The famous American economist John Kenneth Galbraith once exclaimed: “Wealth has its advantages and the evidence to the contrary, although it has been often presented, has never been very convincing. ”
Wealth is not only used to satisfy our needs, real or perceived, but also, beyond a certain level, to decisively mark the position we occupy in society. The quest for ever better socioeconomic status is a leap frog that most people play, with the lifestyle of the rich as the ultimate bait.
Nothing is more natural, therefore, for States than to conceive of national economic growth as a fundamental objective to be pursued. Anyone who wants to dampen popular support for “always wanting more” has a big problem. It takes some damn good arguments.
But no matter how much you want more, it has not always been possible to get more. Growth is a recent phenomenon in history. Until around 1750, the standard of living of humans stagnated at the level of minimum subsistence and reproduced roughly identical to itself from one century to the next.
It was only 275 years ago that the explosion occurred, first in Europe and North America, and for 60 years in Asia. Nonetheless, huge disparities in material well-being remain between and within countries. More than 700 million humans still live in extreme poverty, on less than $ 1.90 a day. Can we blame them for wanting more?
Three sources of growth
Where has the growth of the last centuries come from? In his Brief history of the world economy (Boréal 2014), the great historian Robert Allen identifies three sources: 1) the globalization of trade, which resulted from the collapse of the cost of transport and communications; 2) the invasion of new technologies brought about by successive industrial revolutions, the last of which happened in the second half of the 20th centurye century with the computer and the internet; 3) the support of the States, which ordered public education, favored industrial and financial development, built infrastructures and liberalized trade. All of this, of course, at different speeds from country to country and continent to continent.
Will global economic growth continue on its own in the future? Not sure. It has already slowed down considerably for 40 years.
In Canada, for example, the standard of living increased by 26% per decade from 1929 to 1979; but of 13% per decade, that is to say half as quickly, since 1979. For the future, nothing is certain yet. I myself am convinced – but this is a personal opinion – that the innovations of the time of our great-grandparents, such as electricity, running water, telephone on the wall, appliances, penicillin and birth control pill, have added much more to the well-being of mankind than contemporary computer and internet inventions, such as the so-called smart phone and social media.
Carbon neutrality, quickly!
But given that we now know that the greenhouse gases (GHGs) produced by economic growth threaten the physical integrity of the planet, and even the survival of entire populations, how should we intervene to avoid the disaster? The answer is clear: induce carbon neutrality as soon as possible.
Adopt measures that will cause the economic system to reduce its production of GHGs well below the critical level that the Earth can absorb annually. Is it possible ? Yes.
But to this end, it is necessary to guide the system resolutely by means of three kinds of interventions: direct or indirect taxes on fossil fuels, strict regulations against other dirty processes, and a massive public and private effort to develop new technologies. green.
It has been demonstrated that such a program is technically capable of achieving carbon neutrality and that it is urgent to put it in place. But in order to materialize, the necessary government measures must benefit from the firm political support of the communities which is coordinated at the international level.
This is not taken for granted, because the collective action required may conflict with individual freedom or narrow nationalism, and the benefits of carbon neutrality often appear distant and unclear, while the costs of implementing it are immediate. . The obstacle to be overcome concerns the reaction of the political system much more than that of the economic system.
If we are successful in meeting the challenge, nothing will stand in the way of continued economic growth. We can continue to want more. The reflection will then have to focus on the best means of containing the ambitions of the richest, who already have quite a few, in order to favor the less well-off, who do not yet have enough and are really right to want more.