From Happy Globalization to Happy Collapse

Reflections on the Collapse of Europe (Part 1)

It has been a little slow on my end for various reasons, including the fact that we live in a reality which is so outlandish, stupefying, sickening and infuriating that it winds up being unmanageable for my meager imagination to process. More practically, I also took a step back to design a system around this Substack that allows me to deliver materials at least biweekly.

I had to disrupt my schedule of essays to turn, as I had feared, to the quite mesmerizing events in Europe. Many of us were already expecting a very action-filled autumn, with the acute and self-inflicted energy crisis the continent has been plunged into, but things are even more ominous than I had anticipated, as witnessed by the recent Nordstream 1 and 2 sabotage. 

But this essay will focus on the French president, Emmanuel Macron, announcing, earlier this fall, “the end of abundance” and the beginning of an era of sobriety. In the following paragraphs, I will attempt to de-crypt the meaning of these rather extraordinary words — coming as they are from one of the most lyrical and pompous cheerleaders of globalization — culminating in an exploration of the new fashionable fad of “collapsology.”

Macron began with a statement that France has been living through a series of crises, “each worse than the last,” that has now brought the country to “a kind of major tipping point or a great upheaval … we are living the end of what could have seemed an era of abundance … the end of the abundance of products of technologies that seemed always available … the end of the abundance of land and materials including water. This overview that I’m giving, the end of abundance, the end of insouciance, the end of assumptions – it’s ultimately a tipping point that we are going through that can lead our citizens to feel a lot of anxiety. Faced with this, we have a duty, duties — the first of which is to speak frankly and clearly without doom-mongering.”

This is a rather paradoxical pronouncement from one of the most histrionic political figures of “happy globalization,” who came into office in 2017 under the slogan of the “start-up nation,” and who, when he was minister of economy, lamented that there were not enough young French men and women who aspired to become billionaires.

Macron’s sentiments are by no means his alone. At almost the same moment as he was making his pronouncements, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City was hosting dozens of central bankers, policymakers, academics, and economists from around the world at its annual economic policy symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Here, too, sobriety was on the menu. The deputy managing director of the IMF, Gita Gopinath, warned of “a real risk” of stagflation (the combination of languishing growth and high inflation) in Europe, given the intensity of the energy crisis caused by the Ukraine war. At the same gathering, Isabel Schnabel, an executive board member of the European Central Bank warned that the next few years are at risk of being dubbed the “Great Volatility” — in contrast with the past two decades, which economists called the “Great Moderation.” (Whether central bankers and their entourage really understand the meaning of the word “moderation,” could be an essay all its own.)

All of these developments stand in stark contrast with the reassuring words coming from the White House and the Federal Reserve Bank over the past few months. In Jackson Hole, Jay Powell, the Fed chair, warned that, because of ongoing shifts, a “sustained period” of slow growth and a weakening of the labor market were likely. What did he foresee the duration of that “sustained period” to be? A year? Two? Three? A decade? Several decades? He declined to answer. 

In the aftermath of the summit, commentators in major media organs such as the Financial Times came forward to parrot these talking points, even going so far as to toss off such sentences as: “The structural forces that kept price pressures in check — chiefly globalization and an abundant labor supply — have reversed.” 

There you have it, according to the most ardent cheerleaders of globalization: Globalization is over, after all. Done. Kaput. 

That’s sobering.

There are so many complexities contained in these multiple announcements that it’s hard to cover them all in a short essay, particularly since these events are unfolding before our eyes. A little voice tells me that there will be plenty of opportunity to dive deeper into this clearly historical crisis when the first days of winter arrive.

I will not focus on the rather obvious reason why Macron and the central bankers are suddenly turning into prophets of doom. It is quite self-evident that the West has placed way too much hope in the weaponization of the global financial system to tilt the balance of forces in its favor — as, meanwhile, the center of the world economy moves eastward. Not only have its sanctions efforts failed, but it is actually about to backfire in a major way, in the form of multiple outbreaks of social unrest. I have little doubt that the months to come will give us plenty of opportunities to discuss this.

I will also forego an in-depth explanation of the disorganization of the European energy market caused by its liberalization, and how this has led to the destabilization of EDF, the State-controlled electricity company, and the dismantling of the French nuclear energy policy without any legitimate plan B. To understand the gravity of the situation, one need understand only this: that wholesale electricity prices (i.e., those paid by French suppliers) are expected to hit record highs in France in 2023, reaching more than €1,000 per megawatt/hour (MWh), versus €85 per MWh one year ago, and an average of €45 in the decade between 2010 and 2020. That comes amid a heated debate about the state of nuclear plants in France, where, for a variety of reasons, only 24 out of 56 nuclear reactors are in operation. (Those reasons include, most prominently: a policy of phasing out nuclear energy without any realistic alternatives; a lack of maintenance of the reactors leading to corrosion; and a shortage of the kind of workers who can repair nuclear reactors, who have flocked to places such as India, China, Russia or even Japan, where their competence is highly valued [i].

Instead, I would like to focus on the deeper trend behind Macron’s and the central bankers’ pronouncements. It should now be obvious to everybody that European leaders are about to subject the European population to a suicidal IMF-style austerity plan that they will attempt to disguise as responsible “Net Zero” policies. What Western leaders are doing is leading Europeans into an unprecedented phase of austerity, while attempting to maintain an economy organized around the paradigm of economic growth. 

There is nothing new about any of this. In fact, it is exactly what the populations of low- and middle-income countries have been experiencing for several decades, particularly in the 80s and 90s.

To gain a greater insight into Macron’s “end of abundance” speech — indeed, to understand all the layers that make up his arguments — I strongly recommend turning to a recent interview with former IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard and Jean Tirole, the 2014 laureate of the Nobel Prize of Economic. The two co-authored a report for Macron in 2020, and are currently making the rounds in the media upon the occasion of the report’s publication as a book. 

The interview is valuable to us for a number of reasons. First, it is a perfect illustration of the complete constipation of imagination of economic elites — incapable of thinking outside of the growth paradigm and its alternation of phases of austerity and profligate spending. Second, it is a critical document for its sheer candor and forthrightness — as evidenced  by a couple of quotes from Tirole. Among them: “Fighting global warming will necessarily have a cost, even if there is uncertainty about its amount. The idea of a more robust growth thanks to millions of green jobs is bullshit. The more we wait to act, the more the transition’s cost will be high and hinder growth. We should not tell people that they can have their cake and eat it too.” Earlier in the interview, on the topic of public debt, Tirole, much less savvy than Blanchard in the use of euphemistic and oxymoronically reassuring jargon, said, “We should not kid ourselves: there will be other crises after the financial crisis, the European crisis, the Covid crisis and the Ukrainian crisis, and our margin of maneuver keeps shrinking.” 

I can tell you from firsthand experience: this is exactly the way IMF and World Bank functionaries talk among themselves about the countries they are about to subject to austerity straitjackets in the name of growth-oriented policies.

Let’s see now how this translates operationally.  First, like a vulgar IMF enforcer, here comes Macron, suddenly calling the shots on the “era of abundance,” and warning the French people that they are now entering into an era of scarcity which will require sacrifices (a taboo word while we were living in the “happy globalization” era).

But, more interestingly, we should look at the technocratic translation of the end of abundance offered by Macron’s prime minister, Elizabeth Borne, who attempted to usher the nation of France into an era of “energetic sobriety.” In plain English, this new technocratic slogan means rationing — or, in other words, demand reduction. It means they are asking Europeans to voluntarily reduce their energy consumption before the unavoidable ruptures in gas supply, which will certainly lead to rolling blackouts. In all likelihood, this will also, at some point, extend to electricity. But be reassured, all that should go smoothly, we are told, thanks to the French Employers’ Union, MEDEF, which proposes to deploy “sobriety ambassadors” in every business as compliance officers.

In the wake of this address, the oligarch-controlled media have gone into a frenzy of hilarious advice-giving about how to get through the winter, ranging from turning the WiFi off, to peeing in the shower, and keeping padded jackets on inside. My favorite is this one, coming from a report in Le Figaro, which reads as though it could have been written for an episode of Absolutely Fabulous. Following the lament of the owner of an orchard in Charente who doesn’t know how to store his apples with electricity bills surging from €45 to €800 per MWh, the reporter wrote:

In her luxury building from the West of Paris, Charlotte does not have the same torment. But she will “work harder than ever,” repeating to her children that “it’s not Versailles here! We already make our own compost, but I suggested to the other co-owners that we should create a vegetables garden in our park [sic],” she said. I just bought an electric bicycle. That way, I go less often to the supermarket, and it’s good business for the neighborhood’s cheese shop and the florist.

Many clear-headed voices, such as the energy consultant Nicolas Meilhan, believe that these so-called voluntary sobriety measures will be succeeded by energy lockdowns — something I’m sure Charlotte from the West of Paris will endure with the same playful zeal as the current wave of energetic sobriety measures. It is quite revealing that Borne announced a plan of reduction of 10%, which is exactly the percentage of energy consumption reduction that occurred during the first lockdown in March/April 2020, when the entire global economy was brought to a halt. 

These lockdowns are also exactly what the chairs of WWF France advocated in an op-ed published in the Journal du Dimanche in February 2022, urging the presidential candidates to commit to climatic lockdowns. If, like me, you have not stomached the “you’re not locked at home, you’re safe at home” signs and memes from March 2020, be ready to be nauseated again by an avalanche of similar messages, this time in the name of “energetic sobriety.” 

Because, let’s not fool ourselves: the sobriety plan, which the government is presenting to us as a call to civic responsibility (seemingly to avoid coercive heavy-handed measures down the road), is a mental preparation for the energy equivalent of the infamous Covid coercive methods of lockdowns, masks, and vaccine passports. In just a couple of months, Europeans are going to experience deeply punitive measures, and, as with Covid, you can be assured that scapegoats will be found for originating the turn toward coercion. If things get desperate — and they will — the ruling classes can always blame the non-compliance of families and small businesses who turned their thermostats above 66 degrees Fahrenheit or washed their hands in warm water.

If this is what we can expect for the *short* term, what does the long term look like? 

Well, if you think that “energetic sobriety” is to be synonymous with “joyful sobriety” — a future of bio-regionalism, of mutual aid, of return to earth … in other words, a questioning of the civilization of the “Machine” — you are in for a strong disillusion. 

We turn back to Elizabeth Borne, who added an important proviso when she announced her policy of “energetic sobriety” a few days after Macron’s “end of abundance” speech. She took great pains to emphasize that, in no way, does energetic sobriety mean “degrowth.” 

So what does “sobriety” look like in an economic system indexed on the elusive search for salvation through growth? 

My best guess that it will look like the excellent dystopian TV miniseries Trepalium, where 80 percent of jobless Parisians are walled off in abject poverty in the “Zone” and fed by the government with drugs to help them cope with the lack of drinkable water. The remaining 20 percent populating the “city” on the other side of the wall are employed but kept clueless as to the imminent bankruptcy of the regime.

To understand how deep-seated and irrational this quasi-religious belief in growth is, I have always found the following quote from former conservative UK prime minister Edward Heath, to be eminently enlightening:

The alternative to expansion is not, as some occasionally seem to suppose, an England of quiet market towns linked only by steam trains puffing slowly and peacefully through green meadows. The alternative is slums, dangerous roads, old factories, cramped schools, stunted lives.

The elites are very good at telling us the dangers of de-growth, but they never venture the slightest description as to where we are going. It’s as if expansion or growth is a devouring Baal we need to feed eternally to tame some kind of divine wrath. 

Many, like Paul Kingsnorth, Georges Bernanos, E.M Forster or Lewis Mumford have given it a name: the Machine, or the Technical Moloch.

Ironically, after all these years of sacrificing everything endearing on the altar of the promise of abundance, Europeans are now expected to accept, as their daily condition, what strikingly resembles Heath’s slums, with cramped schools and stunted lives. 

To add insult to the injury, they are summoned to accept this as the “cost of freedom,” as Macron said a few days before his end of abundance speech — a pathetic and plainly obvious attempt to justify his unwavering support for the Ukrainian regime. 

As many critical voices have justly retorted to Macron, what many Europeans are about to enter is not the end of abundance, but rather the expansion of the deprivation of vital necessities (sécurités vitales) that many Europeans are already experiencing.

It turns out that Macron and the European leaders have the perfect ideology of substitution to justify their upcoming structural adjustment plan. Witness the new fashionable doctrine in French environmentalist circles known as “collapsology.” To define the thesis behind collapsology, I will refer to a metaphor used by Renaud Garcia, who wrote a very critical book on the subject: Collapsology: A Mutilated Ecology (Collapsologie, ou l’écologie mutilée). As Garcia frames it: “Imagine that you pass a doorstep, and the door closes after you… forever! Facing you, all you see is a horizon of pollution, riots, suicidal compulsions, etc. And you cannot go back and seek guidance in the past represented by what’s beyond the door.” 

This is precisely the kind of mental disposition in which the collapsologues urge you to see the ecological crisis, echoing very well the words of Greta Thunberg before … wait for it … the World Economic Forum in 2019:

Adults keep saying, “We owe it to young people to give them hope.” But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day, and then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.

If the muse of collapsology is Saint Greta, its founding document is How Everything Can Collapse: a Manual for our Times by Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stephens. The book is an augmented version of a report to the European Parliament authored by Pablo Servigne entitled Feeding Europe in Times of Crisis, commissioned by then-French Green party Euro MP, Yves Cochet, who was also a former minister of Environment under Socialist Party Lionel Jospin’s government in 2001-2002. Elaborating on the Club of Rome’s computer simulations (as contained in the famous report The Limits to Growth) Servigne and his followers aim to elevate the collapse prophecy to the level of science. Briefly speaking, the field of “collapsology” is an attempt to transpose natural sciences’ conclusions about the advanced destruction of ecosystems to human society, which they believe is undergoing a societal or civilizational collapse.

Pierre Thiesset, the editor in chief of the French monthly publication De-growth (La décroissance), is wise in telling us that the collapsology movement must be analyzed, not in terms of its diagnosis — that we are living in a collapse — but in terms of its political possibilities.

On the actual collapse of the ecosystem, the collapsologues add nothing new to the observations of the de-growth advocates of the 1960s/1970s (which can be found in the pages of the French publications La Gueule Ouverte and Le Sauvage, the writings of Romanian mathematician Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, or the discoveries of the Club of Rome and its MIT computers). Servigne and Stephens’s book complements the existing diagnosis, offering a very clear and comprehensive synthesis of the scientific studies about the accelerated destruction of the conditions that make life possible on Earth.

However, the collapsologues’ political goals are diametrically opposed to the ones of historical de-growth critics such as Georgescu-Roegen. As the quote from Greta Thunberg shows, the collapsologues believe that the consciousnesses of the impending collapse has pedagogic virtues that can serve to bring about the desired changes. This is exactly where the old de-growth movement and the collapsologues diverge. The likes of Georgescu-Roegen intended a radical critique of the industrial society and its paradigm of economic growth. For Thunberg and the collapsologues, it means large technocratic and authoritarian projects with fancy slogans such as The Green New Deal, The Great Reset, The Fourth Industrial Revolution, or Build Back Better.

The difference between the political goals pursued by the collapsologues and the de-growth movement is captured perfectly by Thiesset:

Beyond this catastrophist pedagogy, what I would like to say in essence to those who remain focused on the perspective of the collapse, is that their focus leads them to leave aside all philosophical reflection on the condition of man in the present world. As far as I am concerned, it is not the disaster which motivates my engagement in favor of de-growth, but on the contrary the triumph of the “Brave New World.” A world made ever more artificial by technologies, where the sky is invaded by airplanes and satellites, where the streets are saturated with cars, where plastic is so omnipresent that it has contaminated the entire food chain, where the eyes are captured by screens and the brains under assault by personalized advertisement, where the industrial system provides everything: from packaged and sterilized food coming from anywhere in the world to entertainment consumed at home, from machines to transport us effortlessly to smart phones manufactured in slave-like conditions in Asia; a world where work in front of computer terminals is meaningless, where we are buried under merchandise, where all we have to do to summon light, heat, remote communications, animated images, is to press a button, where the energy we use to shave in the morning is supplied by nuclear plants and a global system of supply brings us the gas we burn by driving at 130 km/h speed on the highway … We are at such a point of dependence on technology, of dependence on an immense apparatus, that the State must organize communications campaigns to remind us to move our bodies for at least half an hour per day, so our bodies do not become too obsolete! This “world safe for little fat men,” as Orwell called it (In The Road to Wigan Pier), this air conditioned nightmare which renders “impossible all authentic human life”, should be criticized in itself, from the point of view of a man concerned with freedom and human dignity. That this world is headed toward disaster is secondary: the fundamental issue is that this hyper-efficient organization works way too well and suffocates us.

That’s where the de-growth advocates, such as Thiesset, and the collapsologues clash. The former tell us that the sentiment of losing the world proceeds from a succession of concrete and historical socioeconomic choices (sometimes very historically remote, and often embedded in our fundamental legal institutions), which lead us to treat our natural environment and our fellow human-beings as extractive — and ultimately dispensable — resources. This succession of concrete choices constitutes the foundation of the capitalist system and its associated civilization of the Machine. In other words, for someone like Thiesset, collapse is not a bug, but a constant feature of the Machine, which can at the same time generate an abundance of merchandise and a world which increasingly looks like a desert.

In opposition, the collapsologues view the ecological crisis as a kind of external shock produced by an impersonal process without author … the invisible hand of disaster. Paradoxically, they naturalize capitalism and its creation, the Machine, by presenting their destructive effects as the result of “natural” forces that are inevitable and irresistible. In other words, they are exonerating the capitalist system from the verdict of its decisive guilt in the natural world’s destruction. Instead, they incriminate the entirety of human nature. 

This is exactly the mirror image of the position of the lyrical bards of capitalism, such as Thomas Friedman, who present it as an unstoppable force producing an unending stream of abundance that will find in itself the resources to solve its little problem of the destruction of nature. 

Quite literally, the collapsologues personify Fredric Jameson’s clever formula that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. To see the end of the former, however, we’ll have to go through the end of the world first.

End of Part 1.

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[i] On the two topics of the sanctions and the self-inflicted disorganization of the European energy market, I recommend Thomas Fazi’s recent article in Unherd about the likelihood of social unrest, and a recent rare quality TV debate on France 24 featuring French energy consultant Nicolas Meilhan. For those of you who understand French, Meilhan gave a long interview to the weekly Valeurs Actuelles where he narrates in great details how French technocratic elites have, over a couple of decades, killed French energetic sovereignty based on nuclear energy without any serious alternative, and should bear all the responsibility for what is about to happen to the French population. And because the fate of France cannot be disentangled from German developments, I urge you to listen to Unherd’s Freddie Sayers’ interview of Wolfgang Streeck, according to whom the Ukraine crisis reveals that the Germans elites of the past three decades may have been about as reckless as their French counterparts.