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Elections: The dilemma of the left in a collapsing world
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The most responsible politician needs to tell voters that life is going to get worse—but who’s going to vote for the truth teller?
Eliane Brum
Altamira, Xingu River, Amazon
On October 6, Brazilians will go to the polls to elect mayors and city council members in 5,568 municipalities across the country, although not a single campaign has even touched on the most important issue. Or do any of you remember a relevant, serious debate that has addressed global heating and the extinction of biodiversity? If there was one, it didn’t make the news. But the collapse of our planet has a major impact on politics and is directly related to the rise of the far right around the world—and also in Brazil. The question is: What do political parties and politicians have to offer as the Earth heats up, droughts and floods multiply, extreme weather events grow more common and more serious, and scientists are warning we have entered uncharted territory?
Apparently, if we are to take Brazil’s largest, financially richest city as the model, the answer is verbal assaults, baseless accusations, lies, and outright physical aggression. São Paulo ranks as the world’s most polluted metropolis, 60% of Brazilian territory has recently been shrouded in smoke from forest fires (most the result of arson), people have gone back to wearing masks to protect themselves from contaminated air—and none of this has been discussed by any candidate, from north to south. The debasement of politics is inevitable when politicians and voters, faced with the risk of extinction, talk about everything but the fact that their world is collapsing and that every action taken by every mayor and every decision by every city council should be approached with this reality in mind if it is to have a real, positive impact.
In cities like São Paulo—home to a significant portion of destroyers of the Amazon and the financial instruments at their service—what should be at the heart of political campaigns are issues such as water management, the protection of springs and the vegetation around surviving rivers, water and air pollution abatement, better mass transit (replacing fossil fuel cars and shifting to greener models ASAP), a master plan compatible with life rather than with accelerating destruction, a stronger healthcare system, which takes into account the prospect of proliferating viruses and bacteria—all against the backdrop of a robust plan of actions to mitigate and adapt to a changing climate and mutating landscape.
Municipalities in the state of Pará wield the enormous power to authorize mining in their territories. So Governor Helder Barbalho (Brazilian Democratic Movement) gives “green” speeches all over, posing as a sustainability leader while washing his hands inside his own state, letting the mayors there do as they please and thus securing their support. All across the Amazon, forest destroyers are polling out front. Not because they’re fooling voters but because destroying Nature garners votes.
São Paulo and Amazonian states like Pará are connected. We must see the links and ramifications—which pass through Brasilia, as we show in this issue.
In these elections, most candidates have opted yet again for denialism. Nearly every campaign has been denialist. One question we might ask: How much does this have to do with voter denialism?
In its worldwide advance, the far right is largely a consequence of the insecurity produced by a changing world; it thrives on uncertainty and despair. If everything is collapsing around you and the ground gives way—ever more often quite literally—you’ll demand guarantees and rescue. Lacking the emotional resources to cope with risks most people can’t even begin to fathom, many people who feel they are losing their place in life—no matter how precarious it might already be—turn violent.
But what about the left, what do they have to say to the voters?
The left is at a crossroads. There is the old left, with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as its representative in Brazil, who still believes the only thing people care about is having a car in their garage, enjoying a barbecue and beer on the weekends, and buying their own home, filled with the latest appliances. And as long as this is guaranteed, life will go on. Lula and much of the Workers’ Party have missed the acceleration of the climate collapse in recent years, as well as important changes in what new generations want and need.
But what do leftists who understand the gravity of the moment have to offer?
The most honest politicians must tell their voters that just voting isn’t enough. In addition to voting much more wisely, in order to remove active or passive denialists from positions of power, voters must participate more actively in decisions. They must put pressure on lawmakers and local government leaders on a daily basis, demanding new projects and emergency mitigation and adaptation measures but also demanding that the huge corporations currently consuming Nature be stopped. They must push both for the definitive burial of the legal thesis that nullifies any Indigenous claims to land not physically occupied on October 5, 1988, and for the immediate demarcation of all Indigenous territories, complying with the Constitution after a decades-long wait.
These politicians must also say we have to take much greater responsibility for choices made in the present, because these decisions will determine not only voters’ lives but the lives of their children and grandchildren, and not a century from now but next year.
Between lies that offer the comfort of hope and truths that demand sacrifice and loss, who is going to vote for the politician who tells the truth? The answer must be “us.” We must vote for those who tell the hard truth but are willing to fight. This is the beginning of a change that needs to happen very quickly, because the planet’s landscape is changing rapidly.
The votes we cast at the highly reliable electronic urns on October 6 will define four crucial years of our lives. We don’t have another four years to wait. |
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