IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-04726726.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

La décroissance impliquerait-elle vraiment le retour à l’âge de la bougie ? Un exercice simple de quantification

Author

Listed:
  • Marc Germain

    (LEM - Lille économie management - UMR 9221 - UA - Université d'Artois - UCL - Université catholique de Lille - Université de Lille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

Based on a Kaya identity decomposing the ecological footprint as a function of ecological intensity, GDP/capita and population, the aim of the article is to calculate a country's sustainable GDP/capita, i.e. the maximum GDP/capita level compatible with the absence of ecological overshoot. For France and Germany (resp. for Belgium), the sustainable GDP/cap corresponds to the levels of GDP/cap observed during the 1st half of the 1960s (resp. 1950), i.e. a division by 3 (resp. by almost 4) compared to the current GDP/cap. The results show that the reduction in GDP/capita required to eliminate ecological overshoot would in no way imply a return to the candle age. Nor would it involve a pure and simple return to the 1950s or 1960s, given that the neutralization of overshoot is achieved via a reduction in GDP/capita alone, without giving up current technology and population. In view of the literature on the links between growth and well-being, it is also likely that the decline in GDP/capita would not be accompanied by a loss of well-being of the same magnitude (assuming there is a loss).

Suggested Citation

  • Marc Germain, 2024. "La décroissance impliquerait-elle vraiment le retour à l’âge de la bougie ? Un exercice simple de quantification," Post-Print hal-04726726, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04726726
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04726726v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.science/hal-04726726v1/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04726726. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.