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We are trapped in a calculated geopolitics of fear. We are told, through the megaphones of power, that to maintain our “freedom” and well-being in the Global North, we must continue to acquiesce to the destruction of the rights of the peoples of the Global South. We are faced with the ultimate expression of a world turned upside down: a system that destroys, in the name of security, the material foundations sustaining life and uses induced scarcity to paralyse the collective political imagination.

This fossil-fuel-dependent, imperialist and militarised model, however, is a giant with feet of clay. The extreme volatility of the financial and energy markets, coupled with suffocating inflation that punishes ordinary families on a daily basis—driving up utility bills, fuel costs and grocery prices—is not a glitch in the system: these are intrinsic features of its design. Absolute dependence on gas, coal and oil not only destroys ecosystems and drives climate change, but also funds authoritarian regimes, fuels global wars and renders us profoundly vulnerable to the tyrants of capital.

Faced with this stark diagnosis, paralysis is not an acceptable option. Breaking out of this chain of dependency is not merely a matter of environmental mitigation: it represents the greatest and most pressing act of peace-building of our era. Decarbonising Western economies is, in essence, demilitarising international relations. Recognising this interconnection places an immense historical and moral responsibility upon us. We cannot stand idly by because the technical, social and political solutions already exist, and because turning this reality on its head is the only viable path to guaranteeing dignified lives worth living. This course correction will not arise from concessions made by elites, but from our collective capacity to hack this dystopian present and establish a new paradigm of shared, ecofeminist and demilitarised security. And this inevitably entails transitioning from an extractivist economy to one that respects nature’s cycles.

Genocide, Ecocide and Resistance: From the Global Sumud Flotilla to Planetary Justice

In this world turned upside down, where those who defend human rights are persecuted, and those who finance human and planetary destruction sit on boards of directors, trenches are no longer merely a place of transit or a space for tragic, defensive confinement: they become an active ethical stance and a laboratory for transformative civil disobedience. When, on 15 April 2026, Greenpeace’s ship Arctic Sunrise set sail to join the Global Sumud Flotilla in the Mediterranean Sea, it did so not under the logic of charitable aid; but with the firm determination to act as a disruptive political agent, accompanying and empowering a global citizenry determined to demonstrate that their collective dreams of justice are infinitely more powerful than the fears instilled by those in power. Our mission there has been clear: to help break the criminal siege and demand an immediate end to systematic genocide and ecocide.

In the Gaza Strip, the war machine is not only claiming human lives in an atrocious manner: it is deliberately destroying the biophysical infrastructure, the material foundation that makes it possible to even conceive of a viable future in the region. As we have publicly stated from the front lines of the protest, genuine peace can never be reduced to the mere absence of bombings or a temporary armed truce. Real peace is defined by a population’s structural capacity to drink clean water from its aquifers, breathe air free from military toxins, and grow healthy food in soil free from poison.

The scientific and cartographic analysis of this catastrophe reveals devastating figures [1]:[1] UNRWA. (2025) Environmental Impact of the Escalation of Conflict in the Gaza Strip. UNOSAT. Available here: https://wedocs.unep.org/items/7aa1738b-c460-499b-9227-5818dbac66bc over 81% of Gaza’s agricultural land has been completely razed or irreversibly poisoned by the Israeli Army’s operations, whilst 95% of the available water has become toxic and undrinkable due to the deliberate collapse of sanitation systems. This planned annihilation of local ecosystems and water networks is not collateral damage of war, but a military strategy of occupation and ecological apartheid.

Against this backdrop, we at Greenpeace raise our voices with absolute conviction and intellectual rigour: there is no such thing as climate justice—nor will there ever be—on occupied, militarised and colonised lands. There is a fundamental ethical contradiction in seeking to build a green, circular or sustainable future upon the mass suffering and extermination of human communities. To silence the Palestinian genocide, or any other imperialist aggression in the Global South, is to implicitly validate an unacceptable thesis: that ecology is a “luxury” reserved exclusively for times of peace in wealthy nations, and not a requirement for biological survival and universal human rights.

The journey of the Arctic Sunrise alongside the Freedom and Dignity Flotilla to Gaza stands as the great metaphor of our era. It signifies moving forward with determination against the geopolitical siege, defying the paralysis they seek to instil in us, and unwaveringly recognising that the inalienable right of peoples to exist is the cornerstone upon which any ecotopia is built. We do not ask permission to exercise our humanity: we organise ourselves to defend it wherever life is under attack.

The Audacity of Self-Sufficiency: Designing and Building Together a Future that Already Dwells Within Us

It is precisely from this intersection between active resistance and international advocacy that we must move, with audacity, towards the architecture of real alternatives. The prevailing system has trained us in the false assumption that there is no alternative to unlimited growth and the irrational exploitation of resources, but reality shows us that true realism lies in designing structures that fit within the Earth’s biophysical limits.

Drawing inspiration from the pioneering scientific principles of Donella H. Meadows, set out as early as the 1970s in The Limits to Growth [2];[2] García Paret, C. (2026). Más allá del crecimiento: la economía que necesitamos para vivir mejor [Beyond growth: the economy we need to live better]. Greenpeace España. Available here (Spanish): https://es.greenpeace.org/es/noticias/mas-alla-del-crecimiento-la-economia-que-necesitamos-para-vivir-mejor/ but also by various post-growth and degrowth economic models that followed [3],[3] Pizzinato, S., García, J. L. (2026). Energía para vivir mejor: Hoja de ruta para una energía suficiente, eficiente y 100% renovable para 2040 en la península Ibérica [Energy for a better life: Roadmap for sufficient, efficient and 100% renewable energy by 2040 in the Iberian Peninsula]. Greenpeace España. Available here (Spanish): https://es.greenpeace.org/es/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2026/04/energia_WEB.pdf we must be able to recognise that the insatiable appetite of a significant part of our industrial society towards the constant accumulation of objects and the pursuit of activities and processes regardless of the energy they consume is nothing more than a neurotic symptom. A failed attempt to satisfy, through the consumption of ephemeral goods, deeply human yet strictly non-material needs, such as identity, community, self-esteem, affection, beauty and a sense of purpose. Fossil capitalism has systematically swindled us by selling us purely material, extractive solutions in response to longings that can only be satisfied in the social, relational, and community spheres—essentially, through a more harmonious and regenerative relationship with nature.

Greenpeace Spain & Portugal’s policy proposal in response to these challenges is comprehensive, systemic and solution-oriented. In addition to being set out in this article, it is summarised in a strategic roadmap for the Iberian Peninsula, whose title is a declaration of intent and principles: “Energy for a better life” [4].[4] Idem. This document is by no means a rationing catalogue or a punitive austerity plan for the working classes: on the contrary, it is a political manifesto for social and energy emancipation, as well as a proposal for a new relationship with life and future generations. We dare to propose a rigorous and viable sufficiency scenario with our sights set on the year 2040—a deadline that is absolutely essential to reach the net-zero emissions target and fulfil our climate commitments and historical responsibility. The proposal is structured around three fundamental pillars, which challenge the rationale of the system and the interests of the energy oligopoly:

·A 39% reduction in final energy consumption. This goal cannot be achieved through individual sacrifice or the impoverishment of those at the bottom of the ladder, but rather through the comprehensive and planned redesign of “15-minute cities”—with local public services—, the overhaul of bloated transport systems—based on the “one person, one car” mantra—and the energy-efficient refurbishment of buildings and homes; alongside the electrification of industrial processes, the provision of energy services with the lowest possible consumption—efficiency—and, most significantly, the elimination of activities and processes that consume energy but do not contribute to social well-being—sufficiency.

In this new design for urban and regional daily life, we must dare to right the world and understand that public transport must become the next pillar of the welfare state [5].[5] Arjona, C., García, J. L. (2025) Una garantía de movilidad para movernos mejor [A mobility guarantee to move better]. Greenpeace España. Available here (Spanish): https://es.greenpeace.org/es/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/09/GP_movilidad-2.pdf By contrast, in the current upside-down system, private combustion-engine cars and aviation—inaccessible to the majority of socially vulnerable people—are subsidised with public funds, whilst the trains, trams and buses that connect our suburbs and rural areas are underfunded. Sustainable, collective and affordable mobility is not merely a cosmetic addition: it is a tool for redistributing wealth, health and life expectancy. Guaranteeing a high-quality public transport network, fully electrified and supplemented by universal social fares, is the only real way to break the monopoly of fossil-fueled roads over mobility. It is the only way to ensure that the right to travel, to work and to study does not depend on one’s bank balance. We must therefore commit to transforming the commuter train into a rolling social safety net, freeing families from the tyranny of fuel costs.

·Genuine, clean and diversified energy sovereignty. For this change to be structural, it is not enough to consume less alone; we must transform how we produce energy. In contrast to the fossil fuel and nuclear oligopoly model, we advocate a 100% renewable roadmap for the Iberian Peninsula [6],[6] Pizzinato, S., García, J. L. (2026). Energía para vivir mejor: Hoja de ruta para una energía suficiente, eficiente y 100% renovable para 2040 en la península Ibérica [Energy for a better life: Roadmap for sufficient, efficient and 100% renewable energy by 2040 in the Iberian Peninsula]. Greenpeace España. Available here (Spanish): https://es.greenpeace.org/es/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2026/04/energia_WEB.pdf which meets society’s energy needs—adjusted for sufficiency and efficiency—with the lowest possible impact and cost. This technical alternative demonstrates, through empirical data, that democratic and citizen-led energy sovereignty is viable if based on a distributed deployment of facilities; prioritising self-consumption, local energy communities and regional participation. We do not need to continue using fossil fuels that suffocate life on the planet, nor nuclear energy that dooms future generations. Nor do we need to continue devastating ecosystems or encroaching on high-value agricultural land: the renewable roadmap we propose demonstrates that it is possible to achieve net-zero emissions by 2040 in a way that respects biodiversity and without relying on fuels or minerals sourced from conflict zones or through neocolonialism.

·An architecture of happiness and emotional durability. It is urgent that we fundamentally replace planned obsolescence with the value of what is durable, repairable and shared. We must collectively ask a question long forbidden by the market: how much energy do we truly need to ensure a happy, fulfilling and secure existence for all humanity and for those who come after us? The scientific answer is clear-cut: we require far less than the financial system forces us to burn through daily in its mad dash towards the abyss. Having demonstrated that we do not need to destroy the planet to live better, the major debate we must now tackle is where we draw the line, and how we allocate the carbon budget that will allow us to continue living with dignity.

This paradigm shift ties in directly with the principles of ecofeminism [7],[7] Piris, N. (2026). Ecofeminismo: la vida y el planeta en el centro [Ecofeminism: life and the planet in the centre]. Greenpeace España. Available here (Spanish): https://es.greenpeace.org/es/noticias/el-transporte-publico-como-pilar-del-estado-de-bienestar/ a school of thought and action that reminds us we are ecodependent and interdependent beings. Putting life at the core means dismantling the pyramid of patriarchal and anthropocentric domination that disregards care and social reproduction—precisely the things that sustain our daily existence.

Nevertheless, the Iberian ecological transition cannot be limited to replacing combustion engines with electric ones whilst leaving class and gender hierarchies intact: it must be a process that acts as a beacon of transformation for Europe—and, if we set our ambitions high, for other countries in the Global North—demonstrating that sufficiency must be part of the democratic path to ensure the redistribution of material wealth whilst multiplying relational wealth. It is a moral responsibility towards our sons and daughters, and future generations: not to bequeath to them a scorched planet, but a clear roadmap demonstrating that we were able to organise in time to live better with less pressure on the biosphere.

Housing as a Laboratory for Alternative Futures: The Right to Shelter and Climate

If energy represents the vital force that flows through and invigorates our societies, housing constitutes the fundamental architectural and social vessel in which that life can flourish and be cared for with absolute dignity. In the current context of global polycrisis, it would be theoretically impossible and politically irresponsible to divorce the housing crisis—which is driving families out of their neighbourhoods—from the climate crisis scorching our cities. The Greenpeace report entitled Your Key to Decent Housing [8][8] Prado, M., García, C. (2026). Tu llave para una vivienda digna: Cómo hacer realidad el derecho a una vivienda asequible, saludable y sostenible [Your key to decent housing: How to materialise the right to an affordable, healthy and sustainable home]. Greenpeace España. Available here (Spanish): https://es.greenpeace.org/es/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2026/02/Greenpeace_Informe-Vivienda-Digna_resumen.pdf makes it abundantly clear that homes cannot continue to be treated as speculative financial assets for the enrichment of hedge funds and tourism operators, but must instead be protected as the first line of biophysical and social defence for citizens against the onslaught of a world in flames.

In the face of a model based on real estate speculation, touristification, and uncontrolled urban development, our organisation advocates a transformative goal: the comprehensive, in-depth renovation of 10 million homes in the Iberian Peninsula by 2040. This figure is neither a pipe dream nor a whimsical target: it reflects the structural scale required to democratise thermal comfort once and for all, eradicate the structural energy poverty suffered by millions of people, ensuring that our homes do not conflict with the climate. In a socio-economic system obsessed with building inefficient new developments and gentrifying city centres for the quick profit of the markets, proposing a large-scale policy of public renovation of working-class neighbourhoods and an increase in public social housing constitutes an act of political resistance of the highest order. It means stripping the free-market logic of its absolute control over a fundamental constitutional right and returning it to where it should never have left: the sphere of public health, gender equality and redistributive social justice.

A decarbonised, electrified home that is properly insulated and equipped with community solar energy systems should under no circumstances be an “eco-luxury” reserved for the upper-middle classes: it is the most basic material guarantee that vulnerable families are not forced to make the impossible choice between eating properly or turning on the heating in winter—or the air conditioning during summer heatwaves. It is a matter of applying the macroeconomic principle of sufficiency directly to the built environment: we do not need to continue devouring the land with more concrete and asphalt; what we urgently need is to live better, using criteria of justice and efficiency, in what has already been developed.

This is another true urban ecotopia: rethinking cities not as spaces for the accumulation of capital, but as human ecosystems that heal themselves from within their own neighbourhoods; transforming inefficient blocks of flats into genuine community climate shelters, capable of protecting life against the extreme phenomena of climate change.

Food Sovereignty: the Land and Sea, Alive Against the Financial Algorithm

The trenches of ecofeminist and grassroots resistance do not end at city limits: they extend with equal urgency towards the furrow, the seed and the rural world. In these turbulent times, fertile land is no longer understood by dominant institutions as a living, complex ecological fabric, but instead relegated to the status of a mere speculative commodity. We are witnessing a global process of agricultural land grabbing on a scale without historical precedent, perpetrated by large international investment funds and venture capital firms which—completely detached and indifferent to the ecological and historical reality of the territories they purchase—are buying thousands of hectares as if acquiring financial derivatives or crypto-assets on a screen. A good example of this is the case of Spanish olive groves [9],[9] Greenpeace España. (2026). El campo franquiciado: el caso del olivar español [The franchised countryside: the case of Spanish olive groves]. Available here (Spanish): https://es.greenpeace.org/es/trabajamos-en/ecofeminismo/ which we at Greenpeace have documented. Their sole objective is the maximisation of short-term profit, imposing industrial livestock macro-farms and highly technified intensive monocultures that deplete underground aquifers, poison and desertify the soil with agrochemicals and fossil fertilisers, and irreversibly undermine the social fabric of our villages. This model is not exclusive to agriculture: it is equally replicated in livestock farming and fisheries.

In the face of this brutal offensive by financial capital against the very foundations of human nutrition, the response can be none other than the resolute articulation of food sovereignty. To turn this upside-down system on its head, we at Greenpeace have also designed a rigorous alternative: our proposal for a sustainable food model [10],[10] Ojeda, C., Moreno, H., Ferreirim, L., Martín-Borregón, M. (2025). Revolución alimentaria: urge una transición del inviable sistema actual a un modelo alimentario sostenible [Food revolution: a transition from the current unsustainable system to a sustainable food model is urgently needed]. Greenpeace España. Available here (Spanish): https://es.greenpeace.org/es/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/06/BIO-web-1.pdf a roadmap for social justice that demonstrates that another way of producing, distributing and consuming is entirely viable if the people who consume and produce—and the ecosystems themselves—are placed at the heart of public policy.

Within this strategic framework, the steadfast defence of family farmsteads, extensive livestock farming and small-scale artisanal fishing is by no means an exercise in folkloric sentimentality or rural nostalgia: it represents one of the most crucial strategies for climate security and civil resilience at our disposal. It is the political recognition that only those communities who are deeply rooted in the land and the sea—and who depend directly on the health of their ecological cycles—possess the genuine interest, historical memory and empirical knowledge necessary to safeguard biodiversity and keep ecosystems alive for future generations.

·Decommodifying the right to food in its entirety. The food security of communities and the constitutional right to healthy nutrition cannot continue to depend on speculative fluctuations or future bets made on the commodity exchanges of Chicago, London or Frankfurt. Food is life, and there are people behind it. It is not a commodity for financial speculation.

·Rootedness and interdependence in the face of corporate extractivism. Whilst investment funds exploit water resources and withdraw unpunished from territories once their soil has been exhausted and salinated; whilst large meat producers farm for export and poison the water; and whilst we overempower—and provide exclusive subsidies—to an industrial fishing fleet that plunders the seas of “third countries”; family and cooperative farming, extensive livestock farming and sustainable fishing anchor the population in rural and coastal areas, generate stable local economies, redistribute wealth and act as the true guardians of the landscape and native biodiversity.

·Climate resilience: agroecology and sustainable fishing. A relocalised food system, based on short supply chains, fair prices for producers and the diversity of agroecological crops or fish species, is infinitely more resilient and robust in the face of global supply crises than the industrial macro-chains controlled by a handful of transnational corporations.

Just as we have argued for the energy sector, the global food system requires an urgent transition towards self-sufficiency, local production and decarbonisation. The planet does not need more polluting mega-farms—whether at sea or on land—nor more industrial agriculture saturated with petrochemical pesticides: what it urgently needs are more people from the sea and the countryside who are committed to the health of ecosystems. Implementing a sustainable food model [11][11] Ibídem. from the ground up, in the face of the financial system’s algorithms, is ultimately about defending our democratic autonomy to decide what we eat, how we feed ourselves, who produces or catches our food and how, and how we inhabit and interact with the landscape that sustains us. It means restoring to the land and the sea their sacred role as the life-giving matrix. Snatching the food system from the hands of those who see in it nothing but a cold balance sheet of profits and losses would, in short, be a savings account for the future of the primary sector and for the feeding of all people.

The Green Social Shield: Protecting Basic Rights as an Ethical and Political Imperative

In order to sustain over time this enormous project of systemic transformation and resistance against the onslaught of capital, it is not enough just to arm ourselves with the best scientific arguments or the most refined technical proposals: it is absolutely essential that we simultaneously build solid networks of mutual support capable of acting as a real shield for our collective integrity. It is also essential to reach a broad agreement so that the majority of society can make ends meet, averting the “end of the world”, guaranteeing present and future well-being, and offering special protection to the groups most exposed to economic and climate insecurity. In a world turned upside down, where consumerist hyper-individualism and fierce competition are hailed as social virtues whilst the population’s isolation and mental health deteriorate to epidemic levels, the act of loving, caring for and supporting one another as a community ceases to be a merely private or therapeutic matter: it becomes an ethical imperative and one of the most revolutionary and subversive political tools at our disposal.

That is why our policy proposal in the face of social vulnerability is not strictly limited to the environmental realm: it is strongly centred on the demand for a green, inclusive and democratic social shield [12].[12] García Paret, C. (2026). Un nuevo contrato social verde para una economía del bienestar [A new green social contract for a welfare economy]. Greenpeace España. Available here (Spanish): https://ecosfron.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Dossieres-EsF-61-Alianza-Mas-Alla-del-Crecimiento.pdf By this notion, we allude to a set of coordinated public policies and community practices specifically designed to protect the social majority through economic and environmental justice solutions. A set of policies that ensures the economic and social costs of the necessary ecological transition are fairly borne by the wealthy and the corporations that have historically enriched themselves through the destruction of the planet—unconditionally safeguarding the rights of the social majority and the most vulnerable groups. The green social shield is the practical embodiment of redistributive justice: a mechanism that ensures no one is left behind in any crisis or transition, turning the ecological transition into a historic opportunity to reduce inequalities of class, gender and background. To be truly robust and resilient, this shield must be complemented by a profound cultural and organisational transformation that places care and compassion at the forefront of a broad and inclusive society.

Transformative activism must not, however, replicate within its own ranks the productivist, self-exploitative and competitive logics characteristic of the very system it seeks to overcome. To do so would be to condemn our teams and activists to chronic exhaustion and burnout. Caring for those who care for the Earth and human rights is a strategic priority of the highest order.

We must be able to design spaces for activism and work that act as safe havens where radical kindness, active listening, the reconciliation of life’s rhythms, and the explicit and mutual recognition of our vulnerability and interdependence are not seen as weaknesses, but as the primary sources of our collective strength. Loving one another through action is what makes us politically invincible in the face of the geopolitics of fear. Community affection is the glue that binds the trenches together and the inner energy that allows us to hold onto our smiles and our active hope in the midst of the storm.

The Criminalisation of the Right to Protest: SLAPP Suits and Collective Judicial Response

This growing capacity of self-organised citizens to imagine, co-create and implement real alternatives to disaster has triggered a fierce legal and institutional counter-offensive by those who benefit from the fossil fuel model. At present, social movements must not only devote our energies to mitigating rising global temperatures, protecting ecosystems, halting destructive projects or promoting solutions: we are forced to engage in constant legal battles against a planned offensive of intimidation and judicial persecution. We are witnessing an alarming rise in the criminalisation of protest and so-called Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP). These are tools of legal harassment promoted by large transnational corporations that do not seek justice in the courts, but rather to economically suffocate, psychologically drain and politically paralyse the organisations and activists who dare to expose their environmental crimes and colonial practices.

We have observed with deep concern how certain political and media sectors are deliberately attempting to criminalise peaceful social protest and non-violent direct action, even going so far as to brand as “eco-terrorism” or “vandalism” what is in fact a legitimate exercise of self-defence and freedom of expression. The system, once again in its upside-down logic, seeks to judge those who sound the climate alarm whilst granting total impunity and tax incentives to those who continue to dump millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

It is precisely in this hostile environment that the environmentalist legal front stands firm and proves its democratic worth. The irrevocable acquittals of activists in court should not be seen merely as individual procedural reliefs or successes of our lawyers’ technical defence: they constitute genuine democratic precedents of inestimable value to civil society as a whole.

Through these rulings, the judiciary is beginning to recognise—with rigour and a focus on fundamental rights—that peaceful civil disobedience does not threaten the democratic order. On the contrary, it acts as an essential safeguard and a legitimate mechanism for political participation when institutions and governments fail resoundingly in their constitutional and historical obligation to protect the lives, health and environment of the population.

However, the democratic response to this civilizational emergency cannot be confined to acts of street-level resistance or reactive legal strategies: it must boldly push the boundaries of institutional innovation. It is a blatant contradiction to attempt to steer a systemic and biophysical transition of this magnitude using the worn-out tools of formal governance, which today is hijacked by short-term electoral politics and the interests of corporate lobbies. Faced with this structural deadlock, political environmentalism must promote and defend the opening of channels for direct and binding participation, such as a permanent citizens’ parliament to defend democracy and climate [13].[13] Saldaña, E., Delage, A., Jiménez, R. (2025). Parlamento Ciudadano permanente para defender la democracia y el clima [A permanent citizen parliament to defend democracy and climate]. El País [Tribuna]. Available here (Spanish): https://elpais.com/clima-y-medio-ambiente/2025-01-28/un-parlamento-ciudadano-permanente-para-defender-la-democracia-y-el-clima.html Only by opening up major strategic state decisions to deliberative citizens’ assemblies—selected by lottery and shielded from the financial influence of the fossil fuel oligopoly—will we be able to break the current political deadlock and ensure that regulatory frameworks are, once and for all, subordinate to the objective limits of the biosphere.

Being brave in the 21st century unequivocally means refusing to be intimidated by the spurious use of laws, especially those designed or twisted to shield corporate privilege and the impunity of the elites at the expense of the universal right to a decent life. Let us not forget that the most basic civil, labour and democratic rights we enjoy on a daily basis today—from women’s suffrage to unionism and freedom of association, including workplace safety regulations and the protection of natural spaces—were historically classified as “illegal acts” and subversive by the establishment.

We recognise our own activist DNA in that historical disobedience. Today, our work in the courtrooms is exactly the same as that which we carried out at the cooling towers of thermal power stations, within the supply chains of the arms industry, or in the waters of the Mediterranean: to firmly remind those in power that legality must be subordinate to justice, and that regulations must be living tools for the protection of the biosphere—never containment walls to halt the social change that science and human dignity demand without delay.

Memory as Fuel: From “Impossible” Victories to Earned Collective Rights

When we defend the viability of these specific ecotopias, the economic establishment and the mouthpieces of the status quo tend to label us as utopian, naive or removed from reality. They seek to make us forget that the social history of humanity is, in fact, the graveyard of those absolute truths of power once considered unchangeable. The abolition of the legal institution of slavery, the achievement of universal suffrage, the right to divorce and abortion, and the introduction of the eight-hour working day were all dismissed in their respective eras by the ruling classes as senseless, dangerous and unworkable delusions. If today they constitute fundamental and indisputable human rights—at least within these geographical boundaries—it is because there were organised communities that had the audacity and political courage to envision what did not yet exist in the law, and to risk their lives to bring it into reality. Rights do not fall from the sky nor are they benevolent concessions: they are won through collective struggle.

In our immediate territorial context, resounding grassroots victories—such as the definitive shelving of the Altri pulp mill mega-project in Palas de Rei (Galicia) or the social mobilisation that has halted the expansion of the Guggenheim Museum in the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve (Basque Country)—should not be interpreted as mere local successes or regional environmental conflicts. They are true laboratories of democratic courage and hubs of an interconnected global resistance against extractivist capitalism. These triumphs demonstrate, through the weight of hard facts, that when citizens organise from the grassroots and arm themselves with scientific evidence and social legitimacy, the so-called “common sense” of transnational corporations and complicit administrations buckles and retreats.

Every time green and neighbourhood activism stops a useless, destructive or speculative infrastructure project, it is not only protecting a specific ecosystem, a river or a forest: it is safeguarding our collective mental space and the democratic right to imagine a radically different model of development. We are able to see the living forest where financial logic sees only cubic metres of timber and short-term revenue. We are able to recognise human communities with deep roots and long histories where boards of directors see only “human resources” or “sacrifice zones” with low population density. The memory of these victories is the fuel that drives our present resistance. It teaches us that resignation is an ideological trap and that the audacity to question the status quo is the only historical force capable of permanently expanding the limits of what is possible.

Conclusion: The Rebellion of Imagination and the Historical Responsibility to Act

At this point in our reflection, it is imperative to undertake an exercise in radical and rigorous honesty: the current state of civilisation is extremely serious and deeply troubling. The diagnosis of a “world on fire”, which serves as the backbone of this issue of the Metapolis magazine, is by no means a poetic licence, a rhetorical hyperbole or a distant academic metaphor: it is a material reality that manifests itself starkly in the thick smoke of the sixth-generation wildfires devouring the Amazon and the Mediterranean forests; in the trail of destruction left by bombs funded by fossil fuel greed in the Middle East; and in the extreme cold or heatwaves endured by thousands of households in our neighbourhoods, caught up day after day in the deliberate scam of the energy oligopoly.

But it is precisely for this reason—because the macroeconomic and ecological outlook is unsettling and places us on the brink of biophysical tipping points—that the choice between surrender, enlightened cynicism or inaction represents an unconscionable luxury and a historic betrayal that none of us can afford. Under no circumstances.

Our daily work within organisations such as Greenpeace is not limited to the necessary recording of disasters or the public denunciation of corporate impunity: our fundamental mission is to act decisively as the architects and co-creators of a just future that already exists, in the shape of potential and alternatives, through the resistance practices of countless groups and individuals across every corner of the planet. In structural terms, all the proposals we have outlined in these pages—from energy self-sufficiency, sustainable mobility and housing regeneration to food sovereignty—are intended to function as a systemic mechanism to maximise the safe and fair space for humanity. This set of proposals constitutes the modest way in which, at Greenpeace Spain and Portugal, we are attempting to steer an entire bioregion towards a post-fossil future. A habitable future that we can only achieve by putting into practice Kate Raworth’s so-called “doughnut economy”: that is, by establishing an unshakeable social foundation that guarantees dignified lives for all without exceeding the ecological ceiling of planetary boundaries. In short, it is about laying the groundwork for a new green social contract where collective well-being is not measured by growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), but by our social capacity to guarantee rights and the biophysical conditions to care for and sustain life.

We are not prepared to sit back and wait passively for a future designed by the boards of multinational corporations to be imposed upon us: we have organised ourselves to navigate the present and intervene directly to shape it. We do so armed with the unwavering compass of ecofeminist climate justice, driven by the transformative engine of material sufficiency, and sustained by the firm political conviction that decarbonising our socio-economic structures is the only real way to demilitarise the international stage and guarantee lasting peace among the peoples.

As the architect and systems designer R. Buckminster Fuller so lucidly reminds us, our historic mission on Earth is by no means to resign ourselves as mere victims of events: we were called into existence to act as architects of our own future. We have been summoned by our moral responsibility to present and future generations to co-design and build a habitable world, where many worlds can coexist with dignity.

This is our activist ecotopia: a bastion of hope that does not merely combat the effects of disaster, but has the power to flourish, propose and build alternatives through mutual support. The future does not belong to denialist leaders, nor is it written in the balance sheets of investment funds: it belongs entirely to those fighting on the streets, putting into action the solutions that light the way forward. To those who demonstrate, with political courage, radical compassion and collective organisation, that it is possible to halt the geopolitics of fear and fossil colonialism. That it is possible, beginning today, to build an alternative together.

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