2024-10-14 04:40:00
René Dumont, his red sweater and his glass of water. In 1974, he was seen as a weirdo heralding the apocalypse. The first environmentalist candidate in the French presidential elections, he calls for an end to abundance and wants to demand from citizens a sobriety far from the consumerism in which they then operate. Derided, the “prophet of doom” nevertheless broke the codes of political communication and environmental activism.
His early career, however, was light years away from these considerations. It is not the depletion of resources that worries this former colonial official, an agronomist in Vietnam in the 1930s, but the injustice of their distribution and the insufficiency of their production to feed everyone, and especially those who work there.
Before being a convinced ecologist, René Dumont contributed to the establishment of an ultra-productivist system and the robotization of agriculture, supporting some young independent states in South America, Africa and Asia.
The Meadows report, belated revelation of an environmentalist conscience
It was only with the publication of the Meadows report in 1972 that he questioned the impact of this model on the environment and radically changed his battle. The agricultural engineer, “the first French productivist”, begins to think against himself and criticize Western consumerism.
Anne-Charlotte Gourraud’s film is a fascinating dive into the psychology of the character. Rich archives illustrate interviews with experts who met or studied him. Above all, the documentary maker’s commentary gives it a sustained pace to which the original music by Aleksi Aubry-Carlson largely contributes.
While one may regret the fact that the documentary contains no criticism of René Dumont, it remains extremely instructive on the genesis of environmentalist political thought. A portrait like an echo, belated but welcome, to the cries of alarm he raised without being heard.
#fascinating #genesis #pioneer #political #ecology