No Time to Waste E-Book

Guibert del Marmol

• Herausgeber: Ker
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 207

Beschreibung

When we open our eyes to the world, only one conclusion can be drawn: we are threatened on every side by an apocalypse.

But this is an apocalypse in the primary sense of the word: a revelation. What our multiple crises reveal to us is that another world, a different world, is possible.
We are at the threshold of a new and crucial Renaissance. All over the world, citizens, businesses and local leaders are initiating a multitude of silent, discreet revolutions. What's at stake? A planet that is fairer, enduring, and inventive.
No Time to Waste proposes a new vision of humanity founded on respect, ecosystems and human dignity. In three sections devoted to food and energy self-sufficiency, the emergence of a regenerative economy and the need for education oriented toward creativity, Guibert del Marmol's work discusses technologies for the future and offers concrete solutions for getting us there. But beyond these, he warns, there has to be a leap in consciousness, both individual and collective. It is possible to combine science and conscience, offering a confident and bright future to generations to come. We have the means to do, but...there is No Time to Waste!

A compelling book about today's society and what we must do to move in the right direction

EXCERPT

Camus put it very nicely: our only choice today is to be a laughing pessimist or a crying optimist. The optimist thinks that everything is all right. In French director Mathieu Kassovitz’ “La Haine”, a man falls from the fifteenth floor of a building all the time reassuring himself: “So far so good”.
Our world is falling. It falls from a building that it built, when it hoped to strike a deal, after leaping into the void, that he had imagined filled with potential… And although the landing matters more than the void, there’s little point in relying on a golden parachute.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Guibert del Marmol is an economist by training and has been a director of several international companies. Today, he is an advisor, author, lecturer, and specialist in the field of the regenerative economy. He also trains leaders in the art and pratice of inspired and inspiring leadership, which combines ancient wisdom and modern technology.

Leseprobe

To our children, who will take part to the construction of a new world.

To all the “cracked minds” not afraid to work for a new humanity and within whom the light of a better world shines.

Introduction

Camusput it very nicely: our only choice today is to be a laughing pessimist or a crying optimist. The optimist thinks that everything is all right. In French director Mathieu Kassovitz’ “La Haine”, a man falls from the fifteenth floor of a building all the time reassuring himself: “So far so good”.

Our world is falling. It falls from a building that it built, when it hoped to strike a deal, after leaping into the void, that he had imagined filled with potential… And although the landing matters more than the void, there’s little point in relying on a golden parachute.

I like Camus’ idea although I’m radically optimistic. I make the words of John F. Kennedy my own: “The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by sceptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.” On this roof, threatened by the fall, we must measure the extent of the challenges that we will face to get back down on foot and find ourselves back on solid ground. When times are bad, situations can sometimes feel hopeless. But since we have nothing more to lose – except necessities – we must be prepared to try everything. You only have to open a newspaper to appreciate the crisis we are living. Let’s not use the words: “the crisis that we are going through”, because we’re not going through anything. We are trapped. This crisis is polymorphic: financial, economic, climatic, demographic, moral… In the era of liberal globalisation, the crisis is also global. Can it be overcome? I’m not sure. Firstly because I’m not alone in making this point. This crisis triggered a consciousness that lives up to the danger that it imposes on mankind. Serious studies conducted by leading universities such as Stanford or the MIT forecast that, if nothing changes, the destruction, extinction of the human species in the medium term or disappearance of all life form on the planet will happen. Time has come for the apocalypses…

But the first sense of apocalypse is “revelation”. The word took its catastrophic connotation from St John’s “revelation”, in which the apostle predicts the end of the world and the coming of the Reign of God. But there’s nothing preventing us from reviving this positive definition of apocalypse. On this basis we are simultaneously on the eve of renaissance or destruction. In many ways, our era is reminiscent of the Italian Trecento, magnificent moment of the Renaissance when mankind finds its place at the heart of all preoccupations and when the arts, sciences and humanist thought all blossom. Renaissance humanism results from several factors, two of which in particular: balance and the capacity to think outside the box – as they didn’t say in Florence. Balancing personal interest and collective necessity, ancient knowledge and technical achievements, science and morality. We hold all the ingredients to build a perennial, fairer world. A sustainable world instead of a harsh world, a shared world rather than a wasted world.

During a TED conference (one of today’s most active thinking arenas ) Al Gore said: “We are the generation about which, a thousand years from now, philharmonic orchestras and poets and singers will celebrate by saying, they were the ones that found it within themselves to solve this crisis and lay the basis for a bright and optimistic human future.” I can only stand by these words. But it requires gigantic efforts to rise up to the challenge that we face. We must radically change our approach. We must question what must be challenged and build bridges that seemed impossible or unthinkable only yesterday. We must put at work a thought articulated on a threefold alliance: offer sense to all humans; encourage resilience capacities; put the greater good at the heart of individual concerns. Choose cooperation over competition, mankind over nations, spirituality over religions.

We must not wait for a Saviour. Kafka wrote in his journal “The messiah will come only when he is no longer necessary; he will come only on the day after his arrival; he will come, not on the last day, but on the very last.” And we cannot let the last day come as long as we have the capacities to push back the deadline. We are the only possible saviour. We, together. Each one of us, individually, at their own level.

The solutions that we must invent and put to work must stem from a combination of expertises, individuals and populations. The majority must share a state of consciousness inclined to understand difficulties, their causes and the way forward. There is only one condition to this: give everyone the very essence of humanity, i.e. human dignity.

Dignity is not just a word. It rests on four imperatives: access to food, housing, health care and education. Any action undertaken to respond to the current world crisis must respond to these four needs.

In this way, it’s possible to envisage this daunting task as an unprecedented opportunity. The opportunity to change and reinvigorate our whole ecosystem: overturn our ways of producing and consuming, of designing our cities, establish trade ties, finance the economy, educate our children… In a word, achieve the most fundamental – but perhaps most difficult – revolution, whereby the powerful will be at the service, no longer in power.

Montesquieu evoked this revolution in L’Esprit des lois. According to him, virtue that institutes democracy must replace honour, which defined the aristocracy. Virtue also led to putting oneself at the service of society, not to use society to establish one’s authority. Responsibilities impose more obligations than rights; by essence, they are revocable and limited in space and time. The only power that must be considered is shared action. Not control or personal gain. This change is happening. On every continent, at every level of society and knowledge, individuals design solutions to face up to these mammoth challenges.

I’m not talking about alterglobalist activists or apostles of decline, and even less about the market or economic zealots supposed to solve everything and self-regulate. I’m talking about individuals, organisations and corporations that have become aware of the conditions required for a long-term success. They have chosen growth based on the creation of shared values between all the actors of society. We cannot succeed on our own in a sinking world.

I owe this book to these men and women. I observed them, met them, questioned them. And by their side, in their stride, I too wanted to offer solutions, hope, the beginning of an inspiring vision. The horizon? Another model of society. Nothing less. Utopia? It lies at the heart of action and in the daily lives of all these individuals that have chosen to take on the challenge.

“Another hero generation”, said Al Gore. A world dies, another tries to arise. I don’t have time for tears. An infant life threatened by a burdensome corpse demands all my energy. I hope to share it with you…

Fundamental autonomy

Introduction

Autonomy: the ability to act and make decisions without being controlled by anyone else. One’s own guidelines. Not relying on others for one’s survival, choices or ideas. But autonomy cannot be reduced to egotism, withdrawal, or selfishness. Hillel the Elder clearly differentiates both in his 2000 year-old lesson: “If I am not for myself who is for me? And being for my own self, what am I?” before adding a final question that clearly states the emergency of stake: “And if not now, when?”

Autonomy means looking out for oneself – “being for oneself” – whilst simultaneously looking out for others. Yet, the global model in which we live saw an increase in interdependent relationships, pure and simple dependencies to crucial issues including food and energy. Increasingly loud voices call for a return to a state of autarky. This was already Mussolini’s reaction following sanctions targeting Italy after colonisation campaigns. Autarky is nothing but withdrawal, retirement. Moreover, autarky is an illusion in a world where it is no longer possible or desirable for a region or country to isolate itself.

No. What needs to be put in place is a type of autonomy enabling the resilience of local infrastructure and organisations, without sacrificing their relation with the world. That connection is indispensable, if only to facilitate an exchange of ideas and knowledge. Populations must be capable of living in their areas without having to rely on an outside supply chain that they cannot control or that controls them. They must be the masters of their decisions and political choices, not have the latter imposed upon them by a distant power that eludes them.

Access to food and energy should never rely on a distant power: the situation of the Ukraine, a country that heavily relies on Russia for gas, is a prime example. Disproportionate dependency on other states for the supply of vital resources will lead populations bearing it to lose their independence, thus any possibility of growth, not to mention the development of democracy. The provision of supplies must be re-rooted at the heart of people and communities.

The aim consists in developing a glocal model, i.e. the combination of food and energy autonomy and openness to the world to foster indispensable intellectual efforts and the development of a collective consciousness.

Food autonomy

Food is the primary need for all humans. This might seem blatantly obvious to those of us who have only to enter the first shop we come across – which is never far away in the event that we do not do our grocery shopping online before having it delivered at home. Such ease also relies on unconcern or a lack of awareness: that which reveals our ultra­-dependence and the fragility of the underlying system and supposes sightlessness towards the daily preoccupation of most of the world’s population.

Guaranteeing permanent access to food demands a development of the populations’ food autonomy, thus self-determination. Without doubt, the western agricultural model has protected a large segment of the population from famine and other vulnerabilities… but at what cost? Moreover, this model can no longer ensure access to a healthy and environmentally friendly food supply for the billions of inhabitants on Earth. Our model starves more than a billion of the Earth’s people, destroys the soil and plunges millions of small farmers into poverty, not to mention the health scandals abounding in our “privileged” countries. Marc Dufumier concluded: “Today’s agriculture is out of control: hunger does not decrease whilst ecological and health threats increase.”

Yet, it is possible to feed humankind properly while simultaneously respecting the environment. This does not mean that we must promote negative growth but rather, that we should relocate a large quota of our production, give access to land to those wishing to live off the land, and redeploy diversified agriculture. To implement this genuinely sustainable approach, we must champion close collaboration between high-tech sciences and ancestral knowledge. In seeking to create value for everyone, we must also adopt a holistic approach that considers every link of the food chain, from soil to end consumer.

Background

We justifiably consider that the transition from “hunter­-gatherer” to “farmer-livestock breeder” marked the start of civilisation and culture. Human populations took root, becoming sedentary whilst towns grew along with the many ensuing social, technical, political and economic developments.

For millennia, agricultural methods only evolved on a small scale. Although progresses were made, agriculture remained completely dependent on climatic variations, ravages of war, diseases, epidemics or revolutions. Agriculture commands order and stability.

Two events revolutionized an activity that provided work for most of the population until the mid-19th century, even in Europe. These events acted in synergy for better or worse: first the industrial revolution during the second half of the 19th century, then the First World War. The latter not only set the world ablaze but also used technology, championing its development. The conflict became an industrial war through the scale of its weaponry and number of victims. Since most of the soldiers who died were farmers, war ravaged agriculture. In its aftermath, there was a dramatic shortage of farm-hand to restart farm work. Simultaneously, modern weaponry – particularly combat tanks – opened the path to the new motorised and mechanised tractors. Additionally, ammonia was manufactured on a massive scale to make bombs and would eventually be used to produce artificial fertilisers. Similarly, mustard gas would soon find another use in insecticides.

Modern cultivation results from wartime agriculture and proves offensive, aggressive and directed by the notion that the end justifies the means. Henceforth, science supposedly resolves all difficulties and can take up any challenge. Hunger would be a thing of the past, supplies would be guaranteed regardless of circumstances. After a dependency spanning thousands of years, man finally believes that he truly dominates the earth that feeds him.

The 1920s and 1930s mark the golden age of chemistry. Mass-produced mineral fertilisers replace organic fertilisers and are used indiscriminately on a massive scale to increase harvests. The same principle applies to insecticides: the obsession of the day focuses on a sufficient, constant agricultural production. The age-old approach focusing on a holistic vision of nature in harmony with the soil goes out the window. The labour force working the land for agricultural production considerably reduces.

The Second World War further reinforces the phenomenon of defining the economic parameters of the equation. The industry is in a position to provide increasingly powerful and efficient – albeit more costly – chemicals and machinery. Losses threaten the agricultural industry and agriculture becomes subsidised by a system based on the partial redistribution of taxes. Economic, technical and industrial growth boom during the “glorious thirty” (the years from 1945 to 1975), feeding the illusion that the economic model would be unsurpassed.

The public funding of agriculture through subsidies remains a widespread practice in the Western world. In Europe, the CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) has fostered and massively financed destructive agricultural practices. First in terms of ecology: the abuse of chemical fertilisers and pesticides has drained soils and threatens biodiversity. Secondly, in socioeconomic terms: astate of dependency where farmers find themselves in an intolerable spiral of debts and are forced to automate their production, entirely relying on an economic model based on the granting of subsidies.

Outcry from certain countries can be heard whenever a reform of the CAP appears on a negotiating table. Some states abuse such reforms scandalously because aid is calculated on the size of the farm and “historical” harvests. Amount varies with no ceiling. In 2012, ten thousand French farmers shared six billion euros, i.e. approximately € 600,000 per farm.

Since there is no ceiling, some farms under management of the largest French-owned agrofood companies or those controlled by the Queen of England – one of the UK’s principal landowners – can receive subsidies of several million euros each year. Up until 2013 and despite the number of reforms put in place to make the CAP fairer, 80% of subsidies lined the coffers of a mere 20% of producers. The new CAP, implemented in autumn 2013, slightly improved this system. It is greener and transfers more powers to Member States and farmers on the redistribution of subsidies.

Southern countries are the primary victims of the CAP as the latter encourages agricultural exports at artificially low prices, which triggers unfair competition for local productions that could not maintain a non-industrialised agricultural system. To purchase equipment, etc., southern countries are now indebted to some of the greatest corporations in the North. Moreover, disease resistant seeds are sterile, forcing farmers to purchase new grains every year from agrochemical corporations.

This destructive mechanism is nothing short of a new form of colonialism that has wronged thousands of farmers who, unable to pay their debts, were forced to give their land away to investors. Now reduced to poverty, former farmers have become mere beggars who often work as farm-hand on the land they used to own… when they don’t take their own lives. Whilst in our countries, profits from the industry finance subventions paid to farmers, no such mechanism has been offered to farmers in southern countries who effectively finance wealthy farmers in the North.

The CAP represents a terrible threat for southern countries. It promotes agricultural exports at artificially low prices, which creates unfair competition among local producers. Since the 1970s, all surpluses produced in Europe, including milk, wheat and meat, are being sold to poor countries through a mechanism of export subventions. This has come under fire from citizen’s organisations. The World Trade Organisation, the all-powerful WTO, has never tried to resolve this critical problem. On the contrary, it contributed to conceal subsidies.

Although this situation gives wealthy countries – or at least some of their industries – an economic advantage, it also led to a heavy deficit in terms of food autonomy, both for the North and for the South. And although the last CAP reform took a step in the right direction, the North still suffers from an unfair agricultural policy and completely relies on logistics while the South continues to endure famines resulting from a lack of access to vital resources such as water, land and technology.

Yet today’s science offers mankind the possibility to feed everyone by using intuitive, ancestral knowledge that has been discarded as medieval obscurantism. There are other “reasonable and scientific” solutions than intensive agriculture and huge energy consumption. However, putting these different forms of technology into practice would require an accurate understanding of the situation and specific difficulties to be resolved.

In northern countries, agriculture can be summarised in three words: over-mechanisation, delocalisation and monoculture, which were all imposed by agrofood lobbies. This generates two major problems that need be solved.

The first is logistical dependency. Let’s take Paris, a city that only boasts a food supply of three to four days. France’s dependence on cattle from other countries is around 75%, essentially supplied by Brazil and the United States. In this perspective, by 2050 we will need an additional area the size of Brazil to feed the world’s population – which will be 80% urban by then – according to Dickson Despommier, microbiologist and professor at Columbia University.

One measure is urgently required: relocalise production. Indeed, it is crucial to reduce the size or length of logistical chains binding producers to consumers. This would also allow reducing the number of middlemen, thereby increasing the income of farmers whilst simultaneously cutting consumer prices.

The second problem is none other than the CAP, the pernicious effects of which we saw earlier. Today, the CAP grants massive aids to destructive types of agriculture, which devastate the soil through the misuse of chemicals (fertilisers and pesticides), destroy farmers in the North as they build their economic models on the logic of subsidies, becoming increasingly and excessively dependent. In southern countries, this destruction of the soil usually results in financial ruin.

For southern farmers, the CAP is just one of many problems to tackle. It is crucial to redefine international exchange regulations. As long as northern farmers will receive government aid making them more competitive than their southern counterparts, the game will remain uneven.

The inequality between North and South partly results from such aids and to a series of factors originating from a sort of neo-colonialism and from constantly worsening disparities, as part of a vicious cycle. For example, producing one bag of rice requires two hundred times the amount of work in the South than in the North: southern peasants do not have access to the same costly technology. And southern farmers have no choice but to sell the bag of rice at the same price to remain competitive. Bankruptcy looms over their lives regardless of their choices. Additionally, farmers from the South face the major problem of access to land. Along with the various crises – food-related, financial, economic and climatic – land has become a constantly costlier economic resource. Foreigners purchase huge extents of arable land in developing countries. Now that the primary resources of these countries have been completely ransacked, they are now deprived of their most fundamental resource, land… and consequently their water resources, for which the stakes are even higher.

Small farmers in the North also experience similar difficulties. Like everywhere else in the world, our countries are controlled by conglomerates and multinational corporations. The population of farmers in France has shrunk from 50% in 1960 to 3% today. But this poses a greater problem yet in southern countries, where alternative job opportunities prove scarcer. Behind this takeover and control of the land lies the question of who reaps the benefits of national resources and self-sufficiency.

Solutions exist. They are local and focus on a nature and soil-friendly approach, simultaneously integrating ancestral knowledge and cutting edge technology. Agricultural products are like no others. It would be foolish to consider them as elements of an industrial system no longer aiming at feeding mankind but focusing on selling chemicals to farmers. To break this desperate chain, we need to go beyond local interests. Solutions must be comprehensive and must put an end to subsidies and industrialisation worldwide, allowing for a sustainable and effective agricultural system in the long run.

Local Solutions: New Agricultural Models

The solutions we evoke in this chapter were envisioned during the first third of the 20th century. They are based on a comeback to nature’s profound structure. It is not surprising that they should have been ignored in an era when the cult of industrialisation and boundless rise of financial capitalism prevented such principles from being considered. They were rejected old-fashioned, conservative, in opposition to holy progress when they were not perceived as charlatanism. How could anyone have opposed the laudable desire to tackle world hunger and protect humanity from famine during that era?

However, these approaches do not necessarily oppose science and technology – quite the contrary. The most effective rely on cutting-edge science theories. The key concept of biomimicry, which lies at the heart of all the approaches broached here, is based on the close link binding a comeback to nature and rational use of science. Scientific progress means nothing without the advance of consciousness, said Albert Einstein. This is where we now stand.

Not all sciences reached the same level of maturity. What sets them apart lies in their philosophical scope, not the techniques used. This reminds us of the extent to which agriculture affects the very foundations of mankind. Let’s review some.

Organic farming

Organic farming has become an umbrella term. Originally a genuine philosophy of life, it has become for most people nothing more than a selling point used by supply chains.

Organic food first appeared in the late 1920s, as an expression of nostalgia, nourished by writers and thinkers such as Jean Giono, who regretted the progressive disappearance of traditional rural populations. Since then, the label embraces every initiative that has fallen in within this scope. Obviously, the term is ill chosen, since agriculture is organic by definition. In principle, the term “organic” expresses the refusal of the introduction of outside chemical and synthetic elements in the farming production process.

The various organic movements widely differ. Whilst some totally reject science and technological or scientific progress, others are more progressive and develop a holistic vision. Assuredly, recent developments proved inconsistent. As soon as “organic” became a label and a sales argument, the concept became industrial and developed methods contrary to the fundamental principles of “organic” agriculture. If we look at the way “organic” strawberries are produced in Spain, we find ourselves before an industrial-scale production, a polluting mono­culture that demands a substantial, poorly paid work force and huge waste of water in addition to the controlled – albeit massive – use of fertilisers. We could add the transport of these strawberries to foreign countries, which would be enough to destroy any notion of organic farming. The same applies to organic palm oil produced on enormous farms in Colombia. These farmers often own the land on which they operate intensive monocultures through corruption and the murder of local peasants in collusion with the authorities.

Where do we find the natural and social ideal of organic food in these two examples?

We have to acknowledge that consumers find the organic produce available in today’s shops more attractive than twenty years ago, when such items were only sold in farm shops and co-ops: pock-marked, extravagantly-shaped fruits and vegetables covered in earth. Intermediate solutions can emerge between these two systems, allowing us to escape the clutches of a Manichean vision and clichés. Medium-sized farms leaning towards “organic” farming whilst remaining pragmatic speak of integrated production systems or sustainable agriculture: insects are selected to exterminate others thus drastically reducing the use of chemicals.