# The Enigma of Climate Inaction **Date de l'événement :** 06/07/2026 * Publié le 06/07/2026 ### Date 06/07/2026 ## Chapô **Faced with fifty years of scientific certainty, climate inaction remains an absolute enigma. What are the barriers preventing us from acting collectively in the face of catastrophe, and how can we break them? In this article, Frédéric Samama, a lecturer at Sciences Po and author of _[The Enigma of Climate Inaction](https://www.routledge.com/The-Enigma-of-Climate-Inaction-Why-Are-We-Doing-Nothing-or-Almost-Nothing-in-the-Face-of-Catastrophe/Samama/p/book/9781041030645)_, unpacks the various components of what constitutes the social mystery of our century—at the crossroads of the cognitive, the economic, and the social—to suggest paths forward.** ## Corps du texte The lack of widespread mobilization to combat climate change is a mystery. Although we have collectively been aware of the problem for over 50 years, although we created  the problem, and although it threatens us as a species, the efforts being made are largely  insufficient.  This enigma becomes even more puzzling when we consider that in the face of other challenges— such as ozone layer depletion, the Y2K bug, or the COVID-19 pandemic—humans have been  able to mobilize sometimes considerable resources and respond swiftly.   This enigma is such that it compels us to question established frameworks of thought and invites  us to propose new hypotheses.   Namely, the idea that our societies and their mental representations function like the brain. Recent  research highlights that the brain creates models of the world based on signals and updates them— or not.  Let’s take an example that takes us back to the world of tennis in the 1990s; Andre Agassi had just  suffered three consecutive defeats against Boris Becker, a newcomer to the circuit. Becker had an  innovative and effective serve. Agassi decided to closely study his new opponent’s serve by sitting  among the spectators during his matches. He then discovered that the German player positioned  his tongue differently depending on his intention: when he wanted to serve to the right, he placed  his tongue on the right side, and in the middle when he was aiming for the T. This information  was obviously invaluable, given the very short reaction time a tennis player has to counter a serve.  Having uncovered his opponent’s behavioral pattern—of which Boris Becker himself was  unaware—allowed Agassi to win nine of their next eleven matches. To avoid giving himself away,  Agassi even chose to deliberately lose a few points, ensuring that his opponent wouldn’t realize  his behavioral pattern had been uncovered.  Now let’s take the example of a rat in a maze with a piece of cheese. First, it wanders around; then  it maps out a route based on experience; and finally, it heads mechanically toward the food. It then becomes locked into this pattern, highly confident in its model—which is simple, precise, and  aligned with its motivation: survival.  Humanity is said to have had three “cheese moments,” or “societal bubbles.”  The first would be the moment of access to natural resources, born of agriculture and modern  science. With agriculture came the first moment of control over nature, illustrated notably by the  invention of verticality and sacrifices within a logic of give-and-take—thus calling for water for  crops or fodder for animals. With modern science, the geometrization of nature emerges, leading  to its domination and then its possession. This exploitation would establish the competitive  advantage of agro-pastoral societies over nomadic societies.  The second phase was that of capitalism and then neoliberalism, characterized by access to human  resources across the globe. Capitalism emerged just as traditional systems of human coordination  were challenged by the discovery of China, which presented both an opportunity—access to  considerable economic power—and a challenge: values that were irreconcilable with those of  Europe at the time. Thinkers of the time constructed a new framework of thought that, by downplaying the importance of connection to others, enabled interaction with the outside world.  Neoliberalism also emerged, certainly as a response to the communist system, but also as a  response to the revolution in international trade driven by container shipping and China’s rise.  The third, and certainly the most hidden, would be that of world modeling. This tool initially  emerged as a means to improve access to resources: by hunting animals to the point of exhaustion,  which required creating a model of their behavior; it has now become our primary relationship to  the world, through reason, which can be interpreted as a means of cooperation that dispenses with  the need for trust.  Three moments that are equally key moments in the improvement of human living conditions.  But, precisely because of their success, these moments create overconfidence leading to a  rigidification of worldviews, much like the rat in the maze.  And now, the challenge of climate change and biodiversity loss has emerged. Unfortunately, there  is a total mismatch between these societal bubbles and the specific nature of the challenge at hand.  Where nature is exploited, we need a relationship that accepts natural limits. Where financial  markets are used as the primary means of societal coordination, we need mechanisms for  cooperation. Where we model, we need to act.   Furthermore, while the model has already become rigid, making us reluctant to heed a new signal,  the climate signal is weak relative to the scale of the challenge.  Finally, for the first time in human history, a barrier to accessing resources stands before us, even  as all these models of representing the world were selected to gain access to them.  All of this speaks to the depth of a challenge that strikes at the very roots of the human experience.  Are we doomed? Were we in 1940–41? Did the situation at that time prevent the creation of the  Resistance, and stop some of the greatest analytical minds—such as Canguilhem, Cavailles, or  Jacob—from becoming men of action?  Within the triptych of Government/Business/Society, we have attempted regulation through a  carbon tax designed to offset the most significant negative externalities and drive corporate action.  At the heart of the second bubble, we have framed a challenge concerning the most vulnerable  and future generations—and thus one with a strong moral dimension—as an economic issue.  The third pillar remains: that of society. Further reflection is needed on corporate objectives— which stem from a societal consensus—as well as on the means to enable companies to pursue  long-term goals.   We can also acknowledge that human coordination depends on shared values and, in the absence  of a great leader to embody them, on seeking a signal that would allow us to update our collective  mental representations. This would help reactivate ethical values that foster mobilization and  coordination.   To this end, astronauts have reported that their perception of Earth from space has changed their  mental representations. Certainly because this moment in space activates three mechanisms. First,  they perceived the fragility of Earth. Yet, in the face of fragility, our natural impulse is to care for  one another. Anthropologists tell us that this is notably due to the specific nature of human  newborns, who are born prematurely, creating a unique asymmetry in cooperation—and Emmanuel Levinas made this the foundation of human ethics. Second, they found the Earth  beautiful, which activates the concept of disinterested beauty—a concept that, according to  Immanuel Kant, prepares us for morality. And already the Greeks, by making the beauty of their  temples visible to all, used it as a mechanism for social coordination. Finally, this view reminds us  of the uniqueness of life and brings us back to Baruch Spinoza, who stated that “we are nature.”  By observing the Earth—beautiful, fragile, and alive—amidst the icy, lifeless immensity of space,  human beings return to their rightful place: we are not above nature, but part of it.  Of course, this does not mean sending 8 billion people into space, but rather re-grounding  ourselves in nature. We could thus teach in schools how certain plants emit gases to ward off  predators, the family structures of animals, and so on. The goal is therefore to reestablish a  connection with nature that is neither exploitation nor sacralization, but rather socialization,  particularly through granting rights to nature.  And from that point on, the scope can be broadened. As Hannah Arendt and Karl Polanyi remind  us, the fascisms of the 20th century have their roots in a loss of social cohesion in the 19th century.  People left the countryside for cities and factories, massive migratory flows took hold, and new  technologies like the telegraph and photography enabled connections that had previously been  possible only through physical proximity. All these upheavals in human relationships created a pull  toward seeking overarching social structures, with the destructive exclusion of those perceived as  outsiders as a corollary. There is no need to emphasize the parallel. Consequently, where religions  have created large-scale coordination mechanisms, yet with a competitive dynamic that prevents  them from achieving universality, and where capitalism has achieved universality, but at the cost  of an individualism that erases morality, the climate could then become a first universal value of  responsibility.   In a world on the verge of fragmentation, the climate would then no longer be merely a massive  challenge, but also a tremendous opportunity to reinvent social bonds on a global scale. ### Thématique `#Environnement` **Langue :** `#Anglais` --- ### Navigation pour IA - [Index de tous les contenus](https://conference.sciencespo.fr/llms.txt) - [Plan du site (Sitemap)](https://conference.sciencespo.fr/sitemap.xml) - [Retour à l'accueil](https://conference.sciencespo.fr/)