The reality of the world is complex. It is impossible to make a single balance sheet. I will attempt one that relates to the macro reality and another relating to the micro. If we consider the way the powers that be are facing the systemic crisis of our form of civilization –organized on the basis of unlimited exploitation of nature, as well as unlimited accumulation, and the consequent creation of double injustice: social injustice with its perverse inequalities at the world level, and the ecologic injustice with the destruction of the life networks that guarantee our subsistence — and if we take as a reference point the COP 18 on global warming, that took place at the end of the year at Doha (Qatar), we can say without exaggeration: we are going from bad to worse. If we continue this way, we will eventually face, and not long from now, an «ecologic abyss».
The measures needed to change the course of things still have not been taken. The speculative economy continues to flourish, the markets are ever more competitive –that is to say, ever less regulated–, and the ecological alarm, concretized in global warming, is practically ignored. The last rites could have been given in Doha to the Kyoto Treaties. Ironically, the first page of the final document admits that nothing was resolved, because it postponed everything until 2015: «climate change represents an urgent and potentially irreversible threat to human societies and to the planet, and this problem urgently needs to be confronted by all countries». And it is not being confronted. As in Noah’s times, we continue eating, drinking and cleaning the tables of the Titanic that is sinking, still listening to music. The House is in flames and we lie to the others, saying that all is well.
I see two reasons for this seemingly pessimistic realist conclusion. With Jose Saramago I would say: «I am not a pessimist; it is reality that is terrible; I am a realist». The first reason derives from the false premise that sustains and nourishes the crisis: the objective is unlimited material growth (increasing the GNP), accomplished through fossil energy, with a course totally freed from capital, especially from speculative capital.
This premise is present in the plans of all the countries, including in the Brazilian. The falsity of this premise rests in its total lack of consideration of the limits of the Earth-system. A limited planet does not support an unlimited project. It is not sustainable. Even more, it avoids the word sustainability, which comes from the life sciences; sustainability is not lineal, it is organized through interdependent networks of all with all, that ensure the functioning of all the factors that guarantee the perpetuation of life and of our civilization. Rather, the term sustainable development is preferred, ignoring the fact that it is an internally contradictory concept, because it is lineal, always increasing, and it presupposes the domination of nature and the destruction of the eco-systemic equilibrium. Agreement is never reached on the climate, because the powerful oil consortiums influence the governments politically, and defeat any measure that would diminish their profits. Therefore they do not support alternative energies. They seek only the continued growth of the GNP.
This model is refuted by the facts: it no longer functions even in the principal countries, as the present crisis shows, let alone in the peripheral ones. Either another type of growth must be sought, which is essential for the life-system, but that must be done in a matter that respects the capacity of the earth and the rhythms of nature, or we will encounter the unspeakable.
The second reason is more of a philosophic order and is one with which I have been struggling for more than thirty years. It implies paradigmatic consequences: the rescue of the cordial or emotional intelligence to balance the destructive power of the instrumental reason, that for centuries has been held hostage by the accumulative process of production. As the French philosopher Patrick Viveret tells us, «instrumental reason without emotional intelligence can easily lead us to the worst barbarity.» (Por uma sobriedade feliz, Quarteto 2012, 41); remember the reshaping of humanity that Himmler designed, culminating in the shoah, the elimination of the gypsies and the incapacitated.
If we do not incorporate emotional intelligence into instrumental-analytic reason, we will never feel the cries of Mother Earth, the pain of the liquidated jungles and woods, nor the present destruction of bio-diversity, at the rate of almost one hundred thousand species per year (E. Wilson). And besides sustainability there must be caring, respect and love for all that exists and lives. Without this revolution of the mind and the heart we will go, indeed, from bad to worse.
See my book: Protect the Earth-care for life: how to escape the end of the world, (Proteger la Tierra-cuidar de la vida: cómo escapar del fin del mundo, Nueva Utopía, Madrid 2011.)
Translation from the Spanish:
Melina Alfaro, [email protected],