The Kinetic Solution: Why the “Solar Victory” Requires Gunboats

While the American liberal class is currently soothing itself with Bill McKibben’s latest lullaby, Here Comes the Sun, the American state is busy proving that the laws of thermodynamics cannot be repealed by a price curve.

McKibben’s thesis—that we have effectively “won” the climate argument because solar panels are now cheaper than natural gas—is the ultimate triumph of the Strong Enlightenment delusion. It is a narrative of technological determinism (I_tech) that assumes the political economy is a disembodied spirit, floating free of biophysical constraints. It posits that because a technology is ‘efficient’, the market will adopt it, the biosphere will be saved, and we can all keep our SUVs.

But if you want to see the actual mechanism of our survival strategy—the one dealing with the hard physics of the Resource Entropy Singularity (S_crit)—you shouldn’t look at the solar adoption charts on McKibben’s Substack. You should look at the Caribbean.

As of this week, the United States has ceased pretending to be the ‘Global Policeman’ protecting free trade. It has formally transitioned into the ‘Global Landlord’, commencing the kinetic seizure of Venezuelan energy and mineral assets.

This is not a contradiction of the ‘Green Transition’. This is the Green Transition.

The Thermodynamics of Empire

To understand why the US is seizing oil tankers and blockading Venezuela while simultaneously celebrating a ‘solar boom’, we must strip away the ideology and look at the biophysical variables defined in the Socio-Economic Thermodynamic Entropy (SETE) model.

The Global Political Economy (PE) is an inertial mass (M) orbiting a singularity. This mass is composed of our physical infrastructure (M_M) and our accumulated institutional/ideological commitments (M_I). As we degrade the biosphere, the ‘Entropic Drag’ (F_drag) on our system increases.

This leads to a non-negotiable thermodynamic reality: the energy required just to maintain the system—our Maintenance Power (P_maint)—is skyrocketing. We are running hard just to stand still.

In a sane world—one governed by an ‘Emergent/Sceptical’ Enlightenment tradition—we would respond to this rising drag by reducing our Mass (M). We would shrink the economy to fit the dying biosphere.

But the Strong Enlightenment ideology, which dominates both Neoliberalism and the American state, forbids Mass Reduction. It views contraction as death. Therefore, to keep the massive, bloated structure of American capitalism from collapsing into the Singularity, the system must frantically increase its Exergy input (Ex_in).

It needs more cheap energy and materials. Immediately. And because the ‘low hanging fruit’ is gone (Energetic Divergence), it can no longer rely on the market to provide them cheaply enough.

Enter the Kinetic Solution.

The “Global Landlord” Evicts the Tenant

The recent pivot in US foreign policy—described by some as the “Global Landlord” strategy—is a brittle-fracture response to these thermodynamic constraints.

The US is no longer interested in the ‘rules-based order’ or maintaining a global market for the benefit of all. It is now using its superior military force to effectively ‘evict’ sovereign nations from their own resources. The blockade of Venezuela is not about drugs, or democracy, or ‘narco-terrorism’. It is a desperate grab for the inputs required to keep the US machine running.

Whether it is Venezuelan heavy crude (vital for diesel/jet fuel) or the mineral wealth required for McKibben’s beloved batteries, the US has decided that it will secure its P_maint by simply taking it.

This explains the 10-20% tariffs and the aggressive capital controls I warned about in April. The US is acting as a vacuum, sucking Eurodollars and physical resources from the periphery (the UK, Europe, the Global South) to feed the core. It is cannibalising the global system to delay its own entropic collapse.

The opposition focuses on the 'Agency' of the current administration, blaming the violence on the moral failings of the President. This is a distraction. The President is merely the current property manager of the Global Landlord. The 'Bad Tenant' (Venezuela) was evicted not because the Landlord is mean, but because the building's boiler (The Gulf Coast Refineries) requires a specific fuel that the tenant ‘refused’ to supply. Any manager, Red or Blue, would eventually be forced to kick down the door.

McKibben as the Ideological Alibi

Where does Bill McKibben fit into this? He is the primary architect of the Structurally Guaranteed Compromise (SGC).

The US state cannot explicitly tell its citizens: “We are seizing Venezuelan assets because our lifestyle is thermodynamically unsustainable and we need to steal their wealth to prevent our own collapse.” That would shatter the self-image of the Empire.

Instead, the system requires a high Ideological Mass (M_I) to blind the populace to the biophysical reality. McKibben provides this service. By framing the crisis as a technical problem that has already been ‘solved’ by cheap solar, he renders the violence invisible.

• The Solar Lie: He focuses entirely on the generation of electrons, ignoring the massive material throughput required to build the grid that carries them.

• The Moral Shield: He allows the liberal class to feel ‘joyous’ (his word) about a transition that is actually being underwritten by imperial extraction.

• The Distraction: He channels political energy into ‘Third Act’ banking protests—performative rituals within the Superstructure—while the Material Base is secured by drone strikes.

McKibben’s “Solar Victory” is the brochure for the new gated community. The US Navy is the private security force evicting the squatters next door to build it.

Crossing the Event Horizon

In my theoretical work, I describe the Entropic Event Horizon (H)—the point where the political inertia (M_I) becomes so great that the structural change required to avoid collapse becomes politically impossible.

The US adoption of the Kinetic Solution confirms we have crossed that horizon. The system has proven it is incapable of reducing its Mass (M). Instead, it has chosen to turn the rest of the world into a ‘sacrifice zone’ to fuel its own inertia.

The tragedy is not just that McKibben is wrong. It’s that his optimism is a functional component of the war machine. He preaches the gospel of the ‘clean’ future, ensuring that when the copper and lithium arrive from the ‘liberated’ territories of the South, no one asks too many questions about the blood on the ingots.

The ‘moderate’ stance is dead. You are either for the Resource Entropy Singularity (and the wars required to delay it), or you are for the Deconstruction of the Mass. There is no third act.

Appendix: A Field Guide to the SETE Model

For those new to the Socio-Economic Thermodynamic Entropy (SETE) model, the following concepts are essential for understanding why policy ‘compromises’ like Net Zero are physically failing.

1. The Political Economy is a Physical Body (M)
We often think of the economy as a collection of numbers or market signals. In the SETE model, it is treated as a physical object with Inertial Mass (M). This mass has two parts:

• Material Mass (M_M): The physical stuff—roads, power grids, factories, cities—that requires energy to build and maintain.

• Ideological Mass (M_I): The institutional ‘weight’ that resists change—sovereign debt, legal contracts, and deeply held beliefs (like the ‘Growth’ imperative).

• Key Insight: The heavier the Mass, the harder it is to change direction (steer away from collapse).

2. Maintenance Power (P_maint)
Every complex system naturally decays. The energy required just to keep the system from falling apart (repairing bridges, servicing debt, managing social unrest) is Maintenance Power.

• Key Insight: As the biosphere degrades, the cost of maintenance rises. We are spending more energy just to ‘stay where we are’, leaving less energy available for the actual transition.

3. Entropic Drag (F_drag)
This is the ‘friction’ exerted on the economy by a dying planet. Depleted soil, extreme weather, and resource scarcity act as a drag force, slowing down our ability to adapt.

• Key Insight: Drag increases non-linearly. The worse the climate gets, the harder it pulls back on our efforts to fix it.

4. The Resource Entropy Singularity (S_crit)
The ultimate physical wall. This is the point where the biological systems that support human life (soil, water, atmosphere) are so degraded that they can no longer regenerate.

• Key Insight: This is a hard physical limit, not a soft political target. You cannot negotiate with the Singularity.

5. The Entropic Event Horizon (H)
This is the most critical concept for our current moment. It is the “Point of No Return”, but it occurs before we hit the physical wall. It is the moment where the Required Speed of Change (to avoid the wall) becomes faster than the Politically Feasible Speed of Change.

• Key Insight: Once we cross the Horizon (H), we are locked onto a collision course. The ‘Kinetic Solution’ suggests we have already crossed this line, and the system is now cannibalising others to survive the fall.

Read the full SETE Paper here