Ferghane Azihari is general delegate of the Free Academy of Human Sciences (ALSH) and member of the Society of Political Economy (SEP). On October 21, he published an essay on the ecological question at the Presses de la Cité.
In 1979 appeared
Hans Jonas'
The Responsibility Principle
. The German philosopher aims to endow our society with an ethic adapted to the risks of our technological society. Among his theories is that of the heuristic of fear: "
we must listen more to the prophecy of doom than to the prophecy of happiness
." The followers of this “enlightened catastrophism” maintain that nothing is lost by erring in excess of alarmism and that catastrophists need not be ashamed of the possible failure of their predictions. Whatever happens, they participate in the collective awareness: "
The prophecy of doom is made to prevent it from being fulfilled;
and later make fun of possible alarm bells by reminding them that the worst has not come true would be the height of injustice: it may be that their oddness is their merit,
”writes Jonas.
Let’s admit.
But the remedies proposed by whistleblowers still need to be consistent with their diagnosis for them to be taken seriously.
However, the overwhelming majority of personalities who claim to be political ecology do not meet these criteria.
Cognitive dissonance is palpable when those who fervently share the IPCC's publications on the risks of climate change wage an intense war against the most just and effective solutions to the problem.
One thinks of the hostility of environmental movements towards nuclear energy, which is "
the only carbon-free source of energy that can deliver reliable energy day and night, no matter the season, almost everywhere on earth, and which has demonstrated its effectiveness on a large scale
”, as Bill Gates recalls in his latest book.
Coupled with the increasing efficiency of industrial processes, this energy explains the performance of a country like France, which emits less CO2 per capita than South Africa “
despite
” a GDP per capita three times higher.
The environmental movement wants less to ensure our environmental security than to end modern society in the name of the eternal Rousseauist fantasy idealizing the state of nature.
Ferghane azihari
Only the rapid expansion of atomic energy would make it possible to decarbonise global electricity, to envisage in the near future the capacity to synthesize clean fuels, to develop negative emission technologies, without giving up improving the lot of the poor, all at the cost of controllable pollution.
The alternative to the atom would be to use diffuse and intermittent energies such as wind and solar which, according to their supporters, would be incapable of fueling a developed civilization. In his work entitled
Our Synthetic Environment
, the American environmental philosopher Murray Bookchin enthusiastically explains that the generalization of wind and solar power would lead us to more “
decentralized
” societies.
". By that he meant smaller human communities and a less capital intensive economy. In other words, these energies are made for tribes of small peasants, small artisans and small traders. They would bring us straight back to the Middle Ages and the painful existence from which humanity has been trying to escape for two centuries of industrialization.
Thus appears the imposture of the environmental movement, which wishes less to ensure our environmental security than to end modern society in the name of the eternal Rousseauist fantasy idealizing the state of nature. It is indeed interesting to note that among the decreasing numbers are people who dread the capacity of industrial civilization to overcome environmental challenges. André Gorz, one of the spiritual fathers of degrowth admitted that the environmental movement was born long before the degradation of the environment posed security problems for humanity: “
It was originally born from a spontaneous protest against destruction. of the culture of everyday life by the apparatuses of economic and administrative power
», He wrote in a famous text published in 1974. So he insisted to his supporters on the real meaning of the ecological struggle by inviting them not to be satisfied with criticizing capitalism on the ground of the quality of the environment insofar as this imperative would end up being taken into account by the hated system: “
This is why we must immediately ask the question frankly: what do we want? A capitalism which adapts to ecological constraints or an economic, social and cultural revolution which abolishes the constraints of capitalism and, by the same token, establishes a new relationship of men to the community, to their environment and to nature?
"
Air and water pollution kill 6 and 50 times more people, respectively, in sub-Saharan Africa than in Western Europe, for the simple reason that rich countries have better technologies than poor countries to support themselves. daily needs.
Ferghane azihari
All is said. The environment passes after the big night against industrial civilization. Therefore it is not surprising that a figure of the environmental movement as the philosopher Dominique Bourg ignores the advantages of nuclear power in reducing greenhouse gas emissions to dread the "
flight forward
" materialistic that this energy would: "
We want to maintain our standard of living, so we want to keep it at all costs with nuclear power, but this is not the right solution
". But what is the use of being afraid of the suffering that uncontrolled climate change would cause to assign humanity to the evils of poverty?
As of this writing, underdevelopment kills more than climate change. The disadvantages of poverty are all the more unacceptable as they are not limited to material considerations. Poverty also affects the quality of the environment. It should be remembered that air and water pollution respectively kill 6 and 50 times more people in sub-Saharan Africa than in Western Europe for the simple reason that rich countries have better technologies than poor countries. to meet their daily needs. Anyone interested in the quality of the environment is therefore favorable to economic growth.
This is all the more true as industrial development has the advantage of making our societies more resilient to natural hazards.
The world population has multiplied by 4 since the beginning of the 20th century.
At the same time, the number of casualties caused by natural disasters has never been lower.
The reason for this development is that people have better technologies and institutions to thwart natural hazards as they get richer.
The threat to humanity is less climate change than the obstacles to technological and economic progress that would make it possible to combat and adapt to it.
Ferghane azihari
Floods do less damage to those who can erect dikes, develop polders to gain fertile land from the sea, or build drainage systems to control the amount of water in the soil.
The Dutch have developed a skill in this area that will serve as a model for the whole world.
Storms are a lighter burden on people who can afford better information and crisis management systems as well as solid infrastructure.
This is why they do less damage in the United States than in Bangladesh, which, until recently, could count up to several hundred thousand victims after a hurricane.
Drought does not cause water scarcity in countries that can afford desalination, as the Israelis show us. It also does not lead to famines in countries with modern agricultural systems that use irrigation, pesticides and advanced agronomic practices, such as breeding or inventing varieties resistant to water stress. .
Thus, the threat weighing on humanity is less climate change than the obstacles to technological and economic progress that would make it possible to combat and adapt to it. However, insofar as environmental movements persist in being nests of anti-capitalist reactionaries, our only certainty is that it is futile to rely on them to move humanity forward in the right direction.