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Le but de nostre carriere, c'est la mort, c'est l'object necessaire de nostre
vis&ée : si elle nous effraye, comme est il possible d'aller un pas en avant, sans
fiebvre? Le remede du vulgaire c'est de n'y penser pas. Mais de quelle brutale
stupidit&é luy peut venir un si grossier aveuglement?
The goal of our career is death. It is the necessary object of our aim. If it
frightens us, how is it possible to go a step forward without feverishness?
The remedy of the common herd is not to think about it. But from what
brutish stupidity can come so gross a blindness!
(Montaigne 84, 69)1
NELL (sans baisser la voix) Rien n'est plus drôle
que le malheur, je te l'accorde. Mais—
(NELL (without lowering her voice) Nothing is funnier
than tragedy, I'll grant you that. But—)
(Beckett, Fin de partie 31)
It was the summer of 2017. The New York Magazine published David Wallace-Wells' "Uninhabitable Earth," an article detailing all the possible ways in which climate change could make the earth inhabitable for human beings. In the subtitle, the author proposed "peering beyond scientific reticence," in an attempt to raise the readers' concerns about climate change, implying that most people's understanding of its consequences—raising oceans—and of the solution—fleeing the coastlines—was based on avoidance of the worst-case scenarios ("The Uninhabitable Earth"). To the editors' own admission, the response was "extraordinary both in volume (it is already the most-read article in the New York Magazine's history) and in kind." ("The Uninhabitable Earth, Annotated Edition").* In response to the general panic gathered on social media, but mostly to the "fleet of commentary […] from climate scientists and the journalists that cover them," the editors published another version of the article online, which they linked within the original article and advertised as "complete with interviews with scientists and links to further reading." Ten days later, the author himself published, still in the magazine, a reading list to accompany "Uninhabitable Earth" ("The 10 Book Uninhabitable Earth Reading List"). He also prefaced the annotated version. His arguments are that "we have not spent enough time contemplating the scarier half of the distribution curve of possibilities," and that "when it comes to the challenge of...