“Choosing to live in the heart of nature, in a large house, can help increase your carbon footprint, even if you work from home”

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Tribune. 90% of French people today think that living in the countryside is pleasant, i.e. 20 points more than in 2018. Bad memories of urban confinements, fear of contagion, the pandemic has changed perceptions.

But, at a time when the experts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are warning of the cataclysmic short-term consequences of the looming warming and asking countries for actions to limit the carbon footprint, is it really a good idea from an ecological point of view to move to rural areas? Under current conditions, one can doubt it.

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On average, an employee emits twice as many greenhouse gases to go to work every day when he lives in the countryside than when he lives in the city. Houses are more difficult to heat than apartments. “Green” consumption is also more difficult: long journeys by car to do shopping in hypermarkets far from places of residence, few offers of local and / or bulk products, little exchange of goods between neighbors, few repairs to used products, not always selective sorting. We are far from the traditional idea of ​​an idyllic, healthy, unpolluted rurality.

The image of a marginal

Our research shows how the choice of reasoned, “sober” consumption is particularly complicated in these areas.

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Volunteers for a “Nothing New” challenge, who had promised to buy only second-hand products for a year, told us about the obstacles such an approach encountered outside the cities: lack of local access second-hand products, forcing problematic long-distance deliveries, lack of bulk stores, organic products but also disapproving looks from neighbors.

In a context where social control is strong, consumes little, or only occasionally, can (still) quickly give you the image of a marginal in rurality.

Of course, city life poses social and environmental problems. It encourages excessive consumption, with a plethora of goods that constantly unfolds before the eyes, stirs up desires, and a stressful life that pushes to constantly want to buy more, constantly moving, to compensate, to distract oneself.

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But moving to a rural area is clearly not a naturally “green” gesture. It all depends on the lifestyle adopted. Choosing to live in the middle of nature, far from it all, in a big house, can actually help increase your carbon footprint, even if you work from home.

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