2/4 Thinking about ecology | See the world like a donut

Faced with the climate crisis, we can feel helpless or lost. Our columnist suggests taking a step back. Drawing on a variety of essays and thinkers, it seeks to better identify the sources of the problem and to outline possible solutions.

The Indian mathematician Bhāskara II is credited with one of the first attempts to create a perpetual motion machine, in the 12th century.^e century.

Other ambitious minds subsequently came up against this chimera until the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris resolved in 1775 to no longer study it.

Despite everything, this project remains alive. This is the heart of our economic system: manufacturing ever more goods, on a finite planet with limited resources.

However, thermodynamics specifies this with its first two laws: we do not create energy from nothing, and all forms of energy degrade over time.

Economics claims to be a science, but it operates on the fringes of reality. This is what the British economist Kate Raworth lamented seven years ago in an influential essay, The donut theory.

According to her, growth has become an economic as well as a political objective. It allows everyone to believe that their lot could improve. And for this, we must constantly consume more energy to transform more material into products.

The Oxford professor denounces the drift of her profession, which, ironically, has cut itself off from the real world by wanting to imitate the natural sciences.

From the beginning of the 20th century^e century, the dominant trend in economics was to “discover” laws. To do this, everything had to be encrypted. Theorists thus developed mathematical models that simplified the world. For example, in gross domestic product (GDP), nature practically does not exist. This indicator integrates the quantity of fish caught (the flow), but not that which remains (the stock). And air or water pollution does not appear anywhere. If an oil tanker causes an oil spill, it does not reduce GDP. It’s even good for the economy – cleaning operations boost employment.

Humanity can thus enrich itself while impoverishing the ecosystems on which it depends.

Kate Raworth is not the first to deplore this. In 1972, a report by researchers at MIT, The limits of growth, warned of the coming shock. But no country listened.

In 2009, a group of leading researchers identified nine planetary boundaries (CO concentration₂ in the atmosphere, species extinction rate, nitrogen and phosphorus concentration, land clearing, contaminants, fresh water, ozone layer, ocean acidification and aerosols).

When M^me Raworth was writing his essay, four boundaries had been crossed. We are now down to six^⁠1.

These thresholds are difficult to quantify and are the subject of methodological debate. Indeed, the planet is not a diagram with two variables. It is a complex and difficult to predict system, with feedback loops. But this uncertainty can also serve as an argument for caution. A well-known case: if the Arctic warms too much, permafrost will release methane into the air, accelerating warming.

One thing is certain, the current pace is frantic. Here are some examples.

Ecosystems suffer.

For a politician, the long term is equivalent to the length of a mandate, approximately four years. But when we think about the viability of an economic system or the future of humanity, we have to stretch our necks to see further.

Of course, no one will want to sacrifice their comfort based on what happens so long after they die. It’s easier to hope that scientific advances will do the job. But technology will also face the same physical challenges.

How can we fuel this growth? We won’t get out of this: we need energy.

The father of growth theory, Robert Solow, who won the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in economics in 1987, estimated that more than 80% of the sources of growth come from technological innovations.

Other researchers revised his work in the early 2000s. Most of these innovations actually consisted of efficiency gains in converting energy into work.

The key word here is “energy”. This increasingly efficient conversion was made possible in the last century thanks to the rise of fossil fuels. A liter of oil is equivalent to about 12 days of human labor, Raworth points out.

Unfortunately, this energy exists in limited quantities and we know the environmental cost of its use.

Other technologies are emerging, such as wind turbines and electric cars. But they don’t exist in a vacuum. Wind turbines and “green” cars require materials and energy. And huge data centers are required to run technologies that claim to operate in “the clouds.”

In short, despite its usefulness, innovation will not be enough. It will also be necessary to consume better and consume less.

Raworth knows the power of image. She found a very simple one: the donut.

Here is his version:

Get out of the donut and you’re beyond the limits of the planet. Generate too little economic activity and you will be in the donut hole, where human needs are not met.

The new mission of the economist is thus to find the balance which ensures quality of life while respecting the capacity of ecosystems to regenerate.

The professor is not an anti-capitalist or anti-growth activist. It recognizes the enormous progress made, such as the reduction in the rate of extreme poverty, infant mortality and hours worked. She also emphasizes that growth remains necessary for less rich countries.

But she cautions against naive predictions that assume progress will continue at the same pace. She prefers to ask another question: what will happen if the ecological footprint continues to intensify? The answer lies in the thousands of pages of reports from climatologists and biologists.

Raworth recognizes the scale of the challenge. Growth has become a political imperative. Politicians see it as a measure of their success. It also helps social cohesion. As Henry C. Wallich of the American Federal Reserve noted in the 1970s, growth makes it possible to tolerate “large income differences” because the less fortunate believe that their turn will come.

This is what we keep telling them. The inventor of GDP, Simon Kuznets, drew a curve according to which growth initially leads to an increase in inequalities, then reduces them. This model is “95% speculative”, he admitted. But economists have made it a law. However, inequality and growth have no logical connection. One may increase while the other decreases, and vice versa.

Based on a study by epidemiologists published in 2009 (Why equality is better for everyone), Raworth demonstrates that growth is not always linked to well-being. For example, GDP says nothing about income distribution and inequality or the quality of social ties.

Another blind spot: unpaid work. The best example is the “invisible mother” of the father of economics, Adam Smith. The Scot, who had no children, lived with his mother who cooked his meals and took care of his other needs. These essential tasks do not appear anywhere in the economic indicators.

And as economist Richard Easterlin has demonstrated, beyond an annual income of around $100,000, an additional dollar earned has an increasingly weak impact on well-being.

An example: since the 1970s, the size of homes has almost tripled in the United States. This requires more materials, more electricity, and more infrastructure to spread out humans who will burn more oil to get around. And they are no happier about it, judging by the answers they themselves give in surveys ^⁠2.

The task of the 21st economy^e century is to find a new viable model, writes Raworth.

Instead of being an engineer, the economist should act as a gardener who oversees the balance of a system, ensuring that each species in the garden grows without threatening the others.

This is an extremely complex political challenge. We will have to convince people, especially the richest and most powerful, to consume less. However, as Upton Sinclair wrote, “it is difficult to make a man understand something which he is required not to understand in order to receive his salary.”

1. Read the study by Science Advances which documents these planetary boundaries (in English)

2. Read this summary of the evolution of Americans’ reported happiness since the 1970s (in English)

What do you think? Participate in the dialogue

To read next Sunday: “Carbon neutrality: are you serious? »