Having said over and over again for years that the watchword, in private life as in economic and political life, should be “general mobilization”, and having so often denounced the mental vacations in which the citizens of the West, and more particularly the French, indulge, I want to repeat here the importance of becoming aware of the dangers that threaten us, and the urgency of placing ourselves in a war economy. Everything is being done to distract us from this.
What threatens us is more than obvious. On ecological and military grounds, at least. And not only.
The already very tangible manifestations of climate disruption – the ongoing collapse of biodiversity, hurricanes, floods, rising sea levels – should long ago have prompted us to take radical measures to combat greenhouse gas emissions and regenerate the soil. Yet we’re a long way from where we need to be. Worse still, we’re going backwards; environmental investment has fallen out of fashion; nowhere is the use of coal being abandoned, and more and more drilling is being done to unearth new fossil fuel reserves. What’s more, everywhere, and in France in particular, laws to protect biodiversity and agricultural soils are being rolled back. Madness. We are not mobilized to the extent required.
Moreover, the evidence of war is there, more than ever. And no one wants to see it, except in countries directly confronted with conflicts and in their direct vicinity: they are mobilized. Elsewhere, nothing is being done. In the United States, isolationism has led us to arm ourselves while withdrawing support from our allies. In Europe, we don’t arm ourselves, out of a blissful pacifism masked by ecological pretexts, or, when we do, it’s still, for the most part, by buying American weapons that we can only use with Washington’s agreement.
Ecological threats, like conflicts, entail related and very specific risks, which are not sufficiently analyzed:
First, there are the risks of shortages, real or imagined; and there are many of them, in France as elsewhere. We could run out of manpower (requisitioned), financing (reserved), water, food, chlorine, rare earths, medicines, certain plant products and many other things. If we don’t prepare for it, scarcity leads to rationing, with its attendant panics and corruptions, death traps for our democracies. And we can predict that our enemies will provoke such shortages; or at least panic through false news. Locking oneself away in a personal cave, with one’s own food supplies, won’t be enough.
Then there are the risks of dissolving national unity by bringing governments into disrepute. This too is on the march.
Everywhere in the West, we don’t see these dangers mounting. We have an irenic vision of history.
Firstly, because Europe has never experienced a major ecological catastrophe, and hasn’t seen a war on its territory for 80 years; and the United States for much longer still. Secondly, because the French, like the Americans, have never been short of food, even in the darkest hours of their history. And finally, because Westerners have long been focused on the joyful obsession with consumption, distraction, leisure, shorter working hours and long retirement.
With the addition of social networks and video games, everything is done to derealize the world, to forget that history is tragic, and that it teaches us that old, rich and lazy people are easy prey for young, poor and hard-working people.
What can we do about it?
First of all, we need to become aware of these two issues. And that’s not easy, when everyone’s doing their best to talk about them as a spectacle, rather than as a personal and existential threat.
Secondly, we need to get out of the mental vacations in which we indulge, particularly in France, by only talking about peacetime issues such as the retirement age, at a time when, in reality, working hours should be extended, to prepare for what’s to come.
Secondly, we need to understand that the stakes of the environment and war are not contradictory. It’s true that the defense and security industries currently use fossil fuels. However, not to finance them on ecological grounds, as many are tempted to do, would be to disguise an unfortunately misplaced pacifism: we can reduce the use of fossil fuels elsewhere, and develop what we might call “green armaments”, which are moreover best suited to today’s combat, such as drones or digital weapons. More generally, this means prioritizing all sectors of the “life economy”, which includes sustainable energy industries as well as the defense industry.
Finally, where, as in France, the government, parliament and the entire state are on mental vacation, and where no one at the highest level of the state can be heard when the alarm bells are ringing, it’s up to teachers, journalists, civil society, businesses, banks, citizens, local authorities, intellectuals and artists to react.
There is an urgent need for a general mobilization in favor of an economy of defense, at the service of the economy of life. The survival of our civilizations depends on it.