Essayist, Ferghane Azihari is a member of the Political Economy Society (SEP). On October 21, he will publish an essay on the ecological question at the Presses de la Cité.
In 1972, the American anthropologist Marshall Sahlins supported the thesis that hunter-gatherers had, before the invention of agriculture, a more comfortable life than the first peasants. There is nothing glorious about the results of the Neolithic revolution. This confirms the criticism of modernity which irrigates ecological discourse. Praising the work of Sahlins, his colleague David Graeber enthusiastically emphasized their key role in the emergence of decreasing movements in the 1970s.
However, a closer examination of nomadism calls into question this idealized past.
Among the disciples of Rousseau who regret the primitive prosperity, few recall that the nomads regularly killed their children and their elders.
According to anthropologist Joseph Birdsell,
"the rate of infanticide during the Pleistocene was between 15 and 50% of the total number of births
.
"
Hunting and gathering add no wealth to that offered by wild nature.
With sedentarization, human life can multiply despite the increase in mortality caused by diseases momentarily aggravated by sedentary lifestyle.
Ferghane azihari
Sedentarization reduces infanticide. Better !
"Sedentary farmers were experiencing unprecedented reproduction rates
,
"
admits anthropologist James Scott, who is nevertheless among those who accuse sedentarization of having impoverished human existence. Children pass from the status of pests to that of useful agricultural labor. Pessimists, like the environmentalist philosopher Dominique Bourg, will deplore that this innovation
“ended up causing a demographic improvement, making any turning back impossible”.
Optimists will insist that human life can multiply despite the increase in mortality caused by diseases momentarily aggravated by a sedentary lifestyle.
But the demographic improvement peculiar to the Neolithic period is nothing compared to that allowed by successive industrial revolutions since the end of the 18th century.
The demographic growth that our societies have known for two centuries owes nothing to an explosion in the birth rate (which is falling on all continents).
It owes everything to the decline in mortality and the increase in life expectancy characteristic of societies which are experiencing significant progress in terms of health and nutrition: an expanding demography is the mark of a human condition. improving that empathy forbids to deplore.
When Malthus publishes his essay, the world's population is significantly less than 1 billion people and misery is the norm.
223 years later, we are 8 billion and misery becomes the exception.
Ferghane azihari
There is, however, a paradox.
Our growing prosperity gives rise to ever greater concerns about our condition.
From this arose the fears relating to "overpopulation", qualified as "Malthusian" because of the name of their first theorist.
Malthus published his
Essay on Population
in 1798. As England began its industrial revolution, the pastor feared that the production of wealth was not sufficient to support exponential population growth.
Uncontrolled, the population would end up coming up against brutal regulators: famines, wars and diseases.
The experience belies his thesis. Demography has never taken the path of an infinite exponential and has remained inferior to the increase in wealth. When Malthus publishes his essay, the world's population is significantly less than 1 billion people and misery is the norm. 223 years later, we are 8 billion and misery becomes the exception.
But the Malthusians do not budge.
They speak of luck and argue that our prosperity has been achieved "despite" population growth.
According to this logic, we would be even more prosperous if there were fewer of us.
This is how the collapsologists Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens pose the problem in their bestseller published in 2015: “
do we generally prefer to be fewer and consume more, or more and consume less?
»(
How everything can collapse: Small manual of collapsology for the use of the present generations, Seuil
)
While Malthusianism sees men only as consumers, a French economist like Frédéric Bastiat recalls that they are first and foremost producers.
Ferghane azihari
To rejoice in a depopulation supposes to subscribe to the thesis that the current demography would threaten our prosperity. However, there is nothing to support it. In the 16th century, Jean Bodin already had the lucidity to underline that one should "
never fear that there are too many subjects, too many citizens since there is no wealth or strength except men
" . Economists will endow this intuition with a solid theory.
While Malthusianism sees men only as consumers, a French economist like Frédéric Bastiat recalls that they are first and foremost producers.
Thus, a free country which sees its population increase sees its number of workers increase.
It means a bigger market, a better division of labor, more specialized industries, faster capital accumulation and greater wealth production.
It is no accident that our prosperity has increased with our numbers.
And it is likely that a declining population would be poorer.
This is why the Chinese Communist Party is going back on its disastrous and criminal one-child policy and is now trying to encourage its subjects to have more children.
According to historian Raymond Cazelles, Paris had 200,000 souls in 1328, 10 times less than today.
However, air and water pollution killed a higher proportion of Parisians in the Middle Ages than in the 21st century.
Here, the decisive variable is technological.
Ferghane azihari
At this point in the discussion, we are commonly accused of slipping into vulgar materialism that ignores the ecological question.
While admitting that a large population favors the profusion of wealth, does it not endanger the quality of our environment through more numerous and unbearable pollution?
At first glance, this reasoning is common sense: all other things being equal, the proliferation of consumers favors the increase in harmful waste. This logic leads to depicting the decline in the population as an essential process for improving the quality of the environment and reducing industrial pollution, including CO2 emissions.
But this reasoning has a flaw. He overlooks the fact that things are rarely equal elsewhere. According to historian Raymond Cazelles, Paris had 200,000 souls in 1328, 10 times less than today. However, air and water pollution killed a higher proportion of Parisians in the Middle Ages than in the 21st century. Here, the decisive variable is technological. A medieval town of 200,000 inhabitants which depends on the very toxic process of burning wood for heating or cooking food and which lacks infrastructure to deliver drinking water inflicts on itself more devastating pollution than a modern metropolis of 2 million inhabitants equipped with electricity and wastewater treatment.
As early as 1981, economist Julian Simon emphasized that population growth favors technological progress.
A larger population is home to more brilliant minds, which strengthens emulation and innovation.
Finally, a large population allows significant economies of scale that allow the financing of expensive technologies that are difficult to access to small communities.
This is why cities are better equipped than the countryside with infrastructure essential to a healthy environment, such as hospitals, sewers or wastewater treatment plants.
If the stake is to make our planet more beautiful, it is better to invite Sapiens to fill it than to desert it.
Ferghane azihari
This reasoning applies to the climate issue. Between 1979 and 2019, French CO2 emissions fell by 39% while the French population fell from 54 to 65 million people over the same period. Let us mention for all intents and purposes that French industrial production is higher in 2019 than in 1979 in absolute value. Here again, we cannot understand this “paradox” without mentioning more efficient and better technologies for producing electricity. It was in fact from the 1970s that this low-carbon energy that nuclear power took off in France.
However, cleaning up our environment will depend on our desire to perfect and universalize these technologies. Such a process will be laborious. It will require the cooperation of as many workers, engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs and investors as possible. There is strength in unity, they say. The number too. If the stake is to make our planet more beautiful, it is better to invite Sapiens to fill it than to desert it.