Foreword
There is no question that the progressive decline in the environmental
conditions of the planet makes it clear that humanity is currently
unable to embark upon a policy to invert current trends.
No action has been taken that has the potential to curb the
environmental deterioration taking place. This despite the fact
that there is widespread awareness and in-depth scientific knowledge
of how humankind alters the environment and of how these variations
have a negative, immediate and long-lasting impact on it; and
despite the fact that we have all the technical tools necessary
to change the causes of this impact.
The term “sustainability” has been part of everyday
language for some decades now. It indicates the research into
and practising of solutions which successfully avoid aggravating
the state of our planet. Therefore, while definitions of the
term may seem uncertain, it has been acknowledged that truly
feasible choices are a real possibility.
If we were to take stock of what has been done in this field
over the past thirty years in dozens of countries and almost
all the international organisations which tackle the issue of
sustainability, we might conclude that the model implemented
by them has significantly worsened an already grave situation.
This, despite the way in which the term “sustainability”
has become rarefied over time; despite the enormous terminological
confusion deliberately created by professionals to cast a shroud
of mystery over their actions and present them as environmentally
worthy. The successes which have been achieved have been partial,
specific and local. All they prove is that other paths are open
to us, and that they are not widely followed, even though they
could be.
The guilty conscience of this model of intervention is illustrated
by the great confusion surrounding how the adjective “sustainable”
or “environmental” is used to describe projects,
goods and products. It’s the guilty conscience of knowing
perfectly well that a sustainable approach causes profound changes
to the cultural, social and productive structure of a society;
and of not wanting to change it at all, even though the health
of the world’s entire population is at risk.
Sustainability is not compatible with this model; it is an alternative
to it. It even speaks a different language. If we are to adapt
to it, first of all we cannot speak of growth; quantities must
be reduced, wealth must be redistributed to allow the wellbeing
of many to be improved; we must eliminate the waste which is
the reason for the pursuit of prosperity; we must eliminate
accumulation; we must increase the autonomy and awareness of
communities.
If we are to halt the continuous decline in the conditions of
the planet, the faltering steps made by governments are not
enough. We need to set up a widespread process of environmental
recovery and conservation. This must limit the interests of
the main allies of the model described above; it must reduce
profits and change the mentality of defending the minuscule
advantages of a society that is damaging to the environment
and harmful to people.
In order to do this, we believe that individual and collective
behaviours must be learnt which will allow us to escape from
the lethal trap of daily living; from the slavery of commodities;
from the subjection to incongruous habits; from the authoritarianism
of decisions; from the decision-making influence of the economic
powers.
This can only be achieved within a libertarian culture.
Below, we outline a few considerations aimed at identifying
what is unsustainable in the current model; how important it
is to shed light on seemingly sustainable behaviours; and how
easy it would be to put into practice other forms of living
as a society on this planet.
Living
Contemporary culture has taken apart the meaning of this word
by dividing up the activities that make up a typical day: one
area to sleep in, one to work in, one where you have fun, and
so on. The unitariness of living has been lost in the process
of manufacturing or commercial activities (buying and consuming).
Local regions are unknown. There is no relationship with them,
nor is there a knowledge of their environment and society. Not
even that simple yet effective knowledge so typical of traditional
culture.
Places are pre-formed by economic interests (such as shopping
centres, hypermarkets, multiplex cinemas etc.). They are standardised
to meet the commercial image of contemporary life. Inside these
places, the sole function of individuals is as buyers of commodities
– but they cannot contribute to how the places are defined
and used.
In this way, places are no longer inhabited, because there is
no longer any relationship with them.
Active participation in defining spaces inhabited by people;
endorsement of criticism of shopping centres, hypermarkets,
production and distribution chains which standardise food, furnishings
and physical space.
Demolition
The demolition of buildings is an increasingly common practice
in real estate. Buildings are demolished even when in a good
condition, and are replaced with new ones.
This practice helps to give a contemporary look to buildings;
it increases their economic value, boosts their surface area
and leads to profits. While this makes good business sense in
financial terms, it is a serious burden on the environment.
Building work requires energy to produce and transport materials
and for construction. This energy is then stored by the building
itself. When it is demolished, the energy is lost. Added to
that is the energy used for the demolition, that used for clearing
and disposal, and that required to build the new building. This
deeply unsustainable practice also has detrimental social effects:
the new residents are rarely the same as those who previously
lived in the housing. After all, the increase in property value
requires higher rent or sale prices. And if they were the same
residents, they would find themselves living in a different
context to the one they were familiar with.
There are plenty of ways to improve the quality of buildings.
Demolition is not one of them.
Climate
adaptation
The climate changes taking place lead to profound changes in
the natural system. Being aware of this has underlined the need
to adapt how we use the natural system, as conditions continue
to change.
Acknowledging these changes and the anthropic cause behind them
should mean a change in methods rather than identifying systems
to allow the same level of productivity. Forcing the logics
of natural systems goes hand in hand with a state of imbalance
in the system, and thus an increased risk of collapse.
Adaptations, meaning actions taken to reduce the effects of
climate change, may be constructive if they include a reconsideration
of the mistakes made in the past; and if they are not a substitute
for removing the causes which led to climate change in the first
place.
Adapting
spaces
Inhabitants adapt the space they inhabit, and should have the
right to adapt the spaces of their settlements to suit their
way of life.
Currently, inhabitants are subjected to the urban layout defined
by property speculation and, in rare cases, by town planning
in which there is no space for the active, direct action of
the citizen.
Reclaiming the power given to the technical experts –
first by industrialised society and later by the consumer society
– and thus allowing the citizen and the community the
chance to intervene without damaging the environment or disturbing
people seems to be a positive aspect of a society’s culture.
Environment
(nature and society)
The state of the environment depends closely on the social organisation
of the communities that live in it. Hunter gatherer communities
have a very low-impact relationship with the eco-system: they
do not push its productivity to a state of collapse, they maintain
a low population and do not accumulate possessions.
A society which glorifies state-owned and private property finds
it very difficult to manage to guarantee a common use of assets
and a non-exploitative relationship with ecosystems.
A mercantile, authoritarian, artificial and alienated global
society, like that defined by the most widespread economic model,
builds a relationship with nature that it has invented itself.
In doing so, it reconstructs fragments of nature, promoting
its image but making it ever-dependent on human activity, considering
it in economic terms only.
Travelling
Salespeople
The most ecological way of enabling goods to be distributed:
a limited number of commodities in a vehicle goes to a community
which does not move. The amount shifted is two tons. The shopping
centre model is based around individuals moving, in other words
around a ton per head (in addition to the transportation of
goods to the shopping centre). This is clearly a model that
consumes vast amounts of energy as well as being socially selective
(those who don’t have a car, who don’t wish to travel
or can’t travel are excluded).
Encouraging travelling salespeople is an environmentally qualifying
characteristic.
Craftwork
Handicrafts allow the individual to manage the production process
in an aware manner. It is also how technical skills are kept
alive in a community, allowing it to make and maintain products
autonomously.
Handicrafts differ according to the place and hence to the local
resources and culture, adapting to the changes in local character.
The spread of craftwork allows the penetration of global goods
to be reduced.
Self-production
of energy
Large-scale power plants, even those using renewable sources,
concentrate production and profit in one place. They deprive
the local community of the possibility of managing a fundamental
aspect of its existence. They allow a monopoly and set prices,
but most of all they involve a vast waste of energy due to distribution
and excess production (which exists, even if it is put back
into the grid).
Local, even individual power plants (mini-hydro power, mini-wind
power, biomass, solar, thermal and so on) can be set up to help
reduce environmental impact and allow communities to control
the plants and directly manage costs and consumption.
Self-production
of food
Producing one’s own food or buying it from those who produce
it locally reduces the industrialised food market; it allows
the food autonomy of local regions and communities; it increases
the possibility of directly controlling the quality of products,
and creates employment.
It creates a strong link between communities and places, and
helps us understand the importance of the balance between using
and conserving natural resources.
Support autonomous farming, take part in and use self-managed
trading circuits.
Self-building
Humankind has an innate ability to build and adapt spaces to
live in. Our inbuilt potential and our quality of life are compromised
if we totally delegate this task to third parties, and do not
take part in building and maintaining our own living space.
Individuals can contribute, directly or indirectly, to defining
the physical space in which they live. That is, if they are
aware of the need to work so as to reduce the negative impact
and lighten the environmental burden of transforming and using
that space.
Take part in self-building processes, build your own house or
better still, re-use existing constructions in self-building.
Cars
Every day, most of the world’s citizens are faced with
an onslaught of insistent advertising for private cars.
If we weren’t faced with this constant advertising, it
is almost certain that far fewer cars would be sold. Our society
would not be car-centric, we would not have problems of pollution
in cities, and so on.
In the current model, individual mobility by car seems to be
indispensable and irreplaceable in many areas (just think of
the many settlements of individual houses scattered across the
region). But that’s simply not true. Many other modes
of transport can be organised, starting with individual motorized
transport (a low-powered motorbike), bicycles or other vehicles
which can cover shorter distances. Alternatively, multi-use
cars can be employed, which are nevertheless smaller and less
powerful.
This can be done now, without too many sacrifices and without
changing existing rules. Those who choose not to go down this
path, those who choose to own recently manufactured, outsized,
large displacement vehicles implicitly represent an authoritarian,
polluting, socially damaging culture.
Meat
and combustibles
It is a well-known fact that in each step of the food chain,
most of the energy is not passed on to the next link in the
chain: for example, every cow produces fifty kilograms of protein
by consuming seven hundred and fifty kilograms of plant-based
proteins.
In short, in order to use the amounts of meat currently consumed
we use an amount of plant-based foods which in itself far exceeds
the food requirements of everyone on the entire planet.
Therefore, the rise in meat consumption has not only led to
changes in the agricultural, forestry and social structure of
entire nations; it has also wasted enormous amounts of potential
food.
The recent development of producing plant-based fuels is going
down the same road: in addition to increasing the price of cereals
in every market, creating difficulty for poorer consumers and
benefiting the richest producers, it also involves using food
for fuel. A vast amount of energy is lost in this transformation.
Using agricultural products for the purposes of food, reducing
the protein chain, guarantees the maximising of the potential
of the natural system and the energy it contains.
Living
out of town
This is a housing model in which people live in a low-population
area in a house which is bigger than they need, with a garden
and all the facilities that they can afford, and go to work
in the city. It is a shocking environmental waste in terms of
consumption of resources and of energy for commuting. People
travel thousands of kilometres in order to breathe fresh air,
creating pollution and becoming a direct cause of the climate
change which has led people to leave cities in the first place.
Often it is not a choice (houses cost less the further they
are from the centre). However, if it were a choice, it would
be environmentally and socially damaging.
People should work in the place and in the community in which
they live, and become settled.
Cause/effect
The current economic and social model acts upon the effects.
This way, by not criticising or changing ingrained behaviour,
it adds commodities and expands the market. Acting upon the
causes would, on the other hand, involve changing common practices
and reducing commodities.
Any effective action aimed at sustainability works on the causes
and, sometimes, on reducing the effects at the same time.
Community
Recreating direct relations between individuals and local resources
is the way to rebalance the relationship between population
and environment. Individuals are not aware of the negative effects
that their behaviour has on other places. Nor do they understand
the importance of properly managing the resources in their own
region.
One way of reconstructing relations is to support local economies.
These local economies are enslaved to the global market, and
allow space for the technical and creative abilities of individuals.
The social place in which this can happen is communities of
individuals. This means geographical or a-geographical communities
which are self-managed; culturally defined but not closed; economically
and socially autonomous. In other words, they manage their resources
and environment directly, unanimously and sustainably.
Open communities and
identity
In its attempt to spread standardised goods, the contemporary
economic model has broken down the culture of local communities.
Local culture is closely linked to places. It develops from
the close relationship between the individual and the surrounding
environment.
Distancing ourselves from this relationship increases the environmental
impact of the community on the place it inhabits.
Maintaining a local culture safeguards the identity of communities
and the relations between them and the environment.
This does not mean that we have to recreate closed communities
or reapply the social limitations found in them. It just means
the chance to rediscover a local equilibrium; to leave behind
the market and its cultural impositions; to preserve an identity.
All of this is possible in an ongoing, positive but egalitarian
exchange with the outside world.
Competition/free
market
An environmental disaster has been triggered by over-production,
which seeks to cut costs and occupy sections of the market by
taking them away from other manufacturers. In this way, unnecessary
goods are produced (such as most of those in the consumer society),
goods which do not provide pleasure (such as most of those of
the consumer society), in quantities many times greater than
those of the already inflated market, according to the number
of manufacturers.
This condition is aberrant in the global market, but might not
be so at local level, where producers generally produce goods
for the community in which they live, according to demand (thus
limiting energy wastage for manufacturing, distribution and
disposal).
Consumers
The difference between an individual and a consumer is defined
by the level of criticism expressed towards commercial promotions,
and by the quantity of goods purchased.
In contemporary society it is very difficult not be a consumer.
However, a change in behaviour is a step towards limiting the
global market and reducing the “environmental burden”
of our presence on earth.
Consumption
In the consumer society, goods are not used up: they are reduced
to rubbish without being used completely. It is therefore a
society of waste, of a rapid estrangement from objects, of an
emotional disaffection towards the tools we use. Objects are
all different but all indifferent for those using them. They
are quickly replaced without leaving a memory. They leave only
a profound physical trace (in the amount of rubbish produced).
Reducing purchases, reducing goods, looking after objects, reusing
them, “consuming them” and repairing them is indispensable
in order to slow down a productivity which does not lead to
wellbeing.
Land
use
Settlements and infrastructures are expanding, occupying more
land. The areas used lose any ecological potential. They are
not biologically productive. Areas covered in housing are deserts
brought into natural systems which have much greater potential.
They are areas which are difficult to regenerate in terms of
nature and wildlife. They remain over time and actively contribute
to raising temperatures. This condition becomes even more serious
as they are placed in areas with high agricultural production
(the same areas which guarantee optimum conditions for building).
The large amounts of land used should lead us to consider the
need to contain towns and cities. Not so much by building upwards,
but rather by salvaging spaces that are unused or underused,
such as second and third homes, excessively large surface areas
per head, abandoned or oversized warehouses or barns. These
all derive from the instrumental use of construction (investments
and income), allowed by the economic model (lower costs, speculation),
and supported by culture (size is everything); all of which
are the principle causes behind the expansion of built-up areas.
Growth
The objective of growth is an important one for the present
cultural and economic model. The wellbeing of countries and
companies is measured by the amount of product and the capacity
to increase it year after year.
However, the same criteria apply to the lives of individuals.
Individual satisfaction is attained when the next state of living
is quantitatively superior to the previous one. When people
have the financial means, they replace material goods with other,
bigger ones. For example, a bigger home, a more powerful car,
a computer with more memory, and so on.
Yet despite all the technological efforts made, unlimited material
growth is not practicable, because resources are indeed limited.
In addition to the obvious pointlessness of quantitative growth,
it is time to consider that the growth objective is impossible
to pursue. There is a limit. However far off we want to claim
that limit is (although it is thought to be very close indeed),
it is there, and on reaching it, growth will grind to a halt.
So it is crucial to change cultural attitudes by rearranging
not just individual lives, but also the life of manufacturing.
The latter should rediscover its advantages in terms of quality
of production and not quantity, in the continuity of activities,
in maintaining quantities that are linked to the real needs
of the community for which they are intended.
Distribution
The mobility of goods is a typical feature of the global market
model.
Production is concentrated in one place, replacing local production.
It can count on lower costs, made possible by the increase in
quantities and the geographical location of production units
in areas where there are less environmental controls and lower
labour costs.
The environmental and social costs that ensue are vast, due
to the energy and emissions related to hyper-production and
transportation, and the breakdown of the local manufacturing
fabric. This condition worsens still when it is applied to the
agricultural and food sector.
Eating food produced in nearby areas not only avoids the transportation
of goods and lowers energy consumption, it also provides financial
support to the local community.
Efficiency
Increase
This is a term created by the industrial sector, based on society’s
need to reduce the negative effects of production, in relation
to the oil crisis in the seventies and the subsequent need to
reduce energy consumption.
Efficiency requires goods to be replaced by goods in a constant
improvement of efficiency (also required by voluntary regulations
on the quality of products). In this way, “new”
goods replace “old” goods which have the same function
and still work.
The instrumental use of this concept has led to new areas of
the market expanding (people buy the same product several times
over, at increasing levels of efficiency). However, this requires
vast amounts of energy and produces vast amounts of rejects
and waste.
Given that efficiency increase is measured by units produced,
the advantage of greater efficiency achieved by improving the
product itself is absorbed and exceeded by the disadvantage
resulting from the increase in the amount of products.
Do not fall into the trap of efficiency or of passing judgement
on goods or buying them. Keep items for as long as possible,
checking that they are in proper working condition. The best
form of efficiency is reduction.
Equilibrium
Almost all settlements or towns are not in equilibrium with
their surrounding environment. They consume more energy than
is locally available; they emit pollutants that, due to their
type and quantity, are much greater than the ecosystem’s
capacity to regenerate itself.
All of the planet’s settlements and activities consume
resources and produce emissions in quantities much greater than
the planet can bear.
The overall situation, locally and globally, is therefore imbalanced.
The future of natural systems is under threat. But so is that
of the human systems which live in, and thanks to, nature. As
the current economic and social model continues with exponential
growth, the risk of collapse increases over time.
A crucial element if we are to imagine a decent future is to
recreate a balance between settlements and resources, starting
on a local scale. Consumption should once again be linked to
the actual resources available, and diversified according to
the features and productivity of individual places.
Renewable
sources
The use of renewable energy sources should go hand-in-hand with
the disuse of equivalent non-renewable sources, and with a significant
cutback in energy use.
Global
Global is the mechanism invented and supported by the largest
economic players in order to increase exchanges, concentrate
production and management of the market, and enable profits
to grow exponentially.
Global is supported by intellectuals who are unaware of the
situation described above, and believe it to be the right model
of cultural and social growth for the planet.
Global is a non-place, in which the individual is of no importance,
in which the individual is standardized and becomes the role
which he or she carries out, in which the community does not
exist, and in which there is an economic government dictating
the rules of society.
Do not buy global products. Do not use global solutions. Pay
attention to the potential for local production, to the social
nature of commodities, to communities.
Lighting
The planet has too much artificial lighting. Night has disappeared.
Reduce lighting; darken.
Industrial
A production system which requires a total environmental and
social overhaul. Starting with defining the need for goods,
the geographical relation between places of production and use,
and reducing the mobility of goods.
Industry is a production method that we do not have to give
up, provided that its purposes are transferred from economic
targets to social and environmental ends.
Industrialisation
The objective of industrialisation is not to produce goods,
but to generate profit: the goods are in excess; production
processes are polluting and socially fragmented; the quality
of products is lowered; their predefined duration is limited.
Industrialisation is the founding principle of the global market,
and produces waste which is described as “goods”.
The industrialisation of society has led to people organising
life according to the criteria of industry, dividing it into
stages and fragmenting individual contributions. This means
a lack of awareness of the end product, with sector-specific,
self-referential quality controls.
Let’s de-industrialise our minds and use those industrial
products which serve and safeguard the environmental and social
qualities we want, without being enslaved to the industrial
culture.
Infrastructures
If we want to increase the mobility of goods and people, with
the emphasis on private travel, there’s no doubt that
infrastructures are required.
There is no set limit to satisfaction, neither with regard to
the duration of journeys nor the amount of trips made. It is
therefore evident that infrastructures will never suffice if
we continue to pursue this model.
The constant growth of infrastructures will go hand-in-hand
with ever-growing dependency on them. For example, building
more roads will make it easier for the carriers using them.
This will then lead to a constant growth in road travel (private
or goods), in emissions, in energy consumption, in changes to
the environment and damage to citizens’ health. It will
encourage the fragmentation of settlements and the concentration
of production, both of which are made easier by the ease of
transporting people and goods.
The current excessive mobility is caused by two things: the
land and property market (which force people on lower incomes
to move away from the cities), and the movement of goods (which,
as production is concentrated, requires products to be taken
to places in which concentrated production has caused local
producers to shut down).
Opposing certain types of infrastructure (particularly roads
and airports, as well as high-speed railways) means opposing
the economic, productive and housing model, limiting its development.
Innovation/the
new
“The new” has taken on a totally positive value.
In product marketing terms, it corresponds to a favourable judgement,
quite apart from the actual quality of the product. This positive
consideration of newness is applied indistinctly to all the
actions and products of contemporary society, so much so that
innovation has become one of the main topics of interest.
Useful innovation is innovation which improves the environmental
and social quality of actions, processes and products. It should
enhance not the effects of the individual action, but all actions
as a whole.
The theme of innovation should be considered from a critical
viewpoint. This way we can assess the true advantages brought
by an innovation, without getting carried away by novelty as
an end in itself. We should be well aware that behind this induced
enthusiasm hide the problems that innovation itself can bring.
Slowness
Doing less and slowing down can help us become more aware of
what it is we are doing.
In all likelihood, it increases the possibility of shared decision-making
processes. It definitely reduces the consumption of resources
and the amount of emissions.
Luxury
The consumer society already encourages people to buy useless
items, of which the negative environmental effects are worsened
by the fact that they are unnecessary.
Luxury is a deterioration of this already unbearable condition.
Luxury is vulgar. Because it is pointless. Luxury is vulgar
as it brings about environmentally negative effects which degrade
ecosystems and weigh heavily on the health of the people. Luxury
is vulgar because it demonstrates, shamefully for those who
take part in it, how the market is able to make a profit from
anything: if rich people did not have luxury, how would they
manage to spend their money?
Market
The market of small-scale producers, craftspeople, local technical
skills.
The low cost of industrialised products can have a very high
price in social and environmental terms.
The market weighs up how much people can spend from the moment
they are born. It creates products that are able to take everything
people possess, giving them goods, which may be indispensable,
necessary, useless, oversized or superfluous.
Global companies have understood that perhaps they will never
manage to sell a car or a domestic appliance to everyone on
the planet. They therefore work to sell raw materials (water,
grain, etc.), thus extending the market of products and of industrialised,
monopolistic processes to the poor too.
Try to remain outside the market, as far as possible.
Mobility
This is one of the sectors which contributes most to climate
change and conditions the health of citizens.
Mobility, presented as a crucial element of individual freedom,
is in fact the greatest limit to that freedom.
The growth of mobility leads to low-density settlements being
built. It also leads to an increase in the distance between
the places where people live, work, socialise and go on holiday.
Freedom becomes a duty: it is not possible to use services without
travelling from one place to another. Mobility is an obligation.
Start travelling less when you can choose (holidays), travelling
rarely for work (reducing trips by combining work commitments),
finding housing solutions that are connected to the places in
which you work and socialise.
The Disposable
This is one of the greatest aberrations of contemporary life,
unjustified, and incomprehensible. What advantage does a disposable
product give us as individuals? Not having to wash dishes or
napkins? What about razors or lighters? Does it make the activity
any simpler? How hard is it to refill a lighter? What’s
so difficult about going to the market with your own canvas
bag?
It is precisely this striving after disaffection with the object
and diminishment of its specific identity which underlies the
consumer society. All objects must be equivalent to each other
so that they can be thrown away and bought again, sometimes
exactly the same, so as to boost the market.
The vast environmental and economic cost of disposing of these
materials does not justify the very slight advantages they offer.
Do not use disposable products.
Standards
Standards do not always help reduce people’s environmental
impact. Indeed, as they are often motivated by production theories,
they recommend behaviour that is totally opposed to environmental
quality objectives.
Attempts have been made to reduce packaging for several years
now. However, strict standards exist which mean that the sugar
at the café comes in a packet, sandwiches wrapped in
plastic, supermarket products are over-packaged. And on the
same theme, a European standard was nearly passed requiring
water glasses to be replaced with a single-use package.
Standards help the spread of disposable products, without charging
them with the social and environmental costs of disposal. Standards
facilitate industrialisation by defining procedures for controlling
the quality and type of product; such standards would be impossible
for craftspeople to adhere to. Standards define financing for
atypical crop-growing, for aeroplane fuel concessions, for private
transport subsidies, for lifting systems and so on.
In the market society, standards are not decided by citizens
or by their representatives. They are drawn up by the major
interests, whose requests are less and less attenuated by the
conciliatory attitude brought about by market expansion twenty
years ago (Eastern Europe, liberalisation, privatisation of
energy and water, etc).
Examine standards with critical attention.
GMOs
GMOs were created with the justification of providing an answer
to food emergencies. In actual fact they answer the manufacturers’
need to increase productivity per hectare, and penetrate the
grain market, which is currently managed directly by farmers
for the most part.
It is well known that an increase in productivity per hectare
does not improve the food conditions of the whole planet. As
has already been proven by the constant increases in productivity,
from the post-war period to the last decade, the food problem
is connected to other things: the distribution of products (many
countries produce excess amounts which they throw away), competition
(many countries regulate the price of food and agricultural
resources with their producers),and the social structure with
regard to land use and hence local productivity (large urban
settlements make populations dependent when it comes to food).
GMOs are not useful. They can be harmful to the environment
and are damaging to local communities and natural biodiversity.
Plastic
No material can be demonized, but there are some materials which
are used dangerously, from a social and environmental perspective.
Plastic is one of these.
Plastic is derived from oil. Oil is undoubtedly the resource
the control of which has led to the greatest number of armed
conflicts in recent decades. It is a disappearing resource which
is extremely polluting. It is therefore a very negative resource,
environmentally and socially speaking.
Plastic is used very widely due to features which make it simple
to produce and sell. Low production costs mean it can be made
for vast profits, while the production systems for plastic are
simple and accessible.
Plastic is abused: in construction, in décor, in objects
and tools. Plastic is everywhere in a vast number of different
compositions. It contains all kinds of additives, so many that
it is impossible to recognise the cocktail of substances it
contains. This leads to significant problems when it is used
(the release of toxic substances, the risk of dangerous emissions
when it is burnt or in other conditions) and disposed of.
Plastic also enables much of the disposable manufacturing which
exponentially increases the amount of waste, which is difficult
to recycle.
Reducing the use of plastic, as with any polluting material,
to specific, indispensable uses leads to our liberation from
a dependency, to an upturn in local technical solutions, and
the elimination of a large proportion of waste products.
Population
The number of people on Earth is growing constantly. Population
growth changes our relationship with resources. Even today,
in many areas of the world the number of inhabitants far exceeds
the potential of the places. The limits of food production of
cultivable land can already be seen.
Density is increasing, individual space is decreasing; natural
spaces become marginal waste areas, in terms of both quality
and quantity; behaviours are more and more regulated, production
is industrialised.
Widespread demagoguery encourages people to reproduce, without
reason, given the existing population levels. It also changes
the relationship between individual choices, pleasure, wellbeing
and collective awareness. There are certain sources which promote
the numerical increase of the species: the economic model, which
expands the market; religions, which increase their followers;
and nations, which become powerful with a large number of inhabitants.
Interests, dogmas and fears, but none of this is connected with
the individual and common good.
Quality/quantity
For years now, the idea of sustainability has been reduced to
simply increasing the efficiency of our actions. The reasoning
is that, if a car made nowadays pollutes significantly less
than a car from forty years ago, the conditions of the planet
are improving.
However, a car from forty years ago travelled far fewer kilometres
than today’s cars. It had a much longer lifespan (and
thus used up much of the energy stored in the process of making
it), and was part of a much tinier pool of cars than exists
nowadays.
Improving the quality of goods is a condition which is necessary,
but not sufficient to solve our problems. We also need to combine
it with a significant reduction in quantity.
Research
Most research is carried out by private bodies which have a
specific interest in finding new merchandise. From medicine
to military equipment (some of the sectors which spend most
on research), to cosmetics, transport, chemicals and construction,
organisations with the most funds available invest them, without
answering clear needs, but instead responding to the specific
interests of the financier.
The results of the research do not provide answers to the population’s
needs. Instead, the results are oriented towards the maximum
market obtainable by the party promoting the research. This
is partly due to the fact that research is carried out according
to the same economic criteria which regulate the current model
and which define all of its limits.
This research is socially and environmentally useful to a very
small extent. If research is aimed at solving problems, it cannot
ignore the fact that the solutions to many problems lie in changing
social systems, rather than inventing new products. Ideally
research is connected to society and looks after its interests.
It should focus not only on its specific theme, but on the interaction
between that theme and the ways in which society itself works.
Resources
Although the term “resources” indicates a vision
of the environment which is aimed at transforming it or using
it, because the term regards the environment from a utilitarian
point of view for the human race, it is possible to use resources
in a way that does not compromise and degrade the environment.
The contemporary model uses resources for as long as they produce
economic advantage. In other words, much farther beyond the
limit of use needed to maintain the potential of the resources
themselves.
This situation is helped by the fact that local communities
have no control over their own land and resources, or over the
business-oriented management of them.
Managing resources in today’s world is a very delicate
matter. They are diminishing constantly, in a state of flux,
and insufficient to guarantee the consumption of the affluent
and the survival of a world population that is growing relentlessly.
Putting local communities directly in touch with resources,
initiating a collective management of them, defining consumption
in relation to availability: these would be ways of maintaining
cultural and environmental diversity, as well as of allowing
resources to be used according to availability.
Financial
savings
Accumulated money has a lower environmental impact than the
impact of accumulated goods. Before the consumer society, the
economy was based on savings. Contemporary society, however,
is based on channelling all of an individual’s means into
purchasing goods, even at the cost of future debt, and even
when the goods are not necessary.
On one hand, goods are a tool for using up wealth, and on the
other, for accumulating it. Both uses are frighteningly extravagant
for the environment.
Reusing/
Salvaging
The current model has used commercial, technical and scientific
communication to give new objects a higher status than used
ones. This has allowed a market share to be maintained which
is pointless and over-inflated in relation to actual necessity.
Used objects and materials have been attributed a lower value,
as “second best”. They are soon considered obsolete
and tend to be turned into waste. This is an incredible loss
of wealth and energy. It also creates a problem – that
of waste disposal – which would otherwise be much more
limited.
Whether we’re talking about furnishings, apartments, clothing,
cars or tools, objects respond to an abstract image which is
stimulated by the market.
Reusing and salvaging means adapting a design to suit that which
already exists. It means building the future with the present,
with all the imprecision that this involves. But it also means
taking back possession of the design, without tying it purely
to the purchasing of goods.
Sectors
Learning, skills, the organisation of work; all of contemporary
culture is divided into sectors.
However, information, knowledge and the ability to act are not
connected. The environmental regeneration intervention needed
works across sectors. Often, it does not require detailed knowledge.
Instead, what’s needed is great awareness and the courage
to change behaviour and decisions, even through simple solutions.
Much of this informed, in-depth, detailed sector-based culture
is useless to the wellbeing of the community, as it does not
back up consistent action.
Vision and intervention in the environmental and social system
is cross-sector, and often does not require detailed scientific
knowledge.
Waste
disposal
The amount of waste to be disposed of should be minimal.
Objects should be used, salvaged, reused, salvaged and reused
again until they are recycled. The amount of objects should
be reduced to meet actual needs (and therefore considerably
less than half of current quantities). Only a small part of
them should be a waste product, and only that small part should
be disposed of.
Technical
solutions
Choose technical solutions which are directly manageable and
which can be repaired by local technicians. Avoid being forced
to go to the manufacturer for maintenance and repairs. Use solutions
which save energy and materials and do not guarantee efficient
functioning alone. Use instruments which do not substitute simple
human actions (squeezing a lemon, lifting a blind, switching
on a light).
Sustainability
Environmental changes have been widely acknowledged since the
early seventies at least. For at least twenty years, international,
E.U. and often national policies have indicated that they are
a priority issue. The term “sustainability” is constantly
used to support the idea of change. However, the state of the
environment has worsened exponentially.
Thus, the environmental and social problems of our planet do
not lead us to believe that the current model is able to solve
these problems.
Sustainable actions are ones which conserve and regenerate the
environment, reduce the squandering and use of resources, and
reduce waste products.
Anything else is simply justifying guilty consciences.
Specialisation
of regions
The various regions of the world are used to produce food. They
are managed by large, specialist food and agriculture production
and distribution companies. Prawns are farmed in one place,
maize in another.
Mono-crop farming enslaves local communities to a market that
they do not control. It limits their agricultural independence
and impoverishes them technically and culturally. It gives them
a reason to exist only as part of the global distribution process.
Refusing to specialise can safeguard the autonomy of local communities.
Multi-crop farming, the retaining of technical skills and different
crops not only help society, but also preserve biological diversity
and the quality of the environment.
Supermarkets
– Hypermarkets – Shopping Centres
These are the tool for selling useless things at low cost. In
some cases, the products are so shoddy (furniture, tools and
even food) that they should pay the customers for the cost of
disposing of the rubbish, rather than making them pay the price
of the goods.
The concentration of sales is linked to the concentration of
distribution and production. These are tools for focusing wealth
and increasing the power of individuals over the communities
in which their businesses are based.
This also breaks down the local social fabric. It makes it dependent
on the vast investments of traders.
True savings lie not in buying lots of shoddy products, but
in buying less, buying from people you know, from people who
have the technical knowledge to produce those goods; people
who work nearby.
Development
The only development possible is cultural. It is not connected
to quantity or to commodities.
Technology
Technology is the chosen means of solving environmental problems.
Almost like a deus ex machina, the world awaits the new device,
the new material, the new fuel that will change our lives and
return the planet to a good condition.
This expectation is supported by those who want to leave the
current global model unchanged: let people continue consuming
in the same way; let manufacturers become more concentrated;
let cities grow; let communities’ social and cultural
independence wane. The underlying axiom is that this model is
imperfect (and, in bad faith, “all other options”
are described as imperfect too); but that technological innovation
will allow us to move forward, improving its performance.
This set-up is not just wrong. It is dangerous for the entire
human race. Technology can only help if it is used as part of
a profound reconsideration of behaviour: reduction of consumption,
environmental awareness in all activities, reduction of mobility
and of demographic growth.
If technology is not used with this framework in mind, it is
only destined to produce new goods for the very market which
has caused severe environmental and social changes to this planet
and its inhabitants.
Tourism
Environmentally and socially responsible tourism is that which
is carried out using low-impact means of transport, over a long
period, with short distances covered, without contributing to
the breakdown of local communities, without becoming the ambassadors
of a global culture by choosing standardised, universal services
and products.
Sustainable tourism consists of short distances travelled, long
periods spent in one place, preferably moving without the use
of an engine.
Urbanizations
Large settlements are dependent on outside regions, on manufacturers;
autonomous communities are not created within them. The inhabitants
are at the mercy of the large distribution companies; they do
not control the production systems or the origin of materials.
Metropolises are authoritarian settlement structures in which
the citizens are crushed and captive: they do not directly manage
production, nor food supplies, nor distribution, as they do
not have their own land available.
Large contemporary urban settlements embody the model of the
concentration of wealth and power, the model of the unequal
distribution of wellbeing, the dependency of settled communities
and the expropriation of the individual’s right to live
on the land.
Any action which tends to encourage the strengthening of such
settlements reduces the population’s chances of autonomy.
Limit settlements, connect them with places once again, to increase
their autonomy and identifiability.
Free
use
This was an experiment carried out in the 1970s whereby individuals
made various goods or services available free, from everyday
objects to a certain amount of their own work to meet the needs
of others.
It is a way of redistributing excess, without profit; of strengthening
social relations; of recuperating energy used, without charity
or financial profit.
Speed
Quality is often measured by the speed with which activities
are carried out; by the rapidity with which a practice is defined,
or with which houses are built, journeys are made, services
are acquired.
Speed of activities means that they are carried out in less
time, so profits rise (by making more things, more of them can
be sold), and production costs are reduced (margins increase
on each unit manufactured).
The time which is freed up in this way is occupied by other
activities. The end result is that the amount of energy (human
and otherwise) used increases exponentially. Emissions increase,
as do the materials used. This has unsustainable negative effects
on the environment and on societies.
Allocate the right amount of time to activities, starting from
daily activities, so as to rediscover the awareness and pleasure
of them, and avoid being swallowed up by the constant quest
for action.
Conclusions
For some time now, the world has been aware of how individual
behaviour can improve the state of the environment. Shopping
for goods of a better ecological quality, reducing energy consumption
by carefully managing systems and domestic appliances, reducing
emissions by using alternative and innovative vehicles and replacing
fossil fuels with energy from renewable sources in private homes
and businesses.
However, many people’s commitment to environmentally and
socially commendable behaviour is undermined by the cheapness
of goods of a lower environmental quality (lower quality goods
which often come from stigmatized processes), and by the promotion
of highly polluting goods.
How many incandescent light bulbs do we have to change to make
up the difference in energy between building and using a low-powered
car and an SUV? How many Euro classes (we’re now at Euro
4) do we have to get through to make up for the average increase
in horsepower that manufacturers have made in the last two decades?
Does the (debatable) difference in quality between coffee from
a normal coffee machine and a professional-style “pod”
coffee machine justify the squandering of energy needed to make
and manage the two pieces of equipment, and the inevitable increase
in waste of the pod system (even if they really are “recyclable”,
“biodegradable”, “eco-compatible”, “natural”
and so on)?
These products do not have the purposes of reducing our species’
environmental impact. They operate separately from the interests
of humanity, according to their own rules and criteria: they
increase profits for manufacturers, expand the market, invent
goods aimed at specific categories of consumers.
Manufacturers have a vested interest in creating large objects.
Through them they can manage to justify high costs in relation
to function, and objects which complicate function, because
they maintain that they are useful. These large, complex, short-lived
objects are pushed by manufacturers more than other products
(which have the same function but are simple and of normal size).
They base all their communication around them, and support sales
using emotional motivations.
The world population is subjected to a constant bombardment
of appealing, enticing advertisements which offer attractive
solutions to non-existent problems. They are designed by specialists,
made by skilled engineers, and can channel people’s desires
towards a certain area of the market, thereby fulfilling those
desires.
Individuals are overcome by this glut of pleasure. Most people
respond by spending more than they have, working all hours to
be able to obtain the satisfaction of buying products. It’s
a fact that most shopping centres are full to bursting on Saturdays
and Sundays, days on which shopping has replaced other forms
of leisure for most people in the world who are not poor.
Ecological behaviour is therefore very difficult as it is hard
to practice within a model which encourages the opposite. It
is hard to find low-impact goods, to contact and deal with craftspeople
and self-producers; to involve others in this choice; to bridge
the vast gap separating these behaviours from more widespread
habits.
Manufacturing floods the market with products that render our
existence more and more artificial. Products which concentrate
profit, support monopolies, rob communities of their culture,
define and impose new lifestyles. Business motives have structured
society. They have defined a new way of living and have changed
relationships and behaviour before the eyes of all governments,
wasting a vast creative and cultural heritage.
So it becomes a struggle to avoid the free supplements with
the newspapers (with as much advertising, which is the real
reason for printing the publication, as there is paper). It’s
a struggle not to buy the plastic-wrapped twin-pack at the supermarket.
Carrying your shopping in a reusable bag or driving an old car
are political choices.
Not using a credit card is seen as a rather “third-world”
choice. But we already pay for a piece of paper called money,
so why pay for a piece of plastic too? Ecological behaviour
becomes “anachronistic”, traditionalist, something
for those who pine for “a past that will never return”.
It’s not like that. People who think from an environmental
perspective think neither in the past nor in the future, but
in the present. And they think about the potential of communities
and of individuals to choose, independently of commercial pressures.
The individual’s consistency is crucial in all this. Without
being cloaked in “heroism” or “fundamentalism”,
it is the only way to defend ourselves from a self-serving antagonism
which undermines our critical capacity. Consistency is contagious.
However, in addition to individual choices, what is needed is
a strategy to unmask the misdeeds and praise the laudable actions
of others. Many people, due to lack of self-criticism or out
of self-interest, pursue goals that are harmful to everyone.
This strategy could begin by drawing attention to the sometimes
involuntary collusion of those who behave in ways that support
a model which is harmful to most of the human race and is unable
to improve the state of the environment. It could extend as
far as the choices made by nations, which are so often aimed
at supporting economic interests, even at the expense of common
interests.
Calmly, without resentment, but with an awareness that there
is space to build on a critical, libertarian impulse which is
already widespread in the world.
Sustainable actions can be identified by checking whether they
are at least capable of:
- Reducing consumption;
- Reducing demographic growth;
- Reducing land use deriving from infrastructures and urban
expansion;
- Regenerating and conserving nature;
- Maintaining natural and cultural diversity;
- Salvaging, reusing and recycling goods and objects;
- Supporting all forms of production and exchange that lie outside
the global market;
- Supporting global deindustrialisation, giving space to handicrafts,
small businesses and local production;
- Supporting the settlement-resources balance at local level,
closing cycles and striving after the economic independence
of communities;
- Supporting the identity of geographical and a-geographical
communities, local cultures, languages and technical skills.
Not traditionalism, but open communities which have a strong
identity, as they are closely related to places;
- Supporting alternative mobility and energy production methods
which are non-centralised, non-monopolistic, non-oversized,
but necessary and from renewable sources.
Anything which is unable to contribute to the above cannot be
considered sustainable.
However, these actions are incompatible with the current economic
and social structure. This is because they reduce quantities,
change qualities, distribute wealth, dematerialise assets; they
make individuals participants in the social dynamics concerning
them, they turn a critical attitude into concrete actions, they
develop the awareness of each of us and solidarity between individuals
and encourage direct participation in managing society.
Yet they are perfectly in line with the characteristics of a
libertarian society.
Adriano Paolella
Zelinda Carloni
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