Climate: the cry of science

Reports are interconnected, evidence is piling up, and the darkest scenarios are confirmed. But nothing helps us: we remain surprisingly passive in the face of what constitutes the greatest danger to our species. As if indifferent to the cry of science. The fires that have ravaged California, Greece and Turkey for a few days have not shaken anyone, except for the tourists who watch their vacation skies turn to ashes.

But the report published by the United Nations on Monday should alarm us. It shows that extreme events – hurricanes, floods, hurricanes, etc. – will not exclude any region of the world. He talks about the irreparable changes that are already happening today – not tomorrow. Never, in three million years, has the planet experienced such a concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere! This should convince any rational being to reduce carbon emissions. But this is to ignore his inability to understand the long-term and to act beyond his personal and immediate well-being.

winds of mistrust

It is also to ignore the great winds of mistrust that blow over science. In the West as elsewhere, many human beings hear it without listening to it, or question the hardest truths – the effectiveness of vaccination as global warming. Experts are becoming inaudible, even when there is complete consensus. Including when the IPCC takes the trouble to review the equivalent of 14,000 scientific publications and mobilize three years through experts from 60 countries.

The truth is that fear-mongering expectations are no longer printed. They are so repetitive that they have become familiar. Activists themselves admit it: Citizens tend to shy away from doombirds. They aspire to hear successful stories, to see which countries and companies are moving forward. Like the UK and Sweden, which have had the courage to introduce a high carbon tax, they are seeing a change in the behavior of their populations. Like Orsted, this Danish oil company that has completely abandoned hydrocarbons to produce green energies. These actors share the pursuit of a long-term, sometimes unpopular, often painful strategy. A strategy that the vast majority of countries, including ours, lack.