We are like soccer fans in
front of a TV screen at home, shouting and jumping from our seats, in a
superstitious belief that this will somehow influence the outcome
2 days ago
Just when the burning of the
Amazon forests drifted from our headlines, we learned that almost 4,000 new
forest fires were started in Brazil in the two
days after the government banned deliberate burning of the Amazon.
These figures trigger alarm:
are we really heading towards a collective suicide? By destroying the Amazon
rainforests, Brazilians are killing “the lungs of our Earth”. However, if we
want to confront seriously threats to our environment, what we should avoid are
precisely such quick extrapolations which fascinate our imagination.
Two or three decades ago,
everyone in Europe was talking about Waldsterben, the dying of forests.
The topic was on the covers of all popular weeklies, and there were
calculations of how in half a century Europe will be without forests. Now there
are more
forests in Europe than at any point in the 20th century, and we are
becoming aware of other dangers – of what happens in the depth of the
oceans, for example.
While we should take
ecological threats extremely seriously, we should also be fully aware of how
uncertain analyses and projections are in this domain – we will know for sure
what is going on only when it is too late. Fast extrapolations only hand arguments
to climate change deniers. We should avoid at all costs the trap of an “ecology
of fear”, a hasty, morbid fascination with looming catastrophe.
This ecology of fear has the
hallmarks of a developing, predominant form of ideology in global capitalism, a
new opium for the masses replacing the declining religion. It takes over the
old religion’s fundamental function, that of installing an unquestionable
authority which can impose limits.
The lesson hammered into us is
that of our own finitude: we are just one species on our Earth embedded in a
biosphere which reaches far beyond our horizon. In our exploitation of natural
resources, we are borrowing from the future, so one should treat our Earth with
respect, as something ultimately sacred, something that should not be unveiled
totally, that should and will forever remain a mystery, a power we should
trust, not dominate.
While we cannot gain full
mastery over our biosphere, it is, unfortunately, in our power to derail it, to
disturb its balance so that it will run amok, swiping us away in the process.
This is why, although ecologists are all the time demanding that we make
radical changes to our way of life, underlying this demand is its
opposite: a deep distrust of change, of development, of progress. Every radical
change can have the unintended consequence of catastrophe.
Things get even more difficult
here. Even when we profess the readiness to assume responsibility for
ecological catastrophes, this can be a tricky stratagem to avoid facing the
true scale of the threat. There is something deceptively reassuring in this
readiness to assume the guilt for threats to our environment: we like to be
guilty since, if we are guilty, then it all depends on us, we pull the strings
of the catastrophe, so we can also save ourselves simply by changing our
lives.
What is really difficult for
us (at least for us in the west) to accept is that we might be reduced to a
purely passive role of impotent observers who can only sit and watch our fate.
To avoid this, we are prone to engage in frantic activity, we recycle old
paper, buy organic food, whatever, just so that we can be sure we are doing
something, making our contribution.
We are like a soccer fan who
supports his team in front of a TV screen at home, shouting and jumping from
his seat, in a superstitious belief that this will somehow influence the
outcome.
It is true that the typical
form of fetishist disavowal around ecology is: “I know very well (that we are
all threatened), but I don’t really believe it (so I am not ready to do
anything really important like changing my way of life).”
But there is also the opposite
form of disavowal: “I know very well that I cannot really influence the process
which can lead to my ruin (like a volcanic outburst), but it is nonetheless too
traumatic for me to accept this, so I cannot resist the urge to do something,
even if I know it is ultimately meaningless.”
Is it not for that reason we
buy organic food? Who really believes that the half-rotten and expensive
“organic” apples are really healthier? The point is that, by way of buying
them, we do not just buy and consume a product – we simultaneously do something
meaningful, show our care and global awareness, we participate in a large
collective project.
The predominant ecological
ideology treats us as a priori guilty, indebted to Mother Nature,
under the constant pressure of the ecological superego agency which addresses
us in our individuality: “What did you do today to repay your debt to nature?
Did you put all your newspapers into a proper recycling bin? And all the
bottles of beer or cans of Coke? Did you use your bike or public transport
instead of your car? Did you open the windows wide rather than firing up the
air conditioning?”
The ideological stakes of such
individualisation are easy to see: I get lost in my own self-examination
instead of raising much more pertinent global questions about our entire
industrial civilization.
Ecology thus lends itself
easily to ideological mystification. It can be a pretext for New Age
obscuration (the praising of the pre-modern etc), or for neocolonialism
(developed world complaints of the threat of rapid growth in
developing countries such as Brazil or China), or as a cause to
honour “green capitalists” (buy green and recycle, as if taking into
account ecology justifies capitalist exploitation). All of these tensions
exploded in our reactions to the recent Amazon fires.
There are five main strategies
to distract from the true dimensions of the ecological threat. First there is
simple ignorance: it’s a marginal phenomenon, not worthy of our preoccupation,
life goes on, nature will take care of itself.
Second, there is the belief
that science and technology can save us. Third, that we should leave the
solution to the market (with higher taxation of polluters, etc.). Fourth, we
resort to the superego pressure on personal responsibility instead of large
systemic measures (each of us should do what we can – recycle, consume less,
etc.).
And fifth, perhaps the worst,
is the advocating of a return to natural balance, to a more modest, traditional
life by means of which we renounce human hubris and become again respectful
children of our Mother Nature.
This whole paradigm of Mother
Nature derailed by our hubris is wrong.
The fact that our main sources
of energy (oil, coal) are remnants of past catastrophes which occurred prior to
the advent of humanity is a clear reminder that Mother Nature is cold and
cruel.
This, of course, in no way
means that we should relax and trust our future: the fact that it is not clear
what is going on makes the situation even more dangerous. Plus, as it is fast
becoming evident, migrations (and walls meant to prevent them) are getting more
and more intertwined with ecological disturbances like global warming. The
ecological apocalypse and the refugees apocalypse are more and more overlapping
in what Philip Alston, a UN special rapporteur, described entirely
accurately:
“We risk a ‘climate apartheid’
scenario,” he said, “where the wealthy pay to escape overheating, hunger and
conflict while the rest of the world is left to suffer.”
Those least responsible
for global emissions also have the least capacity to protect themselves.
So, the Leninist question:
what is to be done? We are in a deep mess: there is no simple “democratic”
solution here. The idea that people themselves (not just governments and
corporations) should decide sounds deep, but it begs an important question:
even if their comprehension is not distorted by corporate interests, what
qualifies them to pass judgement in such a delicate matter?
What we can do is at least set
the priorities straight and admit the absurdity of our geopolitical war games
when the very planet for which wars are fought is under threat.
In the Amazon, we see the
ridiculous game of Europe blaming Brazil and Brazil blaming Europe. It has to
stop. Ecological threats make it clear that the era of sovereign nation states
is approaching its end – a strong global agency is needed with the power
to coordinate the necessary measures. And does such the need for such an agency
point in the direction of what we once called “communism”?
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