A better future

When you go to work today, you will be believing in a better future. Your job slowly pulls you out of poverty, you live in a decent neighborhood and you made your flat or house a little paradise where it is good to come back in the evening. Your children will be well educated, will have good professions, good jobs. You hope to have grandchildren, who again will be happy. Life, for you and your beloved ones will keep on improving.

When you go back to work the next day, you may be in the same frame of mind. But to maintain the belief in a better world, you will have to ignore a few things. In one day, between 24 and 150 species vanish from the surface of the earth and more than 100 km2 of native forest are being cut. More than 20,000 tons of plastics find their way in the oceans and 3 billion fishes are killed. In the same day, 30 km2 of arable land are lost to erosion and 30 million tons of carbon are emitted in the atmosphere. The earth harbors 220,000 more human beings.

You will have to ignore that the aggressiveness you see in people around you and your own aggressiveness is due to overpopulation. When back home and when you use some appliance, you will need to forget that their fragility is not only due to marketing tricks. Our plastics, metals, woods are of poor quality because of a generalized abundance of cheap material. Your next holidays are likely to be in a suburb in spite of the advertisements that promise a “thrilling adventure in the heart of nature”.

Can you ignore an enemy that wants to destroy you and say: “this won’t happen, he will be reasonable and I will continue to live happily”? No, you won’t have a better future unless you fight. The environmental destruction of our planet will ultimately shatter your illusion. It is time to be real: your paradise is in danger.

Jean-Philippe Puyravaud