Sustainable

Let’s start with trivialities, perhaps we’ll get closer to understanding what’s happening to us, what’s happening to the world. One such problem, now flattened into a cliché, is the question of sustainable development, which many consider to be the cause of our greatest difficulties. I won’t delve into the conundrum of how development is possible at all if history has ended. Heaven cannot be upgraded, whilst even utopias promise the fulfillment of the best of all possible worlds. Let’s accept that, according to left-liberal logic, even in this post-historic era, as they see it, something can be detected that we might call development. In view of the upcoming Olympics, it would be good if we could describe the dynamics of this so-called development with the triad of “faster, higher, stronger,” but no, this too has been degraded: as the cultured European would say, “more and more,” that’s roughly what the concept of development means nowadays. The smarter ones say this is unsustainable, the model of consumer society is a bankruptcy story. Basically, it’s not difficult to see the truth in this: if more and more of us want more and more, and the raw material supply, and closely related to this, the energy needed to produce and operate consumer goods is finite, then according to the rules of elementary mathematics, this could have an ugly end somewhere, sometime, the horsemen of the apocalypse just ask for a coffee.

And for just this reason, doubts may arise in us about the content of the concept of development: a significant part of historians see that most of the wars that have shaped human history were fought for raw materials in the broader sense, our past few thousand years can be very simplistically described with the arc “from pasture to oil.”

We are now extending this arc to lithium. This is also a possible cause and explanation for the war in our neighborhood.

So as not to be accused of Russian propaganda, I would quote from a review article by hvg.hu, which considers itself authoritative and independent. It states, among other things: “The exploitation of Ukraine’s mineral resources represents a huge opportunity, especially from the perspective of the green transition,” said Maroš Šefčovič, Vice-President of the European Commission back in 2021, primarily referring to lithium.

Lithium is Ukraine’s most important mineral resource, which has become extraordinarily valuable after becoming indispensable in battery manufacturing and is primarily exported to the world market by China. Brussels has long been striving to reduce dependence on its largest trading partner, China.”

In the same article, they quote an American senator: “It’s very important for us how this war in Ukraine ends. Let’s help the Ukrainians in this war because we can’t afford to lose. Let’s find a solution to this war, but let’s never forget: Ukraine is a gold mine! There are critically important raw materials worth 10-12 trillion dollars there. We can’t let Putin have this, who would pass it on to China?” Because, and this is what hvg realizes with some delay, the lithium deposit is located in the eastern quarter occupied by the Russians.

From this perspective, the West’s proxy war against Russia is hardly about Ukraine or democracy.

It’s a decades-old joke that the United States, as the world’s policeman, enters a given country with the promise of democracy and comes out with a mining permit. Put more nicely: under the fig leaf of values, American foreign policy is generally interest-based, business comes first.

What the Biden boom wants, we’ve been feeling on our skin for years. However, the American senator quoted earlier is a Republican, according to hvg.hu, a staunch supporter of Trump.

So the question is only what Trump might want: to trade or to wage war? Trump is a capitalist, so he’ll probably choose what’s more profitable business-wise. If he can make the European Union pay the bill, and we are paying now, and the profit will be America’s, and they are profiting from this now, then the continuation of the war is not out of the question. America won’t change much, neither will Russia, so facilitating a move towards peace could be mainly down to the EU. All the more so because this is of European interest. Though, looking at the self-destructive logic of the current Brussels elite, we don’t have high hopes. For the mirage of Western sustainable development, we are now paying with the money of European citizens and the blood of Ukrainians. And as I look at the declarations of intent, the left-liberal political elite would continue the raw material fight to the last Ukrainian. Even if we all die in the process. And we will die in the process.

Notes:

Political references:

“Left-liberal logic”: The author uses this term critically, reflecting a common rhetorical divide in Hungarian politics.

“Brussels elite”: Refers to the leadership of the European Union, often criticized by certain political groups in Hungary.

Biden and Trump: References to U.S. presidents, reflecting the impact of American politics on global affairs.

Economic concepts:

“Sustainable development”: A global concept that the author critically examines.

“Consumer society”: The text critiques the sustainability of current consumption patterns.

Cultural references:

“End of history”: Alludes to Francis Fukuyama’s thesis about the end of ideological evolution after the Cold War.

“Horsemen of the apocalypse”: A biblical reference used metaphorically to describe potential catastrophic outcomes.

Media references:

“hvg.hu”: A Hungarian news website, presented as a source for some of the information in the text.