Un commentaire sur Realclimate donne un lien intéressant sur un article sur le type de langage utilisé pour parler de l'environnement : l'article fait de multiples parallèles entre ce discours et le discours apocalyptique et messianique, sur le site de la BBC.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8468233.stm
en commençant par "l'horloge de l'apocalypse" qui vient d'être avancée d'une minute....
quelques extraits de l'article
Que pensez vous de cette analyse? personnellement ça rejoint pas mal de réflexions qui m'étaient venues à l'esprit dans certaines circonstances ....some campaigners think it is time to stop relying on apocalyptic messages to convert people to the climate change cause..
"Selling people a vision of climate hell simply doesn't work,...We need to start selling people a vision of low-carbon heaven,"
The theologian and environmentalist Martin Palmer is also troubled by the green movement's reliance on visions of hell as a way of converting people to their cause.
He says: "In the 70s and 80s, environmentalists thought that if they presented people with the scientific facts, they would realise how desperate the crisis was and change.
Is religious language used to scare people, instead of offering them hope?
"That optimism started to fade in the 90s. They realised that no one is converted by a pie chart, so they started trying to motivate us through fear.
"Now they are playing with some of the most powerful emotional triggers in Western culture. They've adopted the language and imagery of a millenarian cult."
"Environmentalists have stolen fear, guilt and sin from religion, but they have left behind celebration, hope and redemption," he says.
"They read science in the way that fundamentalists read religious texts: they cherry-pick the bits that support their argument and use them to scare people," he adds. "Then they offer no solutions other than letting greens take over the running of the world."
"At Copenhagen, you could find the strongest advocate of market-based solutions to climate change sitting alongside the most radical member of Greenpeace," says Hulme. "They would both say the science demands that we act. But it misses the point - what is the action?
"Science cannot resolve the differences in ethics, values and ideologies that underpin the different solutions to tackling climate change," he points out. "Only open, honest, explicit political argumentation can do that.
"That's why all organisations and all interest groups should be upfront and explicit about the underpinning ethical and ideological drivers of their preferred solution."
-----
