This topic will be treated in the decentralised gathering in Bellevue.

Capitalist Ecology: Sustainable development or palpable apocalypse?

For half a century, the energy resources available on this planet have diminished exponentially because of the more and more energy-consuming human activities aiming at satisfying the so-called "well-being" and "comfort" of humanity. Since 1970, the world energetic setting is mutating and is facing a wide-ranging crisis.
Humanity is exploiting the resources massively instead of instead of controlling the tools and means of production of these resources. This result in an inequity of access to these resources: 20% of humanity is consuming 80% of the natural resources. It would take the equivalent of four planets if everyone adopted this consumption pattern. Furthermore, some energy resources are becoming more and more expensive and difficult to extract.
The concept of "sustainable development" was invented a few years ago. This economist ideology (which will burn, we hope, as fast as oil) aim at maintaining an excessive consumption of energy, the financial interest remaining the only goal of the industrialized belligerents/politicians, while allowing, using different tools (teaching and spreading of the notion of eco-citizenship; delocalization and decentralization of the production; financing of scientific research to manage the pollution created) a planning of their activities. Through this notion of sustainable development, we are encouraged to "save the environment of our planet for our children" and urged to become conscious eco-citizens so that "Total" and company can continue their "sustainable exploitation" as long as possible.

In the current model of society, we become more and more trapped in a system of thought and practices defined by the hallmarks of the unregulated capitalist market, whose motto is liberalization but whose actual consequence is only destruction. The environment is not an exception to this rule; the will of the human race to dominate its environment knows no limits. Indeed: the so-called accidental or "natural" environmental disasters are more and more widespread and violent: Union Carbide "toxic cloud" in Bhopal (1982), the explosion of a nuclear reactor in Chernobyl (1986), the oil slick of the Erika in Pen Marc'h (1999), the explosion of the AZF factory in Toulouse (2001), the Hurricane Katrina in the east of the United-States (2005)...

If the rebellion of the "street" can be sometimes limited, "nature" doesn't know any limitation in its apocalyptical destruction of humanity. The apocalypse could take different forms, one that seems credible and close to us would be nuclear. We are told about new "revolutionary" nuclear plants where the atoms will fuse, a "revolution" that could lead to the scission of humanity.

To survive, humanity is facing two alternatives:

• The re-appropriation of the means and tools of our energy resources and consumption.
• The mutation into "cyber-humans" alienated by technological progress, who will have the significant ability to absorb and resist all terrestrial ecological pollution as well as all social and emotional relations.

Those meetings will allow us to discuss, debate, and analyze how our capitalism consumption pattern influence at every level the means of production and the use of energy.
We will consider the ecological impacts ("footprint") of all the elements related to this way of life: alimentation, transport, material comfort... in relation to their production and their energy consumption. We will try as well to understand the key role of the development of meaningful and conscious alternatives to become autonomous in our productions and "deconstruct" the false needs imposed by the market. It will be interesting to understand the stakes of those practices in our quest for material and political independence from Capitalism and the State; while keeping in mind that we all have more or less important relationships with the polluting industrial technological tools (cell phones, computers...) that we are criticizing or even disparaging.
What are the limits that we are setting between our vital needs, our comfort and our ecological consciousness?

As we think that our quest for autonomy depends as well on the transmission and exchange patterns that we choose to develop between us; it seems important to us to share our knowledge and experiences, without financial aspect but not without interest, during workshops conducted by individuals who are not "specialized" but who know about environmental-friendly auto-construction practices (solar boiler, vegetal oil powered automotive engine, phytoremediation...)

To read, see, criticize and complete...

Text

You can tell to iann at no-log.org if you need

• "Funny Weather we're having at the moment isn't it dear?" (English)
• Other text on http://www.infoshop.org/

Film

• http://climatecrisis.org/

Organisation

• http://www.worldwatch.org/