2024-04-06 19:38:00
Today, in the age of the climate crisis, we talk very often about the limits of the planet and the need to live within them in order not to be destroyed. But, on the other hand, there are reports of a possible regression if we surrender to these limits – with an extreme argument that of returning to the age of caves. No organized society functions without rules, institutions, limitations, but in the culture of perpetual growth, limits are experienced more as an exogenous compulsion, as something limiting, which does not go hand in hand with freedom. And yet no, says the ecological economist and political ecologist George Kallis, “without limit there is no freedom”. And he uses the example of “a piano with endless keys. What music to play there, you don’t know where to start and where to end. On the 88 keys of the piano, however, you can play unlimited, beautiful music. Imagine a supermarket, which gives you thousands of different options for every product you would like to buy. You will be paralyzed. Only within a limit can you have real freedom of choice. This fundamental wisdom is anathema to capitalism, for which money must continually bring more money, without limit, without end. And to the extent that for this system to reproduce it requires the participation of all of us, we are all trained to see the limit as something negative.”
Professor at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, with previous research work in the “Energy and Resources” group of the University of Berkeley, author of dozens of articles and a series of books on Dedevelopment, and recently the book “The freedom of borders. From ancient Greece to the age of climate change” published by the University Press of Crete, George Kallis gives another interpretation to the concept of progress. “Progress means stepping on the brakes, rediscovering the strength but also the art of setting limits and living beautifully within them, everyone, not just the few. What counts as progress today, the geometric increase in production and consumption, is destructive and leads us to an unlivable future. The fact that we called it “progress” will seem very strange to our descendants, if they ever stumble upon the ruins of our civilization.”
We remain unconsciously trapped in an economic culture, says Mr. Kallis, according to which the world is too small to contain our dreams. Somehow a late 18th century narrative still survives, that of Malthus, that environmental limits limit progress, condemning a portion of the population to poverty. “Malthus was the first economist and clergyman, and he created a scheme that remains at the heart of the science of economics to this day, but also, unfortunately, of the way many ecologists think. According to this, people’s desires are unlimited and the environment is inherently limited in satisfying them. However, the planet, as the ancients and other philosophies of the East and West taught us, is only limited if we succumb to the infamy of limitless desire. If we seek and find the limits of exactly what we desire, then the planet is limitless, like the 88 keys of the piano on which we can play unlimited music.”
– What exactly did the ancient Greeks teach us?
– Aristotle had said that the only thing in nature that knows no limit is money and that is why its power is destructive. Epicurus had taught the beauty of frugal living, friendship, a good meal and a good conversation, that is where the meaning lies and not in the endless accumulation of money and power that leave you empty and ugly inside at the end of your life. More generally, the ancients, both through their philosophy and through tragedy, had constructed a culture that raised the bar against the danger of hubris, a danger they saw in the discovery of money, which had only brought disasters, such as the civil war in Athens between the few who have and the many who owe. Solon’s founding of the Athenian Republic was precisely an imposition of measure and limit, with the laws of the city aided by thought and art.
– What has led us to growth without limits, on the path to environmental destruction?
– The industrial revolution and the capitalist system in general, which has an inherent dynamic that seeks the multiplication of money. By this I do not mean to deny the good that this revolution brought and the improvements that some parts of the planet experienced for certain periods, such as Europe after the wars or a country like South Korea more recently. The point is that without boundary culture and institutions, this improvement is short-lived.
– Political ecologist, what separates you from an ecologist? What is the ecological economy?
– I understand ecology as a fundamentally political issue, in the broadest sense of the term, as the stakes of different ideas about how we want to live and the conflicts that arise from these differences. Let’s take a forest. We can manage it as a natural park or logging resource, see it as an obstacle to building, consider it compatible with grazing or agriculture, or choose it as a landscape for expensive villas – these are all social and political choices, not it is a matter of physical science which can be solved by an ecologist who studies only the trees and not the political nature of our conflicts. In ecological economics, the economy is approached as an ecosystem of natural resource and energy flows, from which goods, services and waste are produced. It is a very different view from the mainstream view of the economy as a flow of money – investment, profits and wages, budgets and loans. Money is an epiphenomenon; the real economy is the energy and materials with which we live.
What today counts as progress, the geometric increase in production and consumption, is destructive and leads us to an unlivable future.
– Do you see signs of retreat from the uncontrolled growth model?
– No. I can only see that the model is reaching its limits, and this unfortunately leads to an intensification of the pursuit of its goals. It’s like driving into a cliff, the car kicking and you hitting the accelerator furiously.
– Are we at a point of no return with respect to climate change?
– We are close to 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming and this has no return for many generations. Soon we will move to 2 and then to 3 degrees. None of these points will be refunded. And from 3 onwards I think it will be difficult to have human civilization as we understand it today. If what we saw last year in Thessaly happened with less than 1.5 degrees of warming, I don’t want, nor can I imagine what will happen in 2 and 3.
– Is technological development a weapon against climate change?
– It is a weapon, but not a panacea, not a magic solution.
– Is democracy at risk from imposing sweeping limits against climate change?
– At present democracy is endangered by those who accept no limits, and are ready to suppress all liberties under the illusion that in this way they will maintain the status quo. See, for example, the criminalization of the environmental movement, which is promoted by shadow networks that pressure governments to treat environmentalists as terrorists. For a small protest, because you blocked a street or threw paint on a step, you risk spending years in prison and financially ruined by lawsuits. In secondary time, democracy is threatened by climate catastrophe. When the elites see that there is no other alternative, then they will impose limits. But those that benefit them to maintain their privileges, while the rest of us will live in absolute limitation.
– What makes us Greeks, as well as the other Mediterranean peoples, special in the possibility of survival?
– To the extent that we have historical memory, we know that we can live, and live well, with little. A little sun, a little sea and a good company are enough. Things that we are now selling off for the sake of resort and prosperous tourist development. I hope that at some point we will wake up and rediscover something of Greek wisdom and greatness. I think the West needs it too. We can teach them what it means to live a beautiful and happy life, in moderation.
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