"If we want, we head for a more harmonious life", Dominique Bourg

In the journey to what you call in one of your works, "integral ecology", you insist on the notion, even the need for "civil disobedience" if governments do not really and radically take into account theEcology ... What do you think exactly about this idea?How can civil disobedience advance the ecological cause?

Dominique Bourg Civil disobedience presupposes democracy. One is the counterpart of the other. In dictatorship, civil disobedience does not exist. It seems important to me to pose this as prerequisites. Then, on the long time of history, what appears is that if the idea of ​​civil disobedience disappears by periods, it reappears when there is an important gap between power and citizens. Often this discrepancy relates to the question of risk management. Usually a law evolves after an accident. However, in matters of nuclear it is absurd to wait for the accident to try to move the law. Thus, NGOs like Greenpeace then take the torch of disobedience. To the point where we are today at the ecological level, with the delay that we have, all this is more complicated because it is no longer only a question of changing a law but the organization of society. We are there on a systemic and non -circumscribed issue. We are faced with a discrepancy between our knowledge (leaks on the IPCC report in June were also very significant) and then the way in which public policies are conducted.

The discrepancy in which we find ourselves today is very serious. Highlighting in public debate the questions of violent death due to terrorism or delinquency is absurd when heat waves, and all phenomena linked to generalized climate disruption are much more important in the development of chronic diseases and other cancers . For the first time in the history of humanity, we are witnessing a complaint of healthy life expectancy. The discrepancy is total between discourse and political action on the one hand and the reality of the world on the other. It is this discrepancy which will constitute the engine of civil disobedience in the months and years to come. To put it even otherwise, we are faced with something that destroys us and we put small rustins. Civil disobedience is punctual and accelerates the evolution of the world. It is in this sense that it can be one of the tools of a real ecological transition.

Political discourse still seems to be inflated.France has just passed the climate law and European advances presented in Brussels in mid-July aim to accentuate the movement towards another form of economy ... What do you think?

D.B. This political question that you raise is interesting. In France, it is very clear that the debate is underpinned by a structural denial. The way in which subjects are put forward by policies as well as by the media means that the political agenda is polluted by questions which are secondary (identity, etc.) in relation to the powerful and devastating climate emergency to which We will have to face. The way in which the dangers are structured in our public debate is completely offset, once again, having regard to the structural depth of the ecological problem. At European level, it is true that consciences seem to be more awake and things are moving in the right direction. That said, Europe has always highlighted environmental issues without succeeding in a concrete and strong transformation. Recall that 70 % of CO2 emissions worldwide come from the G20. Even if Europe is in a position to modify its paradigm, in fact, it does not really. All the discourse around an economy that would be turned towards ecology is false given the state of gravity in which we find ourselves. It is now up to citizens to sound the tocsin very strongly!

Precisely, are the citizens invested enough, quite mobilized, quite aware of all this?Are they really able to tip the scales in the other direction?

D.B. all year round 2019 was marked by very important demonstrations for the climate. The Covid stopped this, but the current state of citizen mobilization does not correspond to its reality. More broadly, I believe that a rocking took place in the minds of the majority of citizens. This is also the reason for the symbolic success of Greta Thunberg, this child who comes, before the general assembly of the UN, tell adults what we are: "You stole my childhood and my innocence! Not trivial that this event occurs during the year 2019. Year in which everyone could see that there were only two seasons really. A lukewarm season with winter, a bit of autumn and a bit of spring and a hot season with summer a bit of autumn and a bit of spring. The heat wave, then of frost, in France, demonstrates this new state of affairs of climatic disruption, as well as events in Canada and the United States with two heat waves in June, the recent drought in France with a forest decline, or Famine due to heat in Madagascar ... What awaits us in the future is already present. The degree of mobilization is still insufficient. But consciousness is there and the phenomenon which is accentuated again and again should amplify the citizen movement. We came back to a CO2 degree in the atmosphere which brings us back to four million years behind us, in Pliocene! Is that really what we want? When some mock ecology by accusing it of bringing us back to the Middle Ages it is Croquignolet when progress brings us 4.5 million years back! The speed of evolution is dramatic and discourse around growth is a farce!

That's to say ?

D.B., that is to say that we are in a crazy difficulty.Obviously the IPCC results are "alarming".We are at the crossroads and when we compare this the speech of the President of the Republic on ecology and growth, it makes you want to cry.And I am not talking about senators who explain docly without knowing anything that the economy must come before!How do you want a planet to the grip of drought, there can be growth?People will find it difficult to eat, there will be immense migratory flows, we will have trouble living everywhere, and we are served a soothing discourse on growth!What a stupid thing !

Do you not need a kind of right-left consensus to really transform the way of approaching these questions?

D.B. Political consensus is crucial.Our political regimes are the result of both the advent of modern science, of the mechanistic image of the world which suggested that outside of humans there were only machines to finally arrive at representative democracymodern with the philosophy of lights, contract, etc.At the end of the 19th century, all this movement of ideas resulted in a very important consensus, without which our current societies would not exist.The consensus is twofold: everyone agrees to maximize the production of material wealth, everyone agrees that we should distribute wealth.Otherwise, a constitution of society is not possible.The left-right polarity does not relate to these subjects in general but on their different contours.How to get rich?How to regulate, etc.?All this finally worked well.The production of wealth was prodigious.

Problem: it doesn't work anymore.This no longer works because maximizing the production of wealth in a finished world gives us the return to the Pliocene.What destroys the habitability of the earth for our species and for the species that accompany us is very clearly the continuation of this consensus from the 19th century.If we do not reduce the mass of objects produced and the infrastructure that we develop to produce them, we will not get out of it.

It is from this new state of affairs that we must build a new consensus by finding an optimum of wealth compatible with the great planetary balances. The new consensus is in the emergence phase. The dissensus that goes with it is not yet present. It will not revolve around a distribution of wealth since ecologized society is a society where there are no more hyper-rich since it is they who produce the most greenhouse gas emissions: 1 % From the world's population produces 15 % of global emissions, the richest 10 % weigh for 52 % of global emissions when 50 % of the poorest only generate 7 % of total emissions. The riches must tighten and the new left and the new right to come will necessarily have a point of agreement on this. Our current democratic problem is due to the fact that we have not yet found how to structure our disagreements around a substantive agreement on the decrease in wealth to reach an optimum. However, we must not hang out. On the climate, we are barely ten years old to really brake.

Your observation seems very pessimistic and yet, to read you, there is also a form of hope and the possibility of salvation.You say that life on earth will no longer be the same and that it is a question of making a change of civilization ... Do you explain to us?

By taking an interest in these margins and working so that they become central in our lives, we work in ecology, and we also work to make this new paradigm of civilization desirable.If we want, we head for a more harmonious, more pleasant, more relaxed life.Should we really listen to those who say it's a mistake?

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How do you explain that humanity takes time to really make the choice of a more harmonious life?

D.B. I think we are on the way to this.It's inevitable.However, if it appears to be slow, it is also because everything goes in the opposite direction.The media, for the most part.Advertising, also obviously, which is the engine of the current system.If we do not encourage us to buy, we do not buy.We could multiply the examples.De facto, all the structural aspect of the old system is still in place.Faced with this, it is the awareness of some individuals and some meager media who must carry the discourse of the paradigm change.The fight is not entirely on equal arms.Result: what will change are disasters ...

What are the material issues of this new civilization ideal for you?Are we going to have to abandon certain things?How to make this tomorrow more desirable?

D.B. This is the most difficult part. All studies and in particular that of the BL Evolution, published at the end of 2018 following the IPCC report, offer to do things less. Three -quarters of less plane trips, smaller buildings, a deep change in the diet, less use your car, less consume, less heat, etc. We are in an addition of "less". As long as we have not deeply restructured things, this feeling of "less" will be present. The transition period is difficult because it is a question of abandoning comfortable habits. However, if the effort is collective, it weighs less. In addition, little by little, new techniques will evolve and become more efficient to reach the optimum and no longer the maximum. We will end up living better, I have no doubts, but we will get to that while groping, doing, redoing, and exploring. The period we are experiencing will be complex because it is this in-between when things start and are not yet a tangible reality.

An in-between in which, despite an awareness, ecology always appears to be punitive.This is what the red caps seemed to say, then the yellow vests ... You had spoken of an ISF to combat the energy precariousness of the least favored populations ...

D.B. The intolerable thing is that most of the effort is carried by the poorest.If we react only by playing on prices, it will not work.The lesson of "yellow vests" is very clear on this point.Ecology will only work if it is social.An ecological policy that attacks the poorest is an anti-ecological policy because it is the richest that destroys the most.This is very easy to understand and explain.What Damien Carême had initiated when he was mayor of Grande-Synthe was a real policy of social ecology with high-quality HLM, etc.

Do you need a consumption quota for each individual?

D.B. Yes. When you buy something today, the low price very often indicates a very bad environmental footprint. We propose that in addition to the price, another indicator can give us the real impact of the property purchased on the Earth system. We are talking about an ecological load unit. The idea is that everyone has a quota for purchases of common goods. The annual quota for current goods would be recharged each year and we could also imagine a quota on life for more important goods. I often take the example of tomatoes. When you buy tomatoes produced in a greenhouse in Holland at all times of the year, the ecological load unit is very high. On the other hand, if we consume tomatoes produced next to home, in permacole activity and delivered on electric bike, then we gain in an ecological load unit. This measure is a way to restructure supply and demand in a few years. What destroys the habitability of the earth is our final consumption. You have to play on it. Some will not find this very "fun", but it is the only way to get out of it.

We come back to desirability ... Isn't there a lack in the speech on the world of tomorrow?

D.B. Certainly.However, by going to this new mode of consumption, we will live better.We will no longer be harassed by this tumultuous life which pushes us towards the ever more.I do not promise a paradise where everything is gratis.I promise a world of harmony where in fact, living is easier, more sensible, and where we reconstruct the relationship to nature and living.We find a meaning in this life by being useful to others and nature.The society of tomorrow is a decreasing society, but where human activity is there.Where we mix high-tech and low-tech, where we invent new paths to work.The company that comes is a society where human work will be in its right place.It is neither a laziness company nor a company of stakhanovism.Basically, it is a peaceful and more complex society.More interesting in short.

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This article is extracted from "T" the review of the Tribune n ° 6 - Planet my love - let's reinforce the damage!October2021 - Discover the paper version

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