- "The Covid-19 [...] is the most serious health crisis that France has known in a century," said the President of the Republic.
- While several European countries, including France, are at a standstill, both economically and socially, the question of collapse arises.
- The philosopher Dominique Bourg analyzes with 20 Minutes the coronavirus crisis and envisages the after.
France is facing "the most serious health crisis in a century," said Emmanuel Macron in his speech last Thursday. After China, several European countries, including France, are at a standstill. The stock markets collapse while a part of the population finds itself trapped between four walls, confined to its home, telecommuting or unemployed.
Is reality giving reason to collapsologists who envisaged - in the book How everything can collapse by Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens - the collapse of thermo-industrial civilization? Does the coronavirus crisis mark the beginning of this collapse, to be understood as the convergence of all crises: climatic, ecological, biogeophysical, economic, etc.? Dominique Bourg *, philosopher and honorary professor at the University of Lausanne, has no doubts.
Are we experiencing collapse as described by collapsology?
I refuse to speak of collapse in the singular. For more than half a century, we have been told that our system is not sustainable. It is logical that it collapses. You can not say on the one hand, it is not sustainable, and on the other, it will last forever. It's absurd. What is happening today ridicules all the somewhat haughty and funny comments around the issue of collapse. You still have to be careful. It should not be said: that's it, it's collapse in the sense of Yves Cochet. It feeds pitiful reactions. You have people who are going to empty the shelves, there are thefts of masks in hospitals ...
According to you, it would rather be a collapse in the sense of the book "How everything can collapse" written by Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens: the collapse of civilization as we know it.
It's in progress. We have to be very clear on this. What is happening now is a very important step in the disintegration process. I have no doubt about it. What I blame Yves Cochet for is that it starts from global models, the Meadows model [in 1972, the Meadows report put forward the danger for the planetary environment of the demographic and economic growth of the 'humanity], sometimes more precise models. He places this on social realities which are very diverse culturally, locally, geographically. It does not work. We cannot say that all supermarkets are closing at the same time because there is nothing left. There is jet lag, and, for example, there are no supermarkets in Papua New Guinea. Let's avoid this caricature.
During his speech, Emmanuel Macron repeated several times that he [will] be "able to draw all the consequences". Tuesday, Olivier Véran, guest of France Inter, insisted that we should change the model of society. Is this crisis "interesting" for awareness?
More than awareness. Let us compare the crisis of 2008-2009 and that of today. They have nothing to do. In 2008-2009, we had a financial crisis that led to an economic crisis, which, in turn, led to social damage. There we have a health crisis, with the question of the life and death of people. This health crisis leads to freezing the economy. Globalization shows that it is more difficult to cope with it. Indeed, the states will spend a lot by being already extremely in debt. In other words, the very idea of paying down the debt does not necessarily make sense after this crisis. Then, the coronavirus arrives with a cultural shift that had not occurred at all in 2007-2008.
That is to say ?
Philippe Moati's survey, published in Le Monde in November, offers a choice between three models of society: techno-liberal utopia, ecological utopia and security utopia. It shows that 55% of respondents prefer sobriety and the relocation of activities. According to an Odoxa survey, more than 50% of respondents are in favor of growth, compared to 45% for green growth. And when you bring these figures back to the Jean-Jaurès Institute study on the sensitivity in different countries to collapse, you have 65% of French people who agree with the assertion that "civilization such as we know it now will collapse in the years to come. ” It's enormous. We have already entered a cultural dynamic where people have started to understand that the world as they have known it will disappear. These measures are a continuation of a hot summer again and the difficulty of our economy. We are not going to get out of the crisis, that's what we have to understand. We are not going to come back as before.
Are you saying this is just the beginning?
We enter a dynamic of extremely deep change and we enter in fanfare. And what is the lesson of all this? What the Covid-19 shows us is what we should be doing for the climate. When we are dealing with a phenomenon that changes scale, damage that changes scale, all our management by techniques collapse. We are only partially facing. And the only way to cope is to go back to basics, and to behaviors. Reducing our emissions on a global scale, you don't do it with techniques, you do it with behaviors. This is the lesson.
To return to the theory of collapse, collapsologists do not anticipate how it will intervene - oil shortage, war, migratory pressure -. The cause of a collapse also changes the way and how it is received. Isn't the epidemic the best way to avoid the violence that shortages could have created?
Yes, we could have had riots. That's why it's interesting. Covid-19 is an infection that compels citizenship.
You say that the crisis is not over, how do you imagine the rest?
It must be remembered that in history, each time that we have had a destabilization of ecosystems, we have disturbances in germs, in their populations and in their aggressiveness. Nobody talks about it, but there are locust attacks in East Africa. As soon as you have destabilization of ecosystems, you have disturbances in the distribution of populations and in their behavior. The period of ecosystem stability and stability of the society that we have known is closing.
If this health crisis raises awareness, can we not imagine reversing the trend?
I think we will do it and we will do it all the more for two reasons. We will not stop having reminders of the difficulties of being in another world. Second thing: I bet that the re-election of Donald Trump is dead. Given the state of the American health system, the level of poverty, the number of uninsured people who cannot afford to care, it is probably the country that will be the most affected. The virus doesn't care about the social context. It affects the rich and the poor alike. Covid-19 is the start of an ongoing destabilization. There will be no after, there will be a permanent reminder of the difficulties, the fragility, the unsustainable nature of our society. I don't see a return to normal at all. I don't mean we're all going to be confined, let's be clear.
Can we consider this crisis to be good news?
Yes I think Covid-19 is beneficial. It forces us to go back to basics, to understand that we are in the process of changing epochs, and that we cannot continue our lifestyles. If there is really something that stops the ideology of progress, this is what is happening today. We are not at all in the notion of progress, the accumulation time, it's over.
* Author of the book The market against humanity (PUF) and co-author of Collapsus (Albin Michel)
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