I remember childhood summers with a smile.
With the sun and the pool, the joy of the year came to Castile.
Nights in the park with friends, sports at all hours, starry skies, festivals.
It's not the same anymore.
In recent years, people in Malaga began to sleep badly as early as May.
You endure a month without a fan, you resist the air conditioning so as not to shoot up the bill;
but you rest badly, you can't go outside for most of the day, the countryside is dry, the swamps are languishing.
This year, back in my Ribera del Duero, traditionally a cool blessing on summer nights, I have sweated sleeping for the first time.
Of the huge forest fires, devouring mountains and biodiversity, better not even talk.
Summer is no longer the idyllic beer commercial on the beach.
Since June, there has been an excess of more than 20,000 deaths in Spain, partly due to heat waves, converging with tails from the pandemic and the weakening of the public health system.
The perfect storm, especially for the most vulnerable people, generally the poorest, who cannot afford air conditioning and live in overcrowded neighborhoods without green areas.
The banner of a young climate activist made me cringe: "This is the coolest summer of the rest of your life."
It does not have to be this way.
It all starts with Imagination.
It is she who opens the doors of desire and guides us to the new world.
Since Margaret Thatcher promoted her famous “There Is No Alternative” (“TINA”) in 1980, we have resigned ourselves to globalized capitalism (Consumerism), as the only possible form of economy, culture and life.
We have locked Imagination in a small windowless cell.
And with her her sister, Felicidad.
As a result, few people today believe that a way to create a type of employment other than the (miraculous) path of economic growth is possible.
As a consequence, Consumerism brings us her friend Individualism and many people feel lonely, depressed.
So much so that apocalyptic movies frequently show us a devastated world, with wild inequalities and desperate people, and yet,
full of incredible (and elitist) technology, as a mere extension of current trends.
It seems easier to imagine the end of the world than that of capitalism.
Well, let's free Imagination.
Let us collectively build a reality that overcomes Consumerism and returns us to Happiness.
Recently, at an event with young people to address the climate crisis, exposing the devastation we are experiencing, several cried.
It filled me with frustration and pain, but also with hope and motivation.
Because all those human emotions coexist in us today.
Eco-anxiety is real, that feeling of overflow that the documentary
Once you know expresses so well
(once you know), as well as a diversity of solutions pollinating in more and more hearts.
Let's propose.
A new economic paradigm is drawn by changing, first of all, its objective: well-being and quality of life for all instead of economic growth for a few.
Numerous studies prove that less is more: with the consumption levels of 1960, all of humanity could have a decent quality of life in 2050. And I say all, well, for the time being, there is a lack of transformative cooperation with the global South.
As a practical example: let's stop flying, as advocated by the growing movement
flight-free
[free flight].
Only 1% of the world's population generates half of aviation emissions.
Is the right to tourism of a minority greater than the right to the future of young people?
The conversations that question the old can already be seen: we are finally talking about saving, about reducing consumption in the North.
The reason (the war in Ukraine) is wrong, because let's remember that shortages and inflation came from before, since last fall: from the unbridled attempt to accelerate growth to get out of the pandemic crisis.
What to dig the hole deeper, because those who are behind the scarcity are already the planetary limits (matter, energy), and inflation, especially the oligopolies.
That the measures are not circumstantial, that it be a true cultural change.
Let us not be afraid of the supposed post-capitalist vacuum.
Measuring this new form of progress requires more holistic indicators (there is life beyond GDP), as well as criteria for public purchases that draw on the private sector.
This is what New Zealand, Costa Rica or Scotland are doing.
New priorities, jobs and ways of life will emerge from the new objectives and indicators: decontaminate the air and water, restore degraded ecosystems, end poverty, heal the sick, repair useful pottery, recover regional trains and peasant markets and artisans, recycling materials, decentralizing institutions, promoting the local economy, improving efficiency, (re)distributing renewable energy generation, renaturalizing cities, reforesting mountains... There is so much to do!
The impetus for the transition will emanate from giving economic value to the common good, to health, to the ecosystem services that nature provides us.
From buying products for ephemeral personal satisfaction, to supporting this economy of life, with public funding, yes, but also with business innovation, for example through subscription models for regenerative services, with different forms of participation: reforestation, community gardens , agroecological cooperatives, farm-schools… An eco-social and local Netflix.
Inequalities are causes and consequences of global warming, a dangerous spiral, but also the way out: climate justice is climate action.
As a fertile substrate for all of the above, let us build equity (gender, intergenerational, interterritorial).
Let's make public healthcare and education universal, let's guarantee access to housing, let's democratize science, let's value care, let's distribute the work with a four-day working day and, better yet, with a universal basic income: bread and shelter to enjoy peace of mind and choose better jobs, promote art and free culture, enjoy time to share the small pleasures of life.
Of course there is an alternative.
We are the alternative.
Let's imagine.
Jesús Iglesias Saugar
is the Ambassador of the European Climate Pact at SBNCLIMA.
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