about carbon economy and green washing

Reductionism seems to have become the habit of the contemporary human mind. We are increasingly talking of "the carbon economy" in the context of climate change. We refer to "zero carbon", as if carbon only existed in fossilised forms under the ground. We forget that the cellulose of plants is primarily carbon. Humus in the soil is mostly carbon. Carbon in the soil and in plants is living carbon. It is part of the cycle of life.

The problem is not carbon per se. The problem is our increasing use of fossil carbon as coal, oil and gas. While plants are a renewable source, fossil fuel is not. When it is burnt, this carbon cannot be renewed as coal, oil or gas for millions of years. With our dependence on carbon in the form of fossil fuel, we have broken out of Nature's cycle of renewable carbon. We have fossilised our thinking by dependence on fossilised carbon. (...)

While climate change combined with peak oil is making biodiversity agriculture an en ecological imperative for a post-industrial economy, the industrial paradigm is still the guiding force for mainstream society. This is related to the fact that industrialisation (which was based on a transition from a biodiverse economy of renewable carbon cycles to a fossil-fuel economy of non-renewable use of carbon) has also become a cultural paradigm for measuring progress.

Business leaders and politicians seek a de-addiction to industrialisation as a measure of human development. They want a post-oil world but do not have the courage to envisage a post-industrial world. As a result, they cling to the infrastructure of the energy-intense fossil-fuel economy and try to run it on substitutes such as nuclear energy and biofuels; nuclear power production is being redefined as "clean energy" and non-sustainable production of bio-diesel and bio-fuel is being welcomed as a "green" option

by Vandana Shiva