--- title: "Fossil Addiction: War or Forgetting?" sousTitre: "Two Voices on Breaking with the Living" description: "Between Latour’s declared war on modern illusions and Krenak’s accusation of madness against self-forgetting, dependence on fossil fuels emerges as an ontological alienation. Though distinct in their approaches, these two perspectives converge on the same urgency: relearning the world’s limits." date: 2026-07-17 lang: en tradition: transversal auteurs: ["Bruno Latour", "Ailton Krenak"] --- # Fossil Addiction: War or Forgetting? Dependence on fossil fuels is not merely a technical or economic issue. It embodies a way of being in the world, a rupture with what precedes and transcends us. Two voices—one from contemporary Western thought, the other rooted in Indigenous wisdom—sketch its contours with a radicality that compels us to confront what we refuse to see. ## The War of Illusions Bruno Latour offers a violent image to describe our era: that of a conflict. Not a war between nations or ideologies, but a war between two ways of situating oneself on Earth. A war in which the very terms of battle have been obscured by centuries of illusions. > I know it is perilous to state the problem so bluntly, but I am compelled to say that in the age of the Anthropocene, Humans and Earthbound beings must accept going to war. > > — **Bruno Latour**, *Face Ga a*. éd. after the French original. This sentence strikes with its abruptness. Latour does not suggest; he states a necessity. The word *war* is not metaphorical: it designates a clash between two regimes of existence. On one side, *Humans*—the modern abstraction that believes itself detached from earthly constraints, capable of extracting without limit from the depths. On the other, the *Earthbound*—not Earth as mere backdrop, but as a web of beings, processes, and limits that resist appropriation. Dependence on fossil fuels thus appears as the symptom of a deeper misapprehension. It is not merely an addiction, but a *distortion of perception*. By burning carbon accumulated over millions of years, we act as if geological time were at our disposal, as if the Earth were an inexhaustible reservoir rather than a fragile partner. Latour does not condemn: he exposes a logic. The war he invokes is not a battle to be won, but a tension to be acknowledged. To refuse this war would be to persist in the illusion of a humanity freed from the laws of the living. ## The Forgetting of Self Ailton Krenak approaches the same question, but from another place. For him, dependence on fossil fuels is not primarily a technical error or a moral failing, but a *betrayal of self*. A collective madness that consists in forgetting what we are. > The planet is telling us: “You’ve lost your minds—you’ve forgotten who you are and now you’re lost, thinking you’ve achieved something with your toys.” > > — **Ailton Krenak**, *A vida n o til*. éd. after the Portuguese original, Companhia das Letras, São Paulo, 2020. Krenak speaks from an experience where the Earth is not an object to exploit, but an interlocutor. The word *piraram*—literally "you’ve gone mad"—is not an insult, but a diagnosis. The madness here lies in believing that technological "toys" (machines, infrastructures, fossil fuels) have made us more powerful, when in truth they have severed us from our own identity. *Se esqueceram quem são*: the forgetting of self is at the heart of the problem. This perspective does not separate the human from the rest of the living. Dependence on fossil fuels is not a mere economic choice, but the expression of a rupture with the ancestral bonds that define our place in the world. Krenak does not offer a technical solution: he points to a *loss of meaning*. Modern "toys" have made us believe we could transcend limits, when in fact they have only distanced us from what constitutes us. ## The Convergence of Limits Latour and Krenak do not speak the same language. One analyzes regimes of existence; the other evokes collective memory. Yet their diagnoses converge on an essential point: dependence on fossil fuels is an *ontological alienation*. It places us in a relationship to the world that denies limits—whether those of the Earth or those of our own humanity. For Latour, these limits are those of the *Earthbound*—a web of forces and beings that resist our will to mastery. The war he describes is not a call to violence, but an invitation to recognize that we can no longer ignore these resistances. Burning fossil fuels is to act as if these limits did not exist, as if we still inhabited an infinite world. For Krenak, these limits are those of our *identity*. To forget who we are is to forget that we are part of something greater than ourselves. Dependence on fossil fuels is not merely an ecological error: it is a symptom of this forgetting. Modern "toys" have made us believe we could do without these bonds, when in fact they are the very condition of our existence. ## Silent Propositions Neither prescribes a solution. Latour does not say how to wage this war; Krenak does not detail how to remember. Their words are not recipes, but *propositions*—ways of seeing the world that make visible what we prefer to ignore. Latour proposes *seeing the war*: not to provoke it, but to cease living in the illusion of an impossible peace. Dependence on fossil fuels is not one problem among others, but the sign of a deeper conflict between two ways of inhabiting the Earth. Krenak proposes *remembering*: not to turn back, but to recover what we have lost along the way. Fossil fuels are not merely an energy source: they are the symbol of a forgetting—of our place in the world. These propositions do not oppose each other. They complement one another. One points to the necessity of recognizing the world’s limits; the other, to rediscovering the bonds that define us. Together, they outline the same urgency: that of relearning to live *with* the Earth, rather than against it. *[guerre]* The war Latour speaks of is not a battle to be won, but a tension to inhabit. Likewise, the forgetting Krenak denounces is not a fault to atone for, but a loss to repair. In both cases, the task is less about solving a problem than *changing how we see*. ## Sources - Bruno Latour, *Face Ga a* — - Ailton Krenak, *A vida n o til* — Companhia das Letras, São Paulo, 2020, trans. trad. maison (du portugais) Canonical source : https://viasophia.org/en/articles/2026-07-17-addiction-fossile-guerre-oubli/