By Luce Irigaray and Michael Marder, March 19, 2014
Air pollution is deteriorating in many places around the world. In Shanghai, such is the oppressive smog, covering the city with a toxic cloud, that authorities have had to instal gigantic TV screens to broadcast the sunrise. Salt Lake City has such poor air quality that chemicals in the atmosphere not only give it a different hue, but leave residents with a foul-smelling, metallic taste in their mouths. Paris has experienced some of its worst air pollution in recent days, while in the European Union as a whole, even at permitted concentrations, industrial and traffic-related pollution is harming cardiovascular health.
Is clean air, along with
drinkable water, becoming one of the most precious resources on the
planet? Or should we reframe the question and challenge the thinking
that converts everything, including the very air we breathe, into
economically measurable reserves and commodities?
Today we live in a world so
complicated and, moreover, organised so differently according to the
cultures we belong to, that encountering each other as humans has become
almost impossible. However, instead of asking what it means to be
human, alleged experts discuss at great length how to establish
coexistence among people. No doubt such an objective is both relevant
and urgent, but these experts in peace stray far from a solution,
getting lost in technical detail without considering the universal
sharing of life, from which we could start again. Even if it makes
sceptics laugh, we have no viable solution but to experience the
universal human condition as that of a living being, standing naked in
the garden that the Earth is. With every breath we take, we expose our
lungs to the outside world, regardless of all the barriers we have
erected between the environment and ourselves. The resistance to
envisaging this alternative is due to a nihilistic preference for
certain powers — be they material or spiritual, capitalist or cultural —
over life itself. Such a stance is both suicidal and murderous, even
though few people actually intend it to be so negative. How can they
recover their taste for life and learn ways of cultivating it, in
themselves, with others, and in the natural world?
The fact that public parks
become crowded as soon as the sun shines proves that people long to
breathe in green, open spaces. And, in these surroundings, they are
generally both peaceful and peaceable. It is rare to see people fighting
in a garden. If human beings can breathe and share air, they do not
need to struggle with one another. And consequently, it appears to be a
basic crime against humanity to contribute to air pollution.
Unfortunately, in western
tradition, neither materialist nor idealist theoreticians give enough
consideration to this basic condition for life. As for politicians,
despite proposing curbs on pollution, they have not yet called for it to
be made a crime. Wealthy countries are allowed to pollute if they pay
for it.
But is our life worth
anything other than money? The plant world shows us in silence what
faithfulness to life consists of. It also helps us to a new beginning,
urging us to care for our breath, not only at a vital but also at a
spiritual level. We must, in turn, care for it, opposing pollution that
destroys both our world and that of plants. The interdependence to which
we must pay the closest attention is that between ourselves and the
vegetal world. Often described as “the lungs of the planet”, the woods
that cover the earth offer us the gift of breathable air by releasing
oxygen. As we know, rapid deforestation combined with the massive
burning of fossil fuels, is an explosive recipe for an irreversible
disaster.
The fight
over the appropriation of resources will lead the entire planet to an
abyss unless humans learn to share life, both with each other and with
plants. The lesson taught by plants is that sharing life augments and
enhances it, while dividing life into so-called natural or human
resources diminishes it. We must come to view air, plants and ourselves
as participants in the symphony of life, rather than a mesh of
quantifiable objects or productive potentialities at our disposal.
Perhaps then we would finally begin to live, rather than being concerned
with bare survival.