Faced with degrowth, the ecological imperative is prosperity

Key figures:

Carbon targets & degrowth

• 0 to 0.5%/year: the Western growth rate that the degrowth camp proposes not to exceed.
• 11 t CO₂/year: average footprint of a French person today.
• 2 t CO₂/year: the target to be reached per person.
• 4 to 5 t CO₂/year: achievable floor even with an ascetic lifestyle following a model without economic growth (Carbone 4, “Faire sa part”, 2019).
• +2 centuries: the period over which the link between growth and poverty reduction is confirmed.
• The last 15 years: the period during which this link has strengthened further.

Decoupling between economic growth and CO2 emissions: countries (IPCC 2022)

• 23 countries have decoupled their GDP from their territorial emissions.
• 14 of them also achieve this in terms of consumption emissions (including imported goods).
• 67 out of 116 emerging countries have begun a relative decoupling.

High-income economies, 1960 to 2022

• CO₂ per capita: peak of ≈15 t in the mid-2000s, then decline below 13 t.
• Sulphur emissions: peak already in the 1970s, then collapse.
• Material footprint and primary energy consumption: plateau in the mid-2000s.

United States, 1980 to 2011

• GDP +128%
• population +37%
• emissions of the 6 main pollutants −63%

Dematerialisation in the United States (2000-2015): consumption of the 5 major metals

• Steel −15% (2015 vs 2000)
• Aluminium −32%
• Copper −40%

US agriculture

• Fertiliser −25% (2015 vs 1999 peak)
• Water for crops −22% (vs 1984 maximum)
• Cereal-growing area reduced by an area equivalent to the state of Washington, with rising production.
• Farms: 2.5 million (1982) → 2.05 million (2017), with rising production.

Sufficiency/degrowth vs decoupling: two visions clash

Faced with the climate challenge, two schools of thought clash.

The first preaches “sufficiency”, a polite word for degrowth. Degrowth is the idea that production and consumption must be deliberately reduced, at least in rich countries, to bring our footprint back within planetary limits. It rests on a simple premise: since growth and pollution are supposedly inseparable, producing less and thus consuming less would be the only way to pollute less.

The second school, ours, is banking on decoupling. Decoupling is the idea that the link, long considered unbreakable, between economic growth and environmental degradation can be broken. In practice: producing and consuming more without emitting more. It is the opposite bet to degrowth.

We must therefore profoundly transform our production system so that the growth of our activities no longer increases greenhouse gas emissions. The ultimate goal is total decoupling, where human activity no longer harms nature. We do not want less economy; we want an economy that no longer pollutes.

This fight is anything but abstract. A recent international report on social justice proposes bringing Western growth down to 0 to 0.5% per year, and leading economists now present growth as a doomed strategy. It is precisely this path of organised impoverishment that we reject.

The dead end of degrowth

It is authoritarian, even liberty-crushing. It assumes that some authority decides, in our place, which needs are “legitimate” and at what pace they should be met. This is a form of tutelage over freedoms that we oppose on principle.

It is socially explosive. From the Yellow Vests to the revolt of European farmers, we can see the popular rejection of coercive ecology. Tomorrow, with even harsher measures across every sector at once, this rejection would become unmanageable.

It is mathematically insufficient. Even in its most radical form, it does not reach the target. A French person emits on average 11 tonnes of CO₂ per year; the target is 2 tonnes. Even by giving up flying, cars, meat, fish and dairy, buying only second-hand and heating at 18 degrees under several jumpers, one would struggle to get down to 4 or 5 tonnes (“Faire sa part” analysis, Carbone 4, 2019). Maximum austerity falls halfway short of the target.

It saws off the branch it is sitting on. If the entire population becomes poorer voluntarily, businesses and the state are left without revenue. How then can we finance the colossal investments needed for decarbonisation? You cannot decarbonise a bloodless economy. Degrowth dries up the very source of wealth on which the transition depends.

It would break the global social lift. For more than two centuries, in every region of the world, it is growth in income per capita that has driven poverty down: it is one of the most robust findings in all of economic research, and it has strengthened further over the past fifteen years. Where the poorest have fallen behind, it has almost always been because the economy stopped growing, never because growth was captured by a few. The incomes of the poorest and productivity in fact move hand in hand. Organising degrowth therefore means condemning the most vulnerable to stagnation first.

It locks us into an inward-looking society. A stagnating economy closes in on itself: it erodes support for solidarity, fuels distrust of institutions, stirs up tensions between groups and pushes everyone to grab hold of increasingly scarce resources.

It is no coincidence that periods of sluggish growth coincide with the return of political tensions. Degrowth does not produce happy sufficiency, but a zero-sum game.

Decoupling is not a myth: it is proven

Our opponents don't want decoupling. The facts prove them wrong.

A distinction is made between absolute decoupling, corresponding to an actual fall in emissions as GDP rises, and relative decoupling, in which emissions continue to grow but more slowly than GDP, so that their intensity, the amount emitted per unit of GDP, decreases. Regarding absolute decoupling, a further distinction is needed depending on the scope used: territorial emissions, produced on national soil, on one hand, and emissions linked to population consumption on the other, the latter also including emissions generated abroad to manufacture imported goods.

The decoupling of growth and consumption is indeed an unprecedented phenomenon that we have been witnessing for a few years now and which disproves all theories of degrowth advocates, declinists and other collapsologists

According to the IPCC (2022), 23 countries have already decoupled their GDP from their territorial emissions; 14 of them achieve this even accounting for everything they consume, including imported goods, so it is impossible to claim they have simply “exported their pollution”. Better still: 67 of the 116 emerging countries have begun a relative decoupling. This means their growth is no longer linked to an increase in GHG emissions per unit of GDP.

This movement follows a robust law, the environmental Kuznets curve: after a polluting development phase, a country that reaches a certain level of wealth sees its pollution peak, stabilise, then fall. The United States demonstrated this: between 1980 and 2011, their GDP jumped by 128% and their population by 37%, while emissions of their six main pollutants collapsed by 63%.

The long-term data are even more striking. Across high-income economies as a whole, between 1960 and 2022, the footprint per inhabitant first rose with wealth… then reversed. Per capita CO₂ emissions peaked in the mid-2000s at around 15 tonnes, before falling back below 13; the material footprint and primary energy consumption plateaued at the same time; and sulphur emissions, which peaked in the 1970s, collapsed. All this while GDP per capita kept rising. A decisive point: these figures already account for production offshored abroad. The “exported pollution” argument definitively falls apart.

Between 2000 and 2015, while GNP was growing in the United States, consumption of the 5 major metals (aluminium, nickel, copper, steel and gold) fell: 15% less steel in 2015 compared to 2000, 32% less aluminium, 40% less copper, etc. For aluminium, for example, this is explained by the fact that cans used to weigh an average of 59 grams, whereas they now weigh only 13 grams.

The American manufacturing industry shows the same phenomenon: while production increased by 43% between 1994 and 2016, the number of industrial establishments, or locations where manufacturing activities take place, fell by nearly 15%

The same phenomenon can be seen in agriculture: in the United States, fertiliser consumption fell by 25% in 2015 compared to the 1999 peak. The amount of water used for crops fell by 22% compared to its 1984 maximum. The cereal-growing area in the United States was reduced by an area equivalent to the state of Washington, even as cereal production greatly increased. Meanwhile, the number of farms fell from 2.5 million holdings in 1982 to 2,050,000 in 2017. With rising production.

This decoupling phenomenon between agricultural production and farmland area empirically shows that, contrary to the assumption underlying the methodology used to calculate the ecological footprint, an increase in the production of goods, a rise in our living standards or population growth does not necessarily require additional land to provide these resources or absorb this waste. The very concept of “carrying capacity” underlying the calculation of the ecological footprint becomes obsolete here.

The major emerging economies, India, China, are getting closer every day to the threshold where they too will trigger this shift.

The rebound effect? A blessing, not a curse

We are told that every efficiency gain is cancelled out by an increase in consumption. That's true, but what is the goal? Reducing consumption, or reducing emissions? Confusing the two is the flawed premise of degrowth.

Once an activity no longer harms the environment, consumption ceases to be a problem. A prosperous population, with growing needs, speeds up the world's march towards the right side of the curve. Far from wanting to curb consumption, we want to encourage it: the more growth advances, the faster global decoupling accelerates.

And whether degrowth advocates like it or not, prosperity continues to raise well-being, even in already-rich countries. Once corrected for how each person reassesses their situation over time, life satisfaction continues to rise with income per capita, even at the wealth levels of the United States. There is no magic threshold beyond which growth would cease to be useful: that is an invention of degrowth theorists, disproven by the data.

We will not run out of resources

For fifty years we've been told a shortage is imminent, just as the death of capitalism has been predicted for 175 years. The reality is that stocks are abundant, far beyond what the transition requires. And the market keeps watch: when a resource becomes scarce, its price rises, which pushes inventors and investors to find a substitute that is often better and cheaper. Scarcity is not a fate, it is a signal that triggers innovation.

Conversely, a stagnating economy invents nothing: it merely seizes what already exists. It is degrowth, not growth, that turns scarcity into destiny.

Our vision: a liberal industrial revolution

Decoupling requires an industrial policy of unprecedented scale, backed by massive private investment: decarbonised electricity production based on nuclear and renewable energy, extension of all possible reactors and a new fleet (SMRs and 4th generation by 2040), electrification of processes, CO₂ capture, hydrogen and green molecules, reopening of clean mines in Europe, neutral synthetic fuels for lorries, cargo ships and aircraft, precision farming, new genomic techniques, massive reforestation and biodiversity regeneration. This is a project of prosperity, jobs and sovereignty.

This revolution is already under way, and it proves the market right. The solar and battery revolution, at the heart of the decoupling between energy and emissions, is now powering millions of homes in poor countries while building fortunes in rich ones: growth, wealth creation and massive environmental benefits go hand in hand. This is living proof that innovation, driven by prosperity and a well-designed framework, does more for the planet than all forms of renunciation combined.

An ecological conservatism to be fought

The enemy of the environment is not consumption: it is conservatism, precautionism, inertia and the dithering of public authorities. And it is also the degrowth discourse itself, which is holding back the ecological revolution we need. Every minute lost brings the failure of the transition closer.

For wherever growth slows, through demographic decline, policy error or deliberate degrowth, living standards stagnate for everyone, starting with the most vulnerable. The real problem of our time is not that we have had too much growth: it is that we do not have enough. Prosperity is not the enemy of the climate. It is its precondition.