The collapse of our development model is programmed

If for a long time we could think that the alternative between socio-ecological transition and collapse was symmetrical, things being what they are, we don't see how the transition scenario could henceforth prevail.

If words have meaning, an unsustainable development model does not last: at some point, it collapses. It is now well established that the modern development model deployed over several centuries, based on an extractivist relationship with nature and an unequal relationship among humans, is not sustainable.

This development model, which has structured all our ways of living, producing, and consuming, is the direct cause of climate warming through exponential production of greenhouse gases, and of a first ongoing collapse, which is that of biodiversity. The planetary equilibria known over the last 11,000 years within the Holocene are spinning out of control at a pace whose rapidity makes threats with incalculable consequences increasingly certain.

Exponential anthropic pressure

From this perspective, the dominant interpretation of the notion of the Anthropocene obstructs understanding of what is happening to us: humans have not become a new "geological force," we have not just entered a "new geoplanetary era." Quite the contrary. The Anthropocene is not a new era that would succeed modernity: the Anthropocene is the retrospective name of modernity itself.

While modernity based its historical legitimacy on the project of emancipating humans from their original vulnerability through the benefits of progress and growth in an unlimited future, the tragic paradox is that this development model leads to even greater vulnerability because it is no longer local or seasonal but global, worldwide, and whose catastrophic "future-to-come" is rushing ever more rapidly into the present.

In other words, the Anthropocene, which began with the beginnings of modernity in the 16th century, has since deployed exponential anthropic pressure on planetary equilibria, to the point of threatening the very conditions of existence for humans and associated non-humans.

In this sense, we are already in the process of exiting the Anthropocene, because the drastic reduction in anthropic pressure has already begun. The first phase is well identified: it is the transition from an unsustainable modern development model (capitalist, extractivist, unequal, imperialist) to sustainable ways of living, producing, and consuming — that is, not only technically decarbonized, but frugal and cooperative, capable of new forms of alliances and solidarity among humans and with non-humans... In writing and reading this sentence, which carries hope and seems most reasonable, one clearly realizes that things are currently going in exactly the opposite direction.

On one side, capitalist, extractivist, unequal, imperialist, ethnonationalist, and ethnopopulist logics have become the norm again and threaten all existing forms of international cooperation concerning concerted and just action to reduce greenhouse gases and restore biodiversity.

These modern logics accelerate the collapse dynamics of an unsustainable development model: ongoing ecological collapses lead to growing vulnerability of modern globalized systems that have become so interdependent and so technologically dependent that economic, social, health, and technical collapses will inevitably follow, along with associated international and social violence.

On the other side, promoters of a "good Anthropocene" bet on hypermodern "green growth," arguing that if humans have been capable of disrupting the climate, they are also capable of regulating it with more capitalist investment, more technology, more climate engineering.

Boomerang effects

This option, very widely embraced by dominant actors of modernity (imperialist states, great carbon fortunes, deeptech and artificial intelligence, Promethean scientific culture), overlooks two essential dimensions.

First, the risks of this type of operation are very high for incalculable catastrophic consequences, with boomerang effects disrupting climate and biodiversity even more brutally, in a world that no longer has exteriors or refuges.

Second, this option is based on the hypothesis of a world with constant environment, even though the degradation of current conditions of production and energy, with high technological density, is not guaranteed.

The exit from the Anthropocene is therefore increasingly oriented toward a drastic reduction in anthropic pressure, due to the programmed collapses of an unsustainable modern development model. Our political systems remain entirely structured around the power relations of modernity—on one side, the production and redistribution of growth, on the other side, the double standard of progress beneficiaries according to gender relations, race, etc.

The only way out consists of inventing power relations and stakes specific to exiting the Anthropocene: an immense vulnerability recognized as common, and the necessity of rethinking our solidarities, that is, the social organization of interdependencies among humans and with non-humans, based on a universal "care" that has become indispensable. Adaptations to climate change will not suffice: it remains to be seen who will be the actors capable of carrying such a genuine project of socio-ecological transition.

This is a translation of the article published in Le Monde and an excerpt from this book. illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.

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