On Monday March 20, 2023, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its sixth assessment report, which once again highlights the overwhelming responsibility of our productivist and capitalist model in global warming. . While the Paris Agreement asked signatories not to exceed 1.5°C of warming (and not before 2100), the IPCC informs that this limit will be exceeded as early as the 2030s.
Climate: what to remember from the IPCC summary report
It is an understatement to say that reading this report sounds like a final warning, as our very narrow window of action seems to be closing inexorably. This is what the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, said, describing the sixth report of the IPCC as the manual for defusing the climate bomb – but this manual still needs to be distributed, read and above all applied as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, for the moment, the public policies put in place by States are far from reducing the worrying trajectory of global warming – and the decisions of most large companies are hardly more encouraging.
The sequel after the ad
A question nevertheless arises: from the first scientific alerts to the start of the work of the IPCC, the data and studies are visible, accessible and perfectly clear. Why do all these numbers elicit nothing but polite conversation, sterile statements, or utterly ineffective COPs? Why aren’t the citizens of the different states moved by this scientifically proven reality, why don’t they elect political leaders capable of facing a major challenge that will permanently affect our planet and our societies in the decades to come?
Numbers are not enough
The public, media and political space is in fact saturated with stories around the climate. Climatoscepticism, fed by the interests of the conservative camps, refuses to admit the reality demonstrated by the work of thousands of scientists around the world. Greenwashing attempts to make more ecological what only appears to be. Technosolutionism prides itself on being able to respond to the consequences of global warming with miraculous innovations, without ever attacking the causes.
Bouffopolitics polarizes the debates on questions of eating habits, by pitting eaters of rib steaks against eaters of tofu. And in a large majority of media, until very late, it is the dontlookupisme which has prevailed, to use this expression linked to the famous fiction of Netflix – either the fact of treating the climate as another topical subject, by minimizing its scope or by not linking it to more complex issues.
“Everyone saw it! » : Is « Don’t Look Up » the Christmas present for ecologists?
Other stories are still circulating. And while the climate generation, influencers, scientific figures and environmentalists try to percolate narratives to alert again and again, things are struggling to move forward. Quite simply because numbers are not enough, it is a question of creating desire and proposing an alternative story that arouses desire. And it must be recognized: it is difficult to arouse desire in the face of a horizon that promises to be so dark. And yet, we will have to change many of our habits or our fundamentals, willingly or by force – global warming will impose it on us and will impose it on all living things, whatever we think of it.
The sequel after the ad
Just as we do not stop smoking even if we know the harmful consequences, we do not stop ecocidal habits even if we know that their effects are deleterious. Because that is what it is all about: just as a smoker is addicted to cigarettes, we are addicted to this productivist and capitalist system, as Paul B. Preciado so aptly wrote. Regularly, we need our small dose of consumerism or productivist indulgence, because this model nevertheless sells us a dream that we think we can access one day, and which we think we can access in small bits.
Building a new story together
We have to build a new dream, a new narrative. If the system that has caused global warming pushes us to press the accelerator so much, even though we know how it works by heart, it is because we do not yet have an alternative dream. But it goes beyond a simple story: our whole culture depends on it. And our culture is actually our way of life; our habits, our customs, our social relationships, our daily life, all of this is constitutive of who we are – our identity, in fact.
As long as we have not understood that the question is not truly scientific, but first of all deeply cultural, we will miss the point. No policy can be implemented if we do not accept the idea that we must profoundly change our culture, that our personal, collective and community identities will have to evolve drastically, on a whole host of subjects. These topics are important because they are part of the system that has brought us to where we are: consumption patterns, energy management, women’s place in society, eating habits – all those little things that make us are.
How global warming is already changing France
These little things aren’t little things, really. Modifying them represents an immense act, but this upheaval is absolutely unavoidable. Let’s find a story together, let’s build it together: it is essential to write it to take us collectively towards a different society, capable of embracing new living conditions and reducing its footprint on the living and the planet. The margins are reduced, time is running out, the emergency is already strangling the living, of course: but we can do otherwise. We can stop being addicted to a system that uses us to survive at the expense of our planet. We are better than that – our survival depends on it, like that of all living species.
BIO EXPRESS
Albin Wagener is a teacher-researcher in discourse analysis. Specialized in environmental communication, he also deals with digital and social issues. He also created the parody media “Malheurs Actunaires”. He has just published “Blablabla, put an end to climate chatter” (Le Robert).
