Without clean air, we have nothing

Heavy smog in Shanghai. 'Authorities have had to instal gigantic TV screens to broadcast the sunrise.' Photograph: Eugene Hoshiko/AP

Without clean air, we have nothing
As smog contaminates Paris, Shanghai and other world cities, we should regard pollution as a crime against humanity

Luce Irigaray and Michael Marder, 17 March 2014  The Guardian

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, metallic taste in their mouths. Closer to home, Paris has experienced some of its worst air pollution in recent days, while in the EU 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 kind of 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 in various domains discuss at great length how to establish coexistence among people. No doubt such an objective is both relevant and urgent, but in their debates, 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 other than to experience the universal human condition as that of a living being, standing naked in the garden that the earth is. After all, 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 in cities become crowded as soon as the sun shines proves that people long to breathe in green, open spaces. They do not all know what they are seeking but they flock there, nevertheless. And, in these surroundings, they are generally both peaceful and peaceable. It is rare to see people fighting in a garden. Perhaps struggle unfolds first, not at an economic or social level, but over the appropriation of air, essential to life itself. If human beings can breathe and share air, they don't need to struggle with one another. And consequently, it appears to be a basic crime against humanity to contribute to air pollution.

Unfortunately, in our western tradition, neither materialist nor idealist theoreticians give enough consideration to this basic condition for life. As for politicians, despite proposing curbs on environmental pollution, they have not yet called for it to be made a crime. Wealthy countries are even allowed to pollute if they pay for it.

But is our life worth anything other than money? Are we, then, still living? Or, do we only sense what life could be when we enjoy green spaces?

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 any sort of pollution that destroys both our world and that of plants. The interdependence to which we must pay the closest attention is that which exists 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. But their capacity to renew the air polluted by industry has long reached its limit. If we lack the air necessary for a healthy life (or, indeed, for any kind of life), it is because we have filled it with chemicals and undercut the ability of plants to regenerate it. As we know, rapid deforestation combined with the massive burning of fossil fuels, which are largely the remnants of past plants, 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. This task is simultaneously ethical and political because it can be discharged only when each takes it upon her – or himself – and only when it is accomplished together with others. The lesson taught by plants is that sharing life augments and enhances the sphere of the living, while dividing life into so-called natural or human resources diminishes it. We must come to view the air, the plants and ourselves as the contributors to the preservation of life and growth, 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.