La dignité sera le rempart contre tous les extrêmes

A tous ceux qui auraient peur d'une montée de l'Islamisme à la suite des événements récents et en cours dans le monde arabe, écoutez donc la réponse de Béchir Labidi, Tunisien:

"Je comprends que la peur de l’Islam est un vrai problème. Mais derrière cette peur se cache surtout la peur du fanatisme et de l’extrémisme.  Ce fanatisme et cet extrémisme ne sont que le résidu de la frustration et du mépris de l’Homme. La dignité sera le rempart contre tous les extrêmes.
Voila pourquoi, à mon sens, la révolution tunisienne remet les pendules à l’heure : c’est la liberté qui sera le garant de la stabilité et  non la dictature."

A quoi sert l'utopie?

"Elle est à l'horizon, dit Fernando Birri. Je me rapproche de deux pas, elle s'éloigne de deux pas. Je chemine de dix pas et l'horizon s'enfuit dix pas plus loin. Pour autant que je chemine, jamais je ne l'atteindrai. A quoi sert l'utopie? Elle sert à cela: cheminer."

Eduardo Galeano, Las Palabras andantes, cité par Dominique Vidal dans l'éditorial de Manière de voir, Le Monde diplomatique, no 112 (août-septembre 2010).

Sauver l'homme pour sauver le monde

"Il ne faut pas sauver le monde malgré l'homme: il faut sauver l'homme pour sauver le monde."

Laurent de Cherisey, Recherche volontaire pour changer le monde, chapitre "Trois idées pour conclure ou... pour commencer".

Montrer l'exemple

"Le monde n'est pas tel qu'il est. Il est tel que nous le faisons. Soyons le changement que nous voulons voir dans le monde."

Mohandas Gandhi, cité par Laurent de Cherisey dans Recherche volontaire pour changer le monde, chapitre "Le pire n'est jamais sûr".

Une génération pourrait suffire

"une seule génération formée aux enjeux de la planète... Une seule génération volontaire pour changer le monde... Le temps d'une génération pourrait suffire à bâtir les grandes réponses dont ce monde a besoin. Une génération... Celle de nos enfants si nous les aidons à libérer leurs audaces*."

Laurent de Cherisey, Recherche volontaire pour changer le monde, chapitre "Il n'y a pas d'âge pour commencer!".

* allusion au Canadien Craig Kielburger, qui, à l'âge de 12 ans, a lancé avec ses camarades de classe l'association "Free the Children" pour lutter contre l'esclavage des enfants "ouvriers" dans le monde, organisation devenue internationale et qui a permi la construction de nombreuses écoles dans des pays en dévelopement.

Conclusion: sensibilisons nos enfants aux enjeux du XXIème siècle, et encourageons-les s'ils veulent agir!

fatalism or radicalism?

"According to sophisticated computer modeling of future rates of climate change, we do have a short time left to cut back emissions in order to avoid "dangerous" levels of warming, and can still aim for a "safe landing" within the one-to-two-degree corridor. This window of opportunity is very nearly closed, however. My conclusion in this book, one that is supported by the 2007 IPCC report, is that we have less than a decade remaining to peak and begin cutting global emissions. This is an urgent timetable, but not an impossible one. It seems to me that the dire situation that we find ourselves in argues not for fatalism, but for radicalism."

Mark Lynas, Six degrees - our future on a hotter planet, chapter "Choosing our future".

His last sentence reminds me of the answer of Nicolas Hulot to critics of his movie Le syndrôme du Titanic: "Ce n'est pas moi qui me radicalise, c'est la situation!" (tentative translation: "I am not becoming radical, the situation is!").

It does not seem to me that the agreement reached at the Copenhagen Climate Conference is radical enough. Will the world be able to react in time? The next decade will tell us...

Actively resisting

Six degrees by Mark Lynas is the most poignant wake-up call for humanity about fighting global warming that I have read so far. Sometimes it sounds like science fiction, as the possible consequences of a runaway global warming are almost beyond imagination. But it is all based on hard science (Mark Lynas does not invent anything, he draws everything from the scientific litterature), from the state-of-the-art computer projections to the lessons from the past buried in sediments and ice cores.

I would like to reproduce here his vivid conclusion for his chapter "six degrees", as a reminder of what is at stake at the on-going Copenhagen conference.

"Extreme global warming may not be a survival crisis for humanity as a species, but it will certainly be a survival crisis for most humans unfortunate enough to inhabit a rapidly warming planet, and that situation is surely bad enough. Stalin was wrong to say that a million deaths is merely a statistic; that is one of the reasons why he is still hated today. Every human death, of every baby, every mother, every brother, father, or sister, will be a unique tragedy about which the whole world should grieve - not the least because such an outcome is still today avoidable. [...]
So far as we yet know, Earth is the only planet in the entire universe that has summoned forth life in all its brilliance and variety. To knowingly cut this flowering short is undoubtedly a crime, one more unspeakable even than the cruelest genocide or most destructive war. If each person is uniquely valuable, each species is surely more so. I can see no excuses for collaborating in such a crime. As the postwar Nuremberg trials established, ignorance is no defense, nor is merely following orders. To me the moral path lies not in passively accepting our destructive role, but in actively resisting such a horrendous fate.
As I stated at the beginning of this book, nothing in the future is set in stone. We still have the power - though it diminishes every day - to alter te ending of this terrible drama. It need not yet end in tragedy, and to make this point more clearly the next and final chapter will examine our options for avoiding each successive degree rise in temperature. There, and only there, hope lies.
As Dylan Thomas wrote:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

Sustainability has to be a choice

"We must keep remembering that complex global problems can be solved by collective global goal setting, reliance on scientific evidence, mobilization of technology, and most crucially, thinking ahead. We will have to appreciate, with urgency, that the ecological challenges will not solve themselves in a "self-organizing" manner. Markets, we have emphasized, won't do the job by themselves. Social norms do not suffice. Governments are often cruelly short-sighted. Sustainability has to be a choice, a choice of a global society that thinks ahead and acts in unaccustomed harmony."

Jeffrey Sachs, Common Wealth, Economics for a crowded planet, chapter "The anthropocene".

Peace is the way of solving problems

A beautiful speech by John F. Kennedy, still vividly of actuality today :

"Too many of us think [that peace] is impossible. Too many think it is unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade ; therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable, and we believe they can do it again. I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of universal peace and goodwill of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams, but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.
Let us focus instead on a more pratical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions - on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace ; no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process - a way of solving problems.
So, let us not be blind of our differences - but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."

John F. Kennedy, Peace Address at American University, June 1963, when nuclear war was threatening to explode after the failed CIA-led invasion of Cuba in 1961, and the subsequent positioning of nuclear weapons in Cuba by the Soviet Union in October 1962 (cited by Jeffrey Sachs, Common Wealth, Economics for a crowded planet, chapter "Common challenges, common wealth").

Un élément positif de la crise contemporaine

"Notre livre, après bien d'autres, pose une question cruciale : cette complexité croissante que nous percevons tout au long de l'histoire de l'univers est-elle viable ? Quinze milliards d'années d'évolution pour l'avènement d'un être capable de découvrir l'origine de l'univers dont il est issu, de déchiffrer le comportement des atomes et des galaxies, d'explorer le système solaire, de mettre à son service les forces de la nature, mais incapable de se mobiliser pour empêcher sa propre élimination ! Voilà en résumé le drame auquel nous sommes confrontés aujourd'hui. [...]

Dans la tempête, quand le navire menace de sombrer, les marins, oubliant leurs conflits et leurs querelles, s'unissent pour tenter de sauver le navire. La mobilisation humaine qui prend de l'essor aujourd'hui à l'échelle planétaire est déjà un élément positif de la crise contemporaine.
Prendre conscience de cette insertion des êtres humains dans cette odyssée cosmique donne un sens profond à l'existence. Après la disparition des idéologies sociales du XX^e siècle, cette nouvelle cause est susceptible d'engendrer de nouveaux dynamismes, en particulier chez les jeunes. Elle provoquera, espérons-le, une prise de conscience de notre identité de Terriens, bien au-delà des nationalismes, des racismes et des sexismes.
La complexité et l'intelligence peuvent être viables. Cela dépend de nous ! C'est là un message capital pour les générations à venir."

Hubert Reeves, Mal de Terre, "épilogue".

Will is the soil from which hope arises

"In the movie Awakenings, there is a scene in which an elderly woman sits motionless, confined to a wheelchair because of childhood encephalitis. The Oliver Sacks character in the movie, played by Robin Williams, fails to get any response from this woman through conversation or standard stimuli until he accidentally drops an object into her lap. She immediately reaches out to catch it. Sacks pauses to consider what has happened. He then steps back and tosses a tennis ball, with the same result: a precise catch by a woman who heretofore has been silent and immobile. When pressed by his supervising clinician as to how and why this woman can dexterously catch a tossed ball, Sacks replies that she has borrowed the "will" of the ball.
I have seen the movie again and it is this particular phrase that has stuck with me. We all borrow will: from our parents as we grow up, from coaches or mentors, even from stars and famous personages with whom we connect in less immediate ways. It is our will that is the substance of our life. When we lose it, we are on a path to a kind of death, since will is the soil from which hope arises."

Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability. (Chapter "The opportunity of insignificance").

Hope

"Let no one be discouraged by the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills - against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence... Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation...
It is from the numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

Robert Kennedy, cited by Jeffrey Sachs in "The end of poverty, economic possibilities for our time", chapter "Our generation's challenge".
Jeffrey Sachs then concludes his book:

"Let the future say of our generation that we sent forth mighty currents of hope, and that we worked together to heal the world."