What can I do on my own?! When i talk about all this, I'm talking about the climate crisis, of the collapse of biodiversity and ultimately the growth of inequalities. Often, the answer, is to take individual action.

Volunteering by si, donate there, sprinkling of good deeds (like recycling and composting)... All these individual actions that I myself have taken, that I keep asking every day, that others like me pose, were they even a little buoyant? Will through individual struggle? Thanks to thoughtful and eco-responsible purchases, multiplied by everyone's actions? Has this resulted in a reduction in GHG emissions? Has biodiversity ceased to be threatened. Are the vulnerable less vulnerable? Will carry the environmental cause all individually, by our choices, makes a difference? Is buying really voting or is it not rather behaving like Don Quixote in front of the windmill?

The MARE gang, I have known her for a short time, but at each meeting, it leads me to question myself more, to deepen my analysis and ultimately to move, to put myself into action. This group shakes me up, but in a good way. More recently, during a videoconference organized by the MARE, the question of individual gesture versus collective actions was touched upon. As at every meeting of the MARE, I came out with a rich reflection, a questioning about my own belonging to this group and about the fine line between the individual and the collective.

More than ever, I think we can’t get anywhere. It’s downright a new society that we have to build, it is a whole system that we must shake if we want to stem the climate crisis and, To do that, our different levels of government need to get involved. The MARE has become for me a bearer of meaning and hope. It brings together people who, certainly, take individual actions, but who work collectively around the environmental cause. MARE is a movement, a movement that is gaining momentum. I see it, the MARE is making real changes in our community. It doesn't just convince our citizens to make changes, it brings regional political bodies, our local governments, to act on global warming.

Because it is the collective and the struggle that are carriers. When you think of the big changes, it was the collective struggle that carried them, and this even if in the center sometimes stood a heroic personality, catalyst for this strength in numbers. If this person stands out, it is only to be the representative of the message of a whole group. This person is not fighting for her, nor for his interests, nor to tell herself that she is doing the right thing! Non, she tries to inspire and is inspired by values ​​that go beyond her, who are taller than her. Even if this person stands out, that's good because there is a lot, that there is a movement, that there is a thirst and an urgency for change, real changes. If this person rises above the mass it is because the mass is there to help him move and a mass which advances carries with it an even greater mass, it's an endless movement. It's a wave that gets stronger as it goes. It’s in this wave that I believe.

This is what I found at MARE. I have been involved with MARE for a very short time, but i feel the people in this group are just like me. The environmental cause and all that derives from it is close to their hearts and individual choices are no longer sufficient. They decided to be that wave. And the more this wave advances, the more my anxieties subside. The aim is to raise awareness among our fellow citizens, which in turn can help us convince local governments to act, who in turn exert pressure and encourage the provincial and federal authorities to build a project for a sustainable society. If the current health crisis teaches us anything, is that nothing is immutable, society can turn around on a dime. But instead of undergoing these changes, let's orchestrate them!

I will end with a parallel with the diffusion of innovation theory developed by Everett Mitchell Rogers: how a novelty is adopted by a company. "Diffusion is then" the process by which the innovation will be gradually communicated, through some channels, in time, with members of the social system ” (Rogers, 1962). An innovation can have social impacts, environmental and not just technological. Furthermore, according to this theory, there is a milestone more difficult to cross, the Chasme “gouffre”, but after that, adoption would experience a rapid rise. I think we are precisely at this tipping point and that the MARE is propagating a new way of conceiving our cities., the territory we live in, our living together. Join the MARE, together we will become a great swarming and living tide! 

Emilie Poirier