http://ecologie.blog.lemonde.fr/2012/01/18/a-t-on-atteint-un-pic-des-objets/
Have we reached a "peak of objects"?
If we were to characterize it in mathematical terms, the trajectory of our civilization would be an exponential curve. Throughout the XNUMXth century, the consumption of energy and natural resources - and therefore logically greenhouse gas emissions - increased in tandem with demography.
But today, would we have reached a plateau? Have we started to reduce our consumption, or at least stabilize it? Is parsimony on its way to becoming the new luxury? This is what a recent study anticipates, which estimates that Great Britain, the country at the origin of the industrial revolution and one of the richest nations in the world, would have reached a maximum threshold of objects owned by each inhabitant, before seeing this quantity decline. It is the "peak stuff" ("peak of objects"), in the vein of peak oil (peak oil) or peak gas (peak gas).
Over the past decade, and in particular before the economic crisis, Great Britain has thus consumed less, all sectors combined: less construction materials (- 4% between 2000 and 2007), less water, paper ( - 18%), food (especially meat), fewer cars and journeys, less textiles or even fertilizers. Primary energy production also followed the same downward trend (-3%). And the country has also produced less waste. All this while GDP has continued to grow, as has population growth.
In total, and as the size of the economy has tripled, the total amount of things every Briton uses each year - around 30 tonnes - is said to have returned to its 1989 level, after a "peak of objects" reached between 2001 and 2003 , book the American site Fastcoexist, unearthed by the monthly Terra Eco.
Similar trends would have started to emerge across Europe, where household energy consumption in 2009 was 9% below the level in 2000. In France, Sweden and the Netherlands, the decline even reached 15 %.
Decoupled growth and consumption
At the origin of this data? Chris Goodall, at the same time convinced ecologist, expert of energy and climatic questions, candidate in the legislative elections of Great Britain for the Green Party, but also former consultant of McKinsey, accustomed to handle statistics.
"My point is not to deny that the planet is going to face massive environmental challenges. But the data I have gathered suggests that economic growth is not necessarily incompatible with these challenges," he told The Guardian . It could even be the other way around. For the author, the example of England even shows that at a certain level of GDP, the more economic growth accelerates, the more it involves an efficient use of resources, and the less the country consumes material things. The two concepts could therefore prove to be compatible or, at least, decoupled.
Understandably, Goodall's thesis has sparked such heated debate among environmentalists and economists as it is offbeat. On the one hand, optimists like Jesse Ausubel, director of the Environment Program at Rockefeller University in New York, see these numbers as a long-term, unstoppable trend, which is the logical culmination of what economists call the environmental curve of Kuznets, named after its inventor Kuznets Simon. This curve suggests that as countries industrialize, they go through an early phase where they waste resources and generate massive pollution before reaching a tipping point beyond which they begin to invest in more efficient resources. Then comes a gradual decrease in the amount of materials and energy needed to generate every dollar of gross domestic product. Ausubel calls this process "dematerialization".
Relocation of consumer industries
"The idea that the transition to a sustainable economy will emerge spontaneously by giving free rein to the market is false", retorts in the Guardian the English economist Tim Jackson, author of the famous book Prosperity without growth. “It is heartwarming to believe that we have weaned ourselves from our addiction to material things. But historical analysis shows that all of the declines in consumption in the UK are mostly fairly small: a few percent over a decade. in many cases, these figures are lower than the statistical margins of error of the measurements ", continues the expert.
Not to mention that Goodall's study does not take into account the relocation of resource-consuming industries to developing countries. Thus, if the consumption of oil, coal or gas is decreasing in Great Britain, total carbon emissions, once reallocated the emissions from foreign factories producing British laptops, toys or clothing, continue to increase regularly in the country.
Despite everything, the idea of a "peak stuff" raises interesting questions: how to ensure that consumption will not increase again, and even more sharply than in the past? And if Britain really peaked, how did it get there? Was it just the shift from an industry-based economy to a service-based economy, and the growing weight of the Internet? Or the fact that the British Isles are running out of space for business, accommodation and transport? Or a more interconnected population because they live more in cities?
Researchers do not yet have answers to these questions. But there is no doubt that the reasons will eventually be found and will help other countries reach their "peak of objects". To send a key message, in a world that will soon reach 9 billion people: less can be better.
Audrey Garric
