However suppose that this assumption is verified

The WWF environmental association recently released its report 2008 living planet, accompanied by a supplement devoted to the "ecological footprint" of the France and the Belgium. This term refers to an indicator to assess the scale of a country (or a person, city, etc.), the request of the population of this country to the world. According to its proponents, it measures the surface biologically productive land and sea to provide the resources consumed by the country and absorb the waste it produces.

Thus, a country is considered as payor if its ecological footprint is larger than its biocapacity (it consumes more biologically productive space than what it has), and creditor otherwise. According to the report, the ecological footprint of the France would exceed its biocapacity 62 (estimated to be 3 "global hectares", or average productive hectares per person), and the countries of Western Europe would be "in an unsustainable situation of dependence and exploitation to the resources of the rest of the world". Such indicator we appear to be two major boundaries, taking both its mode of construction to the normative vision underlying.

Regarding the first limit, the ecological footprint is to compare an offer (what the planet can allow us to use as resources and environmental services) and a request (what humans living need), a given year. This assumes that we are capable of measuring accurately and homogeneous land and marine areas corresponding, with a clear and transparent methodology to the scientific debate... what today is far from being the case, as acknowledged by the authors themselves. However, suppose that this assumption is verified. The unsustainable nature of current human activities, in our countries, would be a lasting greater than the offer request. The image is striking, and has been used at the highest level at the Johannesburg Summit in 2002: If all the inhabitants of the planet consumed as the French, they we would have 2 additional planets!

Such reasoning, however, forget a (very small) detail: in our market economies, which allows to balance the supply and demand is the price system. Gold prices are simply forgotten in the calculation of the ecological footprint. We are dealing with an indicator to compare a supply and demand of scarce resources, alternative uses without any remedy to the system of price: look for the error! Proponents of the ecological footprint implicitly offer us the following reasoning: If all the inhabitants of the planet consumed as the average of the French, and under current economic conditions, then we would have 2 extra planets. But, precisely, if all the inhabitants of the planet were to consume as the average of the French, economic conditions are very different from those we know. Some goods would see their prices explode, others would disappear, substitutions would operate in the production process, etc. Even in a regulatory and tax framework unchanged, the economic environment would be different, and there is therefore no reason to believe that the choice of production or consumption of officers would remain identical. The reasoning behind the construction of the flag is inherently inconsistent. This same limit (lack of a system of price and production function) had already been exposed to Forrester model used by Meadows and his team in the famous report of the Club of Rome... in the 1970s. The critique of the dominant economic theory and market regulation should not be accompanied by a profound ignorance of the basic economic mechanisms.

I turn to the second limit, at the normative vision of ecological footprint. Our model is unsustainable, because it cannot be generalized to the whole of the planet... but who wants it to be That our lifestyles are particularly energy-intensive consumers of resources and pollution emitters, the uncontested. But that is long overdue that economists have abandoned Rostow vision on development as a linear process of catch-up in the less advanced economies to Western economies. In addition, such reasoning is very surprising on the part of a movement that continues to say the local characteristics of the mode of development.

Second example: our country would be debtor ecological, since according to the latest calculations each French would require 4.9 HA global to support its standard of living, while available to 3 actually. But what does mean That each inhabitant of each country would "right" to what the average productive surface of his country he does Singular and particularly dangerous vision for all the inhabitants of arid, desert or mountainous countries...

Of course, No more that should have confidence blind in market regulation, as the current (old) Liberal supporters of the whole market. The price system is imperfect, "technical progress" bearer of potential threats, and GDP as a questionable indicator. The issue of the sustainable development brings us to make choices in controversial universe, i.e. in situations where the absence of scientific certainty must lead to inaction or the blind confidence in technical progress. But if reflection on this problem is to tell us anything, it is the complexity of the phenomena in question. The evolution of our economies is not a linear process simple and cumulative, but a dynamic process and complex. One cannot think the complexity with simplistic indicators.