I was born in 1995. Two major constants have accompanied me throughout my life. First there was a gripping fear, mediated from a very young age by the news of a world in complete erosion. Then, and paradoxically, a lie, repeated ad nauseam, assuring us that all of this would ultimately be just a bad dream.
I see you coming. These are very harsh words: a lie! It’s not as if we had been unemployed! We worked to change things, right?
Indeed. Every year we emitted more GHGs, we razed more forests, we consumed more meat. We certainly invested heavily in new technologies, but these gave us no indication that a change of course was coming.
Renewable energy is one of those sweet dreams. Do we realize the amount of scarce resources that would be needed to build the solar panels, wind turbines and fuel cells that our future seems to be building? These technologies have notoriously short lifespans, provide little energy compared to fossil fuels, and rely on limited and difficult-to-extract materials. What will their implementation really cost us? Similarly, carbon capture currently emits more GHGs than it removes from the atmosphere, an efficiency failure that is far from over.
There is no longer any escape from this twisted conception of hope. We are told that a better world is on the way. We are told that new oil extraction projects will make it a reality. We certainly admit that it won’t be easy, but then we continue, as if nothing had happened, to make things worse.
And during this time, the world is unraveling and withering visibly.
For some, this dissonance becomes the source of a new evil, eco-anxiety. Eco-anxiety is too often described as a sign that the tools society offers us are ill-suited to allow us to feel that our individual actions have a real impact. This definition stinks in my face. The problem is quite different. Eco-anxiety expresses the pivotal moment when an awareness of the crisis bursts against the incoherent wall of hope. It’s the realization of the lie, that the story we’ve been telling ourselves for decades has accomplished nothing, except to seal our fate. […]
To grieve
I look forward with great anticipation to the ritual day when we can finally bury hope. Because the beast does not want to die, the cursed one. In apocalyptic prayer, a small sigh of relief accompanies each repetition that better is to come. It’s an institution, we cling to it.
Hope is no longer an attitude toward the future. It is a very specific discourse, a mandatory addition that we attach to any description of reality, the one that reminds us that everything is getting out of hand. Look around you, there is nothing rosy on the horizon. This hope rings hollow.
It is that we give him many virtues, to hope. Supposedly seeing everything in black would paralyze taking action. However, it is clear that, if our rose-colored glasses do not prevent us from moving forward, the trajectory that this perspective points to is no less dismal. Beyond that, allow me all the same a doubt. Would burying hope really kill our desire to act? ” On the contrary ! you will hear me shout. Anger, panic, sadness, resignation are all forces capable of moving. We just forgot how to use it.
I sometimes envy the Christians of the time of the great plague. Faced with crushing mountains of corpses, despair found an answer in the wrath of God. If such a cataclysm could take place, it could only be because a terrible crime had been committed. A crime for which the price had to be paid. In the face of evil, there was therefore not only mourning, but also repentance. If such a feeling could still come to us easily, we would think without much effort of future generations and the destruction we direct, their legacy.
Burying hope is the first step in the repentance upon which our future rests. A sacrifice is in order. We have to sacrifice those things taken for granted. Our addiction to the car, our excessive consumption of meat, our access to a thousand riches provided by so many invisible hands. Likewise, sacrificing the comfort and ease that will have made our lives, the story of a moment, a historic exception.
To mourn hope is to turn away from an illusory future and construct a new meaning. The world is actively dying, by our hand, by our choices, by our excessive way of life. Let’s stop this stubbornness to caulk the hull of a lost ship. Let’s accept the lifeboat that comes along. As small as it is, as difficult as it can be to navigate, we know it can be enough.
And it may last long enough to one day see real hope revive.