Reducing the standard of living at all costs

The figures are there: there would be room for 700 million Europeans, and we have 7 billion. So everyone should be content with a standard of living which is ten times lower than the average European…

Which European would be ready to do so? What American? Which African or Asian dreaming of Westernization would agree to reduce to the tenth his hopes of happiness? We immediately see that the prospect of such a decline encounters phenomenal resistance.

The idea remains to reduce the ecological footprint of the individual through new technologies: reasoned agriculture, carbon capture, water and landfill purification, waste recyclages, pollutant bans, renewable energies, biofuels, hydrogen and other choruses cheerfully enthroned by ecologists, and ending too often on a point of disorientation…

There is no need to despair: all the progress we can make to limit the ecological footprint of progress will soon be caught up in the exponential population. By limiting environmental degradation, famine, disease and deprivation are temporarily avoided. But the proliferation of the species is also promoted. Maintaining durables living conditions leaves the field open to reproduction, and increasing populations nullifies efforts to preserve the environment. Predictable stress in the event of environmental degradation may also increase births, as is observed in the poorest countries or families. The solution, if it exists, is therefore not ecological. Or not just.

We immediately see that the problem will be solved only by a drastic limitation of the number of humans. However, in the current order of things, this limitation can only be done in two ways: prohibitions, war, disease, death; by raising awareness of the need for people to drastically reduce birth rates. Neither track is directly applicacbles.

Growth is based on increasing consumption and increasing consumer growth. Without growth, our socio-economic system collapses, with all the social and individual consequences we know. The reduction in the number of inhabitants leads eventually to a decline. It is therefore socio-economically impossible to reduce the world population. The impasse is total.

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Or else, we should find a way to act in depth on birth rates. An awareness, a change of behaviour that causes individuals to reproduce less without harming anyone…

At times, it hides possible realities. It’s the only hope we have left…