A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

ability to focus on comprehensive salvation proposals starting from the
logic of capital. The most powerful (and most responsible) States have
similarly shown their reluctance to assume serious commitments in connection
to preventing the increase of global warming and of other effects
on the environment. The incompatibility of the logic of profit
regarding the preservation of the Common Good of Humanity, which
starts by its atmosphere, its soil and the vital environment of which it is
part (the biosphere), becomes evident here once again.
Has the planet exhausted its natural reproductive capacity, as it was predicted
to happen towards August 2010? It seems that nobody wants to
undertake the risk of verifying this forecast. The correlation between
“ecological mark” (EM) and “human development index” (HDI) is presented
to us as a reverse function. Countries with a high HDI are those
having higher consumptions and incidence in the depletion of resources
and the erosion of the natural environment. The generalization of consumption
indexes in the United States would require the existence of
more than five and a half planets Earth; that of Western Europe and Australia
about three planets; that of Eastern and Central Europe two planets,
while the average in Latin America, Asia and Africa would require
only one planet.
The countries that make up this last group are those which – in statistical
terms – live off that which is allotted to them (to say it without beating
around the bush); that is to say, those that present a sustainable ecological
mark. The rest of the world, that of the “developed ones,” jeopardizes
everyone´s subsistence. Meanwhile, those whose ecological
mark is kept on an acceptable level, are placed under the lowest HDI,
or, to say it differently, are more affected by poverty conditions. At present
20% of the world population absorbs 80% of the world material resources.
Thus, expressing this in statistical terms, the plausible trend
would be that of the global increase of the indexes of human development
parallel to the decrease of the ecological mark. The improvement
of the Common Good, seen over and above independent common
goods and analyzed by tendencies, would consist in this. This is easy to
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