The planet got sick

The planet got sick

Almost half of humanity has been in quarantine (of different degrees or stages) for four months. Never before, in all of human history, has anything like this happened. It took a pandemic for humanity to come to the self-awareness that it is no longer what it was (for thousands! Of years). We have become a gigantic deep, complex and fluidly interconnected biological mass that moves as a single autopoietic organism, beyond the geopolitical, economic or cultural whims of the social and individual agents (or precisely through them) and generates their own defensive antibodies. The truth is bitter but what happens is that the planet is sick. And the Covid 19 pandemic is not the true disease, but the most palpable symptom. It is not the first symptom either. There is pollution, climate change, but also the deepening to obscene degrees of economic inequality and the endemic of extreme poverty. All of them constitute a danger of extinction syndrome, which was clearly evident to humanity in recent decades and against which, until now, in general terms, the imbecility of sweeping trash under the carpet was resorted to. All these symptoms are linked, yes, to the impressive population growth. But remaining only on this data would imply a fatalism that would also be wrong. Even with a gigantic population like the one we have today in the world, the impact of industrial production on environmental pollution, the generation of greenhouse gases and the perverse impact, in the “zoonosphere”, of monumental protein consumption (with dangers zoonotics), as well as the risk of extinction of scarce natural resources, could be perfectly avoided. Large number of inhabitants does not imply, mathematically, impossibility of the sustainability of life on the planet. Now, how can 7 billion (or more) inhabitants live, sustainably, in the limited global territory? The answer should be easy to understand: changing the mode of production (and consumption). Just as Kant stated the categorical imperative, from a moral point of view, saying that "one must act in such a way that my act can become a universal maxim", today we should ask ourselves that no one should consume any more resources or services in quantities, quality or frequency that cannot be consumed in the same way by the rest of the 7 billion, at the risk of an economic-ecological debacle. . Not only will the ultra rich have to disappear, but the middle classes will not be able to continue living as they have (until now) done. This is precisely the social base on which the forces that resist change lean. But it must be understood that change is inevitable because to save humanity the goal must be that until the last inhabitant of this cuddly planet, be it from the continent and locality That is, can live with all the basic needs satisfied, and be included in the system, a process that, for example, China is already carrying out successfully, having lifted 700 million people out of poverty, but to which many countries must join rather than involving a much larger demographic. As long as there are large pockets of poverty and exclusion and irrationality in consumption, humanity will remain at permanent risk of political, economic and social instability. Now if consumption were reprogrammed in these terms, it is clear that the world production of goods and services will have to change. This would imply, obviously, a fabulous change in what is produced and in the quantities (in more and less) of what is produced. But such a change in production cannot be achieved within the framework of the capitalism model of "free" competition, from the invisible hand of the market and from the absolute debauchery of the movement of private capital, but it would be necessary to move towards a great global production planning and a coordinated push between countries to modify consumption patterns, based on what science indicates as feasible and desirable to achieve human-planet harmony. Thus, economic systems should be generated that, even admitting spaces of market operation, allow operating, on these spaces, the governing power of a state institutionality, which acts in coordination with others, of the same nature, from other parts of the planet, in pursuit of the common goal of fulfilling that global planning. The Chinese government itself has opened the door for a debate on these issues by calling for the formation of a world community starting with health. Vladimir Putin has also pointed out that the only alternative is that the great powers sit at a strategic agreement table. Voices that contrast with aggressive and disruptive shouting