Ferghane Azihari is an essayist, general delegate of the Free Academy of Human Sciences, member of the Society for Political Economy and author of
Ecologists Against Modernity.
The trial of Prometheus
(Presses de la Cité, 2021).
Philippe Charlez is an engineer, expert in energy issues at the Sapiens Institute and author of
Utopia of green growth
(Jacques-Marie Laffont, 2021).
Two centuries ago, Europe unleashed an industrial revolution that gave coal and oil – until then confined to marginal applications – unprecedented utility.
We are indebted to the inventors of the machines that made it possible to convert thermal energy into mechanical energy and then into electricity.
The use of these machines within an economy whose opening has accelerated since the fall of the Berlin Wall explains the prodigious improvement in the human condition.
Economic growth has not only reduced hunger, disease, ignorance, and the drudgery of the annual work spent in the West from 3000 to 1500 hours between the end of the 19th century and the 21st century.
It has also cleaned up our environment.
To the disciples of Serge Latouche, convinced that the quality of air and water
"is part of the losses caused by productivism"
, it will be recalled that pollution killed industrial society much earlier.
Constantly irrigated by ecological thought, the opposition between development and environment has no foundation.
Ferghane Azihari and Philippe Charlez
The peoples did not maintain any harmonious relationship with their environment when, for lack of electricity, water treatment plants or smoke treatment, they poisoned themselves by heating, cooking, drinking and producing at home. using rudimentary procedures.
Even today, pollution kills more people in weakly industrialized nations lacking such technologies than in developed countries.
This observation also applies to natural disasters: isn't it easier to resist droughts and floods by desalinating seawater like in Israel or by deploying a sophisticated system of dykes like in the Netherlands?
Constantly irrigated by ecological thought, the opposition between development and environment has no foundation.
Read alsoNuclear, gas: the choices of Brussels scrutinized by experts
Modern society has nevertheless traded old ecological ills for new evils of which climate change is one of the most worrying.
To face it, the apostles of green Rousseauism urge us to take the path of degrowth.
They bow down to Gaia but neglect “Sapiens”.
They forget that this struggle is above all motivated by material considerations.
It is because climate change threatens our comfort and security that we fight it.
A virtuous ecological policy must ensure the highest possible standard of living for Man by guaranteeing the safety of his environment.
Technical and economic progress to decarbonize and adapt our societies appears to be the only desirable path.
Ferghane Azihari and Philippe Charlez
A virtuous ecological policy must ensure the highest possible standard of living for Man by guaranteeing the safety of his environment.
Technical and economic progress to decarbonize and adapt our societies appears to be the only desirable path.
She is also the most believable.
The technologies required to achieve these goals are more accessible to rich countries.
Renouncing growth would deprive humanity of these solutions.
However, the development of humanity must now take a different form from the growth of the past two centuries.
Just as the Stone Age did not end for lack of stones, the Age of Fossils will have to end despite their abundance.
Let's beware of relying on intermittent energies such as wind and solar.
They are incapable of feeding a developed civilization.
Their supporters are also delighted with the
“happy sobriety”
that they would induce.
A sobriety that would in fact translate into absolute poverty.
Read also"Vu d'ailleurs" N°72 - Will the green nuclear war take place?
Between 2006 and 2021, 5000 billion dollars have been allocated to these energies on a global scale.
However, the 1300 TW implemented produce only 12% of the world's electricity.
And, during the very electricity-intensive winter periods, there is often neither wind nor sun.
The development of renewables appears to be a vast
“greenwashing” operation
.
Their failure should encourage us to review our strategy.
The only low-carbon, abundant, controllable, large-scale efficient source of energy available today is nuclear power.
If the 5000 billion dollars invested in renewables had been invested in conventional nuclear power (we considered an average cost of 3 billion dollars per GW), the latter would today produce more than half of the world's electricity and GHG emissions would have contracted by 18%.
The atom is therefore the most credible technology for decoupling human prosperity and greenhouse gas emissions.
Ecological Puritanism abhors the dream of man as the "master and possessor" of nature.
Ferghane Azihari and Philippe Charlez
This should encourage each nation to draw up its own
"Messmer plan"
, named after the one that allowed France to acquire a nuclear fleet at a time when it had less experience and means.
Thanks to the atom, France is one of the rare developed countries to have initiated the decoupling between prosperity and greenhouse gases: a Frenchman, for example, emits less CO2 than a Mongol, so he is four times richer.
Given the wealth and knowledge accumulated by humanity since the dawn of the industrial revolution, this effort is within our reach.
This on the condition of ignoring the prescribers of misery for whom the protection of nature means less the safeguarding of a hospitable environment for man than the sanctuary of a frozen planet from which he must be excluded.
One cannot help doubting the sincerity of ecologists who are officially hostile to the atom for security reasons when in reality they have always demonized the very idea of energy abundance.
Ecological Puritanism abhors the dream of man as
"master and possessor"
of nature.
A dream which however does not induce any conflict with it insofar as our Promethean society only uses physics, chemistry and biology in the service of this natural being that is Sapiens.
As the philosopher Francis Bacon reminded us:
“we can only triumph over nature by obeying it”
.
