Lake Bourget: The Parachuting Nightmare

If you're walking around the southern part of Lake Bourget, you can't escape the noise from a parachuting club's planes. A group of climate skeptics actually takes off in small, very noisy aircraft every 15 minutes over a Natura 2000 classified area. They don’t seem to face any restrictions—neither for noise nor for greenhouse gas emissions. They occupy the airspace without paying fuel taxes or providing carbon compensation to local municipalities or environmental preservation associations, apparently. It sounds surreal, but it’s very real in such an important location.

Hi there,

You see, this kind of message makes me want to take up skydiving. Leave people alone who are freely living their passions, even if you don’t like them—especially if you don’t like them, because that’s what respect is all about.

Michel

Hello Michel,

Saying that ignores the basic principle of freedom: it ends where the freedom of others begins. In this case, the freedom of these rowdy individuals invades the atmosphere with noise and pollution. Expressing regret about that is also a right. As for respect, it has its own rules. Living freely from your passions isn’t inherently respectable when it doesn’t take into account respect for neighbors, the environment, and common sense.

Best regards, Murielle

Good evening Murielle,

We’re always someone else’s oddball.

I don’t know where you heard that “one person’s freedom ends where another’s begins.” It’s a pretty strange definition of freedom—one that made sense in J.S. Mill’s liberal philosophy but is downright harmful in our victimhood-driven society today. We’re always entitled to feel offended or hurt by anything: noise, perfume, social or religious practices, or even someone else’s pleasure or fulfillment. That slogan turns individual subjectivity into a tool for controlling everyone. It’s a dangerous idea in today’s world. The society built on that slogan is one where everyone thinks it’s legitimate to set the maximum limit of what offends or bothers them—and then demands it be banned. I don’t know where you see this heading, but I hope I never live in that dystopia, even if it wraps itself in the moral values of progressivism.

Michel

Well then, you’ve just proven you’re my oddball...

Yes, it’s mutual and that’s just fine 🙂.

More seriously, this kind of motto about "everyone’s freedom" comes from the most liberal of classical Anglo-Saxon philosophers, but it applied to a different world and generally meant the opposite of what it’s used to mean now. We might want to see motorized aerial activities regulated over natural sites—why not, of course—but you can see that in reality, the goal is to ban, and to have banned, what offends our sensibilities, without actually limiting our freedom.

Michel

This is exactly the mindset developed by those who deny the real facts causing climate disruption.

Have a great weekend! !

That’s exactly the mindset developed by those who deny the real facts causing climate disruption.

Have a nice weekend!

If I understood you correctly, people who don’t think properly are the ones causing climate disruption? Just kidding. [;]

If one person's freedom doesn't end where another's begins, what is its limit?

To live together, don't we need boundaries?

Doesn't the strongest always win without those so-called limits?

Back to the topic, I think it's important to know there's a spot on the lake that's really noisy.

This helps you choose your accommodation and walks with full awareness.

And to cross that area off the list for those who love peace and quiet—the limits of living together, a utopia just like anarchy, actually.

Hi Agnes,

Okay, fine, just two minutes then to reply.

I never said there shouldn’t be limits—I’m trying to explain that when the English liberal philosophers of the time promoted that saying, it was to establish individualism in a completely different world. They were protective of individual freedoms, not at all in the current spirit of just making a vague exception, and even then, only when possible.

We stop agreeing on what constitutes a real "nuisance" as soon as we’re in a society, like now, that plays the victim. Of course, other people’s freedom shouldn’t physically threaten us, confine us, or harm us as individuals. But that’s not what we’re talking about here—we’re talking about people who believe they have the right to restrict others’ freedom in the name of their personal values, their particular sensitivities, their political and moral beliefs. And that’s a terrible poison. Not being physically bothered or threatened in your health by other people’s cigarette smoke is one thing, legitimate. Not being able to accept the sight of it, even if artistic, in the name of your sensitivity—shall I say oversensitivity—is another. On this path lies a kind of hygienist and moralist tyranny, puritanical too. And the noise of other people’s passions always bothers those who disapprove of them for moral reasons.

You mention "living together." I won’t expand on the subject—I’ve never really understood what’s behind that other slogan.

Have a good day,

Michel

That’s exactly the mindset developed by those in denial of the real facts causing climate disruption.

Have a great weekend!

If I understood you correctly, people who don’t think properly are the ones causing climate disruption? Joking. 😉

Good thing you clarified it was a joke, otherwise I’d have replied that you actually didn’t understand what I said 😛

The noise of other people’s passions always bothers those who condemn them on moral grounds.

No.

Noise affects those who endure it (and those who cause it too, for that matter...)

There’s no need to overcomplicate this.

Noise pollution has health repercussions.

Like cigarettes, then.

What’s more, a significant number of our fellow citizens suffer from hyperacusis.

Noise is torture. There’s no moral judgment here.

Besides, isn’t noise used as a means of torture?

The noise of other people’s passions always bothers those who condemn them on moral grounds.

Besides, isn’t noise used as a means of torture?

Noise and silence. Devil’s Island at the Cayenne penal colony, for example.

Hi Michel, what we're dealing with here goes way beyond individual freedoms. In a democratic society like ours, what matters is the collective. If everyone only thinks about their own selfish pleasures, everything falls apart, and there’s no peaceful future for the next generation. We have to accept that polluting and noisy activities like water skiing, jet skiing, and even parachuting are from another era—those are "dad’s sports." And given the challenges of climate change and biodiversity collapse, how can we ask a worker to sacrifice two years’ worth of savings to buy an electric car when they see some idiots burning through 30 liters of fuel just for a "wow" and a six-minute thrill?

Since your post is highly political, I’ll refrain from addressing the substance. As a private pilot myself and getting on in years, I’ll leave the controversies to others.

Hello Roger,

we’re dealing with something that goes far beyond individual freedoms here. What makes sense in a democratic society like ours is the collective. If everyone acts based on their own selfish little pleasures, everything falls apart, and there’s no serene future left for the generation that follows us.

That’s *your* take on it. You can be a communist, a collectivist, you can dress it up in morality, ethics, or Hans Jonas-style imperatives, you can turn it into a universal truth—but the assertion remains highly debatable, and deeply ideological, even religious. You think humanity will overcome the current situation, the current energy transition, by banning the expression of individual pleasures—including those that are sometimes seen as nuisances by those who don’t partake? Nothing could be less certain. That’s just your opinion, and history even contradicts it: humanity has never progressed through waves of guilt-ridden virtue. Besides, it’s a Western idea, steeped in guilt—whether you serve it up with a Marxist, environmentalist, or feel-good sauce, the foundation’s the same.

Michel

Re Agnès...

Have you read Fahrenheit 451? You know, that dystopia where they burn books. Do you know why they burn them? An awful dictator? Not at all. They burn them because in a world of consumption, ideas mustn’t offend anyone, and because the slightest little emotional wound has become unbearable.

Michel

Books don’t hurt anyone—at least not physically (emotionally, they can, but that’s more about psychiatry than the books themselves).

Maybe an old phone directory gathering dust in some police stations where a few civil servants from a bygone era still clock in...

Or those far-fetched history books that some people worship to the point of killing for them.

And then, you only read a book if you want to. No neighbor’s ever forced me to check out the latest book they’ve read.

But music, screams, a hammer, a drill, annoying voices—there’s no escaping them.

Even earplugs don’t block out most noises.

how to explain to a worker to sacrifice two years of salary savings to buy an electric vehicle

Not sure that’s enough... Not sure a worker even has savings...

As for electric vehicles, they’re really only a second car anyway. The car for going to work, doing groceries, going out.

Range is still way too limited for high-mileage drivers.

I often see on the highway that runs through my area: charging impossible at station X. Makes you think twice about investing just to end up stranded on the way to vacation...

What about charging options in neighboring countries, by the way?

Charging stations every 200 km in Morocco, Turkey, Albania, Croatia... etc.

If all second cars were electric, that’d be a big step forward...

But we’d need small vehicles: the Ami, the Topolino, the Spring are on the right track and would cover most urban, semi-urban, and rural needs. An electric C15, a 2CV, a Méhari. Basic stuff under 12,000 euros!

As a private pilot myself and getting on in years, I’ll leave the controversies to others.

Good evening, what type of aircraft do you fly? A DR400?

They burn them because in a consumerist world, ideas mustn’t offend anyone, and because the slightest little emotional wound has become unbearable.

It’s mainly because books help educate people instead of just shocking them—and yeah, they develop critical thinking, haha. If people think critically, they consume less, right?

As a private pilot myself and getting on in years, I’ll leave the controversies to others.

Evening! What type of aircraft do you fly? A DR400?

DR 400 160 hp. But unluckily, a club pilot just crashed it into a vineyard. Looks like a bad fuel tank selection.

Is this dark humor? Are you referring to the aircraft that crashed at CHY airport three days ago? To respond to pilot Mathews, I don’t hold any grudge against aviation in general—I was simply targeting a practice that, in my opinion, is a bit absurd: taking off planes for fun thousands of times a year. It gives a really bad image of the airport, and as a result, associations fight against all air traffic without distinction.

Hello, your reference to *Fahrenheit 451* is really interesting. For my part, and on my own scale—without any ideology or religious conviction—I work to fight against this society of entertainment and mind-numbing distraction. There’s no inevitability; it’s the role of education, which starts at home, not at school. When I was very young, I read a book that deeply moved me—*Histoire d’un ruisseau* (*Story of a Stream*) by Élisée Reclus. It helped me stay humble and respectful of the environment, but most of all, it taught me to find joy in all the little things in everyday life.

I also encourage you to read *Le Bug Humain* (*The Human Bug*) by Sébastien Bohler. This book explains why our brain is leading us straight toward the planet’s destruction, but more importantly, how to fight against the striatum by engaging our prefrontal cortex.

Is this dark humor? Are you referring to the plane that crashed at the CHY airport three days ago?

I assume CHY stands for Chambéry? Because when I looked up the IATA code, it points to Choiseul in the Solomon Islands. Otherwise, my question was very serious.

In response to pilot Mathews, I have no grievances against aviation in general,

I’d love to be a pilot, but that’s not the case, and it’s a real lifelong frustration...