Climate risks and the human sense

Keys to environmental conflicts from Teilhard de Chardin’s perspective

Abstract

This essay aims to review some of the postulates of the scientist, theologian and Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin, in the light of integral ecology, environmentalism and the contemporary critique of modernity. The general objective is to highlight the preponderance of the Teilhardian project of the human and to inquire about its resolving potential in the face of environmental conflicts. A controversy about the natural or human origin of disasters is analyzed as a starting point. After recognizing that disasters cannot be treated as natural phenomena, it is observed that they could not be considered human either, without revealing an inconclusive notion of the meaning of the human. Disaster resolution and our unrealized humanity are presented as parallel itineraries. The arguments throughout the text aim, on the one hand, to blur the limits drawn by modernity and secularism to claim exclusive access to the rational and managerial knowledge of human communities; on the other hand, the convenience of broadening the epistemological horizon and the benefits of enriching the intellectual and practical possibilities to contribute to the qualification of the human are postulated. In this case, Teilhard de Chardin’s perspective is presented as a reference.