“The speeches of collapsologists are irresponsible” – L’Express

The Express: The conflict between Israel and Hamas darkens news already marked by the war in Ukraine and the problem of climate change. We might be tempted to believe the collapsologists, who predict an imminent collapse of our civilization. Why is it important not to do this?

Jacques Lecomte: Because their speeches are not based on science. I no longer use this word, because this ideology is so far removed from scientific practices, as I show in my book. Originally, this approach refers to the study of the imminent collapse of our industrial society due to a shortage of raw materials. But this postulate does not hold water. We are not facing a shortage. On the contrary, we can speak of a glut. The big mistake of the collapseists is to confuse resources – everything that is in the ground, and which is very poorly known – with reserves – what is known and profitable to exploit. They divide the amount of reserves by the annual consumption and thus claim that we have so many years of oil, copper, etc. left. But this is a mistake because reserves largely depend on demand. The more this increases, the more we prospect, the more we find and the more we extract. Lithium is a good example. Before, his reserves were low because we didn’t really need them. Now that we need it for computers and the ecological transition, mines are opening and therefore reserves are increasing. As for oil, we have 50 years of reserves ahead of us, contrary to what those who warn us about its rapid depletion claim.

Collapsology seems to have evolved; it no longer only takes raw materials into account. She is interested in pandemics or wars. Does that make her more serious?

Alas no. At the time of Covid, collapseists like Pablo Servigne and his colleagues really believed that they were right and that we were heading towards the annihilation of civilization. However, this did not happen. Subsequently, the discourse of these pseudo-experts evolved. They no longer speak of a single and general collapse but of collapses in the plural, signals of a near end. “Collapsology” becomes protean and anything can come into it: the fall of Bitcoin, the Hamas attacks… However, in truth, there have always been collapses in the history of humanity and there always will be. These movements in no way signify the end of civilization. The 1930s, a particularly difficult period with the rise of totalitarianism, showed this.

The University of Cambridge recently established a center for the study of existential risks. Isn’t this the beginning of a positive trend that could make collapsology a real science?

First, it is important to differentiate between the University of Cambridge and the most popular collapseists, who call themselves researchers when they are not. In my book I make it clear that if collapsology became a science and sought to study past collapses to find solutions and avoid future catastrophes, it would be very useful. Unfortunately, this collapsology does not exist today. Look at what recognized scientists say about it, which I cite in my book. “Collapsology is not a science, it does not exist. […] It is a speech to be analyzed from a historical and political angle”, estimates Valérie Masson-Delmotte, paleoclimatologist and former co-president of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). “Those who advocate doomsday propaganda must be criticized for the most vigorous way because they threaten the future of the planet,” writes Michael Mann, climatologist, member of the IPCC and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Can you give us examples of alarmist information being wrongly spread?

We are spoiled for choice. The Cassandras tell us that the IPCC avoids talking about the seriousness of the future thawing of permafrost which will release a huge amount of CO2 into the air, so as not to scare us. But for scientists specializing in this issue, this is a minor problem, which will have little impact on the temperature of the globe. Some collapseists also tell us that a third of Bangladesh will be submerged. The rise in ocean water levels is an indisputable fact. But every year, huge quantities of sediments from the Himalayan range are deposited in the affected areas, causing the surface area of ​​Bangladesh to increase. In addition, the collapseists also forget to take into account the population, which takes measures to mitigate the phenomenon of rising water levels. We could multiply the examples. Astrophysicist Aurélien Barrau writes that every year, 1,000 billion marine animals are killed, without citing a source. No matter how much I searched, I couldn’t find the origin.

Likewise, when the writer Fred Vargas claims that she is basing her catastrophic book on the latest scientific studies, this is not the truth since she is referring to articles from popular journals, and not to studies themselves. However, it is not at all the same thing. Press articles quite often stray from the content of scientific work.

Why are we so sensitive to bad news?

We are biologically programmed to be more sensitive to dangerous signals than to positive ones. This is a first reason. And then aside from that, there are cognitive biases to which we are particularly exposed. There, psychological and cultural factors come into play. However, confirmation bias, which refers to the tendency to favor the search for information in accordance with one’s hypotheses, beliefs or opinions, to the detriment of contrary elements, appears to be omnipresent in the within the collapseist sphere.

Beyond the disinformation aspect, why should we combat catastrophist speeches?

These speeches are triply irresponsible. First of all, on a psychological level. We will never know the number of young people who committed suicide after catastrophic readings based on false information. This is why I dedicate a chapter of my book to the irresponsibility of this kind of message. Suffering from eco-anxiety based on true information is understandable. But seeing this unhappiness develop on the basis of fallacious elements is unacceptable.

Collapseism poses a second problem, of environmental irresponsibility. Its supporters say we have gone too far, that there are no more solutions. If we apply this thesis to the climate, mitigation, which consists of reducing our CO2 emissions, is no longer useful. All that remains is adaptation. And the collapseists do not propose any coherent global policy in this area, the only thing to do consisting, according to them, of creating rural communities of a hundred people. So we give up, we do almost nothing, which plays into the hands of the oil companies.

Finally, another problem concerns political irresponsibility. Historical examples show that when the warning of an imminent shortage of raw materials reaches the ears of the powerful, they do not push society towards greater sobriety. Instead, they seek to ensure energy security by drilling more oil wells or waging war on countries with raw materials, thereby worsening the ecological problem. Finally, some collapseists explain to us that democracy is not enough to solve the environmental problem. Strong power is therefore required. However, for me, we need on the contrary more democracy, in particular to leave more room for the engagement of civil society!

Faced with collapsology, you defend solutiology. What is it about ?

I fully share the vision expressed by Alain Grandjean, former president of the Foundation for Nature and Man: “While it is important to be lucid about the state of our planet and the impact of our activities, It is, in my opinion, essential to maintain hope by remembering that solutions exist.” The Solar Impulse Foundation, created by explorer Bertrand Piccard, has identified more than 1,000 efficient solutions promoting green innovation in all polluting sectors with a high carbon footprint. And this is just one example among many others. The United Nations launched the Decade of Ocean Science, with the mission of “science solutions for sustainable development connecting humanity and the oceans”. The world is full of initiatives aimed at solving our climate problem. Some of them are already producing measurable and positive effects, on biodiversity for example. Unfortunately, this good news is not always relayed in the media. Solutiology, the birth of which I advocate, will consist of taking advantage of scientific knowledge without falling into “technoptimism”, a posture considering that all our problems will be solved in this way.

I have observed that successes occur when representatives of four essential stakeholders choose to coordinate their efforts: civil society – environmental associations, human rights associations, etc. – science – “hard” sciences and humanities -, public services, from rural communities to UN agencies, and the market – businesses, particularly industrial ones. A fifth universe is also very useful: the media. To multiply successful experiences, we obviously need to make them known. Nowadays, a form of journalism is developing that goes in this direction, under various names: impact, solutions, citizen, engaged journalism.

To bring about this new society, we need both realism and optimism. And above all to consider difficult situations as challenges rather than as insoluble problems. This “optirealism” is not an optimism of blissful expectation, but of active, persevering and above all collective commitment. Quite the opposite of “collapsology”.