Petit-Déjeuner with Jancovici

I recently attended a petit-déjeuner débat, a distinctly French event where people gather for breakfast with a speaker, enjoying a croissant while engaging in debate. It’s a blend of nourishment for both the mind and body.

Jean-Marc Jancovici (JMJ), a prominent figure of climate change in France, was the speaker. His views have gained widespread attention in true French fashion through his comic book The world without end. It ranked second in sales behind Asterix - the definition of literary success in France.

The goal of JMJ is to integrate climate change - a thoroughly scientific topic - into economic discussions, a hard task akin to inviting a professor of morality to a casino. But his scientific angle has the advantage of giving a clear politically neutral angle to the discussion, focusing only on the scientific consequences of our choices.

Matter and energy

JMJ's climate views are based on a simple definition: economic activity is transforming matter. There are 3 limiting factors: the amount of stuff to transform, the energy required to transform it, and our skills and knowledge at using energy to transform stuff.

Depleting the cupboard and stuffing the trash bin

Climate change is one sort of pollution: we put the waste of burning fossile fuels (the greenhouse gases) into the atmosphere. Al Gore at the COP28 compared this to treating atmosphere as a sewer. This pollution causes atmosphere warming due to the greenhouse effect. This issue is well documented and a body of scientific literature describes it precisely.

But stuffing the trash bin is the output side. In addition to our sewer problem, we also face a depleting cupboard problem: our whole world depends on oil, and our reserves of easily accessible petroleum are nearly exhausted. Verifying this information is very difficult because it is private to a few governments and drilling companies. It is clear however that Europe is facing oil scarcity since 2008. It is worth emphasizing the point: all physical flows currently depend in a way or another on oil. The shortage of easily accessible oil will halt globalization and trigger a return to more regional economies - at the very least.

Oil is only the most visible primary resources that we are depleting from the cupboard. Other materials such as copper and silver are also in decline. Copper is essential for electricity transmission (high-voltage power lines). Copper mines and gold mines have now a lower content rate than recycling electronics (0.6%, compared to 30% in the 16th century). Even if we want to switch all our energy system to electricity, we are blocked by limited supply of copper ^[1].

Is green growth possible? Based on these twin issues of stuffing the trash bin and depleting the cupboard, there are hard physical constraints on our ability to at least keep the same level of energy use. Growth depends on increasing amounts of cheap energy. Growth in this context seems very doubtful.

Action

Jancovici offered a paths for individuals who want to also tackle this issue:

The Atlas syndrome Tackling this challenge alone is demoralizing. This hairy problem requires cooperation from many actors to find solutions that are not obvious and involve complex tradeoffs. Building support networks and engaging in collective action is crucial.

How to influence companies? Sixty companies are responsible for 80% of the GHG emissions ^[2]. Influencing their policies can be done internally, by climbing the corporate ladder and taking on more responsibilities, or externally, through demonstration, boycotts, divestments. JMJ believes that corporate cultures are resilient to the necessary changes. I agree with him, see for example [@bogdanichWhenMcKinseyComes2022] for McKinsey employees who tried to stimulate a debate internally, or Microsoft ^[3]. He suggests that companies only change when threatened or under duress. Paradoxically, internal change may be counterproductive: young idealistic employees will contribute to a company's success early in their careers before reaching much later a position of decision. This early success reinforces the status quo, making change even more difficult. Our young idealist may be tempted to hide his or her own opinions and practice a "business is business" attitude until attaining a top management position, and then revealing her true agenda. This does not work either. When taking on more responsibilities, she will be confronted with moral dilemmas. Following her long-held beliefs would lead to premature exposure and ejection from the fast track for not fitting the right corporate attitude. Not following them would make her a hypocrite. There will be always someone to be accountable to that would justify a moral compromise. JMJ suggests instead to learn the inner working of a domain at a company for a few years and then move on to create climate-aware competition, and create the disruptors of tomorrow. The tricky balancing act is to bring tomorrow's winners on par with the companies that won with the rules of yesterday. Government incentives and the right market structures will be key.

These paths are not easy. It may mean at the very least trading a cushy position against a more meaningful but less glamorous place. As he suggests, rather than doing AI at Google, one might contribute to mitigating climate change.

The role of the engineer France highly values its engineering talent. As JMJ describes the French education system: "France educates stellar engineers at the expense of bashing everyone else." Being one such engineer, I am biased, but the French offer a perspective rooted in mathematics:delivering a solution to set of goals under physical constraints of time, materials and energies. Climate change is then just an additional set of constraints on resources, and engineers should excel at this challenge.

1. https://eandt.theiet.org/2024/05/16/study-finds-amount-copper-required-evs-impossible-mining-companies-produce ↩︎
2. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/04/just-57-companies-linked-to-80-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions-since-2016 ↩︎
3. https://grist.org/accountability/microsoft-employees-spent-years-fighting-the-tech-giants-oil-ties-now-theyre-speaking-out/ ↩︎