A-Infos (en) France, UCL AL #369 - Culture - Read Alain Bihr: "Capitalist Ecocide (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]"

It can be neither "green" nor degrowth-oriented: capitalism lives and 
will only ever live off the destruction of the planet. This is the 
thesis of Alain Bihr's latest book, *Capitalist Ecocide*, and as always 
with this Marxist and libertarian author, it is solidly supported by an 
implacable analysis of the fundamental mechanisms of the economic system 
and the powerless consent of the states that are enmeshed within it.
Throughout the chapters, Bihr dismantles false solutions, such as a 
certain neo-Malthusianism that posits that the ecological crisis is in 
fact demographic. Not at all: the problem isn't humankind, it's the 
explosion of its ecological footprint: "Between 1890 and 1990, while the 
world's population quadrupled, global GDP increased fourteenfold, 
industrial production fortyfold, energy consumption thirteenfold, water 
consumption ninefold, CO2 emissions seventeenfold, and SO2 (sulfur 
oxide) emissions thirteenfold, and so on."

Will the "energy transition" solve this? The problem is, it doesn't 
exist. In capitalism, renewable energies don't replace fossil fuels; 
they are added to them, as new sources of profit. Moreover, "the 
transition from an energy system based on fossil fuels to one based on 
renewable energy sources implies an increased use of the former, at 
least initially: it is impossible to produce and install wind turbines 
or solar panels without relying on current thermal power plants and 
current means of transport based on fossil fuels."

The author devotes a substantial chapter to "techno-solutionism," that 
is, promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through technological 
miracles: CO2 capture, 3rd or 4th generation nuclear power, biofuels... 
We discover along the way some "outlandish" solutions: planting rapidly 
growing genetically modified forests, massively dumping lime or iron 
filings into the oceans so that they fix more CO2, dispersing chemicals 
in the stratosphere, deploying a giant sunshade in space... The author 
emphasizes that renewable energies can themselves be part of 
techno-solutionism, despite their ecological footprint. The wind power 
sector alone would require 3.2 billion tons of aluminum and 40 million 
tons of copper to sustain its growth by 2050... "In short, by claiming 
to free us from our dependence on fossil fuels[...], 'renewable' 
energies are creating a new dependence on metals, which are no more 
renewable than the fuels in question."

In truth, the only solution is energy sobriety. And this is 
fundamentally contrary to capitalist logic. Conclusion: "communism or 
death." Not the false Stalinist communism, which was just as 
destructive, but a libertarian communism that, through socialization, 
self-management, and democratic planning, allows us to regain control of 
our future.

Guillaume Davranche (UCL Montreuil)

Alain Bihr, Capitalist Ecocide, Page 2/Syllepse, February 2026, three 
volumes, 1,428 pages, 45 euros.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Lire-Alain-Bihr-L-Ecocide-capitaliste
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