The April 6 announcement by Steven Guilbeault, federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change, of Ottawa’s green light for the major Bay du Nord oil project could not have been better timed to illustrate an anxious questioning. His ex-companion environmentalist Hugo Séguin writes: “Saving the planet while stimulating economic prosperity is a huge bet on the future. What if it didn’t work? »
Guilbeault’s announcement is appalling since it comes just days after the publication of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which underlines that the planet has only three years left to peak. greenhouse gas emissions by abandoning new oil projects. In his test Letter to impatient greens and those who find they are exaggeratingSéguin fears the unconscious self-destruction that threatens environmentalism and causes disarray.
More than once, the lucid book evokes with admiration the surprise resignation in 2018 of the French ecologist Nicolas Hulot, who became in his country Minister of Ecological Transition. But, hostile to what he calls the “small steps” strategy, the politician ended up declaring: “I don’t want to lie to myself anymore. [en donnant] the impression that my presence in this government means that we are up to the challenges.
Would Séguin have reproached Guilbeault for not having imitated Hulot? In any case, Greta Thunberg, he underlines, invites us to a “necessary radicalism”, because her “uncompromising speech does not do in lace”. We imagine the Swedish teenager glaring at Guilbeault as a renegade of the green cause, she who admires the vigor of Pope Francis’ environmental encyclical (2015) which provokes, notes Séguin, “a little embarrassed silence” from the conservatives, even Catholics.
The essayist cheers Nicholas Stern when the one he describes as “great British climate economist” maintains that “a good part” of the reserves “of hydrocarbons (coal, oil and natural gas) had to remain in the ground, unexploited, if we wanted to respect the global objectives” of nature protection. The idea, which would have been considered radical in the past, now belongs to the dominant environmental current, which Séguin adheres to without disdaining the more rebellious currents.
For Séguin, yesterday’s cranks often become inspiring innovators. His teaching experience at the University of Sherbrooke suggests it. Despite the decline in youth electoral participation in politics, the passion for the survival of the planet remains strong, to the point that, in the minds of students, the height of radicalism, the belief in the necessity of material degrowth — this chimera for Guilbeault — continues to grow with them.