#11 - From sobriety to luxury

Every year, the “Earth Overshoot Day” comes a bit sooner and we now consume almost twice what our planet can regenerate. We need to consume less ressources if we want to live in a sustainable manner; that is if we want our kids to enjoy the same possibilities we do.

From there, many are calling for “degrowth”.

This obviously goes against many vested interests and generates just as many political tensions, if not clashes. I suspect there is a lot of misunderstanding behind the term degrowth and that even those who use it do not share a common definition.

If we are talking about coming back to the Middle Ages, abandoning our health or education systems and going back to working in the fields with wooden tools… fear is more than understandable. These were times when many more people died from the hand of men and life expectancy was around 45 years. If you are older, consider yourself a lucky survivor!

But I don’t want to paint too grim a picture of a fascinating period of history that left us with incredible cathedrals and that could teach us a lot about harmony and social relationships. For example, sobriety was a cardinal value, both for individuals and political organisations. It had been since ancient Greece.

It is only in the 17th century that people started to think that producing more than our needs would be a good lever of power.

So allow me to prefer "sobriety"

Without going into the argument of why GDP is not the right measure of prosperity and why experiments like Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Index should be a source of inspiration (that is another discussion for another day), I think the main contention point is that there is a confusion between material growth and economic growth.

Energy consumption is often used as a proxy for the quantity of stuff made. Since most of our world is industrialised, we use energy to make things. And energy consumption has been closely correlated with economic growth over the last centuries.

Both were “coupled”… but saying we cannot “decouple” energy consumption and economic growth is premature: we never had to try and we never tried.

Intuitively, energy consumption is probably related to material growth, i.e., the making of evermore things. But we could imagine growing economically while using less materials: this would be sobriety. Hence why I prefer this term to "degrowth".

Another type of return

Economists use the concept of marginal decreasing returns: for every unit of additional "utility", "profit" or "pleasure", one needs more and more "input". Put simply, imagine you have nothing and win 10 000 € at the lottery; how happy would you be? Now, imagine you are a billionaire (dream big!) and that you win these same 10 000 €; how much happier would you be? It works pretty much with anything (imagine the first and 10th glass of water when you are thirsty).

It is the same for production: each unit of GDP, or "thing", will require more and more materials and energy to be produced.

And if you think technology can prove me wrong and reverse things: you are right. To the extent of approximatively 1% improvement per year... Far from enough if we want to grow as human beings and bring our "Earth consumption" back into the safe zone.

This is where luxury comes in

If we want to reduce the "materials intensity" of growth, we need a different kind of growth. We need to replace quantity by quality. Buying less stuff for more... We need luxury.

The IPCC and many others have pointed out that one of the problems for a "just transition" is the ostentatious consumption of the rich as rich people consume more and pollute more. They are right and to be clear, I am not promoting ostentatious consumption here. Buying the most expensive car and throwing extravagant parties aboard a private jet is not luxury.

We need to adopt Robert Dumas' definition of luxury: "Luxury is that which can be repaired".

These items may be expensive, but they are so for good reasons : qualitative materials, thoughtful design, ingenious fabrication (that makes dismantling and repair easy) and they are made to last as long as possible, often generations.

With that definition, a Hermès "Kelly" bag is luxury, but so is a (much cheaper) Longchamp "Pliage" as the company will repair them for ever. Looking at suitcases, 5 out of 6 are never repaired; even expensive ones! (By the way, that is one of the main motivations behind our CHAPOGET project as we wanted to bring an alternative made to last, but also to be repaired easily and forever).

The social impact

I hear the contradictors: buying well made, often expensive items, is only possible for rich kids in overly rich countries that can afford “minimalism” while people in need just cannot afford the "lifestyle".

I disagree for two reasons: buying quality is often cheaper in the long run. For example, I buy shoes that my family would find outrageously expensive if they knew the price... But the maker will repair them again and again, remaking them entirely for a fraction of the initial cost. Compared to the much cheaper shoes I used to buy every six months, I have probably saved hundreds of euros and yes, they are very comfortable!

The second reason I disagree is that this build-to-last repair model is synonymous with jobs. My shoes are not repaired by a machine, but by a skilled artisan who knows his craft. And with more jobs, there would be less people in need... at least in France and other countries where unemployment stays absurdly high year after year.

Hope

The days where a good life was advertised as being the one where a family would consume single use dishes to avoid cleaning them is thankfully over. But even if slightly less visible, there is still a crazy amount of waste in our systems.

Most industrial sectors are looking at ways to recycle and value their waste (often with the help / nudge of regulators) and for the more advanced to lengthen the life of their products. This is in the DNA of true luxury brands and we can learn from them. Some brands are opening repair shops! Repair is becoming trendy. Now it needs to become the norm. After all, it was not so long ago when our grandmothers would mend a sweater or patch a pair of jeans.

At an industrial level, Laurent Boillot, President of the Comité Colbert put it perfectly:

"The only way forward is to work, to innovate in coalition, and to see the ecological transition not or no longer as a source of competitive advantage, but as a goal for the common good."

I am curious to know how far this repair movement can go. Are there some things you would like to see more often repaired? Where do you see potential savings of resources and materials? Please share your comments, ideas or questions!