Towards another logic of life
Difficult title... More difficult to explain. Our planet in the coming years will have to face countless problems that require answers today. Globalization, climate variations, overpopulation, energy crisis.
Lately, we have been following with particular interest the movement that is being created in our country, which is aimed at the environmental degradation of our mountains. In order for the criticism to be profound, however, it must both define the structural factors of the system that reinforce these tendencies to exploit everything and include specific proposals for reconstruction.
For we do not think that anyone would disagree with RES,( compared to lignite for example) but with the conditions of their installation, through undemocratic procedures, and the wide extent of their installation. To begin with, one should consider what is generating the energy crisis and that is the insatiable consumption both individually and systemically. Let us not forget that today, in less than two weeks, what was produced a century ago was produced in a whole year, and that global production is doubling every 30 years, with unbearable pressures on natural resources.
The Earth contains 51 billion hectares, of which 12 billion are bioproductive (1.8 hectares per person). According to the Redefining Progress Institute and WWF, today the bioproductive space for each person on the planet is 2.2 hectares, more than the 1.8 hectares available on Earth. The issue becomes even more concrete when we consider that a North American needs 9.6 hectares, an Englishman 5.6, and an Indian 0.8. Shall we put it more simply? We are living beyond our means. Whereas in 1960 we needed 70% of the planet, in 1999 we used 120%. I am not mentioning what the projections for 2050 say.
If we dwell only on the technical aspect of having wind turbines in our mountains, I fear we are seeing the tree and missing the forest. We must propose and move towards an ecological restructuring of society, which requires the subordination of economic logic to an eco-social logic, a logic of life. To achieve this the solutions will have to emerge, not from a technocratic and authoritarian, managerial conception, but from the restoration of the lost lived World.
The reduction of the production of commodities to meet supernumerary, imaginary needs must be realized by the self-limitation of needs as well as by their critical consideration. Knowledge and participation in the shaping of the conditions we want to live in must be achieved by a democratic reorientation of the concept of development, by regaining our autonomy.
PROPOSALS
How can we as a society take control of our lives and our wants?
1: Through an institutionalized political lived sociality, constituted by forms of voluntary, self-organized cooperation and non-commercial, non-exploitative transactions.
2nd: Through the creation of local-scale cooperatives, public hearings, elected assemblies, taking into account the criteria of local knowledge and self-determination, which under normal conditions the technocrats do not take into account.
3rd: Revision of consumption patterns and lifestyles. Alternative forms of culture that can lead to conditions of freedom, an ecologically acceptable and oligarchic consumption pattern based on deliberate self-limitation.
4: Democratic debate and open planning on the management and protection of the natural resources of communities. Qualitative shift i.e. all issues currently decided by technocrats , businessmen and bankers.
5: Social priorities on the question of what and how to produce. At this point we must not fall into the trap of a green development, an ecological modernisation of the system, an eco-industry and eco-businesses, which will obey the dictates of maximum efficiency and quantity, just as it exists in other industries, which has the result that fundamental needs are not met in the most rational way and that we are mathematically leading to the destruction of the natural foundations of life.
Sincerely, George Lucas