The Problem With Ecology Is That It Is Perceived As Choices

Whereas we literally don’t have a choice.

Photo by Guillaume de Germain on Unsplash

Today is election time in France. And the contender against reelection for Macron is a far-right woman named Marine Le Pen. Her ecology program? Remove all wind turbines and solar panels in France.

We are in 2022 and that’s not a joke.

Climate and global warming might be the greatest threat to humankind but hey, ecology is about choices right?

She can choose to remove wind turbines if instead, she builds low carbon nuclear power plants right?

Wrong.

Ecology isn’t about choices. We simply don’t have the luxury anymore to choose between solar or nuclear or whatever other ‘option’ there is.

We have to do it all and as much as we can. And it’s also not that easy to build nuclear power plants so when I hear her proposing to build 20 new ones it makes me sick.

We don’t have time to remove functioning renewables just because a racist politician thinks they don’t look nice in the landscape. We barely have time to fight global warming by giving our best right now so there can be no time to hinder this progress.

Ecology Is Politics

There was a time when we could consider that ecology and politics were separate. Sadly that’s not the case anymore. Now any ecological decision is also a political decision.

Politics are essentially the path we chose for our future. And now that our future is so influenced by the climate actions we are taking right now, politics and ecology are intertwined tightly.

Left and right are old political concepts. We are currently shifting to a new duality. The duality between localism and globalism. And in both of these extremes ecology is used as a way to defend one’s values.

And this is not going away anytime soon. Nor should it. It needs to be always included in any political discussion.

One big example we have right now is of course the war between Russia and Ukraine. Europe is highly dependent on Russian gas and oil. As a European, this makes me sick to think that each time I’m cooking or taking a…