Fred Vargas, whose real name is Frédérique Audoin-Rouzeau, was born in 1957 in France. Elles is an Archaeologist but also the author of successful detective novels
Letter from Fred Vargas - The third revolution
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Here we are !
For fifty years that this turmoil has threatened the blast furnaces of the carelessness of humanity, we have been there.
In the wall, on the edge of the abyss, as only man can do with brilliance, who only perceives reality when it hurts him.
Like our good old cicada to which we lend our carefree qualities.
We sang, danced.
When I say "we", we mean a quarter of humanity while the rest were struggling.
We built a better life, we threw our pesticides in the water, our smoke in the air, we drove three cars, we emptied the mines, we ate strawberries from the end of the world, we traveled in all sense, we lit up the nights, we put on tennis shoes that flash when we walk, we got fat, we wet the desert, acidified the rain, created clones, frankly we can say that we had a lot of fun.
We succeeded in downright amazing, very difficult things: melting the ice floe, dragging genetically modified critters under the ground, moving the Gulf Stream, destroying a third of living species, farting the atom, driving radioactive waste into the ground , neither seen nor known.
Frankly we laughed.
Frankly we took advantage.
And we would like to continue, as it goes without saying that it is more fun to jump on an airplane with bright tennis shoes than to hoe potatoes.
Certainly.
But here we are.
At the Third Revolution.
Which is very different from the first two (the Neolithic Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, for the record) that it was not chosen.
"Do we have to do it, the Third Revolution?" Will ask some reluctant and sorrowful minds.
Yes.
We have no choice, it has already started, it has not asked us for our opinion.
It was Mother Nature who decided it, after having kindly let us play with it for decades.
Mother Nature, exhausted, soiled, bloodless, turns off our taps.
Oil, gas, uranium, air, water.
His ultimatum is clear and merciless: Save me, or die with me (with the exception of ants and spiders that will survive us, because they are very resistant, and moreover hardly worn on dancing).
Save me, or die with me.
Obviously, said like that, we understand that we have no choice,
We run straight away and, even if we have time, we apologize, panicked and ashamed.
Some, a bit dreamy, try to get a deadline, to have fun again with the growth.
Wasted effort.
There is a job, more than humanity has ever had.
Clean the sky, wash the water, clean up the earth, abandon your car, freeze the nuclear power, collect the polar bears, turn off when you leave, watch for peace, contain greed, find strawberries near your home, don't not go out at night to pick them all, leave them to the neighbor, relaunch the sailing navy, leave the coal where it is, be careful, let's not be tempted, let this charcoal recover the droppings, piss in the fields (for phosphorus, we don't have any more, we took everything in the mines, we still had a lot of fun).
Strive. Thinking, even.
And, without wanting to offend with an obsolete term, be united. With the neighbor, with Europe, with the world.
Colossal program than that of the Third Revolution.
No escape, let's go.
It should also be noted that recovering droppings, and all those who have done so know, is a fundamentally satisfying activity.
That doesn't prevent dancing in the evening, it's not incompatible.
Provided that peace is there, provided that we contain the return of barbarism another of the great specialties of man, its most successful may be.
At this price, we will succeed in the Third Revolution.
At this price we will dance, otherwise no doubt, but we will dance again.
* Fred Vargas *
