with limitless appetites for consumption and falsely imagining that the corporations that stock the supermarkets have unlimited energy warehouses. The real problem is the conflict between the economic laws that have reduced the planet and society to a supermarket where everything is for sale and the ecological laws that maintain the planet's ecological functions and social laws that distribute nature's goods and services equitably. The real problem is a global economy that has created a planetary ecological imbalance.
If these are the real problems, then the real solution cannot be replacing fossil fuels with other non-sustainable sources to power the same systems. The real solution must be to search for right living, for well-being, and for joy, while simultaneously reducing consumption. In Indian philosophy, right living is "dharma"—the bridge between resources, arth, and human needs, kama. Dharma is therefore based on the sustainable and just use of resources for fulfilling needs. Ecological balance and social justice are intrinsic to right livelihood, to dharma. "Dharanath dharma ucyat"—that which sustains all species of life and helps maintain harmonious relationship among them is ''dharma." 'That which disturbs the balance of the earth and her species is"'adharma."
Equity is about fair share. There are currently two paradigms of equity. One sets the overconsumption and waste of rich industrial societies as the model and measure of being human, being developed. Equity is presented as the entire world being pushed to that level of resource and energy consumption. However, this version of equity would need five planets. This non-sustainable paradigm inevitably produces inequity. Shall we choose a non-sustainable paradigm in which we affirm an equal right to pollute or a sustainable paradigm in which we affirm an equal responsibility to not pollute.
Earth Democracy and ecological equity recognize that because the planet's resources and capacity to renew resources are limited, a reduction in energy and resource consumption of the rich is necessary for all to have access to land and water, food and fiber, air and energy. In an ecological paradigm, what works against Gaia works against the poor and works against future generations, and what works for Gaia works for the poor and for the future.[170]
We need to define equity on the same ecological parameters locally and globally. 5 If communities in India are resisting displacement and uprooting, if they define and experience their lives in the forest or small farms as the terms of their material and spiritual well-being, respecting their rights and freedoms is the first step toward equity. Equity needs to be grounded in the earth, in people's struggles and movements, not dropped in as an abstraction from remote conference halls. Those who would uproot farmers say the life of a peasant is "undignified." Those who would uproot indigenous people define life in a forest as "below the dignity line." Dignity is an experience and consequence of self-organization and sovereignty, of sufficiency and satisfaction.
I have never found working the soil or lighting a wood fire lacking in dignity. It is disposability that robs people of their dignity and selfhood. That is why movements against displacement are so intense and widespread in contemporary India.
Real solutions will come from breaking free of the crippling world of mechanistic assumptions, industrial methods of producing goods with high energy and resource costs, and market mechanisms that make high-cost products appear cheap on supermarket shelves.
The eco-imperialist response to the climate crisis is to grab the remaining resources of the planet, close the remaining spaces of freedom, and use the worst form of militarized violence to exterminate people's rights and people themselves when they get in the way of an insatiable economy's resource appropriation, driven by the insatiable greed of corporations.
There is another response—that of Earth Democracy.
Earth Democracy recognizes that if the survival of our species is threatened, maintaining our ability to live on the planet is the only intelligent response. Chasing economic growth while ecosystems collapse is a sign of stupidity, not wisdom. Earth Democracy calls for a systemic and inclusive response to the climate crisis, not the fragmented and self-serving response that corporations and rich countries are making. Earth Democracy allows us to break free of the global supermarket of commodification and consumerism, which is destroying our food, our farms, our homes, our towns, and our planet. It allows us to re-imbed our eating and drinking, our moving and working, into our local ecosystems and local cultures, enriching our lives while lowering our consumption without impoverishing others. In Earth Democracy, everything is interconnected. To address the pollution of the atmosphere, we do not have to limit ourselves to changes in the atmosphere. We can change agriculture; we can change the way we design buildings and towns; we can change the way we shop.
In Earth Democracy, solutions will not come from the corporations and govern- 10 ments that have raped the planet and destroyed peoples' lives. Solutions are coming from those who know how to live lightly, who have never had an oil addiction, who do not define the good life as "shop till you drop,'' but rather define it as looking after the living earth and their living community. Those who are being treated as disposable in the dominant system, which is pushing the planet's ecosystems to collapse and our species to extinction, carry the knowledge and values, the cultures and skills, that give humanity a chance for survival.
To mitigate and adapt to climate change we need to stop the assault on small farmers and indigenous communities, to defend their rights to their land and territory, to see them not as remnants of our past but as the path for our future.
Earth Democracy begins and ends with Gaia's laws—the law of renewability, the law of conservation, the law of entropy, the law of diversity. In Earth Democracy, all beings and all peoples are equal, and all beings and all communities have rights to the resources of the earth for their sustenance.
In Earth Democracy, the solution to the climate crisis begins with the cultures and communities who have not contributed to it.
Earth Democracy is based on equal rights of all beings to ecological space, including atmospheric space. The atmosphere is an ecological commons. CIimate justice demands that this commons not be enclosed by a handful of polluters. Climate justice also demands that people be compensated for the impact of climate chaos caused by the actions of others. But above all, climate justice demands that every person, every community, every society have the freedom to create and defend economies that cause no harm to the climate or to other people.
To prevent climate chaos and to avoid further increases in emissions we must stop the 15 coercion of trade liberalization and rewrite the rules of trade to favor the local. WTO[171]rules and World Bank structural adjustment programs are robbing sustainable local economies and sustainable communities of their freedom to be sustainable. Compelling them to import food from thousands of miles away and preventing them from having safeguards that protect the local are—in terms of climate change—ecological crimes.
Earth Democracy generates a radical shift in our paradigms and in our patterns of production. It offers real solutions to resource exhaustion, peak oil, climate change, disposability of people, and the erosion of democracy.
Climate change and the two carbon economies: Biodiversity vs Fossil Fuels
Reductionism seems to have become the habit of the contemporary human mind. We are increasingly talking of climate change in the context of "the carbon economy." We refer to "zero carbon" and "no carbon" as if carbon exists only in fossilized form under the ground. We forget that the cellulose of plants is primarily carbon. Humus in the soil is mostly carbon. Vegetation in the forests is mostly carbon. It is living carbon. It is part of the cycle of life.