Achieving global success

There is currently a very universal popular and pro-environmental media current, which can give us some hope for reducing humanity’s ecological footprint. The question is to what extent these hopes are not so dim. The constant increase in CO2 emissions, the evolution of agriculture, the difficult installation of electric traction and many other blows of sword in the water, are all unreassuring signs…

Pro-ecological measures are indeed facing enormous resistance as soon as they affect the interests of industrialists. Investments and increases in production prices are such that competition is often undurables for those who respect them. No company can reasonably embark on a course leading to bankruptcy.

There are also huge consumer resistance: as long as it’s about sorting waste, saving water, switching to new bulbs, it’s pretty easy to accept. But if we really had to give up the major sources of pollution such as agrochemical products, synthetic fibres, cars, trucks, planes, boats, tankers, the step is much more difficult to take.

We find here some idealists who replace their car with a bike, their heating with solar collectors, their polyester clothes with wool, even plastic bottles with glass bottles. But if this were to occur on a scale sufficient to seriously control emissions of greenhouse gases, hydrocarbon particles, plastic particles, garbage accumulations, pollution of the oceans, in short: that the entire population renounces all sources of pollution, oppositions would be major among a large proportion of individuals. There is no guarantee that volunteering will achieve the desired goals.

The problem is particularly acute in agriculture. To return to forms of culture that are respectful of the humus and are not dependants on oil, the very structures of the agricultural world should change. The peasant who grows hundreds of hectares alone in a cabin tractor, with air conditioning, computer and all sorts of sophisticated machines, should give way to the country’s greedy teams, ready to bend to tear away the weeds and harvest the products by hand. We should learn to drive horses, reverse the rural exodus into an urban exodus, abandon all kinds of habits and facilities. Few will be candidates for such efforts and counting. This not to mention the declines in yields inherent in agroconversions…

There have always been a few hermit vocations in a population, some lovers of returning to nature and simple life. But this time, the proportions must be reversed: the majority must be ascetic, only few exceptions will be tolerable (and again, the question of example). We see here how things will come up: everyone will think that the others will only get there first, which will have the mathematical consequence that no one will put aside a few zealators.

The game is far from being won in advance, especially in developing countries. The argument is well known: Westerners have polluted freely for two centuries to reach their level of progress, in our turn now.

If the situation degenerates into armed conflicts, it will no longer be a question of limiting pollution, but of winning war. The competing nations will use all available means. Environmental damage is only likely to accelerate. And who tells us that in desperation, atomic weapons are not the last resort, we never know what can happen in the head of military leaders who are struggling for victory. With the dog stock ready to eradicate the biosphere…