Travel to the land of decrease - counterpoints
Posted on October 13, 2014-A+
By Nafy-Nathalie D.
A few days ago the WWF report was released and was relayed on all possible supports with an alarmist note that made me cold in the back.
I remembered the latest uncommitted alarmist forecasts from this organization a few years ago and I wondered why this time they could be right.So I looked at their site and I found the famous report.I dissected it as well as the previous ones carefully, not contenting myself with the summary generously made available on their site for lazy.And I found it strange that so many noises is made around the variation of an index that cannot be fair since the calculation base has not stopped changing.It's like calculating the increase in the price of vegetables by taking the starting price of carrots 40 years ago and that of carrots and radishes today.It would make no sense.In addition, and by their own admission, this index lacked reliability two years ago.What to say about the index of 40 years ago then?
But what mattered, more than this credibility problem, was that the end of humanity would be soon and that we would be responsible for it.It was time to open your eyes and change behavior.And the information was disseminated in all the media.Full of guilt, I therefore decided to store my legendary optimism in a closed key and leaving a few days to visit the country of decrease, just to understand what was going there.I would have liked to say that the trip was happy but that was not the case.On the contrary, it was dangerous and black.What I read upset me really, making me lose a lot of my bearings for a while, only a moment.
The idea generally taken up everywhere is quite simple in the end: liberalism is the worst of all ills.It leads to wanting infinite growth in a finished world.It seems obvious that if we continue like that, we will destroy the planet and we will all create by entering the lack of resources.
Two trends then emerge from all this.
The most pessimistic is that it is too late to do anything.Followers of this kind are happy pessimism.They are not trying to convince because they are convinced that nothing can be changed.They just want to examine the evolution of the decline and study how to survive as best as possible in a universe close to Mad Max by learning to make fire, to cultivate, to treat themselves by plants ...
The most optimistic is to say that we can still save ourselves in part.For this, it is necessary to practice a policy of decrease.But the problem of this policy is that it is not easily passable, the man being too stupid and focused on his own profit will not be able to understand it.
The solution is therefore to set up an ecological fascism worldwide that will bend the resistances.
Anyone who was supposed to read this would go with a big laugh.Mad Max, a global dictatorship ... It has a fairly funny science fiction.But in fact, we don't really laugh.We can rethink Chernobyl or the Aral Sea for example and say that these self-righteous have no lesson in history and the danger that a fascist constraint represents for the environment.It has a scary side.Then this can make the bed of sectarian movements that embraged terrified people.
We do not laugh, also because in support of their theories, lovers of the end of the world take us out of statistics, scientific studies and scholars with pedigrees longer than the arm that sometimes compare the'Man with cancer that must be eradicated while explaining to what extent we are criminals on a daily basis and as progress is the source of all evils.
They explain this to us with the help of beautiful theories which, if they are beautiful, have the property of being just that precisely: theories not tested scientifically in reality that are almost never verifying.And we let ourselves be convinced in an instant if we do not bother to check everything that is said.And even after verification, the disorder persists because we are a prisoner of certain true things but of conclusions that we nevertheless press inaccurate, most of us lacking knowledge to refute them.
In fact, these theorists thrive from a fairly simple perspective problem if you put your finger on it.
I take an example:
I deduce that carrots are good for sight, which does not make sense.The two observations are true but the perspective of these two truths is false.
Thus, the theorists of decrease have people a fairly coarse and materialist vision which starts from realities but leads to false conclusions.Apart from the fact that the decrease would first victims the poorest, it is based on questionable postulates.
Indeed, growth is not always carrying the increase in consumption.A service, for example, can create growth without however leading to energy consumption.Likewise on a daily basis, an effective innovation can also create growth by reducing the amount of energy consumed.The recycling economy for example is not perfect but it is perfectible.It develops, is constantly improving, creates growth by consuming less.
Countries have made it the basis of their economy.Thus Sweden for example, by dint of recycling, finds itself to import its waste.And we, on a daily basis, we are constantly benefiting from it.Just take the example of polar fiber.I will also take two other examples which may be more striking.There is that of the automobile and that of the washing machine.With progress, we have managed to keep the same service by paying it cheaper, polluting less and consuming less and less energy while creating employment and therefore growth.
In the Facebook groups where I circulated, I have exhibited this point of view to my "eco -teachers" friends with figures and solid arguments in support.They retorted my mouth in my heart that I was right but that it did not count.The real problem is not to decrease pollution or consume less.The objective is to radically change society and for this purpose to radically modify the behavior of men, these pests concerned with their well-being, reprogram them differently, including by force, by bringing them back to an age that resemblesto be mistaken at the stone age.Well, indeed in this case, the reality of things is without interest.
As for the nature that must be saved at all costs in the state it was, it is a funny idea contrary to all realities.Nature has never been something that had to remain stable.She is in perpetual movement.Not everything is white or black.If man can have an sometimes negative impact on the environment, he can also be the guarantor of his biodiversity and his backup.
Furthermore, how can we decide to place the most basic human rights after those of the animal?Why protect a nature in the name of the safeguarding of a humanity that is not respected?Regularly the question returns to the carpet if only in France when one decides to reintroduce bears or wolves in the midfielder occupied by men by despising the damage that the latter can make them suffer.
But sometimes the consequences can be more dramatic.So I especially think back to Canada seal hunting.Seals are essential for the Inuit economy, whether for their meat, fur or derivative products.The products of this hunting fuel the economy of many small coastal and isolated Canadian cities.Following the barbarism of the images of this hunting, the WTO decides in 2013 to maintain the embargo dating from the 2010 of the European Union on seal derivative products.I do not question the cruelty of certain unacceptable hunting techniques, and the Canadian government by becoming aware of it hardened its legislation in order to eliminate them.Thus in 2005, 98.5 % of slaughtered seals were in accordance with the marine mammals regulation.But even if this represents more than 60 % of the market share, thus sanctioning commercial hunting, respectful of the legislation, it is also completely upset the regions which live by bringing unemployment rates equivalent to 60 % in zonesisolated and devoid of other activities.And how to explain to these populations, that established very warm in comfortable armchairs in Europe, people, who have the arrogance of admitting that we can raise mass animals in industrial batteries and build factories forBringing them down, eliminating their means of existence, preventing them from feeding their families, educating their children properly, of being treated?
Finally, contrary to the idea widespread everywhere, liberalism is not opposed to ecology.He advocates an economy and a judicious use of resources.And therefore, on the contrary, it is very concerned about the protection of the environment of which it considers that the problems come in part from the State which unleashes the citizen by laws not protecting the right of property and allowing theImmunity to polluters.We evoke freedom by forgetting that to be real she must go in concert with the responsibility.Therefore, we try to solve problems with laws that collide and paralyze the victims while allowing others all abuses.
Thus, for example, if the appeals (consumer associations, patients ...) against the managers of pollution led and that they could have been condemned heavily, it is strong to bet that they would finally feel responsible and that thingswould be different.