I wanted to react to the publication a few days ago of a quote I made recently on the fact that we are, in my opinion, a generation behind and that the question was not to know what kind of world we are going to leave to our children, but what kind of world we left to the children we were.
I did indeed say these words, convinced that we are already the first generation of children to have their future (and therefore our present) strongly compromised by a global environmental catastrophe initiated by our elders. These words are not taken from one of my books, but they echo a disturbing observation I made recently: I am indeed dumbfounded (not to say flabbergasted) by some expressions that have become popular and taken up by everyone, in the street, in the media, everywhere, without really thinking about it, and that translate, I think, a deep misunderstanding:
It is no longer science fiction, but today's reality
I hear a lot of people asking themselves "what kind of world we are going to leave to our children" or who regularly pronounce sentences like "we won't know that, but our children will...".
I don't know if they express a will to protect themselves from a reality that has become too anxiety-provoking, or if they are dangerously blind. Or both at the same time. Because these words translate a real denial of reality.
Everywhere on Earth, populations have already lost their land, submerged by rising waters or by the advance of deserts. There are already millions of victims of storms and other disasters whose violence has been proven to be a consequence of climate change, and I am not talking about the millions (billions?) of actual victims of environmental pollution in the broadest sense (pollution of our food, the water we drink or the air we breathe).
The upheavals that we have been announcing for many years as alerters are no longer a reality of tomorrow, but of today. We are already living in this pseudo-dystopian world where no human being on the surface of the globe can eat, drink and breathe healthily without simultaneously ingesting microplastics and other chemical industry gimmicks. We are already living in a world whose equilibrium has been upset by a new major crisis of life, this famous 6th mass extinction that no one wanted to believe in 12 years ago*, a crisis where species are disappearing at a rate up to 1000 times higher than the natural rate of extinction (As a reminder: 70% of vertebrate populations have disappeared in barely 50 years).
* And I know what I'm talking about because I was criticized enough for having warned about this point at the time; everyone treated us as catastrophists by refusing to see the obvious.
It is not our children who are likely to be concerned by these dark scenarios: we are already concerned and our children will be even more so if we accept to let the situation continue to deteriorate.
We are already living in this world that we authors described as "science fiction" only a few years ago, but which has now become our reality and our daily life. It is high time that some people dropped their blinders and accepted this fact, because if we are not even capable of integrating this reality, it will be difficult for us to mobilize ourselves to radically change our way of life, and this, very quickly.
Solving environmental challenges is the responsibility of our generation, not our children's
Among the most worrying expressions, in my opinion, are those directed towards future generations, explaining that "our children are the future", "tomorrow's solution" or whatever. Expressions that imply that it is our children who will have to solve the problems we are facing today. A way of passing the bathwater with the baby, as they say, to future generations, a way neither more nor less than a way of giving up in the face of the enormity of the challenges that face us.
So on this point, let's be clear: it is not our children, let alone future generations, who will put an end to the upheaval that is coming.
If we don't act today, if we don't take charge now, it won't be the next generations in 20 years who will be able to do it, because the situation will then have become totally out of control (which is already partly the case for certain phenomena characterized by such inertia that they will last for millennia, like the rising sea level)
It is today that we must act.
Not in 20 years, not in 10 years, not in 1 year,
Today.
My generation, which is also that of Thomas Pesquet or Emmanuel Macron, of Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, of Aurélien Barrau, is very probably the last to be able to change things.
Not by repairing all the damage caused by humanity, as explained above, but by limiting its impact to allow future generations to cope with it. By drawing the contours of another world, radically different, by drawing the difficult lessons of our mistakes and those of the generations that preceded us.
This is the weight that now rests on our shoulders. Nothing less than the survival of our species and our world. You will note that I do not say "of our planet" which, a priori, will probably be able to get by without us (even if a nuclear war has the possibility of sending us back 3.5 billion years by annihilating almost all forms of life on the globe).
This is why I am critical of those who think that the nuclear reactors designed by our government to provide for us in 20 years are a solution. In 20 years, the climate war will obviously be lost (and not only that one). We must immediately find alternatives and get them up and running now.
These projects of new reactors are an example among others, but they illustrate this total gap between reality and the solutions put in place by leaders who have not understood the seriousness and urgency of the situation. Finding a solution that will be functional (at best) in 15 years (and everyone knows that when EDF says 15 years, it must mean at least 20 years) when we are talking about absolute urgency is a bit like if, to use the metaphor of the movie "Don't look up", we were imagining a planetary defense system that would be valid for 7 months... knowing that a meteor would hit us in 6 months. This is absolutely useless!
Humanity must immediately and simultaneously do everything possible to drastically reduce its pressure on planetary resources and to implement alternative solutions (especially in the field of energy) that do not alter our natural environment, that is to say our living environment. I am obviously referring here to the need to stop emitting GHGs, but also, more globally, pollutants in the broad sense (in particular by totally rethinking the ecocidal productivist agricultural model).
So let's roll up our sleeves. Let's find a diplomatic solution to this ridiculous, absurd, shameful, despicable war that is occupying all our minds at the moment, and let's refocus on the only war that has to be fought today, the one against the stupidity, the absurdity, the inconsequence and the irresponsibility of Humanity.
It is now or never.
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