Rather Than the End of Abundance, It Is Sustainable Abundance That We Must Aim for.
Emmanuel Macron is wrong.
Lover of punchlines that sting and provoke epidermal reactions, French president Emmanuel Macron had promised to change his style during his campaign for the presidential election in 2022. A few months later, re-elected for a second term, it is clear that Emmanuel Macron has difficulty changing his method.
Chase your nature, and it comes back at a gallop as the saying goes.
By announcing “the end of abundance” at the end of August 2022, Emmanuel Macron has achieved an unlikely union of oppositions. Some cried insult to the most modest, deprived of abundance. The others denounced a speech with decreasing resonance.
However, if they saw our living conditions, our ancestors would find the term “abundance” justified!
Indeed, we have never lived so well. The proportion of humans who have access to water, food, or energy is historically high. Health, education, access to information, and leisure have never been so widespread in the world. And this, even beyond the Western world. An Afghan-born today will live fifteen years longer than a Frenchman born a century ago. As a result of two centuries of technological progress, abundance has resisted wars and crises.
This abundance of which Emmanuel Macron speaks has flourished in free countries with a market economy and is the stuff of dreams on all continents. But it is still very incomplete and poorly distributed.
Abundance also brings its own crises. Excessive sugar, alcohol, and drugs kill more people today than hunger. The abundance of liquidity weighs on economic stability and increases inequalities. Above all, our abundance has been built on the postulate of a free and infinite nature, at the cost of considerable damage.
From Malthus to the Club of Rome, many have already prophesied its end through the exhaustion of resources. However, the opposite has happened. As early as 1970, the end of oil was announced... The consumption of hydrocarbons has doubled since then, contributing to climate change.
Acid rain, the ozone layer, soil pollution, and global warming are crises of abundance, produced by overconsumption and not scarcity. Our development model is unsustainable.
The alternative is simple: either we renounce abundance or we invent a model of sustainable abundance.
Renunciation is fashionable in France and elsewhere in Europe, carried by voices sensitive to degrowth and heard even in the highest spheres of the chancelleries of the European Union countries. It supposes to embark eight billion human beings on a path contrary to their aspirations. No region of the world, even among the poorest, is today on a sustainable path.
The other way? Sustainable abundance, accessible to all and compatible with planetary limits.
This project of sustainable abundance is that of the United Nations, superbly summarized in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. It is also that of the IPCC. In the 2,913 pages of its latest report, it lists 43 concrete action levers, supported by proven technological progress. If it encourages healthy sobriety in the uses, it underlines that this transition can be done at a cost limited to a few points of GDP by 2050, so it is perfectly compatible with the pursuit of economic growth that benefits everyone.
Like the UN, it is in line with increased access to abundance, not its end. The role of states is essential:
Develop clean energy, decarbonized transportation, and water infrastructure.
Simplify environmental policy around a uniform, clear and ambitious carbon tax, redistributed so as not to weigh on purchasing power or competitiveness.
Encourage in a similar way recycling and the circular economy to reduce the exploitation of virgin resources.
Encourage sobriety without guilt or demagogy.
In short, set a favorable regulatory and fiscal framework, encourage more than constrain, and facilitate without regulation. Proclaiming the end of abundance is a strange project for people preoccupied with their purchasing power. As harsh as the winter is shaping up to be in Europe, the exceptional crisis we are going through will not reverse the road to abundance that started two centuries ago. The prices of raw materials are already falling. Energy prices will follow, sooner or later!
In the meantime, let's accelerate our decarbonization and our energy independence. We are only at the beginning of sustainable abundance.
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