Читать книгу Another End of the World is Possible - Pablo Servigne - Страница 11

All these numbers about catastrophes are easily accessible, and the aim of this book is not to add to them. What interests us here is the change of attitude and of conscious awareness within society in recent years.

One landmark was in 1992, at the Rio Summit, when more than 1,700 scientists signed a common text warning humanity about the state of the planet.³ At the time, this was a new and even embarrassing development. Some 2,500 other scientists responded by warning society against the ‘emergence of an irrational ideology that opposes scientific and industrial progress’.⁴ Twenty-five years later, 15,364 scientists from 184 countries co-authored a letter explaining that without swift and radical action, humanity would be threatened with extinction.⁵ There was no response to this letter. There is no longer any debate. But what is the nature of the silence that followed? Paralysis, exhaustion, lack of interest?

Among the ruling elites, tongues speak more freely, if discreetly. When any of the three of us speak these days in political and economic circles, we are struck by how people no longer question the facts. In public, though, scepticism has given way to feelings of powerlessness, and often to a desire to find ways of escape.

Many of the richest people in the world are barricading themselves inside ‘gated communities’, luxurious and highly secure residential enclaves.⁶ They are also leaving the big cities: in 2015, 3,000 millionaires left Chicago, 7,000 left Paris and 5,000 left Rome. Not all of them are just seeking to evade taxes. Many are genuinely anxious about social tensions, terrorist attacks or the anger of a population increasingly aware of injustices and inequalities.⁷ As Robert Johnson, the former director of the Soros Fund, told the Davos Economic Forum, many hedge-fund managers are buying farms in remote countries like New Zealand in search of a ‘plan B’, and have private jets at hand, ready to take off and fly them there.⁸ Others have built, away from prying eyes and on every continent, gigantic and luxurious high-tech underground bunkers to protect their family from whatever disaster might happen.⁹

All this illustrates what the philosopher and sociologist Bruno Latour has described as an act of secession by a very well-off category of the population. Aware of the risks and of what is at stake, they are seeking to save their skins without worrying about the fate of the rest of the world.¹⁰ To take up his metaphor of a plane and the difficulty of coming to land back on earth, we have entered an area of heavy turbulence. The lights have come on, the glasses of champagne are falling over, existential anguish is returning. Some people open the portholes, see lightning flashing across a dark night sky, and close them again immediately. At the front of the aircraft, some first-class people can be seen putting on their golden parachutes. But what are they going to do with them? Will they jump out into the storm? The economy class passengers then turn to the crew and ask for parachutes, knowing full well that their request is not going to be met. All that they are offered in response is a snack, a movie, some duty-free liquor …