A while ago, I photographed and interviewed the economist and sociologist Serge Latouche for the pilot episode of a TV program on sustainability. The TV program was never produced or broadcasted, so I decided to share here with you a short extract of his interview.
Serge Latouche is the author of many books, including Petit traité de la décroissance sereine [Mini treatise on happy “degrowth”] and Survivre au développement [Surviving development]. One of the things he discusses in his writings is the following mechanism: advertising induces us to buy things we don’t need, and credit allows us to purchase—without money on hand—products designed to soon go out of fashion, break quickly, and not be repairable. This, in short, is our economy…
Serge Latouche
“It is likely that we won’t be able to avoid a catastrophe. And it is only after the shock of a catastrophe that human societies are able to transform […]. The change is going to be a hard one because it is not easy to place restrictions on a society hooked on consuming beyond its means. It would be like asking a drug addict to give up using drugs overnight. The problem with drug addicts is that – although they may be perfectly aware of the fact that they are destroying themselves – they continue to make the easy choice every day of using drugs rather than starting a cure. We are not going to have a choice: we will have to cure ourselves and recover at all costs.”
And the cure is….?
“Transitioning from a society of continuous growth to a society of degrowth and sobriety with a new system of production grounded in a true ecological democracy. We must not base our economy on competition but on cooperation, not on the unbridled exploitation of nature but on harmony with it. Practically speaking , we have to reinvent ourselves and I find it hard to imagine it will be a gentle metamorphosis…”
What can we, as individuals, do?
“The list of virtuous concrete actions is limitless. We can, for example, reduce our consumption of meat. We know that one Calorie of animal contains from 9 to 10 vegetable Calories and, as a consequence, when we eat meat we deprive 8 or 9 people of nourishment. We can reduce our energy consumption without diminishing our comfort just by building in a more rational manner. We can get used to consuming locally. The highways are choked with trucks transporting more or less the same things: Sanpellegrino mineral water from Italy to France and Evian mineral water from France to Italy… In other words, if each of us were to become more responsible in their actions it would significantly reduce our ecological footprint. It is a question of deciding to consume better… without giving up on the joy of living.”
