Faced with the heatwave, denial through adaptation The discourse on adaptation to extreme weather events is a continuation of climate denial. The real priority remains to avoid asking ourselves about the true causes of the ecological catastrophe. Everything must go on as before. By Romaric Godin — 24 June 2026 At the end of the 1960s, members of the German Socialist Student Union (Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund, SDS) hijacked, in a now-famous poster, an advertisement for Deutsche Bahn, the country’s public rail operator. The slogan proclaimed: “Everyone talks about the weather. We don’t” (“Alle reden vom Wetter. Wir nicht”). The aim was to denounce the pointless noise of everyday conversations about “neutral” and superficial subjects, to which the SDS wanted to oppose reflection on society itself. That slogan could be said to have aged well. Because, with the ecological catastrophe, the weather is no longer a superficial subject. On the contrary, it has become a highly political one, in the sense that it should invite us to rethink our entire social organisation. And yet. And yet, the historic heatwave striking France and Europe at the end of June 2026 is in no way an occasion to undertake such reflection. The causes of this unprecedented disaster are concealed or vaguely alluded to in the form of a global warming still perceived as a neutral force, independent of human action. We keep talking about the weather as if it were merely a meteorological phenomenon over which men and women have no hold. When the phenomenon is perceived in this way, it is nothing but a continuation of climate denial. The debate is then reduced to the question of adaptation — the heatwave version of the “resilience” of the Covid-19 era: people tear each other apart on TV panels over the best ways to endure temperatures in the shade that comfortably exceed 40°C. The question of air conditioning has become the crux of this debate, which is now invading the political sphere. Official “small talk” and general passivity “Alle reden vom Wetter”: temperature records pile up and, faced with them, all that’s on offer is discussion of support measures and individual adaptation. On 22 June, the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, posted on his X account, beginning with: “In the face of the heatwave, let’s look out for one another.” There followed a series of recommended measures: drink water, “stay in a cool place,” “wet your body” … Historic or not, the heatwave is treated by our leaders with small talk , as the saying now goes — with naiveties and platitudes coated in a slightly saccharine benevolence to make it all go down. It’s only the weather, after all. But behind this play-acting lies a powerful idea that structures the debate: “heatwaves” are the new normal, so we have to make do. As the President himself put it to a veteran on 18 June, the heat is “all in your head.” Everything must carry on as if nothing were happening… The discourse of adaptation is a fundamentally defeatist discourse, one of passivity, which serves to obscure any possibility — not so much of a return to a climatic normality that is doubtless largely out of reach for our generations, but at least of a brake on the accelerating degradation of the ecological framework of human life. The heatwave is the new normal, and this entails only a technical change to our equipment in air conditioners or fans. This technical vision is a somewhat desperate way of denying the fundamental problem of climate disruption. Of course, the question of our capacity to endure these heatwaves is important, and the use of air conditioning is necessary in certain cases. But when this question of adaptability becomes central rather than incidental, it also becomes a vector of climate denial, by conveying the illusion that one can live normally in extreme conditions. The message carried by this idea of adaptation is that the world can go on as before, provided one buys the right product. This passivity is not unlike another: the one these same elites display toward the economy, which is presented as an independent force imposing its law on men and women ordered to “adapt” to its needs. And this proximity is not coincidental; it is in fact one and the same: climate chaos is incomprehensible without taking into account the very nature of our economic system. Seeking out the causes of this chaos and truly tackling them therefore means threatening our economic system. Better, then, to wax lyrical about air conditioners. Cover up that cause which I cannot bear to see The link between the current climate upheavals and the capitalist management of the economy is so obvious that the targets for average temperature rises set at international summits are calculated relative to the “pre-industrial era” — an elegant and “neutral” way of saying “pre-capitalist.” In a recent magnum opus, L’Écocide capitaliste (Éditions Page 2 and Syllepse, February 2026), Alain Bihr undertakes an indispensable but colossal task: describing in detail the relationship between the capitalist management of the economy and the climate disruption whose effects today lead to these extreme temperatures. By integrating ecosystems (“nature”) into its valorisation process, capital “vampirises nature twofold.” Nature is forced to produce for capital — including what it does not itself produce — in proportions that end up exhausting it. At the same time, capital “transforms nature in its own image” by fragmenting and homogenising it. This movement gives rise to a “socionature,” “perfectly suited to the requirements of capital’s reproduction.” The classic mechanism of the capitalist dynamic then sets in: mystification. Biodiversity is denied in its reality; only its capitalist vision becomes acceptable. The relationship of exchange between humans and ecosystems — the metabolism — is then irreparably broken. This biodiversity, ravaged by capitalist exploitation, gradually becomes unliveable for humans but remains liveable for capital. And the discourse of adaptation is the translation of this perilous contradiction. This is why hoping to find a solution to climate chaos within the capitalist framework — as states have been attempting to do for more than a quarter of a century — is an illusion. At best, these policies only temporarily displace the problems. The root of the evil is the relationship that the current mode of social organisation maintains with all forms of the living. And since the fetishism of the commodity makes us believe that capital is indispensable to life, nothing important can then be done. Bringing this relationship to light, and exposing the systemic character of climate chaos, then becomes unacceptable — because it reveals the untenable and absurd character of our mode of production, ruins the techno-solutionist discourse that makes us believe capitalist technology can solve the problems capital itself created, and overturns the mystification of a power that hides behind a false economic rationality. One techno-solutionism replaces another. This is why we must keep talking about the weather and the technical details for adapting to it. Because the reality of the contemporary economy is that of a headlong flight in which the destruction of the living is a certainty. One techno-solutionism replaces another. If “green” technologies have failed to slow the disaster, then there will always be another technology to address its effects. A commodity is always available. Climate disruption can even be good business for growth. The priority of our mode of production and of our elites is not the fight against ecological chaos, nor even against its effects. All of that is mere pretext. To be convinced of this, one need only recall that at the very moment Europe is turning into an unliveable furnace, the priority is the development of artificial intelligence (AI) — that ecological ogre. A week ago , the tech lobby demanded that the European Union scale back its climate ambitions in order to prioritise the development of AI. For months, Western governments have been unravelling the feeble ecological regulations put in place, in order to favour profits. The structural crisis of capitalism pushes the ecological catastrophe into the background. And it guarantees the disaster by narrowing the scope of any possibility of real action against runaway climate change. That is why we must just keep talking about the weather. Source: Romaric Godin, “Face à la canicule, le déni par l’adaptation”, Mediapart, 24 June 2026. Translated from french using claude.ai submitted by /u/TheRealDji
Originally posted by u/TheRealDji on r/Switzerland