For many years, the theme of the fight against global warming has dominated the news, in both popular and scientific media. In the concert of speeches presented to us on this subject, a lot of crucial and relevant information. But not only.
As often, what we are not told is more important than what we are told. What we are told sometimes even serves to divert attention from more important things, which we prefer to keep in the shadows. Thus, one element that we avoid mentioning is that the current climate crisis is first and foremost only one side effect, among many others, of a much larger problem affecting our environment.
Over the past millennia, what has had—and continues to have—the greatest deleterious effects on our environment and biodiversity has been the disproportionate scale of human consumption of raw materials, energy and materials. ‘space. In uninterrupted expansion (and accelerated for more than a century), the global consumption of these three intimately intertwined resources constitutes what could be called an “infernal consumerist trio” for our environment and other species. populating the Earth. The more energy there is available to the human species, the more it is used to transform more raw materials and to exploit or artificialize new spaces.
The accumulation of waste, pollution, the degradation of natural environments, the loss of biodiversity and global warming are only side effects of this consumption trio, five symptoms of the same disease. Removing fossil fuels from the energy cocktail to replace them with other types of energy, with the objective of maintaining the growth of this infernal consumerist trio, will in no way stop the degradation of our environment and the disappearance of many species.
Of course, each symptom must be tackled to moderate the effects, but the disease will also have to be tackled one day. Talking about reduced consumption, asceticism, sharing through a better distribution of wealth, decrease and de-globalization. Subjects that our governments – and the great beneficiaries of the current economic system – want to avoid at all costs, anxious to continue their usual activities without too many changes.
To do this, shining the spotlight on climate change is very convenient. Thus, the energy transition (the green shift) that is currently proposed to us consists of replacing an energy source that emits GHGs with another emitting little or none, then continuing as before. To achieve the transition to which we are invited, what additional proportion of our natural environments will we have to deforest, flood, dig, cover with mining residues, solar panels? What proportion to extract more wood, ore and energy in order to produce more luxury goods for the better off of this world? More than ever, we will dig the ground and the bottom of the sea to support the overconsumption characteristic of the way of life of developed countries.
It is not the type, but the amount of energy and the consumerist use we make of it that causes the continued degradation of our earthly environment.
Published in 2019, the only scientific assessment of the state of biodiversity and ecosystem services concluded that nature was in dangerous decline, marked by an unprecedented and accelerating rate of species extinction. The first cause: the change in land and sea use and its corollary, the loss of living environments for many animal and plant species. The continuous growth in the consumption of energy, raw materials and space is gradually causing the habitats of a large number of species to disappear, in addition to producing more pollution and degrading the residual natural environments.
We often talk about invasive species these days. Perhaps we should also mention that the champion in this field is ours!