Ecoanxiety is an affliction that is affecting more and more people in the face of the climate crisis, particularly among the new generations whose lives will be affected by its consequences. A three-part investigation into how young people live with an expectation of the worst, why ecoanxiety has become a tool of power, and how emotions can become a political weapon.

“The Power of Big Oil” deals with the oil industry’s long campaign to block any action against the climate crisis. In three episodes, it describes corporate manipulation of science, public opinion and politicians, mirroring the behavior of other companies in the pharmaceutical and tobacco industries.

At the beginning of the year, we crossed a 5th planetary limit: chemical pollution. The European Union has published a plan to restrict thousands of potentially dangerous chemicals. This synthetic scourge is said to be pushing whale species to the brink of extinction, and is responsible for a drop in human fertility and two million deaths a year.

This is the second planetary limit crossed in 2022. A new Swedish study published in the journal Nature on April 28 reveals that we have crossed the planetary limit of the freshwater cycle this time, after climate change, biodiversity erosion, global disruption of the nitrogen and phosphorus cycle, and land use and chemical pollution.

This strategy, adopted by Switzerland in 2012, was scrutinized by the BirdLife association, which declared in a press release that the past decade had been “lost for biodiversity”. In fact, of the 18 objectives, only one is likely to be achieved in the short term: the conservation of biological diversity in forests. According to the NGO, no progress has been made on two-thirds of the targets.

The UN Happiness Index measures happiness on the basis of six variables: income, freedom, trust in government, healthy life expectancy, social support and generosity. It fills a gap that is not measured by GDP. Finland tops the ranking for the sixth year running, with a score of 7.82 out of 10. It is followed by Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

New technologies, renewable energies and innovation will undoubtedly contribute to the ecological transition, but that won’t be enough if we don’t make a systemic change in the way we produce and consume. The debate rages on between the proponents of technology and those they accuse of defending a punitive ecology. Perhaps the solution lies somewhere in between.

According to a 2019 survey, the Internet and social networks are the second preferred means of information for French people of all ages, and the first for 18-34 year-olds. The Guardian revealed that a quarter of all climate-related tweets were written by bots spreading climate-skeptic messages. The IPCC, for its part, has stated that this has “limited” and “delayed” international climate action.

The environmental and human impacts of electronic devices don’t stop when they reach consumers. Most of us trade in our smartphones and laptops for new ones every couple of years. Disposal of these and other electronic devices generates an alarming amount of waste, also known as e-waste.

Most of the world’s biggest shipping lines – Maersk, MSC and Hapag-Lloyd – have stopped taking plastic cargoes to China in 2020. CMA CGM, the world’s third-largest shipping line, goes one step further by refusing to accept plastic shipments anywhere in the world. This is an important step in the global backlash against rich countries dumping plastic waste in China and Southeast Asia.