functioning in case of attacks. The latter is the reason why the network was not created in a hierarchical way, as the computer system is supposed to establish alternative data connections itself in case of malfunction or failure. Just as colonisation and industrial warfare would not have been possible without steamboats and railways, the internet has become essential for (post-) colonial and military projects. The power of the state and capital has thus continued its subjugation of the world, now also by digital means. In order for the system to continue to function ever more ‘gapless’, the digital network is being extended.
Digital capitalism is not primarily about material goods, but much more about, say, ‘virtual goods’, such as data and metadata. This requires an ever faster and more extensive digital network, which must be guaranteed by antennas, satellites, cables, electricity, data centres, server systems, in order to determine and transmit the data in an optimal way. The “Starlink” project of the US space and telecommunications company SpaceX has already sent 1 700 satellites (12 000 by 2027) into Earth orbit. The aim is to establish widespread access to the internet. Broad and fast internet access is of great importance, especially for digital capitalist companies. It is therefore not surprising that the two richest people on the planet, Elon Musk (SpaceX) and Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin), are competing in space. Before that, Mark Zuckerberg had already tried to expand a wider digital network (in Africa and Asia) using satellites and the internet.org initiative (a partnership between Facebook and several IT companies), but without success.
The power of the state and capital – and with it its protagonists and profiteers – has long since reached out to space. Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX, openly announces that its long-term goal is to colonise other planets in order to exploit possible raw materials and settle (rich) people there. And here colonialism continues, as the balance of power between the centre and the periphery continues….. The ‘climate crisis’ is only ever the ‘crisis’ of capital, since the accumulation of capital is limited by the finite nature of raw materials and materials. It is therefore only a logical step that capitalism creates not only new markets through “carbon neutrality” (Co2-free product and production, etc.), but also markets away from the earth. And if the earth is full of rubbish, the earth’s orbit is also already completely littered with rubbish.
The fundamental problem of environmental destruction is the logic of capitalist progress. Therefore, one will only tilt at windmills if one thinks that “climate” should be discussed at the political table. Leaving the management of the “climate crisis” to the state (or even the market) only strengthens power. So we need to take opposite actions.