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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
