{"id":2014,"date":"2015-04-22T15:35:51","date_gmt":"2015-04-22T14:35:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.mr-int.ch\/?p=2014"},"modified":"2015-05-17T12:55:14","modified_gmt":"2015-05-17T11:55:14","slug":"the-environment-all-is-wrong-nothing-can-be-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mr-int.ch\/?p=2014&lang=en","title":{"rendered":"The environment: all is wrong, nothing can be right."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here is a strong statement, one of those that can only be convincing because categorical:<\/p>\n<p>\u00ab\u00a0<em>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&#8230; Just like the sun shines.\u00a0\u00bb<\/em><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>What can be retorted to this?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>That it was worse before.<br \/>\nInaudible, \u00ab\u00a0before\u00a0\u00bb is an obsolete concept; or false, it was better before, gentler, more natural.<\/li>\n<li>That progress exists and consists in learning from mistakes.<br \/>\nUnacceptable, this progress led us to the current disaster and as \u00ab\u00a0we know \u00ab\u00a0, we shall not stay in a state of avoidance or denial.<\/li>\n<li>That development is concomitant of the appearance of pollutions <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">and<\/span> of the solutions to remedy them.<br \/>\nRejected. This development is not right, another one is needed.<\/li>\n<li>That problems appear over time and cannot be resolved at once.<br \/>\nAlso unacceptable. We must give ourselves the ways and means to act, here and now.<\/li>\n<li>That only affluent societies can manage their environment while poor ones have other urgencies.<br \/>\nCynical and inacceptable. The rich exploit the poor, this must stop.<\/li>\n<li>That the objectives are contradictory.<br \/>\nInvalid, the planet cannot be sacrificed in the name of short-term purposes. It\u2019s about our salvation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>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:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What do you really know?<\/li>\n<li>Can a transformation process \u2013from the breathing of a living cell to the artistic creation\u2013 be performed without using resources and producing waste?<\/li>\n<li>Is it possible to reach perfection? Which one?<\/li>\n<li>Who decides on which risks to take or not to take? How?<\/li>\n<li>And where is freedom in all this?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>There is nothing new under the sun, which is shining between some clouds.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>PS: I can\u2019t refrain to recommend reading my <a href=\"http:\/\/climate.mr-int.ch\/index.php\/en\/development-3\">chapters on development<\/a> and those <a href=\"http:\/\/climate.mr-int.ch\/index.php\/en\/environment\">on the environment<\/a> on my site <a href=\"http:\/\/climate.mr-int.ch\">climate.mr-int.ch<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here is a strong statement, one of those that can only be convincing because categorical: \u00ab\u00a0Nevertheless, 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&#8230; Just like the sun shines.\u00a0\u00bb The young cousin who writes &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.mr-int.ch\/?p=2014&#038;lang=en\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> \u00ab\u00a0The environment: all is wrong, nothing can be right.\u00a0\u00bb<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":6,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[39,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","category-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mr-int.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mr-int.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mr-int.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mr-int.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mr-int.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mr-int.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mr-int.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mr-int.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mr-int.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mr-int.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}