Here is a strong statement, one of those that can only be convincing because categorical:

“Nevertheless, concerning what I call ecological disaster, I lean unfortunately on real facts, and, whatever the abilities of the human brain to eradicate such facts of its consciousness, they exist… Just like the sun shines.”

The young cousin who writes this to me, she will recognize herself, has no doubt, she knows. The facts on which she bases her conviction can moreover be enumerated like a shopping list: pollution of air, water and of the soils, anthropic climate warming, nuclear power, genetic modifications, unsustainable agriculture, poisoned food, waning biodiversity, widespread wastage. I must be forgetting some.

And then, as everyone can verify that the sun shines, we must face the evidence of these evidences. The one who will not do so must be affected by a denial pathology, or, and here I extrapolate on her assertion, can only be a criminal accomplice of this permanent disaster who denies his culpability.

This is indeed a summary of the anti-civilization culture which was ingrained in the heads of the generation that was the future and has now become the current one. The worst moment of history is happening nowadays.

We long for an ideal, a world where the human ecological footprint should not be visible anywhere. And as this ideal does not come true, and obviously it is the case, thus there will be disaster.

What can be retorted to this?

• That it was worse before.
  Inaudible, “before” is an obsolete concept; or false, it was better before, gentler, more natural.
• That progress exists and consists in learning from mistakes.
  Unacceptable, this progress led us to the current disaster and as “we know “, we shall not stay in a state of avoidance or denial.
• That development is concomitant of the appearance of pollutions and of the solutions to remedy them.
  Rejected. This development is not right, another one is needed.
• That problems appear over time and cannot be resolved at once.
  Also unacceptable. We must give ourselves the ways and means to act, here and now.
• That only affluent societies can manage their environment while poor ones have other urgencies.
  Cynical and inacceptable. The rich exploit the poor, this must stop.
• That the objectives are contradictory.
  Invalid, the planet cannot be sacrificed in the name of short-term purposes. It’s about our salvation.

In fact, no answer will be acceptable because the injunction is a moral one, aiming at the absolute. My recommendation is, before undertaking a hypothetical and undefinable ecological revolution, to pass the baton to these young generations by letting them discuss even more fundamental questions:

• What do you really know?
• Can a transformation process –from the breathing of a living cell to the artistic creation– be performed without using resources and producing waste?
• Is it possible to reach perfection? Which one?
• Who decides on which risks to take or not to take? How?
• And where is freedom in all this?

I can foresee that their own lives will not last long enough to fully examine this and that they will have to pass on the same questions to their future generations.

There is nothing new under the sun, which is shining between some clouds.

 

PS: I can’t refrain to recommend reading my chapters on development and those on the environment on my site climate.mr-int.ch.

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