And we got the piss out of this election too. However, not before having
endured the usual complaints and the usual apocalyptic appeals on theimportance of voting. This year's European elections, however, had an
aspect that, if not completely new, was certainly remarkable: the
commitment of those who, to put it in a stale formula, care about the
environment. ---- The journalist Ferdinando Cotugno defined them as "the
first climate elections of our lives", as if the previous ones had had
no consequences on the climate. Yes, I know very well that he meant to
refer to awareness on the topic, yet if we want to seriously address the
issues we cannot be satisfied with catchy and good formulas for social
media (of which Cotugno is a master). What we have recorded is a renewed
environmentalist fervor, which has mainly flowed into the votes for the
Green and Left Alliance and, to a much lesser extent, for the Democratic
Party. The delegation mechanism, however, held together two apparently
contrasting factors: disillusionment with the party system and trust in
European institutions, almost a messianic hope of salvation. The thread
that has held all this together is the individualism of those who
continue to vote because they believe they are on the right side without
taking into account that environmental policies, even more so for
cumbersome and distant institutions like the European ones, are
children, to put it in Marxist terms, of power relations not only
between states but above all between power groups and interest groups.
The ones who obtained good numbers were candidates recognizable for
their activism well before the European elections, which in this way
generated risings of hope that had already been dashed (Giovanni Mori,
for example, kept out of the counts of the Alleanza Verdi and Sinistra)
or which will be widely downsized soon. In the European Union that has
emerged - once again governed by an artificial alliance between
conservatives, socialists and liberals (with the greens jostling to act
as a crutch) - attention to the environment is destined to be sacrificed
on the altars of interests financial, military and industrial forces of
an old continent, still attached to the US breasts, especially in the
energy field. In order to have a seat at the table, electoral
environmentalism is once again willing to come to terms with Ursula von
der Leyen, reconfirmed as head of the Commission. A right-wing woman
without any ifs or buts, as can be observed from the migration
management and the funding towards the defense sector, in the first
phase of her previous mandate von der Leyen was even exalted by
electoral environmentalism. Ignoring the banal observation that the
authoritarian imposition of perhaps shareable policies could only create
a phase of rejection towards everything that is relevant to the
environment. An attitude that will leave large consequences and which
must, on the contrary, be addressed immediately.
What does electoral environmentalism do instead? He mocks people who,
for example, rail against the European obligation for plastic caps,
which will no longer be able to detach from the bottle, as already
happens with cans, in order to avoid, at least in theory, a greater
dispersion of waste. Whether the measure is right or not, can we be
surprised if our local fascists then ride on discontent of this kind,
talking about "Europe's green madness" - and also for this reason they
are voted for significantly more? For electoral environmentalism, what
matters is the rhetoric of good feelings: "we need a just transition
that leaves no one behind", "the rich emit more than the poor and for
this reason they must be taxed", "we need more public transport and more
renewables". One has to reply: what if it were that easy wouldn't we
have done it already? Opposite, however, is a European Union in decline
(economically, industrially, even demographically), hostage to
nationalist pressures and to a real power that has nothing shared or
supportive about it, hyper-centralised and emblematic of a financial
capitalism that has commodified even nature, through deleterious
mechanisms such as carbon credits and emissions offsets, made through
the neo-colonization of African states. And is this the beautiful Europe
that should protect the environment, the one that should be reformed
through a presence in institutions condemned to be marginal?
To answer this rhetorical question we first need to make another
admission. The European Union of the Green Deal (even the most important
environmental plan in EU history apes the USA, a subordination that is
disgusting) was born in the aftermath of the Fridays For Future protests
and is strengthened by the most important environmentalist mobilization
of recent years , ditto for the electoral success of the Greens in the
last legislature. In this round, however, the idea was to overturn the
paradigm: in the absence of grassroots struggles, electoral
environmentalism preferred to take refuge in the most putrid party
calculations. Who should we ally ourselves with? Who should nominate?
They even got the votes, for goodness sake, but, let's repeat, they are
destined not to touch the ball. There is a sort of anxiety about the
majority, let's call it that, on the part of a good portion of Italian
environmentalism: that is to say that the desire to be a majority is
pursued through the electoral shortcut when instead one should calmly
accept being a minority, and also restricted, of the "real country". And
from this perspective try to take care of the environment and those who
live in it. To fight power and not to conquer it. Instead, electoral
environmentalism is dominated by an unhealthy dogma of democracy which
must at least be called into question. Otherwise, in every electoral
competition we will find environmentalist candidacies, increasingly
faded and increasingly ineffective figurines.
Andrea Turco
https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
_________________________________________
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