Your voices count in the current reflection on society, humanity, its mistakes and its hopes. How did your meeting and this book come about?
Nicolas Hulot. We had participated, a few years ago, in a book of interviews with great witnesses, Our ways of hope (Actes Sud). And when I was Minister of Ecology, I was about to entrust Frédéric with a mission of reflection on the animal condition.
Frédéric Lenoir. A few months after Nicolas resigned from the government, I went to see him at his home in Saint-Lunaire (Ille-et-Vilaine). We have the same vision of a globalized world in crisis and we both call for a revolution of consciousness, I offered to write a book together and he said yes.
Your ambition is to dissect the roots of the crisis we are experiencing. Crisis ? Or the repeated crises?
NH. It is not only about the Covid crisis. Moreover, the book was already written before the arrival of the virus. We have updated it in the light of this pandemic.
FL. One of the strong points of our message was to say, if we do nothing, we will go from ecological crisis to health and social crisis … Unfortunately, the news proved us right.
Much has been said about the ecological crisis, about nature taking revenge on man. Today, it’s more about saving the economy, right?
NH. It’s a bit early to say that we are going through profit and loss this awakening of consciousness born during confinement. But the trap, which we call the tragedy of the horizons, is to see the short term reinvest in thoughts. I find it hard to believe that this confrontation with our own vulnerability, the universal dimension of the issues and the obsolete side of a model that destroys and loots does not finally upset our operations.
FL. We are seeing positive signs such as the Citizen’s Climate Convention. Citizens drawn by lot who vote for the implementation of measures that few environmentalists would have hoped for, this is a real step forward. It is now up to the government to act.
Does man need to be confronted with the drama to decide to act?
FL. Alas, history shows that yes… And this is kind of what is happening to us today. The reports on the state of the planet are alarming but we continue to stick patches and band-aids that jump when a lobby presses. It will undoubtedly take other catastrophes before we really understand that we can no longer believe in infinite growth in a finite world.
NH. We cannot anticipate a tsunami or an earthquake, but the ecological crisis in the broad sense of the term has been known and documented for decades. But the man got used to the ticking of the time bomb. The longer we wait, the more complicated the resolution will be. However, the immediate years are decisive on the extent of the consequences. It’s up to us to change the system.
Imagine a world that works for the common good and not for profit, isn’t that a bit of a Utopia?
FL. The common good is an old philosophical principle. It appears among the Greeks as the ideal of the city. It was then adapted to the scale of nations by Spinoza in the XVIIe century. He already advocated the establishment of democracy and the separation of Church and State. We ended up getting there. Do not despair. When an idea is right, it ends up winning.
NH. For me, utopia is to believe that the current world can continue without chaos. A world where a small number monopolizes the majority of wealth for their personal interest even though everything is known through the globalization of the media and information … A world where we therefore add a notion of humiliation to exclusion. Yes, the utopia is to believe that all of this can last. Solidarity rather than individualism, preservation rather than destruction are no longer options but conditions for the future …
Can this revolution take place without violence or collapse?
NH. It is fear indeed… Victor Hugo said: “Progress is nothing other than amicable revolution”. We still have a window to do it amicably. Europe has a major role in this area. If we manage to have a collective vision, to build a different economic and societal model, then we will be able to impose it on the rest of the world with which we trade. Europe can be the cradle of this renewal. I am waiting for this vision.
For vision, you need visionaries. Is there no shortage of headlights?
NH. Would a Victor Hugo be audible today in the general confusion? We have great minds, do we listen to people like Edgar Morin? I sincerely believe that there is a humanity which works for the common good and another which monopolizes it. The first is the majority but it is not the most influential. Things have to be reversed.
FL. Fortunately, many glimmers of hope light up as the emergence of a social and solidarity economy that is moving away from the maximization of profit. Like certain big bosses that I meet and who change their policy by thinking of the world they are going to bequeath to their grandchildren.
There must also emerge a society where consumption is not queen?
FL. Our brain is conditioned to always want more. However, it is a total lack of freedom to be constantly assaulted by consumerist impulses. And new technologies, via the giants of the web, do everything to create addiction and profusion. Development must be accompanied by ethics and morals.
NH. One of the pitfalls of our societies is the desynchronization of science and consciousness. Everything goes so fast that we wait to see the harmful effects before regulating them. We are in a crisis of excess in everything. When we take a break on the computers, they turn off. When we pause on humans, they light up.
Nicolas Hulot, you were in power, was it not an opportunity or never to change things?
NH. For eighteen months, I had the feeling of living in a flooding river without one being able to put my head above water. The time for reflection passes after the management of emergencies and lobbies. There was a gap between the transformation I wanted and the simple adaptation.
Got a message of hope in the middle of the doldrums?
NH. Beautiful humanity is in the majority, I am sure.
FL. According to a Native American tale, there are two wolves in us. A benevolent white wolf and a cruel black wolf. Which one will win? The one we feed.
From one world to another, the time of conscience, Nicolas Hulot, Frédéric Lenoir, Fayard, 360 pages, € 21.50
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