Iumanity faces a double existential threat: climate change and the destruction of ecosystems. In our globalized societies, all our actions and all our choices will have an impact whose effects we will suffer. We must deploy our current knowledge and skills to preserve the habitability of the Earth, while taking into account the complexity of the issues.
The debate around pension reform overshadows a major problem: Social Security is threatened, not by the destruction of public services, but by its dependence on an economic model that is absolutely doomed to disappear.
“End of the month, end of the world, same fight! », we have been hearing since 2018. Despite this, we are missing the problem that no political party admits: the sustainable conditions for the survival of our societies impose a massive and drastic reduction in material and energy production. This is a taboo because it induces a generalized although differentiated impoverishment. This comes in fundamental opposition to the growth of gross domestic product (GDP) alone, as well as to the illusion that future generations will live like us.
A genuine democratic process
There is also an imperative of social justice. This does not mean that each individual must accept becoming poorer, owning less or using fewer services. Each individual must be able to guarantee his or her means of subsistence. It is up to society as a whole to establish the conditions.
An authentic democratic process will make it possible to decide – in the name of what makes people, in a fair articulation between the different scales, from the local to the global – the organization of the decline of the thermo-industrial society and the development of the territories. . This will constitute our commons to be preserved, even restored. Rethinking the paradigm of value will contribute to the emergence of new forms of wealth.
Wealth is therefore thought beyond possession. This would be more evident by dispelling the fictitious separation between human beings and nature. These riches can be cultural, symbolic and immaterial. We are referring here to freed up time, to a reorganization of work favoring self-esteem, to affective ties, to full health: to heal.
In contrast, there is a materiality that holds an important place in our lives today. This material accumulation has proven itself as a power and a guarantee of existence such as housing, drinking water, food. To forget or deny it is to minimize the ecological problem.
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