This text is taken from the Courrier de l’économie of September 5, 2022. To subscribe, click here.
Why is economic development so difficult to reconcile with the protection of our environment? asks a reader, Robert Henri. It is difficult to assess the environmental impact of what we consume. In Bristol, England, the vegetarian restaurant The Canteen now displays on its menu the carbon footprint of the dishes offered. This was reported The Press this week. We learned that the production of a plate of gnocchi emits nearly 200 grams of CO2, nearly 3.5 times less than an eggplant meal and 15 times less than the emissions to produce a single burger.
With this information, the restaurant allows customers concerned about reducing their impact on the environment to choose their meal accordingly. The initiative also reveals that all production has an environmental impact; it requires consumption of energy and raw materials. As it feeds on nature, the production necessary for economic development is de facto hardly compatible with the protection of the environment.
Let’s focus more specifically on the exploitation of natural resources. For a long time, they were perceived as materials that were used for development. The most famous of the classical French economists, Jean-Baptiste Say, wrote in his Catechism of Political Economy (1815) that “natural instruments”—forests, arable land, waterways, mines—were “instruments that nature provided free to man, and which he uses to create useful products”. He adds that these resources “are sort of storehouses where nature has prepared and placed wealth” which can be transformed to be consumed.
The idea is not to criticize the thoughts of one of the most influential thinkers in economics, but to point out that those who shaped economic thought had relegated environmental issues to the background. Their quest for understanding focused on the concerns of their time: money, work, supply, demand…
The notion of “negative externality” relating to production – pollution or harmful effects on health – was not really studied until the 1920s. The work of economists such as Arthur Cecil Pigou, who was interested in the be, have been there for many. They were at the origin of concrete measures, such as taxing negative externalities (Pigovian taxes).
However, these initiatives have not been able to curb the impact of the rapid economic development of the past 70 years. Since 1950, the world’s population has more than tripled, oil consumption has increased tenfold, the number of vehicles on the road has multiplied by 20, and so on.
Will the energy or digital transition reduce the impact on the environment? Maybe. Specialists remain in the best position to discuss it. However, a “greener economy” will still have an impact on the environment.
In The war of rare metals (2018, Éditions Les Liens qui liberating), journalist Guillaume Pitron — winner of the Érik Izraelewicz prize for economic investigation — was rightly interested in the energy and digital transition. He points out that technological inventions to free ourselves from fossil fuels have led to the multiplication of the types of metals exploited, which has generated enormous environmental costs.
About metals he writes: “While mankind has consumed only seven [or, cuivre, plomb, argent, étain, mercure et fer] between Antiquity and the Renaissance, it began to use about ten during the 20th century, twenty from the 1970s and now uses almost all of the 86 metals in Mendeleev’s periodic table of elements.
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