Human happiness, first element of the environment

To all of the authorities
present here,
from every latitude and organization,
thank you very much.
Thanks to the people of Brazil
and their Mrs. President.
Thank you for the good faith
undoubtedly expressed by all of the speakers that preceded me.
ehm…
We hereby express our innermost will as rulers,
to adhere to all the agreements our wretched humanity,
may chance to subscribe.
Notwithstanding, let us take this opportunity to ask some questions out loud.
All afternoon long, we have been talking about sustainable development,
about rescuing
the masses
from the claws of poverty.
What is it…
that flutters within our minds?
Is it development and consumption model,
the one reigning on affluent societies?
I ask to myself this question: what would happen to this planet
if the people of India
had
the same number of cars per family as the Germans do?
How much oxygen would there be left for us to breathe?
More clearly:
Does the world have today the material elements
to enable 7 or 8 billion people
to enjoy the same level of consumption and squandering as the most affluent Western societies?
Will that ever be possible?
Or will we have to start a different type of discussion one day?
Because we have created this civilization in which we live:
the progeny of the market,
of the competition,
which has begotten prodigious and explosive material progress.
But the market economy has created market societies.
And it has given us this globalization, which means being aware of the whole planet.
Are we ruling over globalization or is globalization ruling over us?
Is it possible to speak of solidarity and of “being all together” in an economy based on ruthless competition?
How far does our fraternity go?
I am not saying anything of this
to undermine the importance of this event.
On the contrary, the challenge ahead of us is of a colossal magnitude
and the great crisis is not an ecological crisis, but rather a political one.
Today, men does not govern
the forces he has unleashed, but rather, it is these forces that govern men;
and life.
Because we do not come into this planet simply to develop, just like that, indiscriminately.
We come into this planet to be happy. Because life is short and it slips away from us.
And no material belonging is worth as much as life, and this is fundamental.
But if life is going to slip through my fingers,
working and over-working in order to be able to consume more,
and the consumer society is the engine
-because ultimately, if consumption is paralyzed, the economy stops,
and if you stop economy, the ghost of stagnation appears for each one of us,
but it is this hyper-consumption that is harming the planet.
And this hyper-consumption needs to be generated, making things that have a short useful life, in order to sell a lot.
Thus, a light bulb cannot last longer than 1000 hours. But there are light bulbs that last 100,000 hours!
But these cannot be manufactured, because the problem is the market,
because we have to work
and we have to sustain a civilization of “use and discard”,
and so, we are trapped in a vicious cycle.
These are problems of a political nature,
which are showing us that it’s time to start fighting for a different culture.
I’m not talking about returning
to the days of the caveman,
or erecting a “monument to backwardness.” But we cannot continue like this, indefinitely, being ruled by the market,
on the contrary, we have to rule over the market.
This is why I say, in my humble way of thinking, that the problem we are facing is political.
The old thinkers.
Epicurus,
Seneca,
and the Aymara put it this way,
“a poor person is not someone who has little but one who needs infinitely more, and wish, and wish, more and more.”
This is a cultural issue.
So
I salute the efforts
and agreements being made.
And I will adhere to them, as a ruler.
I know some things I’m saying are not easy to digest.
But we must realize
that the water crisis
and the aggression to the environment is not the cause.
The cause is the model of civilization that we have created.
And the thing we have to re-examine is our way of life.
I belong to a small country well endowed with natural resources for life.
In my country, there are a bit more than 3 million people.
But there are about 13 million cows, some of the best in the world.
And about 8 or 10 million excellent sheep.
My country is an exporter of food, dairy, meat.
It is a low-relief plain
and almost 90% of the land is fertile.
My fellow workers, fought hard for the 8 hour workday.
And now they are making that 6 hours.
But the person who works 6 hours, gets two jobs, therefore, he works longer than before.
But why? Because he needs to make monthly payments for:
the car he bought, the motorcycle he bought, and payments, and payments,
and when he’s done with that, he realizes he is a rheumatic old man, like me, and his life is already over.
And one asks this question: is this the fate of human life?
These things I say are very basic:
development cannot go against happiness. It has to work in favor of human happiness,
of love on Earth, human relationships, caring for children, having friends, having the basics.
Precisely because this is the most precious treasure we have; happiness.
When we fight for the environment,
we must remember that the first element of the environment is called human happiness.