“Do you realize that you are the first climate refugee in the family?
– Mom ! It’s not the time to talk about the climate…
It’s never time to get out of a coma, even after 110 ml of float in a day (normal is 83 ml in a month). It is true that there was more urgent to do last weekend than to think of the planet: to pump the water out of its little kingdom, to install an industrial dehumidifier there, to throw away all the furniture, its coats, its precious photographer’s cameras, his office, the new carpet, the electronics, the memories of his young adult life of 18 years. My B and his two roommates are affected by the torrential rains of September 13 in Montreal.
My heart was drowned in more than a meter of water, like Hochelag, like Longueuil, or, worse, Pakistan, Japan, Italy or Texas, which suffered the same fate recently: months of rain in a few hours. Not to mention the dead…
A pestilential smell, halfway between the Waldman fishmonger’s and the mushroom farm, rose from his bedroom in the basement.
— Wafer…
– Mom ! It doesn’t help to
consecrate!
My B displays a phlegm that does not come out of my DNA. I waited until I got home to let the tear surpluses rise. It doesn’t need more moisture.
The gradual collapse that we are witnessing, these overly mineralized neighborhoods that suffer, subjected to the torment of the rising waters, these insurance companies taken by storm, these overwhelmed claims companies, all this does not what to start.
“There is a pandemic Pakistan is under water it’s like 40 in France in mid-September there is three feet of water in the street in Montreal and they are there to say no no it’s not warming that madam, ”wrote my colleague Aurélie Lanctôt on Twitter last week. His last column summed up the situation well. bit.ly/3RXDnose
“In a context of global warming, these events will increase. It’s clear, it’s documented, ”repeated to several microphones Philippe Gachon, geography teacher at UQAM and director of the Intersectoral Flood Network of Quebec (RIISQ). “We are in a non-stationary climate. We have to stop thinking that the statistics of the past are synonymous with what we will have in the future. »
From Islamabad, I make a worldwide appeal: stop this madness. Invest in renewable energy now. End the war on nature.
Resilience will taste like boiled coffee
The TVA journalist who chose my B as Noah on his ark to illustrate the disarray of low-income earners offered me a compliment: “Your son is very resilient. Thank you Cyrulnik, you’ll save me three cases at Costco. Quebecers were already used to not complaining, the human species is now condemned to “resilience” and climate adaptation. The good people will repress the jacqueries and bow down, the same position as with their telephone. Ignore the horizon.
When all the attempts at prevention for 50 years have failed (it’s not the time to talk about it!), when we engulf any bright proposal for change and questioning the model in place, all that remains is to invest in inflatable mattresses or rubber dinghies, paid for in Canadian Tire money.
“You’re going to start putting the words ‘solidarity’ and ‘helping’ into practice,” I slipped to my B, staying with his “bro”, Sean, my adopted son from Hochelag.
On Friday, thousands of young people like them will take to the streets to mark the Global Strike for Climate Justice. Illustrious party leaders — Legault, Duhaime — busy defending a 3e link to accommodate the science of “adrenalinology” will be absent. Their electorate will not care. “Conservatives are optimists, not alarmists,” reads their platform.
Selected excerpts
If you run out of kindling to alarm you, I suggest the uplifting reading ofWe need a political, poetic and philosophical revolutiona rich interview with astrophysicist and defender of the planet Aurélien Barrau.
The elegance of this apostle of the living, his verve, the choice of words, the clarity of the speech of this flamboyant orator contrast with the soothing heaviness of the interventions of a Legault or a Duhaime. This scientist shuns TV shows and show media; we can read it in this exchange on the idea of the collapse, the fall of the thermo-industrial civilization: “The idea of sustainable development is scientifically untenable. It can’t work. Exponential growth is what in physics is called “instability” and this necessarily leads to the crash of the system in question. […] And the catch-up will be brutal. »
“In a game where we are sure to lose, it is not useful to make a good move. The rules have to be changed. The rest is a matter of detail or hiding, “adds Barrau, 49, believing that” our generation is that of a crime against the future “.
To have made “individual freedom” the alpha and omega of all political thought is a disaster
He suggests that scientists get out of their comfort zone, calls for sedition, audacity and revolution and affirms that we need poets more than economists or political scientists. “If the direction does not change, the path followed does not matter. »
The “Let’s continue” is a direct threat to the living.
“You can get used to the worst: it is still the worst,” adds Barrau. “The fact is that information did not lead to action. […] Optimism is a tough bet and I wouldn’t bet on a bright outcome. »
Last Sunday evening, seated at the Byblos café, my three men (two Zs and a Y) ordered dizi, a traditional Iranian dish, a succulent stew smelling of turmeric and cinnamon that makes you forget all the misfortunes, the time to a meal. I was the only one to prefer its vegetarian version, less manly, but more environmental.
“I’m the one who’s going to save the planet again…”
– Mom ! It’s not the time to talk about the planet!
I only hope that it will be time to think about it on October 3rd.
Instagram: josee.blanchette