When I woke up, the smell of smoke preceded the view of the sky through my window. A sense of urgency arose and I turned my head to watch. The opaque and orange expanse, the glowing light of the sun veiled by forest fires. Belly bump. Tears welled up along with the heaviness of my inability to do anything to help.
While I was sitting outside despite the recommendations to cloister, a magnificent doe, probably nursing, came to visit me; anxiety struck again. What have we done? Why do you have to go that far? Rush the end. To spit in the hand of the one who feeds us, waters us and allows us to breathe. I walked in this smoky landscape, backpack, to find a place to sit and write. I stopped along the way to observe the bees foraging in the wildflowers of the Laurentian landscape; the carefree butterflies at the heart of this magical image, a small universe preserved in human mineralization, and I found us immeasurably heavy.
I could have let the anger, the indignation rise; but it was my desperation as a middle-class white woman that cried out the loudest. Despite the conditions in which I was born and which I consider privileged, I do not feel less concerned by the socio-environmental and climatic crises. I have felt urgency in my flesh since childhood. This deep fear of seeing the world go up in smoke. The need to do everything possible to preserve and honor what nature generously places at our disposal. It is in this abundance that lies the ultimate test of our presence here. What will we do with this opulence?
Climate change has no concern for equity and inclusion. Natural disasters spare no one, but more naturally affect marginalized communities, pushed to the extremes by gentrification, prospecting and misplaced powers. Even within the big cities, there are parts of the population that are more affected for several obvious reasons when we draw up the list. Excessive mineralization, loss of biological diversity, decrease in canopy, access to limited or non-existent green spaces, limited or total absence of access to fresh, quality and affordable food, poor air quality often caused by proximity to roads crowded and by the lack of trees, greater and more frequent health problems, dilapidated and unsanitary housing, etc.
We call today for solidarity with the citizens who have been uprooted from their living environments by the fires. Photos of runaway animals make headlines and I mourn our lack of humanity. The nose plunged into our screens, swallowed by the wires of news as if it were about the last fiction to listen to in burst; the truth is that we have never been so disconnected from ourselves, from others and from what surrounds us. Our insatiable thirst will lead us to the most total drought. We have the problem before our eyes, we have the power to extinguish or let ourselves be consumed; and even if we had endless valleys from which to draw the energy of the future, no transition will be enough for us, not even on the back of a tank.
The world of horror fiction, populated by zombies, today bears the face of the digital age and the collective numbness in which we are drowning more and more every day, letting what is left of us slip through our fingers. beautiful and essential.
They say silence is golden, but here it has the weight of an armored ship that the strongest have decided to ride. They will only look at their target, forgetting that the eternal will never belong to us and that we will be the next ousted, regardless of our title or our stock market rating.
As Diego Creimer, of the Society for Nature and Parks of Quebec, so aptly put it in a post on LinkedIn a few weeks ago, inviting people to speak up and give to organizations working on the ground put out the fires and come to the aid of the victims: we are watching the boat sink with our arms folded like so many titanic in black waters, running from one disaster to another in silence so as not to offend realities, while our speech is one of the most active and powerful weapons that we possess individually and collectively. Dare to speak, communicate; help where you can to the extent that is available to you; let yourself be touched by what is happening so that this force inherent in all that lives emerges and gives you the impetus to come out of the latent asphyxiation.
I would have liked to write sweet and light, beauty and wondering words for you today. Why lie to me?
I wish us leaders who get their heads out of the sand and tread the same soil as us. Elected officials who dare to wear our glasses and look out the same window. Representatives who build plans over more than four years, in line with the recommendations and reports of scientists, who work actively to reduce greenhouse gases and cap emissions from the oil and gas sector, who work for the adoption of ambitious measures, relating to the level of the climate emergency, which demonstrate the political courage necessary to move together towards a more just and ecological world. I wish us beauty, lightness and softness, waves of wonder and solidarity.