In 1972, the Stopping Growth Report of the Club of Rome appeared. At the same time, the architect Buckminster Fuller warned us in his book that politics would prevent us from achieving it by saying that we could make the earth a paradise … if it were possible to send politicians to the moon.
Ironically, the G20 met on the way to the climate conference in Rome to talk about economic recovery. When too many resources are already in use, governments subsidize the recovery by calling it green instead of reducing growth. They have ignored Rome, Bruntland, Rio, Tokyo, Paris and will not be able to respect Glasgow without outgrowth, which is not on the program of any party.
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The politicians themselves responsible for the worst waste are doing everything they can to accelerate the exploitation and help their corporations and citizens empty their land and planet of its resources.
Worse, exploitation methods are often subsidized that reduce productivity by depleting the soil’s fundamentals and biodiversity: open cuts and plantations, above-ground breeding and monoculture, industrial fishing and trawlers. etc
The erosion caused by deforestation and monoculture has been known for thousands of years, which does not prevent countries from subsidizing biofuels and bio-energy and thus granting themselves carbon credits. Forests in America are being converted into pellets to produce green electricity in Europe and China.
And we defend these methods. Canada, which cuts 800,000 hectares of forest a year and half of it is reforested in monoculture, calls itself a model forest. Since mechanization in 1970, Quebec no longer applies its regulations prohibiting any cutting without the protection of the land and revitalization from 12 cm to 40 cm.
The sages of the Club of Rome commanded us to limit exploitation to essential needs. In 1972, the majority of people still lived on farms where they were best able to achieve sustainable development by providing for their own needs. Since then, however, politics has favored urbanization by replacing, willingly or by force, smallholder farmers, foresters, and fishermen with large private or public farms.
Why do we draw attention to global warming which is only one symptom of the real problem which is the pursuit of eternal growth. This can only be done at the expense of the environment according to W. Rees, designer of the Ecological Footprint, who can help us distinguish right from wrong.
Instead of agreeing between countries to make trade more logical and avoid unnecessary transportation, we compete with each other through fiscal, financial, technical subsidies, production, transportation, consumption, and so on. So much so that we no longer have any idea of the real cost of a product or service. According to three UN agencies, 90% of agricultural subsidies are harmful to the environment.
In fact, the biggest environmental problem is the way politics works that prevents the application of solutions to problems that have been known for a long time. If we want to bring the exploitation of the planet back to what it can provide, we must prevent political circles from wasting, subsidizing and defending the waste of resources and unsustainable methods of exploitation.
Dominique Bhérer mv Maniwaki
