The French president is the first major political leader brave enough to acknowledge the inter-related declines of population, pollution, natural resource use, food supply, industrial output, and the economy
Opinion: Something quite remarkable happened last month when French President Emmanuel Macron said:
“What we are currently living through is a kind of major tipping point or a great upheaval … we are living the end of what could have seemed an era of abundance … the end of the abundance of products of technologies that seemed always available … the end of the abundance of land and materials including water.”
This was not an off the cuff remark but a planned address to his Ministers and the French nation.
And he was not only talking about France, which is a permanent member of the UN Security Council, a member of the G7 nations, part of the European Union, and the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, a coalition that spans the globe. Macron is very aware of the interdependencies of the global economy and the implications of making such a radical statement.
He is the first major political leader brave enough to publicly acknowledge a body of research begun 50 years ago at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the famous Limits to Growth study. This computer simulation explored the interrelationships between such issues such as population, pollution, natural resource use, food supply, industrial output, and the economy.
The simulation projected significant declines in all of these variables in the early to mid-part of the 21st century. The summary graph is presented below, with both the projections and actual data up to 2000. Clearly, the actual data confirms these earlier projections.
We now have Macron, a G7 leader, talking not about continued economic growth, or a smooth transition away from fossil fuels to renewables, but about a great upheaval related to resource scarcity.
Multiple scientific reports support the findings that mineral resources are increasingly scarce and are unlikely to provide a smooth transitions to a global renewable energy system, that our efforts to curb climate change are still grossly inadequate, that our global energy availability is in decline, and that we are destroying the only web of life we know of in the entire universe at a rapid rate.
A recent report by a financial analyst concerned about climate change summarizes the major challenges facing China’s economy. China is suffering from serious scarcity of one of the most basic resources, water. Water is essential to its energy system. As a result its economy is in serious peril, much of which depends on water. The reverberations are about to unfold for the global economy. This is a confirmation of Macron’s statement from the world’s most populous nation.
The cost of living crisis in the UK and other parts of Europe triggered by Putin’s reduction of energy resources is another indication of what our future looks like. Many independent scientific groups have been warning policy makers that global energy availability is very likely to decline over the next few decades. These warnings have so far gone unheeded.
Coverage of Macron’s dramatic statement has been sparse and largely focused on the unfair distribution of abundance that has existed to date. The issue of inequality is intimately related to the broader issue of the limits to growth, as our current expectation is that the global poor can be aided by continued economic growth.
Macron did not directly address this issue, but it is clear from his statement that more economic growth is not how the poor can enjoy a better life. Creating more “abundance” via continued economic growth is not biophysically possible without accepting some extreme assumptions about how the global economy can continue to grow while using less energy and fewer material resources.
Many attempts to “decouple” the economy from economic growth have been made over the past few decades, but to date there is no hard empirical evidence that absolute decoupling has occurred.
Quite the contrary, as the global economy has grown over that period, the amount of energy and raw natural materials of which Macron spoke, have been increasing dramatically. We are fast approaching the tipping point predicted by the Limits to Growth study and noted by the French President.
When will other governments start paying attention?
Much more could and needs to be said about the end of abundance and what it means personally and politically. If we have genuinely reached the biophysical limits or planetary boundaries that we have repeatedly been warned about but ignored, then it means there is no more making the economic pie bigger.
For the lives of the poor to improve we need to share the wealth that already exists. We have yet to hear any major political leader make such a statement, but the empirical evidence is available to support them when they find the courage to state what is now obvious.
The idea of an end to abundance is scary to most of us as we have all been alive in an age of economic growth and technical wizardry. It is a good time to be reminded that once basic needs are met, the things that make life meaningful and enjoyable are not material. Yes, many people are still struggling with basic needs, and yes, it is difficult to think about giving up an overseas holiday to cover higher taxes to provide housing and basic services for everyone.
But that is a reality we have to face if we are to avoid even greater disparities in wealth with a very small group at the top and a miserable bottom – much worse than the annus horribilis referred to by Queen Elizabeth.
NZ has taken a small step toward a Wellbeing Economy by requiring Treasury to identify and plan for environmental and social goals, rather than relying on GDP growth as the sole indicator of our society’s success.
This important initiative has not attracted much public discussion or attention.
Now is the time to have that national conversation about what our most critical environmental and social goals are if the age of abundance is coming to an end. How do we ensure the quality of life continues to improve for everyone, and not just in NZ, as this is a global issue?
This is an issue bigger than Covid, bigger than climate change alone, bigger than party politics, bigger than co-governance, bigger than vested interests and at the heart of what it means to be human. How do we survive and thrive in a future that shifts its emphasis from quantity to quality?
That’s something we can only answer together.
