elucidating the precise causes of these changes

The immediate causes of the phenomena are generally addressed. For example, consumerism is attributed to human greed, and indifference to its ecological consequences is attributed to selfishness. And they think they’ve said everything.

However, it is questionable whether this apparently incoercible greed and selfishness, at least on the scale of the masses, are an integral part of human nature. If this is the case, we are confronted with a state of fact, an internal contradiction of the laws of equilibrium that usually govern ecosystems.

The greed and indifference to others, e.g. large predators, tigers or lions, are compensated by co-evolution by performances developed by their prey, so that the respective populations remain within acceptable limits. An accident, such as human intervention, is needed to break the balance, as was the case for Stalin crab imported to the Baltic Sea where he had never put the clamps. In the absence of predators, it began to proliferate and ravage the seabed.

Nor did man have a predator. The impact of tigers and sharks is minimal, and contrary to some beliefs, we do not figure in the range of their target species. Microbes seem more dangerous, given the number of deaths due to the black plague, the Spanish flu and other epidemics that have marked our history. If safety and health measures help to avoid these scourges, it seems inevitable that the human species will proliferate and exhaust the resources of the biosphere.

However, one essential element is missing. Analogues often lead to abusive simplifications. Human beings are not like animals. Its intelligence allows it to cause particularly serious damage to the environment, by multiplying excessively and thanks to technological means that never existed. Only here: the same intelligence can also lead it to preserve its environment, thanks to an awareness of the consequences of its equally new acts in the history of life.

The real question is therefore this: why does man use his intelligence to develop a multitude of artifacts aimed at making his life more enjoyable and safer, and does not he use it to control his behaviour when they harm the environment on which he knows how to depend? This may be reminiscent of this word of Genesis: the Lord entrusted to him the guard of the Garden of Eden… Was it a fatal mistake of God… or did man betray the original pact for any reason?

It all happens as if greed and selfishness had taken on a disproportionate place, leading to a systematic occultation of the long-term consequences of apparently advantageous conduct. We are fascinated by the goals we pursue, by the playful aspect of our inventions, by the idea of being ahead of others. This is evidenced by the growth that has become synonymous with economic survival…

Rather than desolating ourselves from this situation without outcome, our duty is to ask ourselves whether greed, selfishness and other traits of behaviour have not been distorted for very specific reasons, which await only clarification. Then we would know better on which registers to play to stop the evolution that irresistibly takes us to planetary chaos…