Between Rocks and Hard Places: Geopolitics of Net Zero Futures and the Tech Imperium

Abstract

AbstractThe geopolitics of contention centering around growing US-China hyper-competition has polarized the transition to a decarbonized global economy and has made digitalization a battleground over control of the tech imperium. This dangerous development undermines the realization of a coordinated international response to the climate crisis. It has also led to the securitization of access to critical minerals and their extensive globalized supply chains, jeopardizing the manufacturing of technological end products at a time when an already narrow window for constructing new infrastructure and deploying green technology is rapidly closing. The overuse of economic statecraft to settle a wide range of disputes (exacerbated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine) has, moreover, further fueled renationalizing narratives that seek to break ties of interdependence. This chapter provides insight into the latest manifestation of resource competition. It recommends the lowering of the rhetoric of hyper-competition so that the response to the climate crisis does not become a starting pistol for a new scramble: for inputs, “geopolitically engineered” supply chains and the building up of tech and knowledge barriers that produce new exclusions and inequities engendering securitized solutions to global challenges.KeywordsInterdependenceReshoringRare earths European Battery AllianceNet zeroCritical mineralsEVs