Everything feeds back. The energy crisis, which does not appear on the front pages of newspapers, but is gradually undermining the world economy, makes one country today, and others tomorrow, go into crisis.
The economic crisis inevitably brings with it the social crisis. Every day people see themselves in a more precarious situation and are easy prey to fear. Fear of the poor who fear for their livelihood and fear of the wealthy, who want to continue with the business as usually in markets more and more uncertain. Fear that increases enormously when an unexpected hit (a global pandemic, for example?) makes us feel even more unsecure. Fear that might lead to violence which, in turn, generates more fear and more violence. Fear that many people try to conjure by voting for the reactionary parties, those strong men who promise to bring us the good old times.
The reactionary parties look backwards: they are not the best company when facing the problems of the 21st century, so different from the past. Ultra-conservative political parties do not think about investing in protecting the weakest parts of the society, or investing in alternative energy, much less about changing the capitalist economy.
With them we run the risk of entering into a feedback loop: the energy and social crisis causes the rise of the reactionary, the backwards policies further aggravate the energy crisis and this worsens the social crisis that drives even more the extreme right vote ... Everything is fed back.
Things can get worse if we try to get out of the crisis by further squeezing our exploited mother earth. Lack of oil can make us look for anything to satisfy consumer hunger: biofuels that ruin the forests, biomass that leaves us without forests, electric cars that trigger mining, coal that accelerates climate change ... All this, in addition, leads us to war over resources and war is also a huge energy waste.
This is also fed back, because the ecological crisis cannot but cause, in the medium or even the short term, an economic crisis. Crisis of an agriculture that is no longer profitable, of the tourist beaches swallowed by the sea, of the rivers, forests, seas, and degraded soils that no longer give jobs and bring us back even more fear, more reactionary policies that exploit nature even more .... because everything is fed back.
If we still endure more feedback catastrophe we can take a look at what the ecological crisis leaves in the global South: deforestation, land grabbing, collapse of fisheries, mining pollution and war over resources… All of them causes of poverty, famine and migration. Migrants that come to our coasts, feed the fear of the emigrant and make us vote more for the extreme right ... extreme right that applies policies of the past and worsens the economic, ecological crisis of migrations even more ... and everything is fed back.
What can we do with all these catastrophic feedbacks? One option is to say that this has no solution and despair. It is a quite understandable option, but it has a serious drawback: it also feeds back. Our despair is an important activator of collective fear and makes us strengthen, to our regret, that pernicious bond of violence and reactionary thinking. The other option is to try to fight with a cold head, a warm heart, and hope for a flag.
This second option has the disadvantage that hope might be a bit naive, but, at least, it does not make things worse. If we are able to not get much worse and save time, we can dedicate ourselves to the solution of systemic problems by cutting all those feedbacks that put gasoline on the fire.
Should we try? I propose five firewalls that can help us break the most strategic leverage points.
Firewall # 1: Care
The most pernicious link of the whole problem is the one that links the economic crisis with the social crisis. This link can be cut if the states use good doses of social policies, distribute the crisis among all citizens and ensure basic needs. The care we give each other is also essential. This is called ecofeminism: putting life in the centre. Take care of each other, something so important in times of crisis.
Firewall # 2: Prosperity without growth
The link between economic crisis and social crisis is also broken if what we call economic crisis - the decline in GDP - is understood as not necessarily something that damages society. Why is it so bad that consumption drops? Right now it is because we live in a capitalist economy addicted to growth, but, in itself, consuming less or working less is not a bad thing.
Creating prosperity without growth is something so far from the current system that we see it as almost impossible, but we must go, little by little, imagining, planning and, above all, claiming such a society.
We can also start it quite easily: promoting family businesses and cooperatives, because these are not capitalist companies and are not necessarily linked to growth (unlike those that are listed on the stock market or work with banks).
Firewall # 3: Greening
The most urgent firewall at the moment is to break the relationships that lead to the deterioration of the biosphere. In this, we literally risk eating or not eating, because droughts and, in general, the instability of climate change threaten to turn large areas of the planet into deserts.
Nature is the only thing capable of protecting us from climate change: forests attract clouds, soils rich in organic matter are able to take advantage of every drop of rainwater, wooded boundaries protect fields from erosion. Only the regulatory mechanisms of ecosystems can prevent the rise in temperature - which we are going to experience, whether we like it or not - if we keep turning our fields into wastelands.
But, in order to do all of this, nature needs to be healthy. That is why we must, once and for all, protect forests, eliminate single-use plastics, end the dumping of all kinds of pollutants and, above all, develop an agriculture that cares for soils and ecosystems instead of destroying them.
We have to radically change our agriculture. We have no other choice, moreover: chemical fertilizers and pesticides are derived from oil and gas that are running out. The good news is that we can and we know how to do it. We do not have to sacrifice the food of human beings to protect the planet.
There is a great firewall called agroecology that involves using both ancient knowledge and the most advanced soil science to produce food while respecting ecosystems rather than harming them. Agroecology brings us good news: it is achieving yields similar to current ones, regenerating soils, absorbing CO2, taking care of biodiversity and producing healthy food. Agroecology is our best tool against the deterioration of the biosphere, and it also saves energy and creates jobs.
Firewall # 4: Austere abundance
Energy saving is a fantastic way to avoid all those false solutions to the energy crisis that plunge us into the spiral of ecological catastrophe. Bicycles in cities, trains, buses, well-insulated houses, local food ... there are many options that give us a high quality of life with little energy.
Yes ... I know, for decades, when we were trying to save energy, someone came to us saying that if we do not consume there are no jobs and if we do not use the car, the automobile industry collapses. But now all that begins to change. The energy crisis makes saving vital so that countries do not go into debt looking for increasingly scarce energy. The energy crisis, for example, can make it more profitable to stop importing gasoline to power our cars than to export cars.
Firewall # 5: Successes
Finally, we must not forget the irresistible power that success has in convincing. We have more successes than we think, many more than society believes. It is time for the solutions of the environmental movement to come to light. We know that it is possible to eat well, have profitable companies and live a good life using much less energy and damaging the planet much less. We know this because there have been people, communities and companies in the social and solidarity economy that have experienced it for decades.
Society is seeing that the predictions of environmentalism are coming true. Climate change has already arrived. All the things that the "doomsayer environmentalists" were saying are coming much faster than we thought. It is time for society to create, also, the solutions of the environmental movement.
We cannot waste time with sterile struggles on those old themes of the past that the reactionaries are raising. It is the moment to propose, project, visualize and debate how a good life can be in balance with nature. And above all, we have to believe it: here we all fit. Human and non-human inhabitants of the planet can live a good life if we are able to contain ourselves and cooperate with each other and with the biosphere.
We can get it? I don't know, honestly. I don't know if it's possible, but nobody knows if it's impossible either. We won't know until we have tried. What I am sure of is that we must try. We cannot accept that cannibalism is the only option without first searching for alternatives in every way possible.
In addition ... we cannot forget that we also have virtuous cycles: more agroecology, more savings and more care, more well-being without growth and more successes that push more people to take care, ride a bicycle and re-green, which gives us more prosperity without growth and more successes that make more people excited about the changes and they are more successful ... because everything is fed back.
|
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Margarita Mediavilla has a PhD in physical sciences from the University of Valladolid (Spain) and is an associate professor of systems engineering and automation at the School of Industrial Engineering. She is also a very active in awareness raising about the limits of economic growth, participating in all kinds of publications and conferences in the Spanish-speaking world. Her personal blog is Habas Contadas. She is also a member of the Group of Energy, Economy, and System Dynamics (GEEDS), University of Valladolid, Spain. All members of the GEEDS team contributed to this article.
|
![[groups_small]](groups_small.gif)