I knew the expression, “Groundhog Day”, but I had never seen the whimsical bluette with Bill Murray who always wakes up on the same day, February 2nd. It’s done, with a feeling of deja vu ” all over again ». I feel the same weariness with Earth Day — for which I was a spokesperson for a few years — of repeating the same arguments, the same refrain, of trying to put fructose on coke and corn to diabetics.
We’ll plant snags of trees to take the plane, we’ll buy ourselves nice electric cars to go and plug the soft asphalt of our burnt horizons, we’ll replace the gas barbecue with a super Kamado in red ceramic charcoal to continue to eat meat because… because it’s just good, fucking.
Because we have to follow the herd, because we are not moumounes even if we are sheep. Because we have the choice between the culture of the CAQ and that of Éric Duhaime, the foot on the gas. Because the blind comfort of habits is much more pleasurable than the supposed discomfort left as a legacy to our children with the joy of undertakers. By the way, our children don’t want to have any more children. This is great news for the planet.
Earth Day was born in 1970, 4.5 billion years after the birth of said planet. On the other hand, we have been reliving Groundhog Day for 50 years. Read the play Oil, by François Archambault: a gem (see my Joblog). Everything is there, everything is said, our immobility, our thirst for performance, we never had enough. We knew it, we preferred to speak of “transition”. We ignored the publication of Limits to growth in 1972 by the Club of Rome, the ancestor of the IPCC. The “transition” has been going on for 50 years, laughing at our intelligence.
For some reason that escapes me, we stubbornly go straight ahead, while pressing the accelerator…
Steven Guilbeault understood this with Bay du Nord. Steven held his nose so that we could sniff a new line, as Catherine Dorion said about the 3and link. We are boosted by speed, by this instantaneity, incapable of stopping ourselves. “We are not even going to slow down to negotiate the curve. Besides, we have no other way of life,” notes Dalie Giroux, professor of political theory at the University of Ottawa, in “Fossil Civilization,” an excellent text in the recent magazine New project. If you want to look at us in the mirror, I recommend it. The IPCC gives us three years.
The 12 hackneyed excuses
I came across — I often come across — a study from Cambridge University which dates from 2020 and identifies the 12 excuses for our climate inaction. We are very good at justifying standing still, we even elect politicians for it. From one wave to another, they surf. Researchers are also looking at our cognitive dissonance. We are the dunces of the species, it deserves a trip to the lab.
Among that dozen useful canned excuses to save time: we’re done anyway (doomism and capitulation), it’s up to others to act first (diversion), technology will save us, “they” will come up with something like carbon capture (marginal measures are enough in the meantime), the poor will pay, it will cost too much (focus on costs in present tense).
It’s about resisting the temptation to claim this cadence as a right, that of killing to live
Of course, the biggest changes have to come from governments and the private sector. Another study published in March by the University of Leeds (The Guardian talking about it here: bit.ly/3rEmmuJ) underlines it.
On an individual level, this study also indicates six factors for change to reduce by a quarter (25%…!) our GHG emissions and maintain the now illusory target of 1.5°C: a plant-based diet without waste , buying no more than three new clothes a year, keeping our electronics for seven years, an airplane flight of less than three hours every three years, a long flight every eight years, no car, or keeping it longer, make a major life change such as improving your heating system or modifying your stock market investments.
For an average middle-class Westerner with dreams of grandeur, it’s a dramatic shift in value system. Even my eco friends haven’t reached this degree of asceticism.
row together
I have known Pierre Lussier, president of Jour de la Terre for fifteen years. The guy is unfailingly optimistic. We chatted for a good hour last Saturday. Pierre, 55, has been at the head of Jour de la Terre in Quebec since 1995. He might be discouraged, but he considers that his friend Steven Guilbeault is in the best position at the Ministry of the Environment, even if he is a victim of the political contest of acceptable compromises and… transition. Like Bay du Nord, let’s say.
Pierre, this hyperactive enthusiast, sees himself as a manager of environmental action and Earth Day is just one of his hats, in addition to the RechargÉco electric terminals.
“Yes, we ramble, but we must not forget that there are always new people, there are young people arriving. According to him, the environmental movement is out of stock; the pandemic has put citizen mobilization in the background. “We have become megascientific and pragmatic. The IPCC gives us three years, not two and a half! But in fact, we should be more inspiring, take a Greta vitamin every day. »
Aware of the colossal task in front of him, Pierre Lussier tries the motivation card, but when I speak to the father of a 16-year-old teenager and a 23-year-old young adult, the tone becomes serious. . “Yes, I’m worried about my daughters,” he admits.
For them, Pierre Lussier will not give up: “We are all in the same boat. If you’re not on my side, I’ll have to row harder. But if you want to roll up your sleeves, it’s the jackpot, ecology. There is still so much to do…”
Sounds more like a cry for help than a job offer with a solid retirement plan.
Instagram: josee.blanchette