The choice of the term was not something premeditated, but rather a matter of the “burn of the moment”. And that the hair came, of course, the choice of the word “ardor”. It was the year 2000 and Paul J. Crutzen, the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, was participating in a conference when someone brought up the expression “Holocene”, the name given to the geological period that began a little less than 10,000 years ago, from from the end of the last ice age.
Convinced that this word that refers to an Earth with relatively warm temperatures in which Homo sapiens thrived was no longer useful to designate the world they inhabited, Crutzen resorted to a term that has not stopped gaining ground since then: “Now we live! in the Anthropocene! That is, the age of human dominance.
In these two long decades since the anecdote, that intuition has been consolidated as a tangible reality, an eventuality that -literally- can be seen and felt. Never before have people exercised such a degree of influence and domination over the planet. We have established ourselves as a force of nature with the ability to create, but perhaps, above all, with the desire to destroy. And the world is going to hell. All you have to do is look outside, through the window at home or through the peephole on the screen.
This is reflected in the countless dystopias that we consume in series and movies, those that we read about in novels, and those that are broadcast on television 24 hours a day, including, with their patina of cheesy optimism, the star-studded Christmas commercials. Resources are depleted, the climate destabilizes, the system collapses, civilization breaks down. The prospect is as terrifying as it is exhausting. Faced with the feeling of helplessness produced by such a barrage of fatalities, many authors and researchers have searched for solutions. They not only propose direct action measures, but also encourage the search for symbolic elements capable of challenging the collective conscience. Here, a brief sampling of entries from a dictionary of terms for the reconstruction of the planet collected from a selection of recent essays.
Acceptance. After denial, anger, negotiation and depression, mourning —they say— reaches its final stage with acceptance. The alphabetical order, however, forces to place this voice not the last, but the first of the list. Seneca already said that “increases are slow to grow, but the road to ruin is fast”, and now Professor Ugo Bardi points out in Before the Collapse (Waterfall) that, since every outcome is inevitable, if it is necessary to collapse Let’s at least do it right. Or, what is the same, that we accept reality and proceed to organize ourselves. A specialist in complex systems, the Italian researcher argues that, although the current crisis does not have to mean the end of the world, it could mean the end of the world as we know it. Among the few good news that Bardi contributes, the idea that every collapse is followed by a rebound stands out. But would this be possible, the author wonders, “in a world depleted, in terms of mineral resources, and subjected to great damage to ecosystems”? The answer: “A civilization of comparable complexity to ours cannot exist without access to a comparable flow of energy.” And some possible alternatives for consolation: renewables, silicon, space travel. From the starting point of a diminished (if not disappeared) humanity, Cal Flyn’s Islands of Abandonment (Captain Swing) opens another silver lining to hope.
Our voracious hunger is leaving the planet in the bones. In the same way that we consume clothes without control, we have become hooked on a cheap but unsustainable diet that is not only harmful for the environment, but also for our health. In Sitopia (Captain Swing), the architect Carolyn Steel (author of Hungry Cities, where she stresses the crucial dependency relationship between what we eat and the place we inhabit) argues that food “may be the most powerful means at our disposal.” to think and act together to create a better world.” Not surprisingly, our lives depend, and very directly, on it. In her essay, the British author explores not only the political and social power of food, but also the options it offers to reconnect with other people and with the environment. Other titles, such as And now what do we eat? (Peninsula), by former food industry worker Christophe Brusset, draw a detailed map of the supermarket aisles to find the most direct path to health and sustainability in the middle of a jungle populated by junk food. In A Long Time We Eat Animals (Destiny), anthropologist Roanne Van Voorst delves into a technological and exclusively vegan future, a philosophy of life that continues to gain followers as it not only pursues sustainability, but also health and respect. by other sentient beings. they map out a detailed map of the supermarket aisles to find the most direct path to health and sustainability in the midst of a jungle populated by junk food. In A Long Time We Eat Animals (Destiny), anthropologist Roanne Van Voorst delves into a technological and exclusively vegan future, a philosophy of life that continues to gain followers as it not only pursues sustainability, but also health and respect. by other sentient beings. they map out a detailed map of the supermarket aisles to find the most direct path to health and sustainability in the midst of a jungle populated by junk food. In A Long Time We Eat Animals (Destiny), anthropologist Roanne Van Voorst delves into a technological and exclusively vegan future, a philosophy of life that continues to gain followers as it not only pursues sustainability, but also health and respect. by other sentient beings.
Anti-capitalism. It is not clear if Fredric Jameson or Slavoj Zizek was the first to utter that round phrase that says that it is “easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”, but the truth is that more and more authors are determined to refute it. The impossible aspiration of unlimited growth, destructive consumerism, unbridled precariousness and inequality of colossal proportions… It is obvious that the system is stretching its limits beyond reason and this is confirmed by a growing number of books that bet on the search for substitutes for the current socioeconomic model, which the journalist Naomi Klein already accused with great evidence in her monumental This Changes Everything (Planet) of having positioned itself as the number one enemy of the environment. Capitalism or the Planet (Errata Naturae), by Frederic Lordon, defends pragmatism against idealism and proposes a way out through an alliance with other movements such as anti-racism. How to blow up an oil pipeline (Errata Naturae), by Andreas Malm, interrelates environmentalist militancy with anti-capitalism and the fight against fossil fuels, which are largely the cause of the climate crisis. Letting go of possessions, comforts, and privileges will undoubtedly be an arduous task. In Learning to Live and Die in the Anthropocene (Errata Naturae), Roy Scranton reflects on what it means to go through the end of an era and outlines what philosophy —from Stoic thought to humanism that connects us with others— can contribute to free us from our dependencies. Murray Bookchin’s Ecology of Liberty (Captain Swing) advocates replacing the hierarchical structures of capitalism with horizontal organization. And in Nature against Capital (Bellaterra), Kohei Saito argues that the anti-environmentalism of which Marx has traditionally been accused due to his aspiration to continuous growth is actually the result of a misunderstanding. On the contrary, the author emphasizes, the protection of the environment lies at the heart of the alternative proposed by socialism. Kohei Saito argues that the anti-ecologism of which Marx has traditionally been accused for his aspiration to continuous growth is actually the result of a misunderstanding. On the contrary, the author emphasizes, the protection of the environment lies at the heart of the alternative proposed by socialism. Kohei Saito argues that the anti-ecologism of which Marx has traditionally been accused for his aspiration to continuous growth is actually the result of a misunderstanding. On the contrary, the author emphasizes, the protection of the environment lies at the heart of the alternative proposed by socialism.
Art. The list of calamities that fly over the planet is extensive, and the ability of art to take sides is limited. Or maybe not so much? Beyond the calls for attention from various environmental groups based on the spillage of liquids on paintings, the French critic and curator Paul Ardenne exhibits in An ecological art. Plastic Creation and Anthropocene (Adriana Hidalgo) a compendium of creations that, although they do not offer solutions in terms of concrete effectiveness, do exert an influence in the sphere of the symbolic. The artivists, as the activist artists were baptized, transport their ecological commitment to the field of representation. They produce matter of ideas. And those notions are transmitted through his works to make the leap to reality. Concrete examples?
Despite the unanimity of the scientific arguments, there is still an enormous amount of misinformation surrounding the planetary ecological crisis. So much so that there are even those who deny it, not to mention the many others who ignore it, or we ignore it. In Colapsology (Arpa), the French researchers Pablo Servigne and Raphael Stevens made an inventory of catastrophes and updated solutions, giving shape to a book that became a kind of introductory manual, a starting point from which to approach the tricky cataclysm issue. Later, the authors joined the biologist Gaultier Chapelle in Another end of the world is possible (Arpa), where from the base of collapsology, that is, the study of collapse, they broaden the perspectives of collapsefia, a philosophy of collapse capable of propelling optimism against the feeling of defeat. His recipe: actionable answers to difficult questions, such as the search for meaning in a world in decline, the relevance of moving forward and the need to create links to combat selfishness.
Decrease. If we add some finite resources to the desire for inexhaustible expansion, there is no way to balance the accounts. The solution? Subtract. In Decrease. A reasoned proposal (Alliance), the former university professor Carlos Taibo starts from an image that invites us to reposition the scales: in Spain, he explains, the ecological footprint is above 3, which means that “to maintain economic activities today existing ones, it is necessary to have a territory at least three times larger than that available”. After more than a decade of study and dissemination, the author brings together and justifies the conclusions he has reached about what it really means to decrease and why it is unavoidable to get down to work. Taibo, defender of anarchism and self-management, has an even more recent title, Ecofascismo (Waterfall).
Spirituality. Ever since Rene Descartes bequeathed his well-known “Cogito, ergo sum” to posterity, European and, with it, global thought have been dragged by the implicit belief that only reason and logic govern the universe. Intuition and mysticism have been relegated to the realm of trickery, but more and more voices are being raised against the tyranny of mathematics. 2017 Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences, the British Karen Armstrong has embodied in Sacred Nature (Criticism) an enlightening plea to recover the link with the natural world. An expert in religions (she was a nun for seven years), she focuses on Chinese and Indian traditions as exponents of a philosophical current that not only respects, but venerates nature. “It is not a question of believing or not in this or that religious doctrine,” he points out, “but of incorporating into our lives a series of perceptions and practices that have the precise potential to transform our minds and our hearts.” In Ecotopia (Anagrama), author, art historian, and yoga teacher Alexis Racionero Rague traverses the flux of schools, myths, and authors—from shamanism to utopian socialism; from the Walker before a sea of fog, from Friedrich, who marvels at the immensity of the landscape, to the consoling asceticism of Thoreau’s Walden— to lead to a founding decalogue of ecotopia, a utopia beyond ecology that allows us to “connect deeper with the wisdom of the Earth to establish a new relationship with her. And in Essential Nature (Atalanta), the philosopher Christian de Quincey recalls that the notion of a living universe, of “intrinsically sentient matter”, has been a continuum throughout the history of Western thought, interrupted only recently. The lack of consideration for the world that nourishes and surrounds us, sums up the thinker, is nothing but an anomaly of our time.
Reorganization. A few years ago, the late biologist Edward O. Wilson —nicknamed the “father of biodiversity”— launched an extreme proposal to reverse the extinction of animal and plant species: reduce human presence to half the planet, leaving the other half available to the nature. After that theory, a call to open our eyes presented in the book Half a Planet (Errata Naturae), other authors have continued to propose ideas on how to organize ourselves, many of them undoubtedly less daring, but perhaps more feasible, at least in the short term. . From a civil servant pragmatism, with information collected from surveys, interviews and investigations, Former Obama advisor Beth Simone Noveck has developed in How to solve public problems (Galaxy Gutenberg) a catalog of measures to reconfigure the public square of democracy with the help of social networks and digital technology. Within its Ciudad 2030 collection, Catarata editorial offers in titles such as Circular, cohesive and creative cities, edited by Maria Jesus Monteagudo, Nerea Aranbarri and Basagaitz Guereno, reflections on how cities can contribute to sustainable human development through the promotion of recycling , autonomy and empowerment of talent.
Mental health. We have to talk about “this-what-is-happening-to-us”. Surely many will not be able to define it exactly, it is a gray grief that is sometimes perceived as a black cloud or white noise. But there it is, always lurking. An indefinite malaise, associated with precarious mental health, from which few, almost no one, can escape today. If there were not enough reasons for concern in this late-capitalist society, now comes eco-anxiety —the anguish before the imminent cataclysm— to sneak into our heads. In Y ahora yo que hago (Captain Swing), Andreu Escriva applies, without sermons, the maxim that affirms that change begins with oneself. To overcome the crisis, the author urges to take action on the matter. Among the commandments that he proposes to tackle the climate emergency and, incidentally, To improve our psychological well-being, there are ideas as basic and necessary as dismantling the excuses with which we justify our passivity. In parallel, the environmentalist develops a decalogue of imperatives, with actions ranging from “run” and “demand” to “imagine” and —above all— “let’s do it”.
