WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE FRANCE - news journal UPDATE (en) France, UCL AL #369 - Culture - Read Alain Bihr: "Capitalist Ecocide (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]"

It can be neither "green" nor degrowth-oriented: capitalism lives and will only ever live off the destruction of the planet. This is the thesis of Alain Bihr's latest book, *Capitalist Ecocide*, and as always with this Marxist and libertarian author, it is solidly supported by an implacable analysis of the fundamental mechanisms of the economic system and the powerless consent of the states that are enmeshed within it.

Throughout the chapters, Bihr dismantles false solutions, such as a certain neo-Malthusianism that posits that the ecological crisis is in fact demographic. Not at all: the problem isn't humankind, it's the explosion of its ecological footprint: "Between 1890 and 1990, while the world's population quadrupled, global GDP increased fourteenfold, industrial production fortyfold, energy consumption thirteenfold, water consumption ninefold, CO2 emissions seventeenfold, and SO2 (sulfur oxide) emissions thirteenfold, and so on."

Will the "energy transition" solve this? The problem is, it doesn't exist. In capitalism, renewable energies don't replace fossil fuels; they are added to them, as new sources of profit. Moreover, "the transition from an energy system based on fossil fuels to one based on renewable energy sources implies an increased use of the former, at least initially: it is impossible to produce and install wind turbines or solar panels without relying on current thermal power plants and current means of transport based on fossil fuels."

The author devotes a substantial chapter to "techno-solutionism," that is, promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through technological miracles: CO2 capture, 3rd or 4th generation nuclear power, biofuels... We discover along the way some "outlandish" solutions: planting rapidly growing genetically modified forests, massively dumping lime or iron filings into the oceans so that they fix more CO2, dispersing chemicals in the stratosphere, deploying a giant sunshade in space... The author emphasizes that renewable energies can themselves be part of techno-solutionism, despite their ecological footprint. The wind power sector alone would require 3.2 billion tons of aluminum and 40 million tons of copper to sustain its growth by 2050... "In short, by claiming to free us from our dependence on fossil fuels[...], 'renewable' energies are creating a new dependence on metals, which are no more renewable than the fuels in question."

In truth, the only solution is energy sobriety. And this is fundamentally contrary to capitalist logic. Conclusion: "communism or death." Not the false Stalinist communism, which was just as destructive, but a libertarian communism that, through socialization, self-management, and democratic planning, allows us to regain control of our future.

Guillaume Davranche (UCL Montreuil)

Alain Bihr, Capitalist Ecocide, Page 2/Syllepse, February 2026, three volumes, 1,428 pages, 45 euros.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Lire-Alain-Bihr-L-Ecocide-capitaliste
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Link: (en) France, UCL AL #369 - Culture - Read Alain Bihr: "Capitalist Ecocide (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]"

Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca