Quite often when I think about my children, our children and our children's children, I wonder what the future holds for them.
Of course, we don't have control over everything. After all, planet Earth is the tip of a needle in a haystack when you think of the Universe.
During my studies, I had a meteorology professor who firmly believed that humans didn't have that much power over the Earth's temperature. 20 years ago, he stood up to a series of scientists with one argument: The Earth has a warming and cooling cycle, as the ice ages have shown us. Plausible... Many still believe that we don't have this impact.
Although the Earth undergoes cycles of temperature variation, some are working to demonstrate that human beings have a grandiose impact on the global ecosystem. That we humans influence the Earth's average temperature through our consumption habits. Thousands of specialists around the world agree. They also agree that the human species is endangering itself.
And what happens in the meantime?
What's going on is that the news is overflowing with headlines about the legalization of marijuana and other trivia. That most of our politicians miss a vital priority and even dismiss it out of hand.
That the population's consumption habits are polluting to a fault and almost crystallized. What's happening is that only small pockets of citizens, environmentalists, organizations and scientists are describing the urgent need for action. And yet, who, in Quebec among others, hasn't heard lately about the polluting abundance of plastic or global warming?
I'd like to hear how all these people who are bearers of knowledge will be passive when they explain to tomorrow's children how they have prioritized the "comfort" of their lives to the detriment of their own.
What will tomorrow's children understand? It's often said that other people's opinions shouldn't influence our choices and who we are. Here, I think it's important to project ourselves into the eyes of these future children, so that we can make more appropriate daily choices that are more respectful of sustainable development.
I don't know about you, but I like risk management... the precautionary principle. I don't need to know for sure that humans influence global temperature, I don't need to know for sure that a substance is a pollutant... I'll simply change my ecological habits, when in doubt.
There's a famous African proverb that goes round and round in my head: "It takes a village to raise a child". And if we were to update it a little: It takes the world's population to provide a quality of life for the children of the future. They need to be able to eat, drink, clothe, shelter and... play.
I leave you with a video of Elizabeth May's speech at the emergency debate on climate change. She says everything, everything, everything that's important to say.
Ecologically yours,
