Categoria: English

Confronting the sixth massive extenction

Leonardo Boff4 Comentários

We have previously addressed the fact that the human being, in later times, has inaugurated a new geologic era –anthropoceno–, the era in which humans appear as the greatest threat to the biosphere, and the eventual exterminator of our own civilization. For a long time, biologists and cosmologists have warned that our aggressive intervention in the natural processes is greatly accelerating the sixth massive extinction of living species. It has been going on for several thousand years. These extinctions mysteriously belong to the cosmogenic process of the Earth. In the last 540 million years the Earth experienced five great massive extinctions, about one every one hundred million years, that exterminated much of life in the sea and on the Earth. The last one occurred 65 million years ago, when dinosaurs, among other species, were annihilated.

All previous extinctions were caused by forces of the Earth, and the universe itself, such as, for example, climatic convulsions, or meteor strikes. The sixth is being accelerated by humans. But for the presence of humans, one species would disappear every five years. Now, due to our industrial and consumerist aggressiveness, we have multiplied extinction one hundred thousand times, as cosmologist Brian Swimme advised us in a recent interview for EnlightenNext Magazin, nº 19. The data are alarming: Paul Ehrlich, professor of ecology at Stanford University, estimates that 250,000 species a year are exterminated, while Edward O. Wilson, of Harvard University, gives lower numbers, between 27,000 and 100,000 species per year, (R. Barbault, Ecologia general, 2011, p. 318).

Ecologist E. Goldsmith of the University of Georgia affirms that humanity, by making the world ever more impoverished, degraded, and less capable of sustaining life, has reversed the evolutionary process by 3 million years. The worst is that we do not even notice this devastating practice, nor are we prepared to evaluate the meaning of massive extinctions. It signifies nothing less than the destruction of the ecological basis of life on Earth, and the eventual interruption of our essay of civilization and perhaps even of our own species. Thomas Berry, the father of Northamerican ecology, wrote: «our ethical traditions know how to handle suicide, homicide and even genocide, but we do not know what to do about biocide and geocide» (Our Way into the Future, 1990, p. 104).

Can we slow down the sixth massive extinction, given that we are its principal cause? Yes, we can, and we must. It is a good sign that we are developing an awareness of our origins, some 13.7 billion years ago, and of our responsibility for the future of life. The universe elicits that in us, because it is not against us, but for us. But it demands our cooperation, because we are the ones causing so much damage. We must wake up now, while there is still time.

The first task is to renew the natural pact between the Earth and humanity. The Earth gives us everything we need. The pact calls on us to be caring and respectful of the Earth’s limitations. But, ingrates that we are, we repay her with machetazos, bulldozers, bombs and ecocidal and biocidal practices.

The second task is to strengthen reciprocity and mutuality: to seek a harmonious relationship with the dynamism of the eco-systems, using them rationally, restoring their vitality, and ensuring sustainability. For that, we need to re-invent ourselves as a species that is concerned for other species, and learns to live together with the entire community of life. We must be more cooperative than competitive, more caring than willing to subjugate, and we must recognize and respect the intrinsic value of each being.

The third requirement is to experience compassion, compassion as a form of love and caring, not only between human beings, but with all beings. Whether they will be able to continue living or be condemned to disappear depends on us. We must abandon the paradigm of domination that reinforces mass extinctions, and live the paradigm of caring and respect that preserves and prolongs life. In the middle of the anthropoceno, it is urgent that we inaugurate the ecozoic era, that places the ecological at the center. Only then is there hope of saving our civilization and of ensuring the continuity of our living planet.

The Great Global and Brazilian Contradiction

Leonardo Boff3 Comentários

More and more a conviction is growing, even among establishment economists and those of the neo-Keynesian line, that we are dangerously close to reaching the Earth’s physical limits. Even with new technologies, it will be difficult to continue the project of limitless growth. The Earth can no longer tolerate it, and we have to change direction.

Economists such as our Ladislao Dowbor, Ignace Sachs, Joan Alier, Herman Daly, Tim Jack, Peter Victor and long before them, Georgescu-Roegen, fully incorporate the ecologic moment into the process of production. Especially the British Tim Jack, has become known for his book, Prosperity without Growth, (Prosperidad sin crecimiento, 2009) and Canadian Peter Victor, for his Managing without Growth, (Managing sin crecimiento, 2008). Both have shown that the growth of debt to finance private and public consumption (as the rich countries are doing), demanding more energy and greater use of natural goods and services, is simply not sustainable. 



Nobel Prize Laureates Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, because they did not explicitly include the limits of the Earth in their analysis, fall into the trap of proposing greater public expenditure as the solution to the present crisis, supposing that this will produce economic growth and greater consumption, through which the astronomical private and public debts will be paid later on. We have said many times already that a finite planet cannot support a project of this nature, one that presupposes the boundlessness of goods and services. This is an established fact. 


What Jack and Victor propose is «prosperity without growth». In the developed countries, the level of growth is already sufficient to allow development of human potential, within the possible limits of the planet. Thus, enough growth. What can be sought is «prosperity» meaning a better quality of life, of education, health, ecological culture, spirituality, etc. This solution is rational but it can cause high unemployment, a problem they do not resolve well, suggesting a universal basic rent and reduction of work hours. There will be no solution without a prior agreement as to how are we going to have a supportive relationship with the Earth, and without defining the models of consumption so that everyone can have what is enough and decent.

That relation is inverted for the poor and emerging countries. «Growth with prosperity» is needed. Growth is necessary to attend to the minimum demands of those living in poverty, misery and social exclusion. Assuring enough indispensable goods and services is a matter of justice. But prosperity, which deals with the quality of growth, must be sought simultaneously. A real danger 
exists that they will fall victim to the logic of a system that induces greater and greater consumption, especially of unnecessary goods. The Earth’s limits would be stretched, which is just what must be avoided. We are facing a painful vicious circle, that we do not know how to make virtuous, without endangering the sustainability of the living Earth.


This is the contradiction not only facing Brazil but also the Globalization: growth is urgently needed to accomplish what the Lula’s government did, this is, to guarantee the basics, so that millions may eat and, through social policies, be incorporated into society. For the classes that have already been attended, less growth and more prosperity is needed: to improve the quality of the good life, education, less unequal social relations, and more solidarity, starting with the least among us. But who can convince them, if they are forcibly controlled by propaganda that incites them to consume?

As it happens, until now, brazilian and athor governments have had only distributive policies: unequally distributing public resources. First, 140 billion reales were guaranteed to the financial system to pay the public debt, and then for the grandiose projects, and only around 60 billion for the immense majorities that only now are ascending. Everyone gains, but unequally. Treating equals unequally is a great injustice. Never have there been redistributive policies: taking from the rich (through legal means) and passing it to the needier. Then there would be equity. 


The worst is that with our collective obsession of growth we are mining the vitality from the Earth. We need growth, but with a new ecological consciousness that can free us from the slavery of productivity and consumerism. This is our great challenge, as we face the uncomfortable Brazilian and Global contradiction.

Whither the Indignados and the Occupiers?

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

In one of the most important debates in the Thematic Social Forum of Porto Alegre, Brazil, where I had the opportunity to participate, I was able listen to the living testimonies of los Indigndos from Spain, London, Egypt and the United States. What impressed me deeply was the seriousness of the speeches, far from the anarchic tone of the 1960s, and very down to earth. The central theme was «democracy now». A different democracy was re-vindicated, very different than the one we are used to, that is more farce than reality. They want a democracy built from the streets, from the squares, from the place where real power originates. A democracy from below, organically created by the peoples, transparent in their procedures and never again corroded by corruption. To begin with, this democracy is characterized by linking social justice with ecologic justice.

Curiously, Los Indignados, the Occupiers and those of the Arab Spring do not identify themselves with the classic speeches of the left, or even the dreams of the several editions of the World Social Forum. We find ourselves in a different era, and a new sensibility has arisen. Another way of being a citizen is postulated, powerfully including women, who were previously made invisible, citizens with rights, with participation, with horizontal and transversal relationships facilitated by the social networks, by the mobile media, twitter and facebooks. We find ourselves facing a true revolution. Relationships were previously organized in a vertical form, from top to bottom. They are now created horizontally, towards the edges, in the immediacy of communication at the speed of light. This form represents the new times we are living: of information, of the discovery of the value of subjectivity; instead of modernity, encapsulated in itself, one of relational subjectivity, of the emergence of a consciousness of the kind found within the selfsame and unique Common House, that is threatened with collapse, as a result of the excessive thievery practiced by our system of production and consumerism.

This sensibility no longer tolerates the system’s methods for overcoming the economic crisis and its derivatives, salvaging the banks with the money of the citizens, imposing a severe fiscal austerity, dismantling social security, cheapening employment, cutting investments, illusorily supposing that this way the confidence of the markets will be regained and the economy will be revived. The belief has become dogma, and in many places the stupid catch phrase is heard: “TINA: there is no alternative”. The sacrilegious high priests of the not so holy trinity made up of the International Monetary Fund, (IMF), the European Union and by the European Central Bank, have dealt a financial blow to Greece and Italy, and have imposed their acolytes there with responsibility for the crisis, without going through the democratic rites. Everything is viewed and decided from an exclusively economic perspective, devaluing the social, and increasing unnecessary collective suffering, the desperation of families, and youth indignation because they cannot find jobs. All this can result in a crisis with dramatic consequences.

Paul Krugmann, Nobel Prize Laureate for Economics, spent some time in Iceland, studying the way this small Arctic country solved its devastating crisis. They followed the correct path that other countries should have also followed: they let the banks collapse, jailed the bankers and speculators who engaged in embezzlement, rewrote their Constitution, guaranteed social security to avoid a generalized collapse, and managed to create jobs. Consequently, the country emerged from the mess and is one of the Nordic countries with the greatest growth. News of the Icelandic path has been suppressed by the world means of mass communications, out of fear that it might serve as an example for other countries. And thus the carriage, with incorrect but coherent measures, rushes rapidly towards the precipice.

Against this foreseeable course stand Los Indignados. They want a different world, friendlier to life and respectful of nature. Perhaps Iceland will serve as inspiration for them. Wither will they go? Who knows. Certainly not in the direction of the worn-out models of the past. They will head in the direction of what Paulo Freire spoke about, the «unedited viable» that will be born from the new creativity, one that expresses itself, without violence, with a democratic-participatory spirit. In any event, the world will never be as it was before, and much less as the capitalists would like it to be.

Brazil: from internationalized enterprise to biocentric society

Leonardo Boff4 Comentários

There are classical interpretations about the forming of Brazil as a nation, but the one by the political analyst Luiz Gonzaga de Souza Lima is surely unique, and helps us understand Brazil in the present process of world globalization: The Refounding of Brazil: towards a bio-centric society (La refundación de Brasil: rumbo a una sociedad biocentrada (Rima, São Carlos 2011). His starting point is the brutal fact of the invasion and expropriation of Brazilian lands by the «colonizers» based on slavery and the super exploitation of nature. They came here not to found a society, but to create a large international private enterprise, a true agro-industry, in order to supply the world market. It was built by kingdoms, churches and big private companies such as those of the West Indies, the Oriental Indies, the Dutch of Mauritius and Nassau, with navigators, merchants, and bankers, who, without forgetting the modern vanguards, had new dreams, and sought quick wealth.

Once the land was occupied, they brought in sugar cane, then coffee, technologies which were modern for the time, capital, and African slaves. The slaves were considered «things» to be bought in the market, and like coal, to be consumed in the sugar mills. With reason Souza Lima affirms: “the outcome was the appearance of a new social configuration, unknown by humanity until that moment, created solely to serve the economy; in Brazil was born what can be called the «social enterprise formation»”.

Modernity was born in Brazil and in Latin America, in the sense of the utilization of logic of production, of the desire for unlimited accumulation and the systematic exploitation of nature, of the creation of immense towns of marginalized people. In this sense, Brazil has been new and modern, ever since her origins.

Europe could have her revolution, called modernity, with rights and democratic institutions, only because she was sustained by the brutal robbery carried out in the colonies. With Brazil’s political independence, the nature of the social enterprise formation did not change. All the impulses for development that arose did not undermine the dependent and subordinate character that resulted from the business orientation of our social structure. Even now, global world capital tends to try to shape our eventual future into our known past: it would behoove Brazil to be the great provider of raw materials for the world market, with little added value.

Enterprise-Brazil is the key, according to Souza Lima, to understanding the historical formation of Brazil and the place assigned to her in the present process of unequal globalization. The challenge lies in creating a society that suits us, and leads to a different future for us. The inspiration comes from something that is our own: Brazilian culture. Our culture was born of the slaves and their descendants, of the Indigenous that remained, of the mamelucos, the sons and daughters of poverty and crossbreeding. They created something singular, not that desired by the holders of power, who always rejected them and never recognized them as the subjects, and sons and daughters, of God.

What matters now is re-creating Brazil, «to build for the first time a human society in this immense and beautiful territory, something that never happened in all the modern era since Brazil was founded as an enterprise; to create a society with the sole objective of saving our people». It is about moving from Brazil as an economically internationalized state, to Brazil as a biocentric society.

As a biocentric society, the Brazilian people will transcend modernity, corrupted as it is by injustice and greed, that is leading humanity to the abyss. Still, for better or worse, our modernity helped us forge a physical infrastructure that can support building a bio-civilization that loves life in all its forms, where all differences peacefully coexist, and that has the capacity to synthesize the most diverse factors.

In this context, Souza Lima links the refounding of Brazil to the promises of the new world that must succeed this agonizing one, that is incapable of projecting any horizon of hope for humanity. Brazil could be,as others, the niche that generates new dreams, with the real possibility of carrying them out in harmony with Mother Earth, and in a manner open to all peoples.