Talking with E. after a couple of years of COVID19 absences, almost with the certainty that unscapable issues have, we ended up pondering global warming and the energy transition and whatever else comes along that trail of themes that, in one way or another, all of us have become opinionated. E, Spanish to the bone, tells me that the government, any government, is doing too little too late. Also, when moving on to electric cars and micro production of energy, he says that individual actions are not enough. And why are we not being told what to do anyway? We are screwed, is his clear message.
Not that I disagree in the broad lines, but I am surprised that it is a conversation at all. On second thoughts, it is quite something how this have become a frequent conversation, since a year or two. I had grown accostumed to that dull light in the eyes of pretty much all my friends, when hearing me about global warming, that light that one reserves for people that one appreciate, but are slightly deranged. “there goes inti again” I guess they were thinking, “with his gloomy views on a future that will not happen anyway”. What a change. My friends engage me and tell me about the latest stupidity said by Boris Jhonson in Glasgow, or about the details of the price regulations for electric generation. It doesn’t matter that I repeat and repeat that I have left the dutch green party. The issue is hot.
The elan of the moment reminds me of Venezuela, in the first year of the Chavez.
I grew up in the Venezuela of the eighties. And, perhaps due to my Argentinian provenance or perhaps due to just my own personality, I have been involved in politics ever since. But the eighties were not an exciting time to be interested in politics in Venezuela in particular, and in South America in general. We had came out of a long decade, or more, of savage repression and mass murdering. The eighties were about disco music and hedonism, not so much about protest music and political commitment, we wanted to leave that behind. So I stayed at the margins of being cool, for quite a long time. And eventually, at the start of the nineties, Chavez came. A coup d’etat in Venezuela? Unthinkable. And yet the unthinkable, again and again, happened. There was a second attempt, and prison, and becoming a heroe, and eventually the first election win. And the suddenly everybody was talking politics. Everybody had an opinion and the debates were heated.
I remember my “political” friends being delighted. Logical, one would say. After so long time being uncool, now we had an advantage, now our opinion had some more weight. Most of us thought that the whole thing was ok, that people being finally interested in politics. What could go wrong? The more interested, the more they will realize that Chavez was a moron, or anyhow, more people would be involved in the running of our country, and that was a good thing, right?
Right?
We know know that it wasn’t right. Just like in the USA of Trump or in most others western democracies nowadays, we are polarized and polarizing further. We have opinions that radicalize by the day. But that is not a good thing. It means that we are further away from finding common grounds to run our countries. And that is a problem. There is no doubt that more people interested in what some of us have put all our energy for decades, global warming, feels good. But it is not good. It is another sign that this is a very big problem.
One that we might not be able to solve.