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60 | THe Puttosopny or Eco-Pouirics
extinction of species; however, the number of members in almost all
animal and plant populations has shrunk to a fraction to what they were
previously. And we are beginning to suspect how much poorer our life
has become without them.
3. The failure of left-wing or critical social theory is that it did not
recognise that the crisis of our civilisation — which is usually called an
environmental crisis based on its symptoms, as if the crisis were affecting
the “environment” and not ourselves — is not due to the unequal
distribution of goods and therefore cannot be resolved with the change
of the bases of distribution. Neither within the framework of the current
global order, nor according to the more radical program of the left-wing
critics of the system. It is not as though the existence of political
suppression, technological vulnerability and indefensible differences in
wealth were not unbearable or unjust. I claim, however, that the
ecological catastrophe which is destroying our world, impoverishing
those of us alive today and destining our descendants to misery is not
due to that in which the political players disagree. It is not the unfair
distribution of goods and rights between rich and poor, masters and
servants (let us dare to use this old-fashioned expression, since we are
in fact servants), but rather to that in which they agree. ‘This something
is the Great Narrative that truly legitimates the operation of the modern
industrial societies and conditions of power. It has linked the
improvement of humanity with the defeat of nature and has measured
the success of scientific-technological progress by the increase of the
mass of produced and consumed goods (i.e., resources transformed into
waste). This is what the majority of Marxists, social democrats, liberals
and conservatives have hitherto agreed upon. Whether they entrust the
market or the state with the distribution of the means, i.e., the evaluation
of social performances and whether they see private property as theft
or the basis of ethics, their practical goal is the same: the satisfaction of
“needs” with the multiplication of produced material goods and services.
Those who even care about such things call this wellbeing and view it
as the condition and goal of existence alike of free society. Now it is this
narrative that has become invalid by today. For if anyone still seriously
thinks that the blessings of consumerist wellbeing should be distributed
more equally among Earth’s inhabitants, must also wish that the 85%
of humanity currently controlling only 20% of the available resources,
raise its consumption to the level enjoyed by the 15% who control 80%
of the resources. How many planets’ worth of resources would be