“Reducing the population would contribute to the mitigation of global warming”

Lhe year 2022 is marked by the steady and relentless advance of global warming, due to the combustion of fossil resources (coal, gas, oil) accompanied by the increase in the concentration of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere. In this context, priority has long been given to what could be done to stabilize or even reverse this increase, in order to mitigate global warming.

However, adapting to climate change is also becoming a major concern. We are thus led to carry out mitigation and adaptation approaches at the same time. In concrete terms, this amounts to giving priority, within the increasingly urgent adaptation approaches, to those which at the same time go in the direction of mitigating global warming.

The year 2022 is also the year of awareness. The question of resources arises in a brutal way: testifies to it the repeated appearance of the word “sobriety” in public debate.

Adequacy of resources to needs

Already, the issue of food resources was at the center of the work of Thomas R. Malthus, who in 1798 underlined the inability of food production to increase in proportion to the population, and therefore pleaded for a limitation of the growth of the latter. However, the world demographic explosion (multiplied by 8 since Malthus) has not produced the massive impoverishment predicted; but the increase in agricultural productivity, which explains this gap, is now reaching its limits.

Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers Overconsumption: “The march towards more radical sobriety must go through simultaneous progress in three directions”

In fact, the question of matching resources to needs is far from having disappeared, at the start of the 21st^e century. Today, it is mainly focused on energy needs, the satisfaction of which requires that of goods and services needs: the conflict triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine highlights the extent to which global production chains are sensitive to the availability of fossil resources and have little leeway.

In France and elsewhere, tensions are also rising over competing land uses: living, eating, producing biofuels and renewable energy, conserving wild areas. Similarly, the level and distribution of water resources raise alarms. This case also illustrates the interconnection of the issues: the availability of water has an impact on agricultural production, but also on river transport, the refrigeration of energy producing power stations, etc.

You have 60.76% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.