A world without facts...
Could you imagine a world where facts don’t mean a thing? Strange question, you think? As a matter of fact, “post-truth” is the Oxford Word of the Year 2016: an adjective defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’.
Post-truth dominated politics throughout 2016, starting with Brexit, culminating with Trump, with occasional stopovers in France during the center right primaries, for example when former president Sarkozy went to great lengths to polarize the debate around French’s Gaulish ancestry or the place of Clovis[1] in history books. This didn’t do him so well, though. Clovis is no longer the hot topic at French dinners since a good thousand years ago and when it comes to straight populism, people generally prefer the original (Le Pen) to the copy.
But in this post-truth feast, like in a world with facts in fact, not all things were equal and Donald trumped it in a landslide. Watching him nominate his cabinet not only left us as “post-truth refugees” but also in a state of post-bewilderment or post-trauma: a climate denier and staunch EPA critic as Head of… EPA (what else?), Rick Perry as Energy Secretary (remember the ‘oops’ moment? A few years ago, Perry famously pledged to eliminate 3 government agencies: Commerce, Education and, ...what was the 3rd one again?… sorry, uh, oops. Bingo, the 3rd one was Energy), the CEO of Climate Change’s Offender-in-Chief Exxon as Secretary of State… the list goes on and on while their combined net worth goes up and up (equivalent to the wealth of 109 million Americans, truth be told).
Post-truth flourishes wherever facts disappear. If there are no facts, there is nothing to measure, nothing to agree or disagree upon, nothing to build on (Trump may not like it after all). I was reminded of this early last year, when interviewing an eminent UAE university professor: “Facts are the single biggest issue. We should stop treating them as a state secret but as a measure for performance, decision-making. Facts are our friends! What you do with them is up to you.”
This absence of facts plunged me in a post-truth moment recently. While dropping my youngest child at the nursery, I was struck by a sensation of pollution: you could see it, smell it. Intent of testing this post-truth feeling against reality, I did a basic google search and found two links which sent me right back in my post-truth world... The first link was a website giving real-time Air Quality Index all over the world. UAE, Dubai… Dubai’s Air Quality Monitoring System is out of order since 30th December 2015 (!). The nearest functioning station, in Bahrein, showed an Index of 234 on that day, in other words, “very unhealthy, with health implications affecting the entire population”. How does the Bahraini situation compares with the UAE? Is it safe to go out, should I keep my kids at home? Up to my post-truth feeling of the day to figure. And the 2nd link? A local news article published two weeks before Dubai’s Air Quality Monitoring System shut down: “Take a deep breath, UAE air is safe, say experts”... Forgot to say, a post-truth world is by all means scary, but can be funny.
Mind you, it’s not like the presence of facts is the panacea. Let us just remember the diesel cheat and other more or less infamous environmental scandals (well captured in this program “Cash Investigation – Climate: the big bluff of French multinationals”). But at least, in a world where facts matter, the pressure from investigative journalism, NGOs or whistle blowers works as a real deterrent.
For science, post-truth is a bit like a black hole. Hear Gus Speth, renowned scientist and US advisor on climate change, pre- post-truth: “I used to think that top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy.” If these are indeed our top threats, then facts, evidence-based research, investigative journalists, NGOs, whistle blowers may well join the ranks of critically endangered species!
Of course, we also do it to ourselves. Our natural instinct is to believe what feels true so when the media saturate our brains with ISIS-Brexit-Trump material, there is no space left for the good news that happened in 2016. Ready? Go… the COP21 agreement got ratified at record speed and is now international law, the largest ever marine protected area was created in the Ross Sea, off Antarctica, while 50 million hectares of Arctic waters were protected from any offshore oil drilling, the giant panda is no longer endangered, China announced a ban on ivory trade by end of 2017, likelu saving elephants from a dangerous path to extinction, France banned plastic bags, Colombia ended a five decades-long conflict with rebel group FARC, there are new hopes for an imminent HIV vaccine while its treatment and prevention made huge progress in countries like Thailand, investments in renewable energy installations reached new records, while their costs continue to reach bottom lows, notably in the UAE or India where solar costs get so cheap they outcompete natural gas or coal for the production of electricity… I could easily fill a page of other little known good news.
Voila, there is, in fact, hope that when we reflect on the 2017 Oxford Word of the Year in 12 months, it will be something suggesting ‘wake up’, ‘action’ or ‘hope’. Meanwhile, a close contender for 2016 was “hygge”: a well-being concept from Denmark we might as well embrace, whenever we get hit by post-truth hangover this year.
[1] first king of France.