In La Part du colibri (‘The Hummingbird's Share’), Pierre Rabhi, French farmer turned public environmentalist, writer, philosopher, and public figure, deplores what he calls the névrose écologique, to which he attributes the fact that so many people simply do not react in any significant way to the ecological crisis. An Amerindian legend of the hummingbird frames this autobiographical essay on ecological becoming. Thousands of years ago, Rabhi narrates, an immense fire started in a great American forest, ravaging the land and leaving most animals to gaze, still and powerless, at the disaster ahead. A single hummingbird, however, could be seen transporting water in an attempt to appease the fire. An armadillo asked the hummingbird if it really believed it could stop the fire. ‘I know, but I am doing my share’, the hummingbird responded. In the context of Western lives—urban or rural—can humans, like the other animals in the legend, reconcile the sense of the futility of their own actions with the need for more ecological lifestyles?

Often, we don’t. In the face of climate change, the overwhelming response seems to be either plain denial or hopelessness: in other words, climate-scepticism or cynicism. Curiously, both reactions re-appropriate tone and language from ancient philosophy. Yet the climate-sceptics know little of Sextus Empiricus, and the climate cynics have rarely heard of Diogenes.

This chapter will trace the strange resemblance between Diogenes—the scandalous, exiled philosopher who lived like a tramp in Ancient Greece—and modern figures of environmentalism like Rabhi, represented and stereotyped in the media for renouncing the comfort of modern civilization, living frugally on the outskirts of town, reprimanding the rest of humanity, sometimes even picking through the trash.