Yesterday, April 22, the 50th Earth Day was celebrated.
This ephemeris competes with Rachel Carson's book “Silent Spring”, published in 1962, for the honorary title of launch date of the modern environmental movement, and began with one of the greatest political actions in the history of the United States of America. , with outbreaks throughout the country.
The institution of this date in 1970 rescued the awakening of a broad ecological awareness of a frequent, unfair and reductive association with the emerging and highly turbocharged New Age movements, with their rainbows (there was at that time one hashtag, would perhaps be #vaifiquetudopedrado), becoming part of the political agenda of “grown ups” and “serious people”.
Half a century later, the whole world honors and celebrates Earth Day with a significant reduction in its vectors of environmental degradation. Not by choice or awareness but by having been forced to.
What if today we continued to celebrate Earth Day, changing something?
The current pandemic and the quarantine into which the world has plunged has, in addition to the tremendous negative impacts that are recognized for it, positive aspects.
One of them is that, given the stoppage of a significant part of production and transport activities on a global scale, it allows this pebble revolving around the Sun to breathe a little better, with an instantaneous reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants.
Hence, for example, hotspots environmental unhealthy classics were, albeit temporarily and circumstantially, alleviated – which certainly brought positive impacts on all other aspects of public health that continue to exist beyond Covid-19.
Another positive aspect was the demonstration that we were able to adapt to new modes of operation, unthinkable until weeks ago. We do not, of course, see ourselves perpetually living like this, mainly because there was no time for any consistent preparation, everything being based on improvisation and remedy.
But what if we planned something different from now on? Not because this virus is messianic or a messenger of love – in the words of a renowned self-help guru – and the moment of global epiphany, but because any pretext is good to make any change!
The economic model around which we organize our entire life is, by and large, a monumental mess. On the one hand, its productivist and consumerist base gave rise to a set of objects and processes that, after normalization and acculturation through the advertising mechanism, were globally agreed to be standards of quality of life and comfort – antidepressants with a button on / off.
With generous pinch of credit, access to them became democratized and, even if illusory – and in these things, perception counts more than reality – and more by context than structure, the conditions in which many live have improved.
But, on the way, we were given an environmental – and social bill, generally associated with production points and wage conditions that allow for low prices – thus pulling us towards the calamitous. And we are living off the alienation of natural capital and planetary heritage instead of income.
Afterwards, the pacifying balm of all the mathematical and statistical efabulation that economics offers us is passed through our hair, to convince us that there is no problem and that if we grow further – to infinity and beyond – everything will be resolved.
Now, what economics has long despised is none other than Ecology. Or, not wanting such an approach hippie, ignores thermodynamics, specifically its second law which, in short and simplified, stipulates the increase in entropy over time, due to energy degradation in each transformation. In this case, this manifests itself in the waste of the production system, specifically pollution, residues, environmental imbalances, etc. Now, if something is not ecologically viable, how can it be economically reasonable?
Kenneth Boulding – Professor of Economics, note! – he explained almost half a century ago: whoever believes in infinite growth on a finite planet is either crazy or an economist.
Many will see this as a critique of capitalism. It is not. Whether they call themselves capitalists or Marxists, the overwhelming majority of world governments (not to say all) aspire to and obey the ideology of unlimited growth, sharing the hubs of contempt for the importance of natural resources. There is, therefore, an objection to growth, as Latouche would say.
Well then, the world economy is on the streets of bitterness, as is well known. Because oil does not flow, because consumption has fallen, because illusions quoted on the stock market have become insignificant compared to reality, etc. And reality means that nowadays it contains more basic needs than ancillary ones, hence the importance of trivial things like… food. And the toilet paper, of course.
The best time to repair any mechanism and change parts is when it's stopped. What is intended is a transition, not a breaking of the “wheel”, in the fashion of Daenerys Targaryen, or of Ned Ludd's supporters, attacking and destroying the looms of today.
In the aftermath of the crisis, many companies – some in a perfectly immoral way, given the obscene profits they made in the past – will want to use government aid. At the same time, Europe has on the table, since the end of 2019, the European Green Pact (European Green Deal), all unfulfilled.
Is there a better time to implement it, conditioning and indexing the granting of support – whether in national budgets or in community financing mechanisms, naturally in a proportional way – to companies to fulfill their goals and the necessary changes that this document advocates?
The PVE is, basically, a manifesto of intentions of the European Commission, towards transforming the European Union into a fair and prosperous society, with an efficient and competitive economy in the use of resources, in which there will be no net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050. Furthermore, it intends to do so through a fair and inclusive process, with people first (includes the Fair Transition Mechanism and Fund) and a wide range of sectoral objectives, from energy efficiency to biodiversity, passing through taxation green, mobility or food safety and autonomy.
From the outset, the Commission implicitly recognizes, in undertaking this environmental and climate task, defining a generation, that it is not at all what it intends to be. And that their efforts will be ineffective if isolated in the world context. But it also recognizes that the tightening of the environmental network can lead to (more) relocation of production to less restrictive countries – “carbon leakage” – assuming incapable of stopping this process (1).
But the European Union faces the challenge, and intends to be a world leader in this matter, by example and by diplomacy (if it is as skillful and sensitive in dealing with global partners as it was internally in managing this crisis…). However, its “green” agenda, as well-intentioned as it may be, remains committed to the concept of continuous growth, and has no streak or boldness in terms of effectively changing core values or paradigms. But it's a step.
What we need are agendas that prepare strategic, phased degrowths. The concept of degrowth is widely seen as a utopia, mainly because of the intoxication of the imagination, but some of its principles are already established today as certainties – the case of Circular Economy.
Peripheral regions, reduced solely to a service economy (even more monofunctional, and with high waste, such as tourism) and totally exposed to the infamous externalities, do not decide their future. They are like a storekeeper. No matter how tidy the stock is, no matter how efficient the organization, if you are told to close the door… it closes, because nothing belongs to you, you just work there. Unless you decide to change your life and open your own warehouse.
Some of the principles of degrowth, specifically revaluation (redefinition of guiding values), relocation (approaching production to consumption, from decision to impact) and reduction (limiting excess consumption and waste), could generate diversification mechanisms in our corner and strengthening resilience, changing the territorial model and harnessing endogenous resources in new – or in many cases old – ways. A work of decades, because we can't drop everything we have instantly. But that has to take off.
In any case, its application clearly implies a revolution. On top of that, a reactionary revolution, with as much progressive as it was conservative. This revolution is, above all, political. Not so much at the level of decision makers (hostage of political parties), but mainly of society, of all of us as a conscious and participative collective. A collective focused on ecoanthropocentrism, a curse word that basically means that we have to understand our role in the house we share and in which we are inserted, influencing and being influenced.
It is, in the end, a (re)learning job that we have to undertake.
Or none of this, and we trust that luck will smile on us again, because at the bottom of all these rainbows there really is a pot of gold waiting.
On the eve of the 25th of April commemoration, it is worth thinking about changes.
Author Gonçalo Gomes is a landscape architect, president of the Algarve Regional Section of the Portuguese Association of Landscape Architects (APAP).
(and writes according to the old Spelling Agreement)
Note 1) the proposed customs ecotaxes for this purpose is unlikely, in part due to the predictable - but not necessarily negative - political and commercial unsustainability of the price increase, but also due to international trade agreements, such as CETA, which allow corporations to circumvent administratively the borders, and still sue States (increasingly less sovereign) when they understand that their profit expectations have been defrauded.
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