In 2018, Gwendal Brossier entered the National School of Civil Aviation (Enac). “I was not too bad in maths and physics. I said to myself ‘Planes, that can be not bad, it makes you dream, it’s at the cutting edge of technology’, testifies the young man of 23 years. Three years later, he gave up working “for a sector that pollutes so much”. Freshly returned, by train, from vacation in Prague (Czech Republic), he is about to sign a permanent contract with the SNCF, to work on the ticket reservation system.
When he was a teenager, Cédric LM imagined “aerodynamicist in Formula 1”. Today, this polytechnician believes that such a profession has no “no interest in the challenges of tomorrow”. “The individual car, for me, is dead. And F1 is really the quintessence of that”, he justifies. Rather than calculating the air penetration of a 1,000 horsepower racing car, he now repairs bicycles in the streets of Paris, on behalf of an online platform. “It’s human contact. We think a little, we use our hands, I really like this craftsmanship”he testifies.
Madeleine d’Arrentières, she has “always wanted to work in space and aeronautics”. “I wanted to be an astronaut, a fighter pilot and then, because it was more accessible, an aeronautical engineer”, lists the young woman of 23 years. Today, this student from the Higher Institute of Aeronautics and Space (Isae-Supaéro) reluctant to engage in climate science research. “To produce planes in the assembly line to transport tourists to the Seychelles for a weekend, that no longer appeals to me at all”she snaps.
A manifesto signed by more than 32,000 students
The story of these three students is not isolated. In 2020, more than 700 students from the aeronautics sector, including Madeleine d’Arrentières and Gwendal Brossier, called, in a forum in The world, to a reduction in air traffic in the face of global warming. At the end of 2021, more than 32,000 students from Grandes Ecoles had signed, like Cédric LM, the manifesto “For an ecological awakening”, launched in 2018 and carried by an association which intends “wake” employers, schools and governments on the climate crisis. “As we approach our first job, we realize that the system of which we are a part directs us towards positions that are often incompatible with the fruit of our reflections and locks us into daily contradictions”, note its authors.
“What does it mean to travel by bike, when you also work for a company whose activity contributes to the acceleration of climate change or the depletion of resources?”
Manifesto for an ecological awakening
For Nicolas Bourdeaud, 24, these reflections came from his first year at Isae-Supaéro, the school of his dreams obtained after three intense years in the preparatory class. “I repeated my second year of preparation, because I really wanted this school, he recalls. But from the moment I left the preparatory class, I had more time to inform myself, to read, to watch documentaries. In six months, I refocused”. Cyprien Brabant, a student at the Ecole Supérieure des Techniques Aeronautiques et de Construction Automobile (Estaca), experienced an awareness “pretty sudden”. “One day, my mother said to me ‘I listened to a lecture by Jean-Marc Jancovici, you might like it’. It was a little shock”says the young man of 23 years.
Courses not up to the challenge
The videos of the polytechnician, member of the High Council for the Climate and founder of the consulting firm Carbone 4, were regularly cited in our discussions with the five students interviewed for this article. This is not the only point in common between them: none of them quoted the lessons delivered in such and such a school as a trigger for their ecological awareness. “We talk very little about the environment in Polytechnique classes. When I was there, it was not even four hours”remembers Cédric LM. “The Isae-Supeaéro curriculum is much too focused on drones, military issues, green aircraft for 2030”, summarizes Nicolas Bourdeaud. After the signing of the forum, however, he participated, with his comrades, in working groups to modify the course, which now includes around twenty hours of lessons around the themes of energy and climate.
This text, much noticed in the aeronautical sphere, opened the doors of the ministries to them, for a few exchanges that remained without a future. “We had met Jean-Baptiste Djebbari’s director of innovation [ministre délégué chargé des Transports], remembers Madeleine d’Arrentières. ‘You are young engineers, you should believe in it, be optimistic. Why don’t you want to come and decarbonize the sector?'” None of the aeronautics students interviewed believes in the promises of Airbus, which announces a carbon-free, hydrogen-powered plane for 2035. “There are five years of certification for an aircraft. It must therefore be ready in 2030, there are eight years left to do so”calculates Gwendal Brossier, who recalls that this project does not solve the question of long-haul and that the time for renewal of the fleet is “fifteen-twenty”far too long to limit the rise in temperature.
A rejection of “techno-solutionism”
Madeleine d’Arrentières recalls that the production of hydrogen is very polluting today (95% from fossil fuels) and that producing it cleanly requires “lots of electricity”. “There will not be any for all sectors of activity, we will have to make arbitrations”she believes.
“Having a weekend I don’t know where and participating in mass tourism is not a good reason to pollute.”
Madeleine d’Arrentieres, 23 years oldat franceinfo
Finally, Nicolas Bourdeaud recalls that the technological progress of aviation in recent decades has been completely erased by the explosion in traffic: the sector’s CO2 emissions have quadrupled since 1966, as shown by Our World in Data. (in English).
Beyond the single case of air transport, many of these students reject the “techno-solutionism”this ideology that sees a technical solution to every problem. “We must tackle the problem at the root, discard false technological solutionsbelieves Nicolas Bourdeaud. This is the reason why I did not go to work at Airbus, but for political innovation”. He is currently engaged for the popular primary, a “independent citizens’ initiative of political parties” to present a candidate for the presidential election “whose priority will be the social and climatic emergency”.
“Meaningful rather than a big salary”
This refusal to stay in the nails of their training is a strong choice, with sometimes very concrete consequences, especially on their pay slip. “In order of magnitude, it’s halved [le salaire annuel brut moyen à la sortie de Polytechnique est de 59 000 euros] compared to my comrades who join large companies”calculates Cédric LM, who is about to sign in a company offering fleets of cargo bikes to professionals. “It already sounds great to me, I earn more than my mother at the peak of her career and I would much rather have meaning than a big salary”he comments. “I no longer want to have the basic approach, the good salary, the company car, the good job”abounds Cyprien Brabant, who is continuing his studies in Sweden.
“The criterion of money is not the first for me and it is not always understood.”
Cyprien Brabant, 23 years oldat franceinfo
If none of the students interviewed has fallen out with their families, this ecological shift has not always been understood. “The reaction of my parents was above all incomprehension. They saw all the energy invested in reaching this school and when I told them six months later that I wanted to change, they asked what was going on”says Nicolas Bourdeaud. “That moment is often quite difficult. I was rather understood by my parents, compared to the average, but not enough for my taste”, testifies Cyprien Brabant. To make himself better understood, he organized a fresco of the climate, an educational game on global warming, with his family. “I did it with my sisters, my parents, uncles and aunts. It went well, it’s not confrontational, it’s a good way to broach the subject”he believes.
The immediate entourage, friends and classmates, are not always better disposed than the older ones to accept this change of course. “Would I have the same friends today if I had had my realization earlier?”, asks Cyprien Brabant, who regrets that the subject is little discussed in his circle of friends. But all perceive a change in their generation. “At Supaéro, when we signed the stand, many students were in agreement”remembers Madeleine d’Arrentières. “At Polytechnique, many are ready to do something completely different, at a lower salary, to take on other associative commitments, there is still a fundamental movement”notes Cédric Le Mouel. Nicolas Bourdeaud invites his generation “to join associations, to participate in these democratic processes”. Faced with global warming, he recalls that “every tenth of a degree counts”.