Not long ago, I attended a colloquium of French scientists and philosophers in Corsica, France, called "How to Think About the Future." With few exceptions, the astrophysicists, economists, physicians and social theorists on hand offered dark visions of tomorrow. A new financial crisis, water and grain shortages, endless war, a general collapse of ecosystems — we were spared no catastrophic scenario, writes Pascal Bruckner in the Los Angeles Times.
A month earlier, I had been invited by the environmentalist think tank Breakthrough to San Francisco, where I reflected with a group of thinkers on the Schumpeterian economic idea of "creative destruction" and its application to energy production. My experience there was quite different: three days of vigorous and sometimes tense debates among advocates favoring, respectively, nuclear power, shale gas and renewable energy sources. Defenders of threatened species had their say too, but no one doubted in the slightest that we had a future, even if its contours remained unclear.
I recall an observation that Michael Schellenberger, Breakthrough's president, made in the proceedings: "The United States' greatest hope at present lies in shale gas and in the 11 million illegal immigrants who will soon become legal, 11 million brains that will stimulate and renew our country."
Such a comment exhibited a hopefulness completely missing in Corsica — and hard to find in today's France, which has outlawed even the exploration of possible reserves of natural and shale gas, and which sees every stranger on its soil as a potential enemy. France has become a defeatist nation.
A striking indicator of this attitude is the massive emigration that the country has witnessed over the last decade, with nearly 2 million French citizens choosing to leave their country and take their chances in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the United States and other locales. The last such collective exodus from France came during the French Revolution, when a large part of the aristocracy left to await (futilely) the king's return. Today's migration isn't politically motivated, however; it's economic.
Read more of this report from the Los Angeles Times.