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The Manifesto "Last Call"

This is more than an economic and political crisis: it’s a crisis of civilization

Among European citizens, it is not uncomm to believe that our present consumerism society can (and must) “progress” into the future. Meanwhile, a the majority of the inhabitants of the planet just dream in achieving our same level of material comfort. However, our level of production and consumption has been achieved at the cost of exhausting natural (including energy) resources and by disrupting the equilibrium of Earth’s ecosystems.

But these are old news. The most lucid researchers and scientists have warned, since the 1970′s, thatif humans were to maintainthe current trends of growth (economic, demographic, resource use, pollution and increase in inequality), the most probably outcome during the 21st century is the collapse of civilization.

Today there is a growing evidence in the news indicating how the path of unlimited growth is similar to a slow motion genocide. The end of cheap energy, the catastrophic scenarios of climate change, and the geopolitical conflicts over the natural resources illustrate that the years of the apparently unlimited progress are forever gone.

To cope with this challenge, the flimsy mantra of sustainable development is not enough; nor are betting on eco-efficient technologies; nor a supposed transition to any “green economy”. Indeed, all these versions of friendly development hide plans for the general commodification of natural resources and ecosystemic services. Technological solutions, supposedly adressing the so many environmental crises, or the decline in energy production, are insufficient. In addition, the ecological crisis is not an incidental problem, but an essential one affecting many societal issues: food, transportation, industry, urbanization, military conflicts… In fact, it concerns the base of our economy and our lives.

We are trapped in the perverse dynamics of a civilization that does not work if it does not grow, even if growth destroys the resources that maintains the civilization. Our culture, completely addicted to technological and market solutions, has forgotten that, in fact, we are, at our roots, part of an interdependent ecosystem.

Our production- and consumption- oriented society cannot be sustained by the planet. We need to construct a new civilization able of securing the dignity of a huge, and constantly growing, human population (today more than 7.2 billion) in a world of diminishing resources. This would be possible only after radical changes in our lifestyle, production forms, urban design, and organization of territories. We need a society that focuses to recover the equilibrium with the biosphere by using research, technology, culture, economy, and politics to advance towards this end. However, to do this we will need all the political imagination, moral generosity, and technical creativity we are able to deploy.

Such Great Transformation would have to confront two obstacles: the inertia of capitalist lifestyle and the interests of privileged groups. However, to avoid the chaos and barbarity that that would ensue if we were to maintain our current trends, we need both a political rupture of the current stablished polytical system, and the stablishment of an economy whose goals are the satisfaction of social needs within the limits imposed by the biosphere and not the accumulation of private profit.

Fortunately, more and more people are resisting the attempts of elites to make them pay for the consequences of the crisis. Today, in Spain, the awakening of dignity and democracy emerged from the 15M movement (during the spring of 2011) is creating a constituent process that opens possibilities for other forms of social organization.

However, it is fundamental that the various social alternative projects become fully aware of the implications of the limits to growth. This is the only way they would be able to design sound proposals for durable social change. The economic and political crises would only be overcome at the same time as the ecological crisis is. In this sense, old Keynesian policies are far from being enough. Those policies led us, in the decades following the Second World War, to a cycle of expansion that have brought us to the brink of exceeding the planet’s limits. At this point, any new cycle of expansion is unfeasible: there is no material basis, ecological space, or natural resources to sustain it.

The 21st Century will be decisive in the history of humankind. It will be a great test for cultures, societies, and even for the species as a whole. It will be a test that will decide our continuity on the Earth and the appropriateness of qualifying the future social organization as “humane”. We face a transformation akin to major historical events such as the neolithic revolution and the industrial revolution.

But just beware: The window of opportunity is closing. Certainly there are many social movements around the world pursuing environmental justice (the organization Global Witness has registered almost a thousand environmentalists murdered during the past decade, killings during demonstrations against mining or oil projects, or against people defending their land and water). But we have at most five years to settle a broad debate about the limits of growth, and to construct democratic ecological and energy alternatives that are both rigorous and feasible solutions. We should be able to convince large majorities willing to promote a change in economic, energetic, social, and cultural models. It is not only about fighting against theinjustices resulting from the exercise of domination and the accumulation of wealth; we are speaking about defining a new model of society that acknowledges reality, makes peace with nature, and makes possible the good life within the ecological limits of the earth.

One civilization is ending and we must build a new one. Doing nothing, or too little, will lead us directly to the social, economic, and ecological collapse. But if we start today, we can still become the protagonists of a society that is unite, democratic, and in peace with the planet.

Written at many locations aroundthe Iberian Peninsula, Balearic and Canary Islands, during the summer of 2014.

Translation by Popular Resistance & Joaquim Ballabrera

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