Translator: Elisabeth Buffard
What if we put climatologists in their place?
I realize that by saying that, I am a little teasing.
I will explain this to you.
There is a report being published, in three parts,
the first part was published last August, the second in February.
The third is coming soon.
This is the sixth report of the IPCC assessment.
It's talked about a lot, but only in certain circles.
Very little is said about it in the media.
This report is remarkable.
Now, concretely, effectively, in my opinion, there is a problem.
There is a problem, not in what climatologists do,
but maybe in what they don't do.
There is a problem in the way the climate issue
is taken into account in the debate.
So I have two messages today.
The first is that I think the problem is badly posed.
Is humanity facing a serious climate problem?
Yes, but is this THE serious problem?
I don’t think so.
I will explain to you what I think is the serious problem.
The serious problem is that our civilization
is a thermodynamic machine that transforms the environment
in which we live by extracting resources.
Then, we transform these resources, we use them:
goods, services, human activities, human societies.
And then, downstream, we spit out waste and pollution.
We loop back to some little things in this system.
we circularize certain sub-parts of the system.
But overall, it's a linear flow that turns nature into waste.
Waste is solid, liquid or gaseous.
Among the gases, a subset, greenhouse gases,
disturb the climate.
Climate change is one of several subsections
with multiple consequences of this problem which means that,
upstream, we take more resources
than what the Earth can sustainably give,
for what is renewable, beyond the renewal rate.
Downstream, we generate more pollution
than what the system can sustainably absorb, for what can be,
and along the way, we transform, we destroy, nature’s ability to adapt.
We destroy faster than nature's ability to regenerate.
This stream is too big.
The Earth system can no longer adapt.
And that, in my opinion, is the nature of the problem.
The climate is a serious problem among other serious problems.
We are attacking the climate issue as THE big problem today,
for those who are concerned about it, it is presented to us
as THE super mega challenge to take up.
It's a challenge, I don't deny it.
But the problem is that we are confusing two things:
we confuse ailments and symptoms.
We treat the climate as an evil when it is only a symptom.
I will explain to you, with a metaphor that is clear,
why this is a serious misunderstanding.
Imagine you have chronic headaches, skin problems
and on top of that, a bowel problem.
If you treat these things differently, like problems,
you will be able to find solutions: for the skull,
paracetamol, for the skin, ointment, for transit, herbal tea.
All of these things are small adjustments.
We can continue to live normally,
we relieve the symptoms with a little paracetamol, ointment
and we continue to live normally
Now imagine that all of these things, these symptoms,
are in fact consequences a generalized cancer.
(I told you it would be funny…)
Imagine. Do you believe that by eating paracetamol,
by applying ointment, you will cure cancer?
No, you must understand that treating the cause
is absolutely not the same thing
as the sum of symptom treatments.
It is fundamentally different.
Because it is only when you understand cancer
that you understand the need for shock treatment,
that we understand that survival is at stake
and that to survive, we must make enormous sacrifices.
Chemotherapy for example, involves enormous sacrifices.
It’s your whole life that changes, that reorganizes around that.
It’s a lot of suffering to survive
because we understand that it’s survival that’s at stake,
So we do whatever it takes.
If we were logical, as humanity,
what we would be doing today is shock treatment.
We would stop everything we are doing,
we would completely reorganize to survive.
What is at stake today?
Is it our survival? Yours? Mine?
No, it's much more than that:
what is at stake today
and what will be at stake in the next thirty years,
it is the habitability of planet Earth, for most living things.
This is what is playing out.
And in the face of that, we take paracetamol.
When we deal with the climate,
when we try, for example, to decarbonize civilization, that is good.
Let's do it!
We relieve the “climate change” symptom
which is so serious that on its own, it can kill us, so let’s do it.
And yet, if we only do that, the cancer is still there!
If we treat the different problems separately, for example the climate,
but also the biodiversity which is collapsing
and nature which is totally destroyed,
for example also the pollution which accumulates,
access to certain resources, access to water
disruption of biogeochemical cycles,
nutrient cycles such as phosphorus.
It's a whole bunch of problems that are all extremely serious,
and actually interdependent.
Trying to treat them independently of each other makes no sense.
What we do is relieve certain symptoms and in general,
we do that without systemic coherence.
Other symptoms worsen.
For example, the strategy that would like us to develop renewables
to manage the climate problem, what does it do?
In our own societies, the rich societies
(we are the ones it actually concerns),
we will develop new technologies and these technologies,
they calm things down a bit in terms of the climate,
that’s very fine, but they also accentuate extractive flows:
we extract more resources upstream (metals, ores, etc.)
and in the process we destroy the environment,
we reduce biodiversity even more,
we pollute, we use as much water as possible,
there are health, hygiene, social problems, etc.
We will aggravate certain symptoms to cure one.
I’m not saying we mustn’t do it, I’m just saying
don’t imagine it’s going to solv the problem, it will displace it,
transform it into other symptoms.
This is what we do today.
We relieve some symptoms and besides that,
what happens is that we aggravate others.
There is no systemic consistency.
Let's talk about energy transition.
if we could put carbon-free energy
at the service of our society but without changing the social project,
we would simply put carbon-free energy, it would be better,
at the service of a flow transforming nature into waste.
That's what would happen, it wouldn't change much.
Do you understand the problem?
Today, we have major challenges before us,
but the fundamental problem is not a climate problem,
but of exceeding the limits of the Earth system.
That’s what we should be talking about.
If we don’t talk about it, we risk finding ourselves
in what is called maladaptation.
Even the IPCC says “watch out for the maladaptation phenomena!”
The problem is that if we only follow “in silo”
the recommendations of the IPCC,
we will avoid maladaptation with respect to the climate
but we will be in another form of maladaptation,
that of the Earth system.
You have to zoom out a bit.
So if we tackled the cause,
really, what would we do?
We would organize an energetic and material descent.
We would reduce the flow of energy, the flow of materials,
we would do everything necessary to regenerate nature.
For that, we would have to change our relationship with nature.
It’s a big change, both in what we produce,
how we consume, and what we consume,
and how we relate to each other, and to nature.
It’s a big cultural, anthropological change,
and we have to do it on a global level in the next 10 years.
Do you believe in it?
It’s complicated, we might not succeed.
Today the problem, if we tackled that,
is we would have to change everything, and people don’t want that.
Why?
Because this great energetic and material descent,
decreasing the energy flows of materials, is vital.
But what does it mean for our societies?
It implies that the size of economies must be reduced.
There are people who will argue the opposite, who will say:
“We can decouple, do green growth, continue to
grow economically, but we will relieve nature.”
It's wrong.
Whoever says that,
I think he will only talk to you
about greenhouse gases, and he will take some examples:
“This country has succeeded in decoupling, there are fewer greenhouse gases
while the economic growth rate is still positive.”
Just because a country could do it doesn't mean the world can do it.
Some rich deindustrialized countries can do it because
other countries produce massively what we do not produce.
It cannot be extrapolated to the whole planet.
Here we are only talking about greenhouse gases,
you understand that this is only one dimension of the matter,
for everything else, there is no decoupling.
More savings means less pollution?
No, always more, we are not in decoupling, but in over-coupling.
More savings, less environmental destruction? No, overcoupling.
More savings means fewer resources? Nope ! More !
Resource flows are being intensified like never before.
To produce one point of GDP today, we use
more raw materials than twenty years ago.
We are not getting closer to decoupling, we are moving away from it.
So green growth? Not possible.
It is necessary to reduce the flow of energy and materials,
this energetic and material descent must be organized,
anyway if we don’t do that, we will suffer it.
It’s a Ponzi scheme, our global economy,
we must always add more energy and materials, otherwise it collapses.
Bad news: we’re going to have less and less from now on.
So, do we understand it and organize it?
Or do we just put ourselves in a position to suffer?
So the problem is that for now,
we avoid questioning anything.
We would have to rewrite all the economic, social, political software, etc.
we don’t want to do it, it’s too much!
We have the idea that if we don’t grow economically,
it’s the end of progress.
Indeed, so far, there has been progress due to growth.
But the fact is that it was not really due to growth,
it was due to the fact that we invested in infrastructure, health,
education, things that have actually improved people's lives.
Today, the growth is that instead of two,
youy have eight screens at home. Are you happier?
In other countries, people need to grow.
If and only we invest in these essential things,
for the rest, no more need to grow.
This is my first post today:
the climate is only one problem among others
and to solve it, we must go back to the cause of the causes.
It means reducing the flow of energy and materials,
it means reducing the size of our economy.
Whoever supports you, once again, the opposite is an ideologue.
I am not an ideologue, I am an engineer.
And to be able to do it without it being a social breakage,
a human breakage, projects are needed to reorganize a society,
and these are major changes.
This is my first message,
The second message is that it will be complicated,
to be able to do all of this.
And to do that globally.
And in the next few years.
So something is missing.
Something essential is missing in all the strategies deployed
including that of the IPCC.
Today, what is the approach of the IPCC?
It's not just the IPCC, it's general!
The IPCC is organized into three working groups:
the working group studying the science of climate change
the working group studying the adaptation to climate change,
and finally the third, on the mitigation of climate change.
The strategy is: we mitigate and we adapt;
we will adapt our societies to change.
The question I ask is:
and if we can't, what's plan B?
That's plan A, what's plan B?
Are we betting everything on this, on the ability to adapt our societies?
What if we don’t make it,
not well enough, not deep enough, not fast enough?
And if we come to breakdowns, at times when things change,
where what is essential for everyone’s survival stops working?
Not overnight, not for everyone, no doubt,
but large sections that would break down, what do we do?
What is plan B? Where are the lifeboats?
What I am telling you is that we need a working group number 4
working on it at the IPCC.
And if that’s not enough,
what do Working Groups 2 and 3 offer?
So a plan B.
And this plan B is a new way of living,
a new way of doing things.
It’s not just how we produce and consume.
Often, you are told what you can or cannot do,
stop flying, or at least fly less,
less meat, etc.
All you are told you can do is as consumers!
Go ahead, do it, it plays into the equation,
everyone must make a lot of effort.
But what can you do as citizens, collectively?
For me, that's where it comes in. Collectively… to weigh.
On the one hand weigh, as I said, on the system in place,
try to make it evolve, amend it,
to arrange it in all possible ways,
rewrite the rules, but also, on the side, lifeboats
in case we don’t get there in the allotted time,
we don't have much time, things are accelerating.
Exponentials are settling everywhere.
So what do we do next, the lifeboats?
Resilience is at the heart of this system.
But collective resilience,
We are sometimes told: “Humans are capable of resilience.”
Yes, individually.
But the sum of individual resiliences does not make a collective resilience.
If individual resilience has an individualistic bent,
it’s obvious that it will not go towards societal resilience.
How do we build resilience, and what kind of resilience?
It is not that of the IPCC!
Because the IPCC also speaks to you about resilience, but which one?
Climate resilience, in the face of climatic hazards.
I’m talking to you about something else.
I tell you that the problem is not only climatic,
it is the passing beyond the limits of the Earth system.
Behind, it will deteriorate in a lasting way,
sometimes irreversible, our societies.
So what do we do when our societies fall apart?
What do we do when what we have planned to manage occasional crises
not enough?
What do we do when there are definitive shortages,
when there is an imposed, unplanned energy and material descent,
suffered more or less in chaos, and irreversible?
What should we do? This is where you need resilience,
not just the ability to bounce back after a shock and return to “normal”,
but that’s how we collectively transform
to be able to self-organize over time,
in a collective way if possible supportive and dignified,
fraternal, and also in fraternity with the rest of nature.
We are far from it, but precisely, we must create it!
That’s called collective, societal resilience, in the broad sense,
and that's what we need.
Well, this is my second message.
Not only is the climate just a sub-problem
of a much more serious problem that we still do not talk about,
but on top of that, you have to create lifeboats,
a plan B in case plan A doesn’t work.
Overall, we are confronted to two major challenges.
Today we are ahead of a presidential election:
the debate in the context of this presidential election is catastrophic.
Catastrophic! We are eluding all the great problems of this world, all of them.
They are barely mentioned by some of the candidates.
It is the candidates’ fault, but also that of many journalists
who do not ask the right questions and are off the mark.
At the beginning of February, 1,400 researchers urged, in a forum,
the candidates and the media to finally talk about the climate.
So yes, ok, of course let's talk about the climate!
But you see, it doesn’t go any further than that.
Today, we say, and this is good news,
that the climate is a “systemic” problem.
The fact that it is important to see things in a systemic way
is somehow getting established.
The latest IPCC report is very clear about this,
climate is a systemic problem.
And that's enough, right? No.
This system must be integrated, must be reintegrated,
in an even larger system,
which is the one of the Earth system in its entirety.
This is still not the case!
Today, we don't do that!
So we have to reframe that considerably,
because today, in the best of cases,
we call to consider the climate, it’s fine but...
Those who mobilize do so on the icing and no one on the cake.
We are running several conceptual trains behind schedule
on the characterization of the problem
and so on that of the space of possible responses.
And my last message concerns the fact that we lack a strategy
to organize this energetic and material descent
that will therefore, in any case,
be understood, anticipated, organized
and potentially at least partly piloted,
or that will be suffered in chaos.
Personally, I prefer the first option.
What is at stake is the habitability of planet Earth, and it’s happening now.
So the choice is ours.
It is in the hands of all citizens that lie dormant in all of us.
Let’s wake them up!