Nothing guarantees that the ecological disaster can be stopped

The reversibility of a disorder is not a certain thing. The extinction of a species is generally irreversible: dinosaurs, after the impact of the meteorite that fell into the Gulf of Mexico 65 million years ago, have definitely disappeared. Crocodiles and turtles are the only reptiles that have survived environmental change, allowing evolution to take a different path, with the supremacy of mammals and most recently that of man.

Damage to the natural environment caused by human activities, although apparently less brutal, may not be reversible either. The hole in the ozone layer seems to be slowly receding since the CFC ban, but a new record occurred over the Arctic, so far relatively spared, in the winter of 2010–2011; It is expected that it will take about 50 years to recover the previous situation, and there is no guarantee that industry will not produce new ozone-depleting substances. Global warming may lead to the dispersion of methane retained under the ocean floor and in permafrost: the greenhouse effect could be affected and the rise in temperatures could lead to the permanent disappearance of many species; We can’t see how the released methane would be trapped again. Many groundwaters used for crops date back to time immemorial and, once exhausted, will not recover.

It is urgent to put everything in place to stop the debacle as quickly as possible, before it reaches irreversible. This, it is true, requires a degree of awareness and accountability that is not available to most mankind for the time being, given the irrational nature of consumeristic behaviour that is constantly gaining in strength and number.

Human ecogenetics aims precisely to trace the root causes of environmentally harmful behaviour and to decipher the psychological and psychopathological mechanisms responsible for it. It thus brings us a new hope of halting the infernal mechanics of which we are both artisans and victims.