Planète sacrée (eng)

This planet will live interesting times during the next decade: A combination of a full size global financial crisis, of major environmental constraints, and of shortage of energy, water, and certain key commodities. Herald Tribune (11/22/07) quotes OECD saying in a recent report: “Losses in the distressed sub-prime mortgage sector of the United States could reach $300 billion, only a portion of which has so far been accounted for by write-offs at major banks… We still have not hit the worst point in resets, delinquencies and ultimate losses on mortgages." Lead by US financial markets, Europe and now China and others are getting closer to technical bankruptcy, when assets market value becomes lower than debt level. In China, the Chinese people discovering the joys of getting rich quick thanks to a booming stock market are applying to it their millennium old gambling inclination.

This financial crisis would be bad in the perspective of conventional free economy. What makes it worse is that the world economy, growing since 2000 at its highest level in some 40 years, demands more energy, more fresh water, and more commodities. Producing more fresh water means ultimately consuming more energy. Mining, growing and transforming more commodities whether agro, chemical, metal or mineral means the same. Ultimately, the world faces a massive energy shortage. But mankind is running out of areas in the world where local environment impact conditions combined with attitude of the local population are favorable to new power generation capacity. Nuclear is clean in CO2, but unpopular. Making it fool proof means higher costs. Coal can be made clean, even CO2 free, but at a higher cost of kWh bringing it a nuclear costs level. Oil and gas are available and can be CO2 clean as well (through CO2 storage for instance), but they don’t come cheap anymore. Renewable energy is available, but very expensive.

To increase energy capacity, we need to massively invest long term. Our financial markets have lost the ability to invest in anything which is not short term, low risk. This factor, combined with environment pressures, means that all new power plants run late. And their capital costs escalate with delays.

According to Greek mythology, when Jason and his Argonauts came to steel the Golden Fleece from Medea’s empire, Medea warned them that wherever they would go, she would, one day, send them the Bill. On top of our facing a combination of bankruptcy and energy shortages, our planet is beginning to present Medea’s Bill to mankind: We never paid for the investments engaged in natural phenomena which took from tens to hundreds of millenniums to generate the fossil reserves of the planet. Our planet did, beginning way before the first hominians began hunting and gathering. By doing so, the planet put in underground storage the CO2 levels which were five times higher than today in our atmosphere in the days of the dinosaurs. We are destroying these reserves as if they were free of charge, while putting back carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere, as if the air and a stable climate were free of charge too. During this century, we will start paying Medea’s Bill, and the moratorium will completely change the way we perceive financial planning. This is the end of Stockholders Value Enhancement!

How shall we face this colossal challenge? We will from now on regularly talk about the options and solutions.

Andre Teissier du Cros

In early October, the Jacques Attali Commission raised the question of the Principle of Precaution upheld in the French Constitution. Its members considered in majority that this text was a restraint to economic growth and in particular to research. Here is a true topic for debate. If it is of interest to you, your remarks interest us.

Here comes ours; They will allow you to better understand our dogma.

An English anthropologist, Roy Lewis, is the author of a book you can find in pocket edition under the title « Why I ate my father ».

It is the story of the first humans, told in a very crazy manner, but concealing lessons which deserve to be remembered.
One day an ingenious father gone down from his tree with his family and wandering about the savannah discovers how to make a fire. It’s magical, but dangerous : it burns ! His brother, a cautious and conservative man, worries about it - one could even say he panics. Suddenly, alarmed, he shouts to all his litter and to those who want to follow him : « Back to the trees ! »

For thousands of years humans have found themselves confronted in such a way with the risks of their discoveries, and are more or less putting up with them.

So was born and has developed what we call Progress. It does not come without risk. But one cannot deny it has brought better living conditions to the major part of mankind.

Therefore the concept of risk management imposed itself, and with it the Principle of Precaution.

Today, when considering damages we are causing to the planet, many think it would be safer to stick to the Principle of Precaution and reduce potential risk upfront. We would be like alpinists all of a sudden refusing to climb the mountain by fear of danger. Unable to call themselves alpinists anymore...

So goes the march of mankind, we think. It cannot progress without discoveries, and this for two reasons ; First because it takes place in an inexorable evolution of nature, as from a given order pointing towards an ever greater complexity, that might lead it to explore other universes one day. Then, because the challenge it is facing to save the planet cannot be achieved without a joint effort towards innovative solutions, and they won’t be without risk. What is anyway more risky than life itself?

And since life is short, let us live it fully and not allow the cautious and finicky ones play on our fears and make it all bleak.

Let’s not listen to fear. Let’s live!