Lanzarote: el papel de la crisis - Fundación César Manrique

scientific due to the fact that they lead one to think that more means better and because
some of them are expressed in monetary terms. However, as Donella Meadows points out so
lucidly and humorously, to try and conduct the economy with present figures is like trying to
drive a car with a misty windscreen and trusting a drunk passenger to show us the way along
the road.
Not unrelated to the consolidation of this faith is the major role played by certain politicians,
whose task consists initially of protecting the territory and the environment but which, in actual
fact, becomes a fervent defence of growth: aware that people’s attitudes are influenced by
insistence and repetition as opposed to reasoning, politicians “argue” that growth is compatible
with the environment and ecology, claiming that it is necessary if the standard of living of the
inhabitants of the Canary Islands is to be improved. Thus, we are made to look so ungrateful
that we fail to appreciate everything they do for us. To all this is added the enthusiastic welcome
given by mass media to the construction of new hotels with hundreds of beds and investments
worth billions. In doing so, they deliberately turn a blind eye to the fact that the pre-requisite
for true social progress to exist is that people be aware and convinced that there are lots of
feasible alternatives to present policy that offer a wide range of options in the most vital of the
aspects affecting their wellbeing: the physical environment in which they live and work.
Unfortunately, instead of opening the debate on actual, feasible alternatives, which would,
moreover, constitute an opportunity to practice and consolidate democracy on a day-to-day
basis, the only message to come across, time after time, is one which disqualifies those of
us who question that growth as utopians and fails to appreciate that what is really utopian
is to think that we can go on growing as we have been doing until now. It is irrelevant that
this questioning is based on solid reasoning and arguments as, by definition, the only
accepted reasons and arguments are those that defend growth and help the economic
machinery to keep running non-stop, irrespectively of its contribution to people’s wellbeing.
The conclusion is obvious: if the economy grows, then all is well and there is no need to
wonder what this growth is costing, the real price that is being paid for growing or how the
income produced by that growth is being distributed.
To put it briefly, the only objective to receive the blessing of politicians and entrepreneurs in
this land of tourism à la Far West – Lanzarote and the Canary Islands as a whole – consists
of the growth of tourism, the idea being that the engine should run faster and faster and
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