LThe watchword is sobriety. First, energy sobriety to get through the winter. Then, a more structural sobriety imposed on us by the ecological crisis and which calls for a profound revision of our lifestyles and consumption patterns.
L’Responsible Consumption Observatory, in a survey conducted by the Society and Consumption Observatory at the end of 2020 with the help of the recycling company Citeo, showed that 44% of French people could already be considered to be significantly engaged in “reasoned” consumption, concerned about its impacts. A dynamic is clearly underway, well beyond the militant avant-gardes, in phase with the awareness of the gravity of the situation and supported by the evolution of social norms (a third of the people who continue to take the airplane confess a sense of guilt).
However, on closer inspection, the changes observed in consumption habits most often associate a contribution to the common good with a consumer benefit. Saving energy reduces the bill; eating organic is good for the planet, but above all for your health; buying second-hand clothes means giving them a second life, but also buying them cheaper and being able to indulge in the pleasures of fast fashion in good conscience… The mere feeling of “doing one’s part” is rarely enough to convince them to change their habits, especially if the consumer feels they are losing out. Significantly, the cost is the first obstacle to more responsible consumption, highlighted by the people polled by the survey mentioned above.
Therefore, the march towards a more radical sobriety seems to us to have to go through simultaneous advances in three directions.
“Dematerialize” economic value
First, there is the action of the public authorities. In addition to the carrot of incentives (tax benefits, ecological premiums or bonuses, etc.), they can play the stick of taxes, rationing, or even outright prohibition. But moving in this direction risks arousing strong opposition, especially when a feeling of injustice arises, of an unequal distribution of the effort to be made, as shown by the crisis of the “yellow vests”.
Then there is the voluntary progression of citizen consumers towards more sober lifestyles. This presupposes an ability to get rid of the grip of hyperconsumption. Receptivity to its sirens is all the stronger as consumption fills the existential void left by the decline of the great systems of thought, up to the myth of progress which yields to the ambient pessimism and which leads a majority of French people to consider that ” it was better before “. So, Carpe Diem ! and revel in the fleeting pleasures of consumption.
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