is a doctor in philosophy who teaches “environmental redirection” at the ESC Clermont Business School in France. He’s also the scientific director of the Origens Media Lab think tank and author the recently published book Politising Renouncement (in French, 2023).
Picture © Dorian Prost
We are faced with a climate crisis, which implies learning to relinquish: saying ‘no’ to a private pool, ‘no’ to more smart devices, ‘no’ to that particular investment fund. But nobody wants to turn and head back to the bad old days. For researcher Alexandre Monnin, the way forward is simply to take the ecological path. So, how do we decide which technologies to give up? How do we know which plants to shut down? Here’s what our expert has to say.
Interview by Athénaïs Gagey.
What do you mean by learning to relinquish?
Alexandre Monnin: Companies try to be greener and minimise their impact by improving their efficiency. For example, producing huge quantities of chocolate means cutting down acres of forest. Some companies will therefore cut back on deforestation, or compensate for the harmful effects of their business once the harm is done. But why even try and make deforestation efficient? That’s tactics, not strategy. We should be questioning the finality of our business. That’s what I mean by relinquishment. I mean deciding to shut down some businesses and transform others.
Haven’t we already started giving up?
Yes, but not in a consistent, concerted, democratic manner. When Russia invaded Ukraine, we did an energy about-turn, but it was more crisis management than thoughtful anticipation. Businesses have always closed down, but not as the result of concerted action. We began deindustrialising in the eighties, only to set up shop somewhere cheaper. And now we want to bring the factories back home. When you open a plant for every one you close, you do nothing to save the planet.
But there are many examples of real change. In one corner of southern France, new building construction is forbidden due to lack of water. Further along the coast, planning permission for a golf course has been refused. The EU is banning the sale of new vehicles fitted with internal combustion engines. The Netherlands is cutting back its livestock to tackle nitrogen pollution. Relinquishment has begun, but it’s just the beginning. Next, we need to stop acting as if this were a passing crisis and start adopting long-term policies.
‘I emphasise that externalities are not chance happenings, they are problematic business activities that need rethinking’
You like to replace the term ‘negative externalities’ — which occur when the product and/or consumption of a good or service exerts a negative effect on a third party — with the term ‘negative commons’. Can you explain why?
‘Negative commons’ refers to the problems raised by the over-exploitation of common resources such as air, water, etc. The term may refer to tangible infrastructure such as factories as well as to intangible legacy such as cultural and managerial models. I emphasise that externalities are not chance happenings, they are problematic business activities that need rethinking.
How do you know what is a negative common?
It’s not a classification as such. Nothing is intrinsically a negative common. We determine what should be closed, pulled apart or redeployed after close examination. Most close examinations have complex conclusions.
Unlike a one-sided philosophical analysis, close examination throws up grey areas, reveals intertwined interests and so on. For example, you can be against mega reservoirs in principle, but when you examine an issue closely, you see all the repercussions — in this case the effect on industrial farming.
So where do we go from there?
I don’t mean we shouldn’t make any decisions. Decision-making procedures are an absolute necessity. Staying with the example of mega reservoirs, citizens sounded the alarm, which gave rise to an unreconcilable confrontation. We need institutions that come up with a counter-expertise when people in the street start sounding the alarm bells. When there is no decision-making system, there’s a deadlock, opinions become entrenched and reactions brutal.
The whole 5G issue is another good example. In France, anti-5G reports, criticising the technology from a profitability and environmental point of view, were circulated in-house at telecommunications provider Orange. In the end, President Macron took the decision to press ahead with the rollout. But why did we leave it to the president? We should be deciding to refuse this sort of thing together, at a local level.
Is technology always a negative common?
Technologies based on non-renewable resources that generate waste that hangs around for a long time are problematic. Belgian physics professor José Halloy calls them zombie technologies because they have no future but don’t die because their waste can’t be composted or digested in any cycle of matter. But we’re so used to these zombies that we can’t just throw them out. We need to decide what to keep, to smooth the transition towards sustainability. That probably means not buying an SUV and opting for an electrical vehicle that’s less of a zombie. In the meantime, we need to rethink our whole car-oriented mobility.
On the other hand, we need to acknowledge the challenge involved. In 2020 Azerbaijan won the war with Armenia in part thanks to the drones used to destroy the Armenian anti-aircraft equipment. It’s not easy to step away from an arms race. Which means arms should be part of a “relinquishment” plan. In the future we are going to have to choose between public and sovereign use of technology, and give up some things that civil society takes for granted, things that filtered through from military technology.
‘By the time an innovation has been designed and manufactured, it is sometimes already obsolete’
You observe that some technologies are already zombies before they are even designed and marketed.
By the time an innovation has been designed and manufactured, it is sometimes already obsolete. Laboratories have a problem saying no. But it’s more difficult to get rid of innovations once they are available.
Take the Internet of Things for example. By 2030, the market will be flooded with hundreds of billions of connected objects. They’re a result of ambient intelligence, which was big back in the eighties! We are bringing into being polluting, energy-hungry innovations that were thought up forty years ago, when sustainability was a less pressing issue.
If we use them to collect climate data, then why not. But commercial use is an issue for debate. We sometimes justify innovation with absurd circular logic: since we’ve decided to proceed with 5G, then we need the devices that go with it. And why did we proceed with 5G? Because of the Internet of Things.
You also cite organisations as negative commons.
Yes, criticism levelled at organisations often boils down to neoliberalism. But organisations should be given a seat at the table because they are a major cause of today’s problems. Our management tools are not capable of measuring the extent of the change that is to come.
For example, take a ski resort that’s unlikely to continue getting enough snowfall to be viable. The usual response to that sort of problem is diversification — year-round tourism. But the resort has looked into that and they would lose revenue. So, what is the solution? The tools we have at our disposal don’t account for that sort of problem. Which is why we need to look more closely at how people in the area can earn a living in a totally different way.
You provide a consultancy service in ecological redirection. Can you give an example of what it is?
Grenoble city council examined whether they should continue rebuilding public swimming pools with a life expectancy of 45 years. My colleague Diego Landivar and four of our students spoke to everyone concerned: swimming pool builders, heating specialists and plumbers and drew up a protocol to involve local people so they could have their say.
One of the students, Andrea Angioletti, also worked on the Maif’s house insurance offer looking at what can be done when areas become “uninsurable” due to shrinking and swelling caused by clay soils or coastal erosion.
I would have expected relinquishment to be planned at a macro-economic level. But you are saying that organisations are making changes at their level.
Some activities stop independently of the national plan. The problem with macroeconomics is that it only covers financial aspects. If an asset is no longer profitable — a stranded asset — it’s best to pull out and invest elsewhere. But what becomes of the organisations, areas, the people who depend on the assets that are going to disappear? They get overlooked. It takes in-depth research to reveal how transformations are going to affect an area. It’s not really a job for an economist — even a degrower. Nor is it for politicians to deal with. It requires special expertise and presence on the ground.
What about “uncomfortable know-how” — skills that will become obsolete with climate change?
First, let me say that stranded assets refers to buildings, to infrastructure. The people who work in them should not be left stranded! When plants close down, the workers remain, and need to be redeployed. Uncomfortable know-how, i.e. know-how concerning what doesn’t work, hidden pollution and so on should be a focal point of redirection. Recently, TotalEnergies oil rig workers expressed the desire to dismantle refineries so they could play a part in the energy transition in France.
‘The desire to return to the living world is a refusal of today’s world which helps us neither understand nor transform it’
All this dismantling and reining in of technical progress, isn’t it refusing modernity?
Absolutely not! Today, there is much opposition to science and modernity — the Covid antivax movement was the result of a trend that had already taken hold. People wanting to be free of Western science tend to accuse Descartes and modern thinking. Science is equated with the West; Industry with Civilisation — which is both a historical and a political problem! Sometimes it looks like we’ve entered a huge battle of Giants — a reaction against Technique, Technology, Industry and Civilisation — all capitalised. But anti-modernism sometimes veers towards conspiracy theory. When your desire to return to the living world involves turning your back on vernacular, native philosophies as a form of political action, it is not an admissible response. It’s a refusal of today’s world, which helps us neither understand nor transform it.
Like when Macron said that refusing 5G was living like the Amish…
Yes! We err on the side of caricature because we absolutely need to find a culprit for all our problems. Like Nietzsche, who saw Christianity as the root of all evil. The sort of philosophising that targets Modernity, Being, Capitalism or Nature is invariably full of simplifications. Instead of looking for ways to change our practices, our institutions and our know-how, we bring out grand philosophies that only confuse the issue. Philippe Descola says “nature doesn’t exist,” to which ecologists retort, “we are nature and we’re fighting back”. Instead of a battle of philosophies, with Modernity the enemy, we should be undertaking painstaking analysis, case by case. Some people are doing that, but we don’t hear enough of them. I would like to see less philosophising about this issue.
Picture © Dorian Prost
