My father is an engineer and an environmentalist. He was head of environmental affairs at a multinational company, chaired an environmental foundation, and was a vegetarian in Spain back when that was almost unheard of. I grew up in one of the first bioclimatic houses in our region, surrounded by solar panels and conversations about natural limits. Nobody had to teach me to care about the planet. I absorbed it.
So it’s a little ironic that, in our conversations today, he’s the committed one and I’m the nihilist.
Two engineers, two conclusions
I followed in his footsteps. I studied engineering and then specialised in green hydrogen, convinced it was the missing piece of the energy transition. I spent years on real projects, until the numbers made me stop believing. Then came a personal crisis that changed my life far more than any spreadsheet.
Today I live in a small village in the Pyrenees. I work as little as I can. I haven’t started my car in weeks. I don’t fly. Not because I’m trying to save the planet, but because the speed of the world exhausts me just thinking about it.
My father still believes that science and good policy can bend the curve. He has given his life to changing the system from within, and he hasn’t stopped. I don’t think the curve will bend, at least not in the way he hopes. When we talk about it, we always end up in the same place: him with his hope intact, me with my uncomfortable certainty.
What neither of us says out loud
What we don’t say to each other, but both know, is that neither of us escapes the contradiction.
He criticises the system and lives in a large house. I write about how desire produces suffering, and then catch myself checking how many people have read what I wrote. There’s no clean position. There are only different degrees of contradiction, and different degrees of awareness of it.
And here’s the part that surprised me. My actual environmental footprint is probably much smaller than my father’s. Not because I set out to make it that way, and certainly not because I’m more virtuous. It’s a side effect. I stepped away from the speed of modern life for selfish reasons, because it was making me ill, and a lighter life came along with it.
I find that revealing. A lot of real change may not come from the intention to change the world at all. It may come from people quietly stepping away from what hurts them.
What I’ve learned from disagreeing with my father
For a long time, I thought one of us had to be right. Either his hope was naive, or my scepticism was a kind of surrender. I’ve stopped seeing it that way.
His hope keeps him working, connected, generous with his time. My scepticism gives me a kind of peace he doesn’t have, but it could easily turn into indifference if I’m not careful. I need some of his commitment. He could probably use some of my willingness to slow down.
What we share matters more than where we disagree. We both learned, in our different ways, that the planet has limits. We both care. And we both know that the other person is wrestling honestly with the same question: how to live well in a world that can’t keep growing forever.
For sons and fathers
Many men I know have some version of this relationship with their fathers: two people who love each other, who share more than they admit, and who have reached opposite conclusions about how to live. It’s tempting to keep score. I’ve found it more useful to listen.
My father showed me what it looks like to care about something your whole life. I’m trying to show him, in my own way, what it looks like to put down some of the weight. Maybe neither of us will convince the other. But every time we have that conversation, I understand both of us a little better.
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