A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

The precise years when the oil, gas and uranium peaks will be reached
can be debated, but we know that these resources are finite and that
the dates are not so far off. In some countries, like the United States,
Great Britain, Mexico and various others, the process has already begun.
Inevitably, as these resources run out, the prices of their products will
increase, with all the social and political consequences. International
control over the sources of fossil energy and other strategic materials
becomes more and more important for the industrial powers and they
do not hesitate to resort to military force to secure it. A map of the military
bases of the United States indicates this clearly: the wars of Iraq
and Afghanistan confirm it. The role of the United States as the universal
guarantor of the global system is fairly obvious, in view of the fact that
its military budget amounts to 50 per cent of the military expenditure of
all other countries combined. No country – not Great Britain, nor Russia,
nor China – spends a quarter of what the United States spends in this
sector. Clearly this is not only to control the sources of energy, but to
ensure the perpetuation of the whole economic model.
The question of agrofuels has to be seen in the context of the future
scarcity of energy. Because of expanding demand and the foreseeable
decline in fossil energy resources, there is a certain urgency to find solutions
to the problem. Since new sources of energy require the development
of technologies that are not yet sufficiently advanced (like solar
and hydrogen energy) and since other solutions (like wind energy) are
interesting but marginal or not economically profitable, agrofuels appeared
attractive for the time (François Houtart, 2009). They are often
referred to as biofuels, because the basic material is living and not dead
as is the case with fossil fuels. However peasant movements in particular
contest this terminology because the massive production of agroenergy
actually destroys life (nature and human beings).
For a while, the agrofuel solution was supported by ecological organizations
and movements, while it was dismissed by business leaders.
Around the middle of the 2000s, the attitude of the latter changed. Experience
in the production of ethanol based on cane sugar in Brazil and
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