Last week, my niece and two daughters left for southwestern France to spend their summer holidays at a Huttopia campsite. I was slightly concerned: Wouldn’t she be surrounded too much by nuclear families there at the campground, reminding her of the breakup of hers a year ago? Wouldn’t it be too heavy, alone with the kids?
The concerns turned out to be unfounded, except for some chaotic scenes at Schiphol (the tour group missed a first flight). Every day I got sunny photos of tanned bodies in summer dresses, and messages about impressive books being read by an azure blue swimming pool.
That was last week. On Monday there was ashes in the same pool, and the tour group had to pack their bags as a precaution because of an approaching forest fire. “Honey, your first flight bag,” her new boyfriend, a seasoned climate activist, had said touchedly over the phone.
I got a picture of a trembling sky distorted and smoke-blurred sun in the French sky. My niece wrote ‘Melancholia’, a reference to Lars von Trier’s 2011 Science Fiction Drama. In it, sisters Claire and Justine must come to terms with the devastating collision between Earth and the solitary planet Melancholia. Just before that, it shines like a second moon in the sky, in my opinion one of the most beautiful and terrifying images in European film history.
Claire’s husband is convinced that the planet will not crush the earth, it will be a ‘fly-by’. Don’t listen to the doomsayers, he soothes his wife. He suffers from what climate psychologists would now label as, a optimism bias and buy an expensive pair of binoculars to see the natural spectacle in all its glory.
Melancholia is a study of depression, but the psychological processes that von Trier explores evoke associations with the climate debate, in which there are also those who argue that we should not exaggerate, that we should stay sober.
Those who do not want to think too much about doom may not attach much value to the words of UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who spoke to the forty participating countries during the Petersberg Climate Dialogue on Monday. warned that if they don’t take drastic action, we’ll be heading for a ‘collective suicide’ (his warning didn’t make it into this paper).
If you want to remain unconcerned, it is better not to read the well thought-out reports of The Guardianthe newspaper that no longer talks about climate change, but about climatecrisis and this week in a lead editorial called for letting go of the fantasy that human civilization can continue to grow unchecked, without consequences for the climate. degrowthbaby.
Anyone who does not want to think of doom and gloom should not dwell too long on the fact that 2022 was not the year of the green turnaround, but that of the great standstill. That the two biggest polluters – the United States and Europe – will not fulfill their climate commitments.
Personally, I resemble the main character Claire the most: a master of doom and gloom, but easily distracted by more prosaic matters. Just before Melancholia the earth is crushing Claire tries to drive a golf cart to the nearest village. My desperate act of resistance, after a week of heat records and fearful messages from France: I bought a train ticket instead of a plane ticket to my holiday destination. That ticket was pricey, the journey time three times as long. My friend saw my train plans mainly as the impractical outcome of a whim.
Fortunately, during the long journey through scorched areas, I have plenty of time to convince him that we need to do much more against global warming. That we must resist, even if it is against an inevitable fate.