When young French people take an ecological turn

Basculons!

(Let's take a turn, in Spanish) is the title of this collective work that was published in France last April by the Actes Sud publishing house and that began to be reprinted in the summer.

Its success lies in collecting the experiences of 30 young French environmental activists who have gone from words to deeds.

Through the personal journey of each of the protagonists, the reader discovers how they became aware of the "ecological disaster" and how they committed themselves to the "fight" to guarantee the habitability of the planet.

The book, which is presented as a militant notebook, is subtitled

, an expression that plays on words.

It can be translated as “in a

world ” if the “v” is preserved or “In a viable world” without the “v”.

The edition has been coordinated by Tanguy Descamps and Maxime Ollivier.

Descamps is a 25-year-old, with a degree in Political Science and Sociology.

While studying for a Master's degree in Management, he became interested in renewable energies and read a book that opened his eyes.

It's about

.

The reading made him realize that there would be no purely technological solution to the ecological crisis and no infinite growth in a world of finite resources.

The awareness caused him vertigo, anxiety and a feeling of loneliness until he joined the La Bascule movement, which can be translated as "turning point", and which is a citizen group that acts in favor of the ecological and social transition. .

Since then, Descamps has dedicated his life to militancy.

At La Bascule he met Maxime Ollivier, and the two of them together cooked up the idea of

The purpose of the book?

It's double.

As Descamps explains, on the one hand they want to legitimize the voices of young people like them who have "turned around" and also encourage other young people who are asking themselves the same questions, so that they fully commit to ecology because it is "the urgency of the moment”.

The book wants to reunite the "climate generation" with their parents and grandparents, and in no case delve into a possible generational fracture, says one of its authors

Julie Pasquet is one case among the 30 reviewed.

This 24-year-old spent the last six years at university and today she is a double graduate from the Toulouse Business School and the Toulouse Faculty of Political Science.

She and even so she has resigned from working in a company that offered her an indefinite contract.

She has registered as self-employed to continue with her life as a militant environmentalist.

She says that she saw the light while on the street with the demonstrations around the Greta Thunberg movement.

She does not come from a militant family.

She had never gone down to the street to protest until that moment.

Today she is the president of an association, Together for Earth, which brings together 60 French student organizations.

In addition to giving a face and a voice to those young people who have changed their chip, Basculons seeks to create a dialogue with the previous generation.

For this reason, the book also includes the impressions of 17 actors of the ecological transition.

In this case, it is about older people who have been committed for a longer time and who contribute their view of what they consider to be the “overturning generation”.

We find consecrated voices such as Delphine Batho, Pablo Servigne and Dominique Bourg, who provide advice for young people and also outline possible paths for intergenerational encounters.

Descamps makes it clear that the book wants to reunite the "climate generation" with their parents and grandparents, and in no case delve into a possible generational fracture.

What's more: ecological action requires for Descamps that all those involved, old or young, assume their part since we are all on the same boat.

Someone could argue that the testimony of 30 young people in a book does not carry much weight.

The reality is that in recent years in France there are more and more cases of well-prepared young people making public their renunciation of a life of ascending career and huge profits to get off the ladder of power and take care of the Earth.

And they even make a call to drop out, as was the case at the AgroParis Tech diploma ceremony last May.

In a very politically incorrect choral speech, the new engineers announced that they were giving up their promising career.

The same thing happened at the HEC graduation last June.

Who will be next?

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