Un collective of scientists published a column on September 25 in The world calling for a “Manhattan Project” to fight against global warming which they rightly describe as “existential threat”.
The forum states that “ limiting this warming and adapting to it is an imperative and superior duty: this is the greatest challenge in human history “. For this, they call “to build a research and innovation center, responsible for developing scientific and technological tools for the transition, in direct link with industry “.
This appeal raises several serious problems. It obliterates, first of all, a large part of the ecological issue. He only looks at it through the lens of global warming; this is indeed an existential threat to humanity and many species, but it is far from being the only one. Global warming is only one facet of a larger problem: human activities are destroying much of life on Earth.
Pressure on finite resources
The massive extraction, transport and use of raw materials to maintain growth at all costs lead to a dispersion and catastrophic waste of non-renewable resources while generating multiple pollution. Waste generated by human activities is incapable of being included in biological recycling cycles. The result is that species and ecosystems are disappearing at a rapid rate.
Focused in this way, the forum obscures the trajectory which in fact stands out as the most rational, even if there is nothing simple about it: significantly reducing the pressure that humanity exerts on finite resources, in order not only to reduce the deadly pollution, but also to save these precious stocks.
The second problem lies in the proposed solution: with the bad taste example of the Manhattan Project, which led to the nuclear arms race, it requires colossal means to be implemented to accelerate technological development. This approach with an uncertain outcome is dangerous, because doing only this would increase the consumption of resources and the production of waste, without resolving the problems that humanity creates on living things and therefore on itself.
A risk of social catastrophe
We will, however, happily welcome a major plan for the ecological redirection of research and higher education, provided that it takes into account the systemic and interdisciplinary nature of the ongoing catastrophe.
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