InvestigationThe fight against climate catastrophe opposes multiple currents of thought divided between reformist environmentalism and more radical ecology. For its part, the extreme right tries to combine the preservation of biodiversity with the defense of ethnic identity.
Thousands of heat-stunned birds rain down on the cracked lands of India and Pakistan. Salmon who die burned by the too high temperature of a river in the United States. A consortium of intergovernmental climate experts who recall that humanity has a limited time to “ensure a viable future”. A battered Ukraine has become the epicenter of a global energy conflict and a global food crisis. Global warming, which places organisms at the limits of what their physiology can withstand… Ecology is undoubtedly the business of the century, today’s great battle. But it is also a source of conflict that the urgency of planetary devastation amplifies.
To the point that calls for “desertion” are increasing. Like these young engineers from AgroParisTech who, on April 30, during their graduation ceremony, called for “fork” and refuse the ” system “. In particular that of agro-industry, which is leading a “war on the living” and the peasantry. An invitation not to participate in trades that will lead them to “design prepared meals and then chemotherapy to treat the diseases caused” or even to “count frogs and butterflies so concrete workers can legally make them disappear”. A movement that recalls and radicalizes the one launched in 2018 by the student manifesto “For an ecological awakening”. A desire to secede which bears witness to a “universal ecological affect” whose youth is crossed, observes the philosopher Dominique Bourg. So much so that, according to a global survey on eco-anxiety conducted in ten countries in both the North and the South, 75% of 16-25 year olds judge the future ” scary “ et 56% believe that “Humanity is doomed” (The Lancet Planetary Health, 2021).
These calls to “fork”as the philosopher Bernard Stiegler says, that is to say, to take another path, because “our model of development is a model of destruction”and “the real world war”it is “the one that opposes our whole genre to its global environment”said the philosopher Michel Serres, highlight the nature of the conflict between two ecologies, assures Bruno Villalba, professor of political science at AgroParisTech and author of Political Ecology in France (La Découverte, 128 pages, 10 euros). A “superficial” ecology and a “deep” ecology, which the Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss (1912-2009) endeavored to distinguish from 1973. “Superficial”, because of his inclination to propose technical solutions in order to reduce the pollution or curbing overconsumption without attacking the roots of a productivism centered on an anthropocentric conception of the world. “Profound”, because it strives to associate human and non-human forms of life within an ecocentric metaphysics. A philosophy of ecology that Arne Næss baptized “ecosophy”, a term taken up by the philosopher and psychiatrist Félix Guattari.
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