It’s no longer a cold drop, it’s an icy shower and, we might as well say it right away, all the city models for 2050, or even 2030 – biosourced eco-neighborhoods for example, proudly waved to mask powerlessness and incompetence – are already obsolete.
In 2021, a “ cold drop » – the opportunity for non-specialists to learn the word – had already badly cooled western Germany and the Benelux. It only gave us the measure of what awaits us. Indeed, this droplet was nothing compared to the blade that devastated the Valencia region, in the southeast of Spain, on October 29, 2024. As much rain fell in one day as in a year. No building, even if it is made from recycled materials, no city, even if it is filled with eco-districts, can withstand a furious wave two meters high. A terrestrial tsunami in short!
Not even to mention the more than two hundred dead, victims of a horrible end – suffocated by mud! – and hundreds of missing people, let us mention the incalculable cost to date of the disaster since it is always in financial terms that the powers that be speak of ecology. What is certain is that in Spain, the cost of inaction will explode the Excel tables of well-dressed advisors and panic the rating agencies, especially those whose shareholders own – owned – a house on the hills. from the Valencia region. What have these not prescribed for thirty years?
The reality is that, at least since Al Gore, for those who remember this Cassandra – Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2007 and unsuccessful candidate for the American presidency narrowly beaten in 2000 by George Bush junior – all the leaders of all countries, unless they substitute stupidity for cynicism, know without illusion the scale of the catastrophe before us. However, from COP 15 in Paris to COP 29 in Baku (from November 11 to 22, 2024), except in Costa Rica, have you seen the difference?
In 2024, in view of the devastation in Spain, the French government pretends to panic – it has only been ten years since Vulcan ex-Jupiter has been in power – and “ sets new targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions “. The same one who invented the concept of Ecoterrorism! The Worldin an editorial as usual full of nuances (2/11/2024), not to say too cautious, again invites “ the need to adapt and protect “. Certainly, but no adaptation is possible when faced with a two-meter-high wall of mud rolling down the hill.
It is true that as long as exotic islands were sinking alone out of sight, out of mind, the time for adaptation seemed promising! Remember the farce of warming controlled at 1.5°.
Welcome to the new real world. Now imagine the same cold drop above Paris and that, like what happened in Valencia, it rains on the capital region in one day as much as in a year, even six months. You have to imagine what Paris would look like at the foot of the Butte Montmartre or Ménilmontant, and Meudon and all the towns located on the slopes of the Seine; we could cross the river on dry ground by jumping over the pyramid of cars, volunteers by the thousands to clean the corridors of the metro or the reserves of Parisian museums! Unimaginable? In 2021 a cold drop in Germany and the Benelux, in 2024 in Spain in Valencia: in 2026 in Paris, right in the middle of the diagonal?
The good news is that no one is spared anymore and, for the most favored survivalists, since for Mars it is threadbare, it will be very funny for them. Imagine the Vuitton foundation swept away with the acclimatization garden by furious waves. We would then see if it flies… And Elon Musk who is having a villa built in San Cassiano, a luxury resort in the Italian Alps of Trentino-Alto Adige, a five-storey, 800 m² building which will count ” 15 bedrooms and 15 bathrooms, a large living room, a wine cellar and an underground spa » (JDN 3/01/2024). What happens if the whole mountain disappears into the valley, taking with it its children numbered in abattis? Donald Trump will then be of little help to him.
In other words, when even the richest are forced to start considering the worst, it is no longer time for the easy adaptation which allows the powers that be and their industrial cronies to try to preserve the goat and the cabbage and the good people to continue to believe that it only happens to others. Now that it happened once in Valencia, so it will happen again, it’s just a matter of time, it’s not like the Mediterranean is going to cool off… So what? Rebuild like before? Once ? Twice…
And a cold drop on the Flamanville EPR, what happens? Let’s be reassured, with the rise in sea levels, France has a Canadair plan! Anyone still know how to build seaplanes? Hauts-de-France is taking…
Indeed, at the time of writing these lines, the real concern is that of threshold effects, like the (cold) straw that breaks the camel’s back of anxiety. We are already seeing the damage at +1.5° (according to the police) with our own eyes. What will happen at +1.8°, hailstones the size of an orange? At +2.1°, hailstones the size of watermelons? And Christophe Béchu, former Minister of Ecology who evokes a France at +4°.* Hailstones the size of a Clio?
The inescapable fact is that the more time passes, the more each hundredth of a degree increase in the planet’s temperature brings threats with increasingly devastating consequences. Threshold effects are what really pisses off IPCC scientists. And what to say to those who are going to take a shower or get sunburn tomorrow? Send them our condolences? Buoys?
More precisely, to return to politics and architecture, it is a new geography on a very large scale that is now in question, which in essence will require major works in order to respond to new urban and architectural imperatives. . In other words, a new paradigm is already at work and we now have a very short time to solve multiple equations with multiple unknowns. For those who doubt, recalculate the costs of inaction in Valencia…
What to do? Create underground cities like in Dune to protect ourselves from the dodger and develop the troglodytes of Saumur? Create adobe houses made of reinforced concrete to resist whatever the elements may be? Find the town planning of the lower town made of alleys protecting from the sun and without cars to pile up at the bottom of the street in the event of a Cévenol event? Raise entire suburbs to cope with flooding?
Let’s talk about the flood! Solutions exist, it is the political will that is lacking. This is abundantly demonstrated in our chronicles of the predicted catastrophe,** by architect Eric Daniel-Lacombe. Another example, so as not to offend anyone here in Gaul, is that of the city of Chicago. To deal with flooding from Lake Michigan, the decision was made in 1856 to raise the city by two meters; the whole city! Which was done. An underground logistics network was created – Wacker Drive – and thirty ‘blocks’ west of 22nd Street, all of the former ground floors are still basements today, the vegetable gardens below lake level.
It is therefore possible to imagine decisive political action. But this is undoubtedly doing too much honor to our people, politicians. Take the Ministry of Culture for example, endowed with a forward-looking vision and at the head of this exhilarating fight! However, to think 50 or 100 years from now, who better than architects? Ah yes, how many men and women of art among the ministers and deputy ministers whose entire horizon of the general interest stops at the next election?
In any case, the powers in place, pusillanimous and so concerned about the interests of their own, can now reflect on the way in which they were welcomed in Valencia; even the king was booed and forced to turn back. Hello Don Quixote! At a time when they are feeling sorry for the Iberians, this says a lot about the Scottish shower that now awaits our politicians at the slightest new unnatural disaster. Especially since the entire country will soon be in a state of unnatural disaster.
HAS at a given moment, at the latest when insurance shareholders start throwing themselves from the top of their buildings in New York, La Défense or in the VIIIe district of Paris, our leaders, those of today – voting the country’s budget for example – as well as those of yesterday and the day before yesterday will no longer be able to hide. However, whether justified or not, the anger is already great, in Spain on the verge of regicide. In France, we know how to do…
But hey, it will be too late.
Christophe Leray
* France + 6°. Plans for Vulcan ex-Jupiter
** Read the Chronicles of the Foretold Disaster by Eric Daniel-Lacombe
