“The sobriety presented by the Head of State is that of constraint, of renunciation”explained Thursday August 25 on franceinfo Sandra Hoibian, doctor in sociology, director general of the Research Center for the study and observation of living conditions (Credoc). “The idea of sobriety is rather to start from the needs of individuals”she added while the expression “the end of abundance” used by Emmanuel Macron on the subject of global warming caused a lot of reaction.
franceinfo: Can this expression “end of abundance” be understood as a questioning of our consumer society?
Sandra Hoibian: Emmanuel Macron has in his DNA the image of green growth, the idea that to preserve the living conditions of the population and to develop society, we must rely on technology, individual responsibility. Today, we are faced with a shortage of raw materials and therefore this model of infinite growth is coming to a halt and we feel that there is a form of turn that the Head of State is trying to take. He says that we will no longer be able to follow this model of green growth and that we have to move towards sobriety. But the sobriety presented by the Head of State is that of constraint, of renunciation. The idea of sobriety is rather to start from the needs of individuals. Today, 40% of cars are SUVs and the weight of cars has been steadily increasing for the past ten years. We need to move but do we need to have an SUV? The Citizen’s Climate Convention had decided to give up this form of abundance that the SUV can be, saying to itself that we were going to ban these sales of large vehicles. But in the end, we didn’t ban the 1.4 ton but the 1.8 ton, or 2% of the vehicles.
So you share Emmanuel Macron’s observation but not his vocabulary?
Vocabulary and vision of society. There is an individual responsibility which is valued, the idea of making small gestures and that this is how we will manage to manage scarcity and lack. We know that individual responsibility is a quarter of the way to reduce the carbon footprint. We understand that this can annoy a part of the public who is trying to do a certain number of things, but to be able to get moving you need a general movement. Sobriety is like a Rubik’s cube: if there is only a small square that moves, that cannot be enough. There are things that could change, a relationship with consumption that is changing, but not fast enough. But this cannot be the only lever. There are many constrained dimensions in the choice of households, the question of infrastructure, public transport, housing prices, on which they cannot act. This is where the word abundance comes in.
If Emmanuel Macron had said that everything had to be changed, would the French have been ready?
We have one in two French people who is already involved in an action. Some have reduced meat consumption, we have a 12% drop over ten years, which is not nothing. The question that arises is to make households move, but for that we need action from companies and public authorities. But everyone is passing the buck. To get moving you have to have the feeling that it is right. Recurringly, when limiting measures are taken, there is a feeling that it is “double standards”, that for the little ones there are a lot of taxes and that there are fewer for the fats. Acceptability is very much at stake in the question of fairness and in supporting households.