Venice wakes up flooded. The worst "acqua alta" since 1966 rises 1.90 centimeters above sea level. And rising. The water has flooded palaces, monuments, basilicas, hotels without any consideration... Venice, the city of greed, vice, luxury and lust, dies under the tide of tourism and climate change. Two tides that feed each other to uncontrollable limits. There will be no dike, no wall, no human work that can stop the catastrophe.
While Venice is flooded, people in the third world are fleeing en masse from extreme drought. More than 140 million migrations are expected by 2050, continents such as Africa, Asia and South America are already suffering from water scarcity, poor harvests, and extreme climates. There will be no dike, no wall, no human work that can stop the catastrophe. We can deny the relationship between the two realities until we face them head-on.
The neoliberal capitalism into which the economy of the first world has become, our "privileged" way of life, is based on the exploitation of the third world in the form of slavery, extraction of natural resources, destruction of habitats, neocolonization, coups d'état, armed conflicts... Climate change is not the cause, it is the consequence of a way of life based on having over being, on consumerism, on criminal urbanism, on inequality and on the dehumanization of homo sapiens until we become homo economicus (well stocked with tranquilizers, anxiolytics and various narcotics).
The countries that conserve the raw materials necessary to sustain the standard of living of the first world suffer the extractive action of neocolonialism. Order is maintained in a kind of pre-Christmas impunity that brings peace and cynicism to the table in abundance. An exploitation that includes the massive destruction of natural spaces that should be universal heritage (such as the Amazon), slavery (human markets in Libya), neocolonization practiced openly in Bolivia (lithium), Chile (copper), Venezuela (oil), or directly armed conflict (camouflaged with a veneer of defense of fundamental rights that stinks).
In the first world we have no time left but to survive exploiting this suicidal rhythm that leads us to walk through St. Mark's Square with water up to our necks but, yes, wearing the latest brand model, bought to use and throw away. Because we have so much ignorance as arrogance and we refuse to relate the world catastrophe with the exacerbated consumption in which we live. Only some scientists warn of the necessary change of socioeconomic paradigm as the only recipe to avoid the world catastrophe.
The history of humanity repeats in a tiresome way the binomial economic crises-radical governments, ultra exclusive, ultra violent. The first step of this calculated strategy of flight towards the abyss began with the institutional promotion of capitalist liberalism that generates a lot for a few and little for many, the social inequality encouraged with an institutional policy of cuts in public services, education, justice and health, and continues with the assumption of an inevitable armed conflict to justify the exploitation of the "other". The recipe of neo-capitalism encourages the continuation of unbridled consumerism with the inevitable increase of fascism, exclusion and violence as medicine against fear, ignorance and despair. The self versus everyone.
The tide of tourism and the Atlantic Ocean will flood our coasts. Just as in Venice, or in archipelagos such as Kiribati, Vanuatu or the Maldives, the Canary Islands will succumb under the water. It will be a slow but unstoppable process, while our governments will become more radical, politics will follow the path of frivolity, public money will be lost year after year in the reconstruction business (dike after dike) or in the rescue of the tourism industry and people will be lost in a mental decline that has already begun and that will cause mental illnesses to be the first health problem in the world (of the first world, of course).
You will say that the perspective is pessimistic. No, it is realistic, even optimistic considering the level of posturing of which our political representatives boast. After the publicized declaration of climate emergency, declaration of intentions empty of content, planning, coordination or economic item, the government does not take a second to divert economic items to "subsidize" the tourism industry, assume the costs of Thomas Cook and demand compliance with road agreements. The discourse changes, they change the word emergency for urgency, but the short-term policies of submission to the tourist monoculture continue, yes, subsidized. If the sneeze of Thomas Cook has alerted them, despite the predictable, announced and inevitable bankruptcy, I cannot imagine what they will do when planes stop coming. That they are going to stop coming.
There is no decency, knowledge, or political will to end the party. While the energy and tourism industry continues to fuel electoral campaigns and turn doors of soulless people who lose their calm for a crumb of power there will be nothing more than empty emergency declarations. While the most servile among the servile is rewarded with the highest position of public representation, sanctified in the name of sacrosanct "Party" and blessed for looting the institutions fattening the b box there will be nothing more than posturing rescue plans. While politics is identified with the collection of public procurement commissions (Gurtel case), the massive embezzlement of public money for the obtaining of private benefit (Unión, Jable cases), the assumption of the public function as a tool at the service of clientelism (ERE`s case), the fraud of money destined to international cooperation (Cooperation case) or the use of the territory as an object of trade at the service of local caciquismo (Yate, Stratvs, Costa Roja cases...) there will be no future to wait for.
In short, while the neoliberalism party is paid for by corruption, only an open bar will be served. We will all pay for the hangover, rich, poor, richer, poorer and other animals.
