"The Titanic Syndrome," the film by Nicolas Hulot and Jean-Albert Lièvre, which will be out on [French] screens October 7, will upset people. This environmental documentary shows almost no nature: Breaking with the postcard aesthetic customary in the genre, the film confronts the hard reality of poverty and injustice. It attempts, uneasily, to say that the vertiginous deterioration of the biosphere is the result of a social order become insane, one which makes the weak, the poor and the exploited bear its consequences.

    The film repeats that the key to escaping this sort of destructive logic is in the reduction of rich countries' material consumption. Let us bet that this discourse, harsher than that of "little gestures for the planet," will garner a mixed reception. And should Nicolas Hulot begin to upset people?

    The strength of his persona is to remain popular by going right to the tip of what French society - or more precisely, the media system that provides access to French society - agrees to hear at any given moment.

    Thus, for a decade, he has little by little hardened his speech: At first, sounding the alarm over the scope of the environmental disaster, he then sought to involve citizens, then brought the question into political terrain. He now succeeds in demonstrating that ecology is first of all a social issue, and criticizes - but in terms that remain very general - "capitalism."

    In the commentary that clothes the images, he says: "I am lost." Lost? I telephone him to understand. He answers: "I'm lost because I don't understand that so much energy should be necessary to put what is obvious before our elites. People who have a sometimes dazzling intelligence have blind spots, that is, they don't manage to understand that their economic model will not succeed."

    That's Nicolas Hulot's problem, and, consequently, our problem: He believes that political action today is inspired by the pursuit of the common good. But he forgets the strength of interests: individual and class interests. What Hulot calls the elites are today an oligarchy. The oligarchy does not want to hear about the obvious facts of environmental crisis and social disintegration because the principle objective of the oligarchy is to maintain its own interests and privileges. It does not concern itself with the common good insofar as it does not challenge the oligarchy's own position.

    When one is a nice person, it's difficult to absorb the fact that others are not all so nice. Nicolas Hulot is about to do that, and, especially, about to draw the appropriate conclusions. That is: to speak in vague terms about "capitalism" no longer, but to plunge a knife into the flesh of class selfishness. He can do it. But he knows that then, all of a sudden, a number of media and of more low profile powers will suddenly find that he has many flaws.

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    Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.