Why deny reality?5 reading minutes

Le Regard Libre N° 48 - Alexandre Wälti

You only have to spend a few minutes on the informative website of the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network (GLAMOS) to see the massive melting of glaciers. Even our streets and roads show, as crudely as on an advertising poster, the obvious link between CO₂ and the increasingly rapid disappearance of eternal snow in Switzerland. A little chronicle between literature and observations during a descent into the city center.

It's a simple billboard outside the Neuchâtel train station. It seems to promise wild adventure. Above all, it depicts an impossible cohabitation. The conquering SUV - the polluting 4×4, if you're honest and don't make a fuss about it. greenwashing - that I see there is not compatible with the illusion of a resplendent nature. Let's look at one of the many examples of the shrinking ice cap due to global warming: the Morteratsch glacier in Graubünden.

It has retreated 600 metres in ten years, as the NZZ on its website on January 31, 2019. The Zurich newspaper emphasizes the speed of the phenomenon: from 1970 to 2003, in 33 years, the glacier shrank by 533 meters, while it has already retreated by 673 meters between 2003 and 2017, in fourteen years. A state of climatic emergency is perhaps emerging as a political option to be taken very seriously if we consider all the other obvious and numerous signs of global warming. If we don't slow down the engine today, who will tomorrow? We won't. We'll be extinct.

Just an illusion

The reality is far from what the poster claims. The vehicle climbs a disproportionate road in the middle of a pristine mountain landscape. As if it were a paradise within reach, a motorized Eden. As if it were an amusement park for drivers in search of thrills, of terrain to crush. Above all, it's a false perfection and a trampled ideal. This is obviously what advertisers are selling: lies. It's becoming increasingly urgent to hammer home the message that we live on an endangered planet. Especially after hearing the lack of courage and conviction of those who say «yes, but it's not going to change anymore, my goodness, I've done my time anyway» or «it's too late, there's nothing more we can do». What's more - and this is more alarming - there's a bland willingness to do anything. policy to combat melting glaciers. Yet this is part of the water our bodies need to live.

I calmed my anger on the descent to the town center by recalling a text by Maurice Chappaz:

«It's in Sierre where I live
that two trout swimming up the Rhône
said:
“To save nature
you have to kill the man.’’

I like the radicalism of this poem by Chappaz because it implies a position without nuance or compromise. The same attitude we should have when confronted with someone who doesn't take seriously the poor health of our planet and has no regard for our near future. The same verbal energy we should have in exposing all the arguments that say over and over again that the current state of the climate is critical. These verses appear in The mackerel of the white peaks, This poetic pamphlet first appeared in the Jaune Soufre collection published by Bertil Galland in 1976. This was exactly the time when mass tourism was gradually taking hold in the Rhône valley. The publication of this book provoked controversy between Maurice Chappaz and journalists from the daily newspaper Le Nouvelliste.

Read also: Bertil Galland, the man of letters in French-speaking Switzerland

This uncompromising poem is entitled «Ma génération ne passera point». A title that resonates with the current mobilizations in defense of the climate and against the climate-skeptic lie. Are we witnessing a split between two generations? Is it a profound opposition between two visions of life on Earth? This is certainly an opportunity to think differently about our daily consumption, our choices as citizens and the political actions we can take to save the earth we live on today.

The murdered Alpine ideal

I counted seven 4×4s between the station and downtown, a ten-minute walk at rush hour. They were all on asphalt, and the snow-capped peaks were buildings. This observation is as banal as it is unacceptable. It's also curious to note that the poster's setting corresponds to an ideal that no longer exists. As if we were still in Goethe's letters from Switzerland in the 18th century^th century. When he marveled at the sublime landscape of Lake Neuchâtel and its Alpine horizon on October 27, 1779:

«There are no words to express the grandeur and beauty of this spectacle; it's scarcely that one has at first a feeling for what one sees: only one remembers with pleasure the names and shapes of the towns and villages, and marvels at recognizing that it's the same white dots before one's eyes.

But the chain of glittering glaciers was always a sight for sore eyes and souls. The sun was declining ever more towards the west, making their largest plateaus glow. From the bosom of the snows, what black rocks, teeth, towers and walls rose up before them, variously ranged, and forming wild, enormous, impenetrable porticoes! When then, with their diversity, they show themselves clearly and purely in space, we easily abandon all pretensions to the infinite, since the finite itself is enough to weary sight and thought.»

So let's not fall into the false lassitude of daily warnings about global warming and melting glaciers. Rather, let's fall into the lassitude of contemplation that leads to the protection of what is beautiful and essential to human life. Let's take action every day by behaving more economically! Admittedly, the poster at least extolled the real utility of a 4×4. In other words, the ability to take difficult roads, not flat asphalt. In this respect, it stands in stark contrast to the majority of other images of the same type, where 4×4s are often seen in the middle of the city or in total harmony with an urban environment. Is it really?

State of emergency?

Seven hundred glaciers have disappeared in Switzerland since the 1970s. The same article in the NZZ which makes this clear. That's why Maurice Chappaz's poetry must ignite the anger needed to refuse, right now, to allow such a disaster to be repeated at greater speed in the years to come. That's why Goethe must remind us to contemplate before we turn our environment into a vulgar playground and cover it with concrete indiscriminately.

If our political representatives continue to reject amendments to legislation or refuse to ratify texts that are in the interests of climate protection, then their unquenchable thirst for profit and growth will have to melt, one way or another. L’glacier initiative could be a first step in this direction.

Write to the author: alexandre.waelti@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: © Alexandre Wälti for Le Regard Libre