Marxism, ecology and constitution

A debate on the “exhausted planet”

Abstract

This paper analyzes the origins of the ecological sensitivity progressive consolidation in the last hundred years, the relationships between ecology and constitution and the theoretical breadth of the concepts of fundamental rights, human rights, democracy, socialism to avoid catastrophe, remembering that the ecological discourse was born in the Soviet socialist tradition. It also analyzes war as a source of law and legitimate environmental defense in international law to the "ambiguous" but necessary corollary of the international principle of solidarity as a possible way out of the crisis. The construction of other notions as "global public goods" seems, by many, another consequence of this opposition between environmental protection and humanitarian interventions, both on a global and universal scale. Saving the environment and saving the economy is the second big problem: what is environmental production and how does it work beyond the many assumptions of responsibility and the many committments that have not been accomplished? Is there a "natural capital of the world"? is the last question of the essay, as for the last ten years a way of seeing has been legitimized that points to the enhancement of the "natural capital of the world". In front of a sum of critical and historical arguments to all these concepts, the article tends to conclude that the political attitude is precisely that of an "evasion" from the Planet, that is an abandonment towards a planet now in an irreversible crisis.