Hear the promises to save a planet in peril spring from a thousand mouths. Because Earth Day is tomorrow, Friday. However, on TV, commercials for large cars sing a different refrain. Consume! Consume! The sovereign order buzzes in the ear, becomes embedded in the collective unconscious.
No wonder human nature has little desire to change its way of life or acquire values more inspiring than those of the 4×4, the mower and the gray three-gabled house. Elected officials procrastinate for economic reasons. Not housed in the same boat from one state to another, it must be said. In the developing countries, poverty repels action. Where the extreme right holds power, the ecological question is swept away with redoubled ardor. Surprising to see conservative leaders from various walks of life ignore collective housing in this way.
Bolsonaro of all kinds want to save assets, except the main one: the floor of the cows. And if Marine Le Pen had a chance of winning the presidential election on Sunday, the French would have five years to understand what dead wood she is warming up on this galley.
The rising generations, born in the oven, fight it. The older ones will have especially seen, over the decades, ostriches putting their heads in the sand before taking them out for the group photo. These long silences, these multinationals drunk on profit, these international protocols with variable geometry, we know them.
If Canada, a self-proclaimed leader in this area, has ambitious plans to reduce greenhouse gases, it is due to its oil drilling project off the coast of Newfoundland and its oil sands. No offense to Tintin, the land of black gold is everywhere.
Nevertheless, for a long time voices have been crying out in the desert to predict planetary destruction. Thus that of the ecologist René Dumont, author in 1973 of Utopia or death!, too misunderstood… Our environment was going to hit a wall, he assured. All that remained was to act quickly to prevent the worst. But do you think? Many have observed the waltz-hesitation of the dossier on the planetary arena over the years. And how can we forget these trial and error, these advances, these setbacks, these faltering victories? Too many competing interests at stake.
So that it falls at the right time, the room Oil by François Archambault presented until May 14 at Duceppe. To better grasp the chain of collective denials, what a powerful reminder! The author relied on a report from the New York Times going back to the past: 40 years earlier, everything was on the table to solve the problem of climate change. Alas! Negotiations turned into water pudding, lack of collective will.
The piece is based on a well-crafted text more than on characters (unevenly sketched), but the historical rise is dizzying. The fictionalized real facts plunge us back into a not so distant yesterday: 1979 back and forth with today. At first, the apocalyptic horizons seemed to float in a dreamlike fog: 2022, just think! And 2035 for extinction without return! Go and sacrifice proven socio-economic engines on such a sci-fi scenario. Hardly conceivable deadlines then. Modernity, the freedom of travel came from black gold and the machines that rolled thanks to it. Deprive yourself of it? No no no ! Still today…
In the theater, an idealistic young scientist joins forces with a major oil company to promote alternatives to fossil fuels. A summit brings together oil lobbyists in bad faith, the American government, environmental activists and this man, crushed by the grinding machine. The piece, sometimes heavier, also plays with humor. Thematic affinities link it to Don’t Look Up, the disturbing comedy by Adam McKay, which in December approached the advent of the end of the world on the airwaves of Netflix. The hero of Oil struggles like Leonardo DiCaprio in the American film, without convincing his interlocutors, if not for showing off.
At the turn of the 1970s, blindness could still be envisaged. Not in our 21st century, which nevertheless keeps one foot on the brakes. The planet takes revenge like Jupiter, all elements outside: fire, water, wind, earth in tremor. The children scream it; the oldest remember the old battles fought, won inch by inch, feverish, fragile.
On this Earth Day, hydrocarbons burn our eyes. One more step, we will understand. So late, so bad, so messed up. Young people, yesterday’s activists and artists are also prophets. Let’s listen to their thundering torrent.