a letter to my grand-daughter
Summer has come to Brittany and looks here to stay. This quiet time of year always relaxes me. I think of you and hope that one day you will get to know this old house. This place that your grand-father and I bought together and made ours even as it made us its own. There is something very peaceful about the house with its old stone walls. We do not know much about its centennial history, but it seems to have adopted us over time.
It is your mother’s favourite place. She likes to come here and recharge far from the hubbub of Paris. To breathe the sea air and smile, happy again, as she swims the brisk waves of the English Channel.
Our lives are flying by. All being well, we should be able to pass this house down to your mother. The immutable chain of intergenerational transmission then dictates that one day it should be your turn to take my place. I can already picture you sitting here and writing a letter to my great-great-grand-daughter or grand-son.
We are living in an era that will determine your quality of life on this earth. You will grow up to hear how, in the first thirty years of the twenty-first century, the world was hurtling towards civilizational collapse and came precariously close to missing the off-ramp. In fact, we still do not know, as I write, whether we will collectively and individually prove up to the task of making the necessary lifestyle changes.
We are living in an era that will determine your quality of life on this earth.
At school, you will learn that our life choices meant that, in the second half of the twentieth century, a minority of the world population released enormous quantities of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere. We lived as though progress was uncorrelated with the laws of physics, oblivious to the basic needs of the other living organisms with whom we shared this earth. CO2 emissions eventually impacted the climate, and we are now experiencing the first serious consequences of climate change. The adjustments that we will make to our way of life and habits in the days, months and years to come will determine your quality of life, my child. The well-being of your generation – indeed, life on earth – lies in our hands.
The adjustments that we will make to our way of life and habits in the days, months and years to come will determine your quality of life, my child.
You will probably find it difficult to comprehend the scale of the civilizational shift that had to take place before your world could come into being. How could we allow a handful of people to wield so much power just because they had deep pockets? And how could the wealthy be so clueless as to imagine that they could just escape to planet Mars? Take off and leave earth behind, allowing billions of living beings to fend off for themselves on an increasingly unliveable planet? Try to save their own skins and leave the majority to die, in a repeat of the early twentieth century sinking of the Titanic? In answer to these questions, all I can do is confess that we lived under the illusion that progress could go on forever. But the notion of progress had lost all meaning, and we believed that any innovation was necessarily a step forward. A step that would make us happier and more capable.
We lived under the illusion that progress could go on forever.
School will teach you that we owe the first stirrings of life on earth billions of years ago to a number of chance events. To a set of factors that came together against all odds. To the fragile balance of life within an unbelievably rich ecosystem. And, aware that you have your own place within the planet’s fragile natural order, you will find it bewildering that a handful of powerful people could ignore this fact.
The idea of eating the flesh of other living creatures and killing animals to feed yourself will strike you as appallingly cruel. I imagine that your reaction will be akin to mine when I read Robinson Crusoe and discovered cannibalism. You will try to imagine the map of France dotted with giant warehouses full of cows, pigs and hens. Stock-full of animals whose sole purpose was to satisfy your ancestors’ craving for meat.
Stock-full of animals whose sole purpose was to satisfy your ancestors’ craving for meat.
And you will feel the pain of compassion in your heart when you hear how these animals were put to death. How sophisticated yet tragically commonplace the slaughterhouse system was. The scale and ghastly ordinariness of these deaths may even put you in mind of the extermination camps of World War II.
In my world, what you can see, everywhere you look on the map of France, are monoculture fields of maize and cereals – crops for the most part destined for the animals the humans eat. The plant life flags, and the soil is depleted by the sheer number of annual rotations. And by the lack of biodiversity, for there are no hedgerows or trees left between the fields. What few mice, bees and birds do venture onto these fields are soon killed by the oversized machines that till a soil made toxic by thirty years of intensive spraying.
Crops for the most part destined for the animals the humans eat.
Toxic land will be a familiar problem in your own world. The chemical residues of our era will still linger in the soil, impacting your generation’s quality of life. Whole areas of France will be left untended, their levels of forever pollutants still too high to allow any form of activity. I think of a film shot in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, now taken over by nature because the area remains off-limits to humans, almost forty years on from the disaster.
I imagine that you will be well acquainted with the map of France, after exploring it for large parts of your holidays. You will know how lucky you are to have been born in a country where there are so many different landscapes to discover and where every region has its own culture and traditions. Visiting other parts of the world will also be possible, of course. But, for now, you will not feel compelled to travel beyond the borders of Europe, which you will want to explore on the train, on your bike and on foot. You will be content to ponder which faraway destination to choose one day. Like everyone else in your generation, you will have been set a lifetime quota for plane travel.
For centuries, your country has welcomed refugees. At the time of your birth, its history will have been enriched by a wave of immigration. People south of the Mediterranean will have had to leave their countries in droves, after climate change will have made their homelands increasingly uninhabitable. And we, the citizens of the countries that lie north of the Mediterranean, will have shifted the narrative at last. After decades of dithering, we will finally have understood that opening our hearts and doors to migrants is both humanly and economically the right thing to do.
And we, the citizens of the countries that lie north of the Mediterranean, will have shifted the narrative at last
The influx of young migrants fleeing their homelands to survive will have revitalised an ageing Europe. Their arrival will also have secured the peace in our part of the world. We will have learnt to live together and discovered that we have much in common. Instead of waging war against each other, we will have become better at working together to mitigate the damage from unsustainable twentieth-century lifestyles.
We will have learnt to live together and discovered that we have much in common.
By the time you take my place in this house, the face of our northern Brittany village will have changed. Until recently, this cold, damp and windy part of France was not very popular. To cheer ourselves up in the summer, we used to quote a proverb that said that in Britany the sun shines at least once a day. Most of the houses in the village are shuttered all year long, except for a brief window in mid-August. But today, as I write, I can sense that this won’t last, because the summer months are becoming increasingly mild with climate change. There was a massive heatwave across much of France this week, but here the weather was balmy, and the unruffled emerald waters of the sea reached 20°C.
By the time you take my place in this house, the face of our northern Brittany village will have changed
This slow but increasingly perceptible change reminds me of what happened in Denmark, the country of my birth. When I was a child, the weather was harsh and the summers unreliable. It was a challenge to get strawberries to ripen in the summertime and the season was very short. Every year, the Danes would strive to make the most of the brief window in July when nature might bless them with the precious gift of strawberries. But today the climate is no longer the same in northern Europe. The weather is milder now in Denmark, and strawberries are available throughout the summer. Even vines can grow in Denmark these days. In northern European countries, as in our part of Brittany, you might think that climate change isn’t all bad news. At least, for now.
In northern European countries, as in our part of Brittany, you might think that climate change isn’t all bad news. At least, for now.
But by the time you read my letter, France will have been dealt a new hand. You don’t need a PhD to predict that, over time, our village, indeed Brittany as a whole, will become a magnet for those seeking relief from the excessive heat in other parts of France. By the time you come along, our little hamlet won’t be a village but a town, and all the houses around you will have their shutters open throughout the year.
I can just see you swimming the waves of the Channel to recharge, like your mother before you. And the power of the tides will fascinate you too, I think. The gravitational pull of the full moon over the sea is spectacular in this part of France. Once a month, people of all ages meet on the beach to gaze at the awesome display of the great tides. The breakers slam against the dike before hitting other swelling waves as they pull back and surging up to the sky in a giant cascading effect. Everyone looks on blithely as the teenagers dare each other to run through the spray on the dike.
But the great tides are getting increasingly powerful, and I know in my heart that the coastline will have to be redrawn. Climate change means that sea levels are rising. This is already clearly visible at the North and South Poles, where the icecap is melting. As the sea rises, it will inevitably start to encroach upon the land. You will never know this dike on the edge of the sea or the current row of seafront houses. The waves will have claimed them at one point or another. Not that this really matters – the village’s concrete dike and hastily built seafront houses do not add much beauty or staying power to the stunning landscape of the Emerald Coast, in my view.
But the great tides are getting increasingly powerful, and I know in my heart that the coastline will have to be redrawn.
My generation is living though strange times. We are caught in a bubble suspended between two worlds. A large part of the population still enjoys the lifestyle of modernity, as though on Sirius, to paraphrase the philosopher Bruno Latour. Our political and economic systems are still enthralled to the productivist and extractivist logic of the “Capitalocene”. Our technocracies have never been more powerful, and the mirage of technological progress is still hailed as the solution to all our problems. And every day we endure an increasingly unpredictable climate and natural world.
We are caught in a bubble suspended between two worlds
Generation Z – your mother’s generation – has already started living in the world that will be yours one day. They rebel against the status quo and experiment with new ways of living and working. They draw on 21st century technologies to share information, organise and work together. And they understand that we need to redefine what we mean by progress. They have chosen to take the off-ramp and live more abstemious lives. They are pioneers, busy building the world that will be yours one day and showing us the path to a new way of life which you will recognize as yours when you read this letter.
They are pioneers, busy building the world that will be yours one day
Yet, before I sign off, I want you to know that your grand-parents’ generation also had a part to play in the civilizational shift that these young pioneers made possible. We are living through a period of transition, and some need a little more time to adjust. But by and large, my generation knows that now is not the time to sit back and withdraw into retirement. We know that we cannot continue to take advantage of an unsustainable system or go on taking airplanes and ocean liners for pleasure. Because we realise that your quality of life on this earth will depend on our actions today. And so, each in our turn, we try to rise to the challenge. Whether we are baby-boomers or generation Xers, we are all capable of a new Woodstock moment.
We are setting our political differences aside to come together and try to resolve the systemic civilizational crisis facing us. And we take pride in our newfound abstemiousness, as we follow the example of our children’s generation. But we also know how much they need our support – we have so much more experience. Like the hummingbird in the Amerindian legend, we all can help to douse the fire that is destroying our world, one drop of water at a time.
And we take pride in our newfound abstemiousness, as we follow the example of our children’s generation.
You will inevitably inherit the unfortunate consequences of our lifestyle choices. As I write, it is already too late to stop climate change and this is a tragic fact. But you should know that this crisis has spurred Europeans to come together. It has taught us to rise above our differences and open our hearts. I am glad to know that you will live in a more humane, inclusive and tolerant world.
I am glad to know that you will live in a more humane, inclusive and tolerant world.
Dear French-Danish-and-Breton grand-daughter, will I ever have the pleasure of meeting you? Indeed, will life set your mother on the path to motherhood one day? Only time will tell, but in the meantime, I dedicate this letter to all the grand-mothers of my generation already blessed with grand-children. Because we will need to hand them a liveable world before we can pass down our finest recipes for crêpes bretonnes.
Because we will need to hand them a liveable world before we can pass down our finest recipes for crêpes bretonnes.
