Abstract

The idea that living beings are nothing other than exchanges of energy is a reductionist one. Rather, living beings are characterized by reproduction, evolution, regulation and adaption - or most generally, information and reaction. Ecology is inseparable from information, both biologically and historically. Political ecology emerged in reaction to the dead end of energy-based, quantitative economics and its productivism, suggesting instead a qualitative vision of regulation through information. The information age radically transforms our world and our representations. The information we receive determines our responsibility: this is the basis for the principle of precaution. Political ecology is the feedback of industrial modernity ; it is a the critique of the negative dimensions of progress, its degradations and pollutions. Information technology is indispensable for shifting towards a reduction of material consumption, in favor of immaterial production. Information is at the heart of political ecology at all levels - biological, historical, political and economic - and as such as it truly is a new paradigm, contrasting with mechanical « laws of history » or even thermodynamic equilibrium