"The obsession with global warming is a leak that prevents real ecological progress"

François Henry is a teacher-researcher in the Sens & Travail chair at Icam de Lille, an engineering school.

Talking about ecology has become commonplace today. It is a commonplace. It is even more banal, at the turn of a simple conversation of daily life, that the different interlocutors agree spontaneously, and that whatever their references, their way of life or their field of professional activity, on the fact that it is necessary to "save the planet" , "preserve the environment" , detach from the "consumer society" , initiate the "energy transition" . And so be it. No one will dispute the need to take into account these elements now in order to demonstrate responsibility towards the "next generations".

So far, this speech will have aroused interest, won support, made consensus. It is precisely at this point that the observation of speeches begins to be interesting. Indeed, the ecological crisis is generally presented as the consequence of two causes: pollution by material and concrete waste (whether visible or invisible) on the one hand, global warming on the other. Among these two causes, it is the latter - global warming - which, during media discussions and speeches, is most often put forward, presented as the main target against which to fight. And perhaps rightly so. Global warming is all the more publicized and its reduction presented as an objective of the very first order that "science" has demonstrated that man is at the origin of it. Is. Maybe this is the case? Or not. I let scientists from relevant disciplines, climate specialists and physicists present their methods, their studies, their results and their interpretations. The purpose of this text is not at all - far from it - to take a position on these specific points.

The point here is more to discuss how the material pollution on the one hand, global warming on the other hand, are publicly and mediated. These two elements are not of the same nature. They are widely distinguished by the scale from which we can appreciate them: global warming is generally known by scientists who are specialists in the subject and by farmers who observe earlier harvests, the appearance of new parasites, modified migrations of birds, while concrete waste, packaging, trash bags and other chemicals are observable by everyone directly without the need for media - in the truest sense of the word, of another who tells me things without being able to verify it . Even if everyone has certainly been able to note the increasingly frequent absence of cold winters and the increase in heat waves, it is here a question of size to resume the title and the thesis of the work of Olivier Rey who writes : "By misleading the sensitivity in the general, by making lose even a little more the sense of the proportional. 'When we do nothing, we believe that we are responsible for everything' ; conversely, when we believe that we are responsible for everything, we do nothing, or very little. ” (p. 239).

Concretely, a person or a human community considered singularly has much less control over global warming - which I am emphasizing once again here that it is not my point here to determine whether man is, or not, the origin - whereas on the contrary, they have pollution from material waste.

In short, it is permissible to consider today that the incessant mobilization of reality that is global warming is a flight from reflection, hampering action not only potential but above all possible on its scale. Because paradoxically, the discourse on global warming can prevent action and therefore the reduction of pollution and waste.

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The debate over the electric car is one example. It is often presented as being a means which, widespread on a large scale, would be effective in combating global warming, even though it is obvious that over its entire life cycle, it would pollute enormously for the following reasons : need to create countless and new infrastructures (construction and installation of charging stations, necessary cables, etc.); battery production, energy-hungry and hungry for chemicals; production of electricity for use (even today a large part of the world's electricity is produced with very polluting coal-fired power stations); recycling of batteries and chemicals on a large scale ... The high media coverage of electric cars, the pinnacle of electronic objects, contrasts sharply with the absence of transparent, clear and encouraging information on the recycling of computers, smartphones and others connected objects that precede it.

Another example that shows that we have a more direct grip on pollution than on warming: non-perishable items sold in supermarkets are most often sold in plastic packaging often larger than the item itself.

In addition, focusing discourse on global warming, like a magnet systematically oriented towards the polarity that attracts it, can generate an atmosphere of fear. This fear can be all the greater since we cannot individually act on its cause, or perhaps collectively prevent it. This is why it is nowadays common to hear - this has also become commonplace: "man is a predator, a harmful species that destroys the planet!". Let man disappear, and it would be good for nature! In his recent work The malignant spirit of capitalism , Pierre-Yves Gomez speaks of "anti-humanism" and thus analyzes the situation: "Ashamed of being a man, rather than a critic of speculative capitalism: the lesson learned is reproduced in daily life. Anti-humanist fatalism is Narcisse's agreed philosophy. Which doesn't stop him from moving on, because it's a philosophy of convenience. ”

This observation now established, propose a rebalancing. Moving the problem to a scale that is not ours prevents it from being tackled more fully, diverts from concrete possibilities for action and thereby takes away responsibility. For this reason, there is perhaps an indulgence, a fairly contemporary attitude to indulge in passive and resigned fatalism. The question of global warming then functions as a flight, a Pascalian entertainment: the overinvestment of the question of global warming disinvests the more obvious and concrete question of pollution and waste. Talking less about the former can make it possible to redirect efforts towards a concrete reduction in pollution and waste because the latter are, everyone can see in daily life, indeed produced by man.

It is not by getting lost in elusive generalities that man becomes more man but by devoting himself with vigor, courage and determination to the tasks that are close to him and immediate. So may we first grasp, on our own scale, personal, family, that of the district, of the company, of each sector, of the administration or others, of concrete and material pollution, for example by limiting the purchase of overpackaged products as much as possible. The results of each will be all the more effective and visible, sources of satisfaction of his own power to act found. Here is enough to push back anti-humanism by finding the human person as an actor in the beautification of the world.