Why did this apparently irrational strategy work? Because the knowledge contained in ‘Of course we know very well’ is not neutral : its objectivity is already biased. What we ‘know very well’, what is ‘obvious’, what is accepted as a matter of course, is not written in stone, but in shi# ing sand; it is a socially-constructed shared hegemonic opinion which obfuscates its owns cracks and inconsistencies in order to seem immutable, and our task is to change it. Th e point is not to provide ‘alternative facts’, but to undermine the framing that makes us select some facts and ignore others. This is why we are not dealing here with the usual disavowal but with a courageous act of taking a risk and ignoring our apparent limitations. Our stance should be: we know we appear weak and divided, but we should nevertheless do what has to be done. We know (or feel with the force of seeming knowledge) that we cannot avert environmental collapse, but we should still take the actions that would give us the best chance of doing so. In such a situation, where apocalypse is on the horizon, one should bear in mind that the standard logic of probability no longer applies – we need a different logic, that described by Jean-Pierre Dupuy:
"The catastrophic event is inscribed into the future as a destiny, for sure, but also as a contingent accident . . . [I]f an outstanding event takes place, a catastrophe, for example, it could not not have taken place; nonetheless, insofar as it did not take place, it is not inevitable. It is thus the event’s actualization – the fact that it takes place – which retroactively creates its necessity."
