 Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another coordinating call of DM25, The Movement for Europe, featuring progressive ideas you won't hear anywhere else. I'm Mehran Khalili and today we've got two topics for you. First, what the hell is the metaverse? It's quickly becoming a buzzword in technology and business, especially since it was embraced by Facebook in its recent and controversial company rebranding. Well, what does it mean? What does it mean for progressives? What dangers and opportunities does it present for progressives and activists across Europe? And in the second half of the hour, we'll be looking at the ongoing COP26 climate conference and helping you to separate the spin from the reality. You out there, if you've got any questions, thoughts, comments, anything you want to throw at us, this is live, put them in the YouTube chat and we'll put them to our panel here. Let's kick it off with Yanis. Thank you Mehran. Hello everyone. The thing about live streaming is that it makes it compulsory for us not to ignore crimes that are happening while we speak. The contemporaneous crimes and there's a crime happening as we speak on the border between Belarus and Poland. Hundreds of mainly Iraqi Kurd refugees are stuck. They're stuck between two armies, the Belarusian army and the Polish army. And they are being effectively driven into the ground in sub-zero temperatures, as we speak. Now, there's no doubt that the Belarusian regime is instrumentalizing them, weaponizing them, in order to embarrass the European Union. It treats them like pawns on an awful hideous chess board. But so does the EU, because by not letting them in, by letting those people actually, you know, as we speak, they're children and they're women and they're men and they're all as we speak, you know, fading in sub-zero temperatures with no food, no medicine, whatsoever. The European Union is instrumentalizing them too. It is treating them as instruments for sending a message to other potential refugees. Don't come here. We are, you know, we are going to treat you just as cruelly as we're treating them. This is what the European Union, with all its great principles and values and humanism has boiled down to. As a team to defile the democracy in Europe movement, we can do nothing more at this moment than to despair, send our solidarity to those people and look in the eye, the great and the good in Brussels and Berlin and all of the European capitalists and say to them, you are criminals, nothing short of instrumentalizing criminals. By the way, Poland must be having second thoughts now, the regime in Poland, about their decision to join the invasion of Iraq by the United States. I hope they do. Okay, having said that, COP26, there's very little to say. This is an international jamboree festival organized by the United Nations. So much hope was invested in it that spectacular agreements would be reached in order to ameliorate climate catastrophe. It is a fiasco. It is a train wreck. It will be remembered even worse than Copenhagen. Do you remember Copenhagen, which was going to climate change, did nothing? The Glasgow COP26 is a cop out. It's actually offensive. All these leaders, journalists, activists and so on, gathering around, effectively to provide cover, ideological cover and a moral cover to a crime against the planet and against the species, the human species. This whole point about net zero, the target of net zero on its own, it's simply a gigantic colossal lie. It's telling the world that we look we're doing something. We are going to have net zero by 2050 or whatever. When in reality, all they are doing is they are allowing the fossil fuel industry and capitalism in general to keep emitting more and more gases. One thing is for sure, the gases will be increasing. While at the very same time, they're making promises of offsets that no one can measure, no one can account for as an excuse for not doing that, which they must, which is introduce a very hefty carbon tax, which should be collected by the states and returned in full to the last cent to citizens and shutting down mines and shutting down oil rings and ending all new fossil fuel extraction. And finally, let's go to my favorite subject. Now, a couple of years ago, when I was writing my recent book, Another Now, my science fictional, I had the character in there named Costa. Yeah, I know a Greek, a Greek technologist working in the Silicon Valley, who was terrified of big tech and Facebook in particular. And he wanted to find a way of using that technology in order to shake people out of their tendency to fall prey to big tech. So he came up with the idea of a multiverse, not the metaverse, but a multiverse, the idea of creating a machine that if you connect to it, that machine is going to allow you to experience infinite experiences, pleasurable experiences that once you could be, you know, be conquering Mount Everest, proving Einstein's theorems are wrong if you want to be a physicist, you know, winning the World Cup in football, you know, composing the best rock music in the world, doing all of these things, you know, having sex with a million people at once. Imagine this multiverse that allows you infinite hedonism coming from different and infinite experiences at once. Now, why did Costa wanted to create this machine? In order to be, say to people, you can experience that. But if you connect to this machine, you'll be connected to it forever, hoping that they would say no, because life is a lot more worthy than infinite hedonic experiences at once. So that's, you know, that's my character in another now. And lo and behold, a few months after the publication of the book, Zuckerberg comes out, I'm not saying that he even read the book, I'm not claiming that, but he comes up with his idea of a metaphors, which is effectively an enhanced 3D second life for anybody who knows this, this thing. It's a much more lone level version of Costa's multiverse. Costa's multiverse is far more potent. Of course, it's science fiction than what Zuckerberg wants to turn Facebook into. But the fundamental difference is Costa came up with this idea of that machine in order to convince us that we should stay out of it and not be sucked into it. And his great fear in the novel is that Zuckerberg is going to take it and tempt us to join it, which is exactly what Zuckerberg could do. So, you know, the metaverse is simply a way of sucking us into a tech fiefdom that he owns and digital version of the world, which is completely his ownership. This is where capitalism is going. That's why I've been saying that we're moving towards techno feudalism. And, you know, if only Costa was around, not just in a novel, to create an alternative technology that is far more powerful than Zuckerberg's and capable of deterring us from becoming techno peasants in this techno feudal land. Thank you, Janice. Who would like to respond to anything that Janice said on any of those points? Everyone's still digesting? No? Lucas, go for it. Lucas Rabarra. Thanks, madam. I would like to add a few quick thoughts on the metaverse. I think if you saw the video presentation by Facebook now meta, I think there are two urges, if you're progressive, that we need to avoid. The first one is to laugh at it because it may look ridiculous and bound to fail now. But this is not a $150 billion company pushing all their chips into this idea. And they're not alone. Microsoft, Nvidia, Google, others are investing heavily into it as well. And you can say a lot about those corporations and, you know, a lot of bad things about them. But one thing that they're not is stupid. So we need to take this seriously. The second thing that I think we need to avoid is outrage, outrage followed by retreat, meaning just letting them own these bases and pin our hopes into persuading people not to join them, essentially. I think metaverses are coming, not necessarily Facebook's dystopian inescapable metaverse, you understand? But the metaverse as a technological concept. So I think our tasks are one, to make sure that Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, and others don't just take over this new space and entrench their power in it before society can react, which of course, has been their strategy throughout the years and decades. So they operate, the shock and all, it's big streak, they come up with ideas that weren't thinkable before, and then they take over those spaces before legislation, before democracy can catch up. So that's the first thing we need to avoid. And then the second thing is to ask ourselves, how can we take advantage of the possibilities that such spaces could offer if they're free of corporate dominance, of course? So how can we use them to foster education, to strengthen democratic processes, and to foster solidarity and understanding among people who happen to be physically very far away, and who might only have the opportunities to sort of interact in a more immediate way in such an environment? Of course, that's not to say that we should all be plugged into the metaverse and forget about the real world. The real world will always be more important than it. But I think those are questions that we need to think about, because certain things happen whether we want them or not. Thank you. Thank you, Lucas. Who would like to go next? Comment on this. You did, do you have any thoughts on this? No? Not yet? Anyone else? I know the metaverse is a bit of an abstract concept, but as has been laid out, it could have some very real world consequences. No other thoughts or comments? Amir, go for it. Amir, okay. Thank you, Mehran. And just to add on top of what Lucas and Yanis were talking about, this metaverse issue and what is DM25's policy standpoint, and viewers can obviously see this and we'll paste a link now for everyone's benefit, is our technological sovereignty white paper. And in that white paper, we to some extent have already had, we have already seen the issues that we are seeing right now coming and facing us. So we introduced the concept of a data union for collective representation. Ideas are on the public data comments and supporting alternative business models, just to name a few policy perspectives that are available on our website and viewers can see it. And as always, we always encourage members and people who want to join the DM25 to work on these issues to please take up the white paper and let's talk about it within the DM25 structures. Thank you. Thank you, Amir. Fortini, back at Inba. Thanks, Mehran. Just to add, because Amir covered the point that I wanted to raise, we should for sure revisit not only technological sovereignty and say that DM has a whole pillar dedicated on that and we should revisit and perhaps update if needed and not only all our members, but all the people out there should get engaged and bring to us their comments and their thoughts. But also, I was thinking of one of our very first campaigns, the event we had in Vienna, bring light in. I would say that we should bring light into technology and DM is here. We can always discuss everything and we are waiting for the opinions, the ideas, and all the force that our viewers and all the people out there can give us in order to move forward and because, yes, metaverse is and will become part of our lives, but sovereignty is necessary if we need, if we want to bring democracy and not be sub in technology. Thanks. Thank you, Fortini. Anyone else want to comment on this or anything else? Beral. Beral, Madra. Thank you, Mehran. Yes, I think I have the same questions in my mind. Can we use metaverse for DM-25? Lukas at the first moment mentioned millions of dollars. So it is actually made with a lot of money or they will gain a lot of money out of it, but how can we use for DM-25 so that we can fight against this post-truth instrument? Because I believe metaverse is a post-truth instrument now and it will really affect the future generations. It's going to be very dangerous to my opinion and I have two micro stories about COVID, sorry, about the Copenhagen conference. At that moment, something happened on Black Sea coast in a very small town, but the town is very ecological and the people in this town are very aware of their nature in this small town and a young woman artist is really fighting against the fish companies which are polluting this part of the sea. And when she was making a press conference, the same day with Copenhagen conference, they burnt her house down to earth. Nothing is left. All her paintings, because she was a painter, all her paintings were lost, for example. And this was really a tragedy. We were very, very sorry about it. And the second micro story is Sunday evening, I had the opportunity to talk to two young artists on the border of Poland documenting all this, what is happening there. And of course they were afraid to, they are afraid to show this document because it really reveals the truth, the real truth, because these two young women are there since two weeks and following all what is happening. So I think we are going to help them to edit this video and show it to, I mean, if possible, in an important moment to the public. Thank you. Thank you, Borough, for the update. You did, Maya, muted. Yeah, muted in the metaverse. Go for it, there you are. Sorry. Clearly not prepared, but I will try to summarize my thoughts. Basically, yes, Facebook by whichever name it wants to call itself is a threat to us, to the way we live to our democracies. But I would like to think beyond Facebook. And that is the metaverse is not really a place. It's not something that Zuckerberg creates, or that any of the tech giants creates a place where people want to go in order to have pleasure, in order to get information, to connect with their family, or whatever. Rather, the metaverse is, well, if you look more broadly, it is the point in time at which we will all be connected basically 90% of our waking hours connected to the Internet, whether via our cell phones, probably not, but via Google Glass, via some kind of implements or glasses, or whichever way we choose to do it in the future, or via a kind of virtual reality, as they have in some movies. But the trend is like this, that more people spend ever more time connected to the Internet, or whichever form officially evolve, some kind of global net. And they are connected, not just for pleasure, but also to work, to talk to friends, talk to family, to make payments and so on. And this trend to spend ever more time connected globally is, I believe, unstoppable. It is just like the trend to pay electronically. More and more people don't want to pay cash, some things you cannot even pay in cash, and the same as using phones. Who doesn't use a phone or email? It's something unstoppable. And so the question that we have to ask ourselves is, given that this is unstoppable, how can we make it bearable? And certainly not by having Facebook be the mediator of most of these interactions. I'm just not certain that if we had a government alternative, it would be so much better, because that is essentially the Chinese model. I mean, obviously the government would never create something like this themselves, right? The government is absolutely unable to do anything related with the Internet or creating websites or like themselves. So they outsource it to one company, maybe five companies. And then you have essentially the situation like in China. You have a couple, a few companies running this big network on behalf of the government and controlled by the government. And I'm not sure that that is what we want for the future either. So we have to really think about how we want to have this global connection without running risk of tyranny, either by Zuckerberg or by some single government. Thank you. You did just some comments from the chat here. From Adrian, what energy will be consumed by the metaverse? We're in a climate chaos crisis and Zuckerberg wants to virtualize reality. Does he not acknowledge that we have a real existence on this earth and that this is enough? George Turner says, isn't the real world always an abstraction? The problem is not the existence of abstraction, but its ownership, something that was mentioned before. Yanis had his hand up and then the stretch go. You muted Yanis. Sorry. I just want a quick comment on what you did. Of course, it is the question of ownership. That's what matters. But I don't think that this is simply an enhanced connectivity issue. It's not that the metaverse will connect us more directly to the Internet. Yes, that's happening. That is a soul. But I think that I watched Zuckerberg's video too. And what I think he has in mind is very connected, very much related to second life. If you don't know of second life, I think you should look into it. Second life is a game that started 10 years ago, very, very basic. You enter it with an avatar that looks really stupid and two-dimensional. And it's a digital ecology. It's a digital space where you meet other avatars. It's a multi-person game, but it's not really a game. It's like what it says on the tin. It's second life. You go in there, there are bars, people can buy land. You convert your dollars or yen or euros into linden dollars. This is what they call them. These are convertible dollars. You can convert them back to your currency. And you go in there and you buy spaces. You create bars. There are even virtual embassies of countries in there that are represented there. But it's all really very ramshackle. What he has in mind is to create something like that in 3D. So you actually wear stuff and you actually feel that you're not looking at it on your screen, but you feel you're inside that digital network. He thinks that in there with his own cryptocurrency, which he calls DM, remember? It was originally going to be called Libre and then he turned it into DM. You will be able to buy stuff and primarily NFTs. All those NFTs, artworks that are being sold by NFTs, which is now rubbish, of course, because you don't buy the artwork. You buy a string of numbers that is connected to the artwork. But in that digital space, it can be a unique artwork that you put on your digital wall and nobody else can do it unless they've purchased that NFT. So imagine a situation where you've got a cryptocurrency owned by Facebook, used in that space that buys stuff in there and Zuckerberg controlling. This is the ultimate feudalism. A tyranny of one, a digital world, not just something that we're connected through the internet. No, it's a lot beyond that. But when it comes to the solution, look, I agree that the state is not the solution unit, but the Chinese are much closer to a solution than we are. Because even though I wouldn't want the Chinese Communist Party to create a digital universe for me to enter, at least the idea of publicly owned or public controlled companies that actually create that kind of environment is leaving a door open for us to talk about its socialization. The socialization, not the nationalization, but the socialization of those companies. Imagine, in other words, that these companies belong to the people using this metaverse or multiverse or digital space. Then suddenly we have a completely different self-managed kind of digital socialized economy in mind. But this is a long question, a long answer, too much longer than I intended it to be. So I shut up. Thanks, Yanis. Judith, the counter. Yeah, I'm skeptical that Zuckerberg can create something that we will want to enter because he doesn't even manage it with Facebook. People are leaving Facebook. But I am worried about this general move towards spending more and more time connected in some way, whether through Second Life or any other way globally. And that is the trend because when the internet was only available on computers, we might have spent like an hour or two a day online. And now with cell phones, it's more like half of our waking hours already spent online. And as soon as the workplace moves online and you start to spend a lot more time co-working online and on Zoom and through Trello and all these tools, rather than with the person next to you, that will easily make it possible for people to spend like 90 percent of their waking time connected via the internet, via whatever you call it. And then these environments where we spend 90 percent of our time, they must not be fiefdoms, like you said. And that is my worry. It doesn't have to be a Second Life. I don't think people will go for it. I mean, Second Life itself was a big failure. But it will be something like this where people, especially now with the pandemic accelerating everything spent basically all their waking life being connected. And then we really have to watch who is doing the connecting. And this is increasingly recognized also by the courts because, for example, someone was getting banned from Facebook. This also means that he's banned from WhatsApp, but WhatsApp was used by the company. So by banning someone from WhatsApp, you're suddenly banning that person from working. And so we've seen some pushbacks from the courts would kind of recognize like a right to be on WhatsApp, a right not to be banned from it, or a right to have your video on Facebook or on YouTube restored if it was getting taken down for bogus reasons. So they're starting to recognize and regulate a little bit in some countries, in some specific cases. But I don't trust it. And we really need better social control. Thank you. You did. João on the chat says that what you were essentially talking about is the matrix. In that case, stretch code. Yeah, I'd love to comment on the metaverse as well. I mean, it's not a particularly new idea, as some already claimed, but it's amazing that no one mentioned science fiction yet. Because as most of the great ideas, this idea also exists in science fiction. I mean, from Snow Crash or Philip K Big, just remember Minority Report, you know, that scene when Tom Cruise is walking around and then you have all these augmented reality commercials for Guinness or for Gap, you know, what kind of clothes he could wear and so on. And that's 2002. That's 20 years ago. Or 10 years later, you have this beautiful film, which is called Congress, the Congress, which is based on another science fiction writer, Stanislav Lem, where basically you have a scenario of an extras selling the rights to her image to a movie company. So and basically that's what's happening today, in a way, because I think the biggest problem of the idea of the metaverse, I mean, ownership was mentioned already. But I think the biggest problem is the monetization, of course, which is connected to ownership, the monetization of all aspects of life, whether this is work, labor, dating. I mean, you can see how much the dating apps are rising precisely in times of the pandemic. So basically we have, you know, from desires to dreams to the unconscious, which is now becoming monetized. And what I find particularly interesting is what wasn't mentioned yet is the semiotic sphere and how important it is, this new level of capitalism, how important signification, semiotization is. I mean, you've seen already all of you probably Jeff Bezos and his wife talking to Leonardo DiCaprio. And I think this is a beautiful example how now these new feudals, new feuds from Silicon Valley are actually monetizing on the sign value itself. You know, Leonardo DiCaprio as a, you know, valuable signifier with whom they want to be associated to put it like that in these terms. And I think that's another problem because you could imagine the metaverse where you have an avatar, you know, off Leonardo DiCaprio, you pay to Hollywood or so on. So basically everything is monetized. And the other problem I think is, and then I shut up because I know that we have to talk about COP as well. The other problem is I think the merging not so much of technology and politics, technology and geopolitics, what you can see in this Cold War between Silicon Valley and China, but also the relationship between technology and human subjectivity, you know, in which way technology changes, human subjectivity produces different sorts of pathologies, depression, addictions, and so on. And in that aspect, I find it particularly interesting. I don't know whether you saw a few days ago, there was this interview published between Henry Kissinger and the former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, which is basically on artificial intelligence. And I find it very interesting that, you know, both the military industrial complex and Silicon Valley are after our brains, they are after our minds, they are not just colonizing Mars, who knows whether and when that will happen, but what is already happening is the colonization of our minds. And what is, you know, what is really surprising or not is in that time interview, actually, those people who actually, you know, advocate AI, although they are a bit worried and so on, they actually perceive themselves as people who bring good to humankind. You know, Henry Kissinger says, when they ask him, how would he love to be remembered in 50 years when people Google him? And he says, I would love to be remembered as someone who contributed to the conception of peace. And when they asked the question, what kind of, to what kind of conception of peace, Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google contributed, he said that he thinks that among his generation, he could contribute in the most profound way to the relationship with technology and humankind. And well, that's true in a way, you know, and that that's the scary thing about it. So I don't think I agree with you that, and here I stop, I don't think that this is the metaverse is something which will happen tomorrow or not. But I think some segments of it already exist, you know, Pokemon Go was the preparation in 2016, the preparation for augment for commercializing augmented reality, which we will see now. So it's already here, you know, you don't have to join Zuckerberg's metaverse. This is a sort of metaverse already. Thanks, Srećko. I'd like to put a point to all of you to sort of bubbling up on the YouTube chat here. Is this really inevitable? I mean, we've all we've all taken it as inevitable so far in this conversation. I remember a few years ago, we had the time well spent movement, we had the documentary, the social network, all about the ills of spending too much time online. And now, just because of an announcement by Zuckerberg, we're all sort of accepting this apparently as the way things are going. Is there any mileage left for activists to push back against what you call, Srećko, the colonization of our minds? Comments or thoughts? Lukas? I think we have to assume that it's inevitable, because the consequences of assuming that it isn't and then being wrong are tremendous. So, regardless of like, I agree with you that like, I agree in the sense that I hope it never catches on. But if it does, and we're not ready for it, then we're going to pay for it dearly. So that's why I think we should assume the worst. We should assume that it's going to become pervasive and that we need to react to it. And so it needs to be controlled so that big tech can't just seize that space. And by control, I don't mean like, seized by the states. It needs to be decentralized and limits need to be imposed. And we need to think of how can we make the best of it? Just like, I believe most of us here, most of us watching this live stream, don't have a very positive view of social media. But a lot of us do use it and DM25 does use it as well, because that's the way, that's the price you need to pay basically in order to reach the vast amounts of people online. And they're all controlled by those big corporations that we're very much against, but that's the price they have to pay. So in the same sense, we don't need, we don't want it to come to that. It's still very early on, we can avoid it. I think we need to take the lessons from the past and make sure it doesn't happen again. Thanks, Lucas. A comment from George Turner. When can we expect to see an augmented reality DM25 coordinating meeting? This reminds me of the rush by so many companies in 2005 to establish a presence in second life. Interesting point. Srećko, you had another comment follow up. Yeah, I mean, I don't think that the battle is lost. Whether we speak about the metaverse, augmented reality, crypto, NFTs, I think this is a battle which is still open. Even if we can see the bad effects of, for instance, Bitcoin on the environment and so on. But I think this is definitely a battle that is not finished yet. There is another example of the metaverse existing already, which just came to my mind, which is this Trevor Scott, who is now becoming more infamous for the big tragedy that happened at his concert. But he was the one who actually had a concert of 12 million, I think 12 million people in Fortnite in a video game. Now, you could say this is another proof how everything is being monetized, even those teenagers who listen to his music and so on. But I think it shows that it is possible in a way, it doesn't have to be necessary. You can penetrate into this world, not necessarily as Trevor Scott, but even as a subversive if you want. I mean, there are good examples with NFTs, for instance, both of crypto and NFTs don't get me wrong, but I'm not ready to go so far to completely reject it. So, for instance, in NFTs, you had Edward Snowden fundraising around $4 million for the Freedom of Press Foundation, and I think that's a good use of something which is NFT. But in the metaverse, of course, what you will have is that you will have all these posh people in this kind of second life having an NFT here behind, and then it will have this kind of use. So, I think the battle is not finished yet, definitely. Instead of just rejecting it, progressives, I think that especially the left, but also the Greens and the Liberals, should learn something about technology, actually, and should use some of this technology in order to criticise it if they want. Thank you, Switzerland, for that positive note. And we should move now to our second topic, moving from the virtual world that's being built to the physical one that we actually currently live in. And that's the ongoing COP26 climate conference. Last week, the narrative of that conference was that with a variety of announcements and ending deforestation, coal use, and other things that were vital for our continued existence, it was a successful progress. There was progress going on in the conference. But a few hours ago, there was a new report by Climate Action Tracker that found that when we analyse government's actual policies rather than their pledges, the world is still going to heat up by 2.4 degrees centigrade in the next 80 years, which is far more than the 1.5 degree centigrade limit that nations have committed to. What is the truth? And what's the spin? Dushan Payovic, go for it. Thanks, Mike. Yeah, the COP26 is definitely at this grace. I mean, I had the low expectations, but they still managed to disappoint. So the thing is that not only they are paid by lobbyists from fossil fuel industry, but they are also paid by the animal agriculture. And there was a leaked document that proves that. So all of the same is happening. Once again, new symbolic targets that are not going to be met. And even those symbolic targets are nowhere near enough and not of a good quality. For example, they talked about ending deforestation, but they talked about the very same thing in 2014. So seven years after, we are still at the same point. They didn't mention at all animal agriculture, which is responsible for the 91% of destruction of Amazon. And they failed to mention that. Come on. They just continue business as usual. Of course, they have that methane pledge where they say that they are going to cut it to 30%. But even that is not realistic, because again, animal agriculture, if they don't want to talk about fossil fuel, let's go about the animal agriculture is responsible for the 34% of all the human generated methane in the air. I say human generated because it's indirectly, of course, it's because of the human consumption. And let me end by saying that deforestation can be stopped really easily. Because when you transition to a plant-based diet, you save 20 times more land than it is needed for one pound of beef, for example. And that's it from me. Thanks. Thank you, Dushan. Anyone else? Boral, you had your hand up for the previous topic. Sorry, I missed it. Sorry. If you have something on COP26. I just wanted to ask how are we going to fight against this metaverse? And I mean, is there a strategy? I think we should leave that as an open question now that we're knee-deep in COP26. But thank you for that. Anyone else want to comment on COP26 and Dushan's assessment? Do you share his view? You're more optimistic? Johannes, Johannes Fair. I raised my hand before, more optimistic before you said that. I think I share Dushan's evaluation. I think there have been 26 COPs now, I guess you can say that from the number. And I don't know, we continue to go into the wrong direction. So that is pretty depressing. I actually remembered now when there was again the COP that, I don't know which one, but there was a COP in I think 2008, around 2008 in Copenhagen. And back then I was studying in the north of Germany and we were doing a protest right on an old ship sailing to Copenhagen three days in December in the cold sea to show that sustainable transport was possible in the old days and this still possible. And back then I was pretty hopeful that these conferences will lead to something. But now this is like more than 10 years later and nothing has changed much. The same I think can be said for the last German elections here. The new government forming is I think going to make the same mistakes and is not going to turn around the switch as we would need and as we propose a deal with the Green New Deal for Europe and with our programme work. Thank you, Johannes. And just looking at the chat, I mean, this is one or two comments. They're like, oh no, they're talking about the green agenda now. They've gone away from that lovely sexy topic of the metaverse and they're just talking about the extinction of our planet. Let me ask you, I mean, perhaps Dushan or anyone else who's working on this or has any thoughts, what do you think is wrong with climate activism perhaps so far? What could we learn from the failures so far of COP26 that might point to a change in strategy from climate activists in terms of what we can do to actually push for these concrete goals? Any thoughts? Has there been too much alarmism? Are people just tired of hearing about this? How do we make them aware? Dushan? Well, the thing is that environmentalism has been dealt with in two different ways and both of them are wrong. One is non-intersectional way where they forget about the working class and middle class people and the other one is populistic. So we need to find a middle ground. Yes, we need systemic change and we need individual change, both of them. It's not neoliberal to say that we need to change our behaviour and it's not too lefty to say that we need to stop the corporations from polluting the earth. We all need to take the responsibility according to our footprint, which is by far the worst by the corporations, so that's why we are fighting them in a political arena. But people need to realise that this is part of their identity, that if planet dies, they will die as well. If species go extinct, we are going to extinct as well. We are not cockroaches. We are not going to adapt to the catastrophe. So this is our last chance to say, cop off to the COP26. And that's why, if you want to hear more about it, join our alternative climate conference, 14th, 15th and 16th of November. We have multiple sessions on various topics and you can see the programme in the chat. Thank you. Thanks to Isha and Srejka. Yeah, I think to say that COP26 was a failure is not just an understatement, but it's also completely wrong because it would mean that, you know, I expected something of COP and then it became a failure and it disappointed me. But well, I didn't expect anything, but it's still interesting to follow it. I mean, on the one hand, of course, because of the massive climate movement. So you have more pressure at COP and these events than any time before, I would say. But the other side is, you know, what's happening now, I think, and I think this comment in the chat is a kind of indicative for that, you know, to talking about the green topics again. I think this kind of co-optation of the green topics already happened. And what we could have seen in COP26 is precisely a new global green washing, you know, so moving away from fossil fuels. And you can also very often hear it in the climate movement, in different parts of the climate movement, focusing solely on fossil fuels, as if lithium is not a problem, as if other sources of energy, like nuclear power, which is now coming back in France and in other countries, as if that is not a problem. So I think, you know, we have a very simple picture of the world currently. And what is also boring, that's also another comment, the comments in the chat, you know, you talked about meta before, now you talk about COP26. But well, it's pretty connected, you know, you have seen that speech which Jeff Bezos gave at COP26, behaving like, you know, this new master of the planet who came back from space and now will grant us some money, and we should all be happy and so on. So you have already Silicon Valley part of it. I mean, also this kind of dreams of geo-engineering, terraforming, it is all part of this technological solutionism, as Evgeny Morozo would call it, that we just have to wait for the technology, it will come and it will bring us out of the deep shit in which we are living and the future will become green. So, similar to the conspiracy theories who are opposed to vaccines, I can understand those who say, oh, green topics. Of course, when you see Obama, who says that he will get rid of some parts of his lifestyle to contribute to fairness and to the planet and so on, you cannot but become a skeptic, you know. And I think that that's becoming a new serious problem also for the green movement or for green aspirations of any progressive movement, similar to the anti-vaccine conspiracies which are floating around, that this terrain is being monetized. Again, on the one hand, the Silicon Valley and the big corporations who will say, yeah, let's just sell and buy electric cars, as if this is a solution. Thanks, Rich. I would again remind you about three immediate problems which can happen in Turkey. One is the nuclear plant on Mediterranean coast. The second is the canal, which is going to be opened in five years. This canal is from Lexi coast to Marmara Sea. And please remember that this summer Marmara Sea was completely polluted. So these are really immediate problems next to European border. And next to the refugee problems, we should also put these issues into our agenda. Maybe Duchamp should look to these issues in a more deep way and see the danger. Thank you. Thanks, Perot. Amir. Thanks so much. And you know, the interconnectedness of this issue is and very, very critical to bear in mind, even some sectors not even mentioned at COP26, and we're going to be talking about it at COPOP. And one of them is the military dimension. So the military forces globally account for more greenhouse emissions than aviation and shipping combined. Are we talking about a huge chunk of GHG that's going off into the atmosphere that's not getting counted, that's not getting addressed, that's not included in any possible area? And never mind the alternative ways of using the money that's going into the military, right? Just one statistic which I hope people are aware of this is that the war on terror costs 21 trillion dollars over 20 years. And the cost of decarbonizing the US energy sector, which is around half of its emission around, okay, only needs five trillion dollars of investment. So we could have been sitting at much more closer than 1.5 degree target if we just allocate our spending correctly. And we're going to be talking about these and other issues at COPOP. And the link is there, please join us. Thank you. Thank you, Amir. And I think we're going to wrap up with that. We're at the end of the hour. And as Amir suggested, we're going to be quite busy in the coming days. On Saturday, we're launching a new rebellious, realistic yet radical political party, Germany in Berlin. So please check out dm25.org and our social media channels for updates on that. And then on Sunday, we've got, as Amir just mentioned, and Duchenne, COPOP, our alternative climate conference with a great lineup of speakers like Noam Chomsky, Caroline Lucas, and many other progressives. You out there, thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for your comments in the chat. And we will see you again, the same time, same place two weeks from now.