Decrease (economy)

The decrease is a Concept political, economic and social, being placed contrary to the current political consensus, according to which the Economic growth is a benefit. The partisans of the decrease propose to substitute a reduction in consumption and production in order to respect to him the climate, the ecosystem and the human beings.

The decrease is not regarded by its defenders as a political dogma, nor an economic model. Thus for Paul Ariès: “It is not an ideology nor an economic model moreover, it is initially a word-shell to pulverize the dominant thought economist. ” In the same way, Serge Latouche considers that it is about a “lucky find happy rhetoric” and prefers the term of have-growth , as one speaks about “atheism”.

Genealogy

The concept of “decrease” is born in the years 1970 - partly through the thesis of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen - awakening from the consequences allotted to the productivism from the industrial society (that this one is resulting from a system Capitaliste or Socialiste):

Exhaustion of the resources for energy: oil (world oil Peak arriving between 2008 and 2040 according to the forecasts of the companies and the governments), gas (70 years), Uranium (50 years), coal (200 years) (with the current rhythm of consumption).

Rarefaction of many primary resources: Copper, steel, Iridium, etc…

Environmental pollution: Greenhouse effect, deregulation of the climate, loss of the biodiversity, Pollution in any kinds.

Degradation of the health which results from it: flora, fauna, and also of humanity itself: sterility, allergies, malformations, increase in cancer in France of 63% of 1980 to 2000 (280 000 cases, of which only 30% are ascribable with the tobacco and alcohol), (although the ageing of the population are also a multiplying factor).

Evolution of the lifestyle of the countries of North to the detriment of the countries of the South: transport, treatment of our waste, food (example: the countries of North import soya of the developing countries to nourish their cattle: 7 vegetable calories for 1 animal calorie), energies. Exploitation of the resources of the countries of the South to the detriment of their self-sufficiency. (Exploitation considered as “neo-colonial”).

This Productivisme, recently, is partially called in question by the “Sustainable development”, concept which is often seen by the partisans of the decrease like a Oxymore (a contradiction in term): those support that at the rate/rhythm which it maintains, (20% of the planetary population consuming 85% of the natural resources already), the development cannot be durable.

The concept of “decrease” tries to show that to always increase further and the production of the goods and services, increases necessarily the consumption of the Natural resources, thus making only accelerate the moment of their exhaustion. It tries to also show that the dematerialization of the economy, hoped by the laudators of the growth, is a lure.

In addition, the problem of the exhaustion of the energy resources put aside, when one multiplies the ecological Empreinte (in Hectares) of an average European (I.e. surface considered it necessary to produce its consumed resources and to absorb its waste and pollution) by the world population, the estimates show that it would be necessary between 3 and 8 planets Ground so that the world population approaches the European lifestyle. These richest 20% would have thus other choice only to reduce their production and their consumption in order to " décroître".

For its partisans, the decrease, late, will early or be imposed by the rarefaction of the natural resources. They propose to anticipate it so as to affect the least possible our quality of life.

Presentation

The concept of “decrease” is born from a controversy on the growth from GDP. The defenders of the concept of decrease affirm that the growth as measured by the GDP is “only quantitative” (in opposition to qualitative), since it measures only the increase in the production and the sale of goods without taking account of the wellbeing of the populations, of the health of the ecosystems and climatic balances. They privilege alternative indices of development such as the Indicateur of human development, the ecological Empreinte, the Indice of social health.

The partisans of the decrease affirm as this type of economic development is opposed to the “human values” and account does not hold owing to the fact that the Ground is limited as well in its natural resources as in its capacity to support the destruction of sound Biotope (impact strength).

The Theory called “Bioéconomie” as expressed by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen in The Entropy law and the Economic Process (1971) belonged to the bases of the decrease, just like criticisms of the industrialization of years 1960 and 70, like that of the Club of Rome, through in particular the Report/ratio Meadows of 1972 which has as a French title Halte with the growth? , or that of Ivan Illich with User-friendliness (1973).

Reports/ratios of the Club of Rome

In 1968, the Club of Rome order to a research team of the Massachusetts Institute off Technology a report/ratio to recommend practical solutions with the planetary problems. This report published in 1972, entitled Limits to Growth ( Halt with the growth? in its French edition), is the first important study underlining the ecological dangers of the economic growth which the world knows then. A second report/ratio entitled To leave the era of the wasting: tomorrow was published in 1974. These reports/ratios, also known under the name of Meadows reports/ratios, are not in a strict sense texts founders of the decrease. They are however regarded as the first “official” studies explicitly presenting the economic growth like a crucial factor of the aggravation of the planetary disordered states (pollution, shortages of raw materials, destruction of the ecosystems).

One can consider that the thesis of the “ zero growth ” defended in these reports/ratios had many heirs, in particular the claim of a bearable decrease.

Thesis of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen

Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen is regarded by certain as the father of the decrease: he publishes in 1971 a work titrated The Entropy Law and the Economic Process . Into 1979, Jacques Grinevald translates the work under the title Demain the decrease . Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen estimates that the neo-classic economic model is founded on the paradigm of the Newtonian Mécanique not taking into account the principle of the degradation of energy and the matter. It is based as for him on the paradigm of thermodynamics and introduced the principle of entropy (Second principle of thermodynamics) into its economic model. It associates, with economic flows, of the matter and the energy which by the means of the various production processs are degraded in an irreversible way. For example the raw materials used for the construction of the computers are split up and disseminated through all planet and it becomes practically impossible to reconstitute the ores of origin. As for the energy used for their manufacture, it is dissipated forever.

Assumptions

The theory of the decrease starts from four assumptions:

the operation of the current economic system depends primarily on resources épuisables whose consumption accelerates.
It does not have there a proof of a possible “decoupling” between the economic growth and the growth of the ecological impacts.
the increase in the commercial richness can be made with the detriment other types of richnesses like the health of the ecosystems, the quality of justice, the good relationships which are maintained between the people within the same company, the degree of equality, the democratic character of the institutions, etc
the Western companies, whose economic development was primarily based on the increase in the consumption of tangible properties, would not be conscious of the degradation of more essential richnesses like quality of life (silence, air not polluted, pure water…), and the frustrations generated near the populations excluded from this abundance would underestimate, that it is in the popular layers or the Pays of the South.

The decrease is not presented like an end in itself but like a means of seeking a higher quality of life and of making it possible the future generations to also enjoy it. Its holding assert that the measurement of GDP is an abstract measurement not taking into account the wellbeing of the populations nor the health of the ecosystems.

A particular aspect: the measurement of the growth

In the thought of the traditional liberals, the richness “or not embraces all the things, material or intellectual, tangible, which get utility or pleasures with the mankind. ” It thus integrates as much the goods produced by the men that the quality of the social reports/ratios or that of the environment. However, historically, the search for an evaluation of the evolution of the richnesses, dependant as well on political needs as scientific, led the economists to create indicators taking of account only measurable richnesses the “. ” With the wire of the history, focusing on these indicators thus gradually directed the definition of the richness towards the only saleable outputs. Thus there exists a political consensus today on the benefits of the growth of the GDP. and calls into question the basic categories of the economy: money, wages, the exchange value, prices, “laws economic”, etc

Sustainable development and countries under-developed

Holding of the decrease tolerate a certain growth for the little developed zones and the poorest communities and individuals, but consider that the process is not “durable”:

a sustainable development would imply always to differentiate the development qualitative and human (the development of the wellbeing, school, cultural and of harmonious Community operating rules, etc) from the material aspects limited by their consumption of resource. The Biodiversité must be preserved. The development then becomes necessarily one “écodéveloppement” more respectful of the environment and the Man (from where the idea emergent of environmental High-quality and of ecocertification more or less actually applied according to the cases). To achieve this goal:

it is necessary to preserve the populations of a world economic situation of end of the vital resources. The relocalization of the economies (priority to the production and consumption local and the reduction of motorized transport) is one of the means suggested.
to make benefit poor zones from best technologies and strategies as regards energy efficiency and ecological.
Of the recently reformulated ideas, but which were embryonic in écodéveloppement of Ignacy Sachs or of Rene Dumont then of Rene Passet are the concept of “refunding of the ecological Dette”, even of a social debt, and a shared and equitable reduction of the ecological print, in a vision of interdependent development.

“Rebound Effect”

The “Effect rebound”, usually used in saving energy, described the effect of an improvement of effectiveness of the use of a resource on its request: if the effectiveness of use increases by 1%, consumption decreases in a quite less proportion, and can even increase in extreme cases.

Certain partisans of the decrease postulate “a systematic extreme rebound effect”: according to them, any technological advance, any improvement of productivity, instead of decreasing the consumption of raw materials and energy, would result on the contrary in producing much more, therefore to consume more.

For example, the advent of the Data-processing and the networks in its beginnings let think of a possible disappearance of the paper medium. In fact, one initially noted an increase in consumption of it According to the manufacturer of office supplies Esselte, the demand for paper increased by 40% in the companies which founded a system of email, because the employees tend to print their e-mail before reading them. The reduction was in addition compensated by the rise of the emergent countries become consumers. However, the fall of pulling of the newspapers papers ended up carrying it, in particular in North America, and is one of the causes of the paper crisis of 2005.

Another example: the Automobile Industry . It is today possible to produce vehicles much less polluting per unit of power than there are a few tens of years; but like their number, their power, their mass, the traversed kilometers, the air-conditioned cockpits increase, automobile pollution increases too. The same argument is advanced concerning the Recyclage of which the effect, however important, is not always enough to compensate for the increase in production of waste per capita.

The partisans of the decrease summarize the “rebound effect” so that when one manages to produce a unit while polluting less (or with less raw materials), one ends by producing more units, and finally up polluting more (or to consume more matters).

“Débond Effect”

Answering the know-evoked principle, the débond effect, on the individual level, passes by an acceptance of a personal lifestyle in harmony with a voluntary Simplicité: in other words, the productivity gains must be invested in time saved for leisures not " consommateurs" resources for planet, and not reinvested by effect rebound to accelerate this consumption.

The militants of the Decrease propose consequently solutions that they consider practical and rational to reduce as much as possible the Dépendance to oil of the companies Western.

Bearable decrease

The qualifier of bearable is added (Cheynet-Clémentin, 2001) in opposition to the Sustainable development. It makes a translation righter of the word English sustainable than does not give the “durable” term. It expresses, according to the objectors of growth, the idea that in the situations where the threshold of an ecological print corresponding to a planet is exceeded individually and collectively, there is no more economic development compatible with the maintenance of a viable environment. According to this thesis, the only durable evolution would thus pass above all by a revision of the mechanisms which bring to exceed these limits. For certain partisans of the decrease, that led to the political need to organize, even to impose these changes. For those, the “bearable” term translates the wish then that the committed policies do not cause catastrophic collapse of the company.

Process, actors and means to obtain the bearable decrease

The partisans of the bearable decrease propose steps of individual initiative (see for example the voluntary Simplicité) and collective steps of sensitizing, in particular by organizing conferences and steps.

In France, a Party for the decrease was created in 2005. Even if it is necessary to moderate the concepts of decrease and bearable decrease, it is well of bearable decrease that it acts.

A group Utopia was created within the Socialist party.

The French political party the Greens, since 2004, formalized a position favorable to the concept of decrease which was supported since, while bringing the concept of “selective and equitable decrease there”.

A certain part of the libertarian movement takes up on its account the ideas of the decrease, in particular Jean-Pierre Tertrais in his booklet “Of the development to” the subtitled “decrease Of the need for leaving the suicidal dead end of capitalism”. The libertarian approach is related much to the will to radically change the economic and social structures of the company to count on individual initiatives or etatist. For them, it is the capitalist mechanism of the appreciation which is at the base of the overproduction and the destruction of the ecosystems. The solution would be to promote an organization of the company of federation of free communes, the practice of self-management on the work places and in the districts as well as the relocalization of the economy.

Media

Association Casseurs of Pub publishes a review (ex Revue mental environment ), the newspaper the Decrease , under titrated the Newspaper of the love of life .

One can also quote the following reviews and magazines:

the review S! lence
the review the Old one To make

Events

the Day without purchase

Steps for the decrease

The non-violent steps are a mode of action characteristic of the movement for the decrease. These steps fall under the tradition of the steps of civil Désobéissance, in particular the Marche of salt founded by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

In general, these steps are self-managed and autonomous: no motorized vehicle is used to transport food and the tents. The heavy or bulky objects are transported by asses, bicycles or on carrioles.

Even if all the steps do not claim a " explicitly; décroissance" , these events constitute an essential aspect of the movement. The success of the steps near the militants of the objection of growth is explained by coherence between the means of action and the goal of the action: thus the steps are local events and of small scale (a few ten people). With slowness and user-friendliness like principal values, the “walkers of the decrease” furrow the roads and can take time to stop to discuss with the people met in way. The debates and the transmission of the ideas are done person to person, rather than via the media of mass.

Steps in 2005

For one month (from June 7th to July 3rd, 2005), between 70 and 220 walkers, whose majority of young people, took part in Walk for the decrease, between Lyon and Nevers.

On Sunday, July 3, approximately 400 people ravelled on 15 km to ask for the suppression of the Grand Prix of France of Formule 1, considered as symbol of the company of growth and wasting of the resources. At midday, Jose Bove, Albert Jacquard, Serge Latouche and François Schneider had spoken on the place of the village of Magny-Course.

Steps in 2006

the Breton walk of the decrease: From April 27th to May 1st, 2006, a few tens of people went of Rochefort-in-ground to Our-Lady-of-Moors (close to Nantes) to protest against a project of international airport.

Grenoble-Die walk: organized by the group of the Objectors of Grenoble-native growth from April 29th to May 6th, 2006.

walk for the decrease of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais

the walk of simplicity in Charente-Maritime

Steps in 2007

the Step of the After-Growth , transborder walk, of Maubeuge (France) to Liege (Belgium).

Criticisms

By its nature even, the “word-shell” decrease causes many reactions. Thus one observes the appearance of many critics coming from very different mediums: economists classical, Marxist, ecologists reformists, alter-mondialists, etc

Critical “traditional”

The most frequent objection made with the decrease consists to propose the fact that the economic growth is creative richnesses, of use, improvement of the standard of living and thus to deduce that it is about a requirement of progress and social stability. A contrario the decrease is regarded as a recession involving unemployment, loss of the purchasing power of the households and violences social.

One finds these arguments in particular at holding of the economic evolutionism like in the majority of the economic schools of thought; Growth or chaos as Christian Blanc summarizes it.

Confidence in the advances in knowledge

A form of criticism of the decrease defends the idea that technological advance will solve the question of energies, waste and the rarefaction of the raw materials. It rests on the spirit of the lights to develop a vision technophile and optimist of the scientific research. They are based for example on the evolution of the radiant Intensity of the great worldwide economies which has strongly dropped for 20 years (cf graph). This argument is by the stagnation of the carbonic intensity recently highlighted by the researchers of the Global Carbon Project

For example, the activities of R & D in the field of nuclear energy could provide solutions of substitution vis-a-vis the probable shortage of oil. Later on, the partisans of the nuclear Fusion predict that the engines of the type ITER will be energy sources almost inexhaustible and low polluting.

Creative destruction

The economic concept of the decrease is founded on the assumption that to produce always more implies to consume more and more energy or raw materials, while decreasing labor to replace it by machines. This analysis however is disputed by some, which estimate that the technique and progress of competitiveness make it possible to produce more with less, including in the field of the services. One thus often quotes the example of the replacement of the telegraphic cables by the communications satellites.

It is that one calls the creative Destruction, i.e. the process of disappearance of branches of industry jointly to the creation of new economic activities. This expression is strongly associated with the economist Joseph Schumpeter who develops this idea in 1911 in his work Théorie of the economic evolution : any important technological innovation involves a process of creative destruction.

Critical Marxist

The Marxist point of view recognizes or shares the concern environmentalists of the decrease but considers that the control and the strategy of the growth will allow a material development growing. Thus essentially of the Marxists, the concept of decrease is vain because it eludes the question of the social reports/ratios. As a whole, these critics consider that it is the nature and the control of the production which is determining, and not its quantity.

This criticism is very current among the militants of Workers' struggle, the Communist revolutionary league and the PCF

Anti-Malthusianism

Certain opponents with the decrease compare it to a form of néo- Malthusian economics, or to a resurgence of former forms of the underlying Malthusianisme that the growth is conditioned by the exploitation of the resources, the theses “anti-Malthusians” preaching on the contrary that the exploitation of the resources depends on economic development.

Raymond Aron reports in his Mémoires that part of the left in the years 1950 showed the capitalists to refuse the growth which would endanger their position.

A flashback

The concept of decrease is sometimes presented by its detractors like a flashback. Thus the objectors of growth who propose the values of slowness and frugality, as well as the rupture with the consumer society are caricatured like technophobes preaching the return to the era of the candle, even at the age of the caves.

One can note that this critic was also addressed to the movement Hippy and with the Luddisme.

Critical Third-mondiste

Many of its detractors consider that the decrease is an idea preached by the developed middle-class classes of the countries which under cover to protect the environment, wish in makes prevent the countries known as “underdeveloped” to take the same economic way as the Western countries.

For example, Claude Allègre presents the concept of decrease like a reduction of the growth imposed to the poor by the rich person

“A moralizing concept and culpabilisator”

The decrease seems for certain (in particular in the libertarian mediums) a return of the Christian values of examination and rigor preached in particular by François d' Assise. For example, the monthly magazine the decrease, the newspaper of the love of life is often criticized for its positions moralists

Of their with dimensions, certain ecologists resulting from the political movement the Greens consider with mistrust the concepts of relocalization and autonomy, which they associate with a fold towards a local preference or nationaleainsi that a disappearance of the institutional systems of solidarity,

Critical of Georgescu-Roegen

The Rumanian economist Georgescu-Roegen based his “bioeconomic theory” on an interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics to be opposed to a material and energy growth unlimited, inviting to an economic decrease. Some estimate that this analogy contradicted the scientific analysis of the phenomena of emergence S and Néguentropie which affects the dynamic systems complex such as the human social organization.

Clean growth

Environmental curve of Kuznets

The detractors of the decrease use the concept of environmental curve of Kuznets affirming on empirical bases that certain indices of pollution follow a curve out of U reversed. For example, air pollution in certain areas of France increased at the beginning of the industrial revolution, to decrease after the closing of the factories.

However this theory is regularly called in question. The majority of the experts agree to say that the assumption of the environmental curve of Kuznets is checked only for certain pollutants located geographically.

Self-regulation of the market

The detractors of the decrease think that the growth allows the reduction or the disappearance of certain types of productions. The Capitalisme would thus allow the arbitration towards more abundant resources or worms of other goods, and would announce by the market prices a resource which rarefies. Others estimate that the economic growth has two contradictory effects. The increase in the production causes an increase in pollution, but it also allows:

to enrich the citizens who would become more concerned then of the environment which is regarded as a higher good (in fact, the environmental regulations are much more constraining in the democratic rich countries).
to release from the supplements of incomes likely to be allocated with environmental protection.
to diffuse new technologies allowing a better use of the economic resources.
finally, the companies end up claiming, under the pressure of the citizen-consumers, measurements aiming at protecting an environment necessary to good walk from their activities.

Critical on the forecasts of exhaustion of the energy resources

In the past, certain forecasts on the exhaustion of the energy resources appeared inaccurate. Cécile Philippe of the economic Institut Molinari recalls thus that, for example, since 1914, the Office of the mines in the United States estimated that the future production of oil was limited to 5,7 million barrels, that is to say perhaps ten years of consumption. She also adds, inter alia examples, that the Rapport Meadows envisaged in 1972 for before the end of the century an exhaustion of certain resources whose substitution appeared impossible. Another example, the geologist Marion King Hubbert who was interested in the oil peak announced it in 1956 for 1970 with the the United States. Contrary to the forecasts on the exhaustion of the energy resources, Daniel Yergin, American specialist in energy, considers that, thanks to the reserves and with progress of technology, the world is not close missing oil .

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