If he had stolen the snow, it would have been / would not have left. / But so / there would be no more Pyrenees… / and I… / I loved the Pyrenees. It says so, or something like that, perhaps the most beautiful virtue of Basque culture: Joxean Artzeren Piriak Piri. Are we not now cutting their snow wings to the Pyrenees? Are we not with the time off a Pyrenees-Christian camper on weekends, doing what a Gore Ruper was going to say? Kill what you want.
Pyrenean snow has descended in the same way as fossilfriendly middle class tourism in the Global North. In 1950 there were 25 million tourist trips in the world, while in 2018 it was 1.4 billion. However, in the middle of the 19th century, 247 hectares of glaciers passed through these dominants, now 47 hectares. The old alpinists surprised the huge masses of ice, the size of the buildings, refined and disintegrated, that look almost to the left.
Had smoke in Navarra in 2022 (oi Baldorba!) And the weather is very concerned about the emergency, but when the first flakes fall and start moving the chairlifts: Decathlon, load the churgo and leave it in contact. Freeee… in the Whatsapp groups of Basque progression: “Anyone to the Piris?”
A country that does not question its imperial way of life will never accept eco-social transitions, never acquire sovereignty
The eco-social crisis, of course, has a remarkable kind of gap: the richest 1%, the poorest 50%, half of French flights, 2% of the population. But it’s time for us, Westerners, to take responsibility for our impact, rather than stay on the forever passive “but it’s worse.” Or perhaps the severity of the Manada attacks justifies me speaking in the hostel? On the contrary, we are able to see the structural problem in understanding the difference of two scales and the connection. And our structural problem is fossil capitalism. And the fossil pyricounter-same, part and symbol of this machinery, involves:
On the one hand, turn everyone's atmosphere into our private landfill for the crying glaciers. The average annual CO2 emissions per person in the CAPV are 8.4 tonnes. However, to keep the temperature of the planet below 2 degrees we have a budget of 2 tons each… I don’t get the bills. Return from San Sebastian to Ordesa 200 kilograms of CO2 (1/10 of the annual budget and we have not yet started to fry potatoes). If we want to burn gasoline in a catxarro of a ton and a half to the Pyrenees from ortziral to Sunday, in our memories, to steal bits of those snowy landscapes, then those of tomorrow do not. And don't you deserve those peaks, the green valleys of Belagua? In this march, Euskal Harria is the only nation left.
Low cost trips in the city during the week, but on weekends and holidays as marginalization
On the other hand, there are socio-ecological impacts beyond Euskocentrism. Where are our private vehicle quarries? In Miña. The international distribution of capital opens veins in the Global South, accumulates profits in multinationals and consumer goods for the middle classes. Cumulative impact consumption. Another thing: the Guinean remains with the hole, the shareholder with the banknote game and the West with the toy. Therefore, one cannot be internationalist and go to the Pirías every weekend in a churro.
But the neoliberal culture of the van is not just an invisible material impact. It is about hegemony, since developed capitalism discipline more than the consumption of porras. Hyperconsumerism plays a dual role: selling goods and legitimizing the system. For the case of a van: buy the handsome Volkswagen and Petronor gasoline and normalize the neoliberal model of freedom. Low cost trips in the city during the week, but on weekends and holidays as tuboeskape. This hegemony must be dismantled. What people will ask for decarbonisation if they have built their joy on wheels?
We need public luxuries, Pyrenees buses, more mountaineering clubs, remaking the community and maybe going a few times a year.
(Car for another raw cause. Just one question: do you need a car to work or have you built work and life based on your car?)
And, therefore, without Pyrenees? No adjustment! Before the car there were mountaineers, as before Netflix were the Movie Paradises. We need public luxuries, Pyrenees buses, more mountaineering clubs, remaking the community and maybe going a few times a year, but with a different tempus. Perhaps because the Pyrenees deserve more respect and more time. Let us not put an end to what we want!
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It is an economy that cuts snow wings to the Pyrenees and has the birds of passages imprisoned in the greenhouses of Almería. But a people who do not question their imperial way of life will never accept eco-social transitions, never acquire sovereignty.
Gorka Laurnaga