The Daily Planet #129: The Coming Metabolic War

In today’s Daily Planet, @nilsgilman.bsky.social argues that a new geopolitical split is emerging around energy: a Green Entente led by China that builds dominance through green tech, and an Axis of Petrostates (the U.S. under Trump, Russia, Gulf monarchies) that defends fossil-fuel power.

Middle powers face a hard choice between infrastructural dependency on China or clientelist fossil ties to petrostates, so many pursue nonalignment and issue-specific bargains. The result will likely be a fragmented world of competing energy supply chains and strategic dependencies rather than a single global order.

What might a Bandung Conference revival look like?

re: the Middle Powers, I said elsewhere that the essay understates the importance of South Asia - and India in particular - for our metabolic future.

The Axis of Petrostates starts from our Western border and the Green entente from our North East, and if you look at the tightrope India is walking right now, you have a sense for how the new NAM will negotiate future metabolic polyconflicts.

The petrostate supply chains and the electrostate supply chains will meet and merge in India, so metabolic sovereignty will be negotiated district by district, so this won’t just be a great game of nation states IMHO.

Electrostates vs. Petrostates