“overconsumption: the impasse” (1/5). The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions comes up against the maintenance of our lifestyles.
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This February 10, the Head of State is not yet officially a candidate for his own succession. Two months before the first round of the presidential election, he came to present, in Belfort, his vision of the energy future of France. Throughout this speech, he will make major announcements on the revival of the nuclear sector or on the development objectives of renewable energies. But the very first project does not concern neither atom nor wind turbines: it is first, he declares, of “gaining sobriety”, to “lower our energy consumption by 40 %” Here at 2050. The word is released: “sobriety”. He will now be presented as one of the pillars of the president’s energy program.
By taking up the word on his own, Emmanuel Macron sends a signal to a leftist electorate and environmentalists. But, more broadly, this borrowing reveals the way in which this ancient notion ended up imposing itself in the public debate. From “happy sobriety” by Pierre Rabhi (1938-2021) to the first papal encyclical on ecology, in 2015, work on the International Energy Agency (AIE) to those of climatologists of the group of experts Intergovernmental on climate evolution (IPCC), sobriety seems more and more essential, while remaining eminently divisive. Synonymous, for some, of a powerful and exciting lever to invent a model more respectful of the environment, it is an absolute overhaul for others, which fear the end of progress and growth. Desired or feared, it questions, in any case, the very foundations and organization of our company.
This questioning is not new. From the nineteenth e century, the industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism give a political dimension to the concept. “In the 1970s, after the publication of the Rome club report [International Association for Reflection on Sustainable Development issues] appeared that our exponential growth and our insatiable desire for wealth could lead to our loss”, recalls the Circle of reflection La Fabrique Ecologique . Broadcast in France by the thinker André Gorz (1923-2007), this idea is found first in the notion of “decay”, both for ecology and against capitalism. But, little by little, the term “sobriety”, less politically connoted, is gaining ground.
If there is no precise and shared definition, it implies moderation in the production and consumption of goods and services and the abandonment of excessive or superfluous practices or uses. “This term can lend confusing, notes Eloi Laurent, researcher at the French Observatory of Economic Conditions (OFCE). He suggests that we have lived well and that we should now live in a reduced way. However, it is the contrary: we must learn to live better, not to live less. Learn to live with the biosphere, not against it. “
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