The ” Common Good” summit: our take-aways.

Organised by the Toulouse School of Economics and Challenges, Les Echos and Le Parisien, the summit featured a first-rate panel of speakers. These included Eminent economists and public figures :

• Jean Tirole, Nobel Prize in Economics, Honorary Chairman of the Toulouse School of Economics and founding member of the Toulouse Institute for Advanced Studies,
• Daron Acemoglu, economist and professor at MIT,
• Philippe Aghion, economist and professor, Collège de France,
• Jean Pisani-Ferry, Professor of Economics at Sciences Po & Bruegel Institute,
• Laurence Tubiana, European Climate Foundation,
• Antoine Peillon, General Secretary of Ecological Planning (France).

Heads of large and very large companies:

• Getlink (a quarter of freight between Europe and Great Britain each year)
• BNP Paribas,
• Pfizer,
• InVivo,
• TotalEnergies.

Over the course of the two days, they took to the podium to draw up a comparative assessment of the paths taken by the United States, Europe and China, on TSE’s key research themes. In Europe, the performance of our education, innovation and research systems is mediocre. On several occasions, the panellists sounded the alarm bells for Europe’s politicians and governing bodies. In particular, research money is poorly invested in Europe. The mistakes are the result of negligence. This mismanagement could lead to impoverishment and technological dependence on the United States and China, according to Jean Tirole.

The management of the common goods seems to reflect the health of our democracy.

Based on an analysis of artificial intelligence technologies and the hype surrounding them, MIT’s Daron Acemoglu alerts us to the critical choices we need to make for the future. Indeed, the models that have dominated the tech industry for the past 30 years are encouraging the emergence of oligarchies (large companies monopolising data in order to create tools that enable other companies to automate work and monetise this data). The opposite of a model that empowers individuals. Fortunately, it’s not too late to redirect our technological choices in the right direction. And Daron Acemoglu cites the experience of Taiwan, whose Minister for Digital Affairs Audrey Tang has used these information technologies to create a series of “pro-democracy” platforms aimed in particular at openly reporting on government management.

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The figures put forward by Jean Pisani-Ferry and corroborated by the General Secretariat for Ecological Transition differ, however, on the breakdown of funding sources.

For Jean Pisani-Ferry, the effort will be shared 50-50 between public and private funding, even if it means having to call into question the European Stability Pact, which makes no provision for special arrangements for debt linked to the climate transition.

According to Antoine Peillon, whose department has identified around fifty decarbonisation levers, 50% of the effort would fall on businesses, 25% on households and 25% on the state and local authorities.

Decarbonising the 50 largest industrial sites would represent almost 10% of the effort required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (i.e. 18 million tonnes).

While 50% of the levers to be activated are “bankable”, the remaining 50% cannot be borne entirely by the public authorities. Antoine Peillon’s debating with TotalEnergies France representative, explicitly called for a greater contribution from sectors benefiting from rents.

To be credible, the plan must represent a “reasonable gamble”. A period of political debate is about to begin in Europe and France on the question of the timetable for implementing the Green Deal. For Jean Pisani-Ferry, we, in France, do not have the means to turn back the clock on our industrial transition choices.

All these levers and limits are the subject of research. A key question is: how can the story help people to understand and accept the need for sacrifice? The stories that prevail feature a hero fighting an enemy, justifying the fact that a sacrifice must first be accepted, with a view to a later reward. And not the other way round, as illustrated by the government’s losing account of pension reform, where the sacrifice comes at the end, points out Paul Seabright, TSE.

The narrative of the fight against climate change needs to be corrected. According to Bengt Holsmtröm, reaching or not reaching the 1.5°C of the Paris Agreement is not the right enemy. The local and physical manifestations of climate change are a more concrete and identifiable target.

• The founder of L214, Brigitte Gothière, had a polite exchange with LVMH’s strategy director, Jean-Baptiste Voisin, who presented the charter of good practice for crocodile farming, which has become an international standard (!). The question of the usefulness of making leather goods from crocodile skin was only raised at the end of the round table, concluding the discussion rather than opening it up.
• Another aspect of the discussions on the negative impact of livestock farming was the organisation of the protein transition. Committing cereal farming to crop rotation represents as major a conversion as that achieved for organic farming. Local initiatives are already working towards the emergence of a seeds and pulses industry (Graines et légumineuses de France de Qualisol in Occitanie).
• Extinction Rébellion had invited itself, unsurprisingly for the organisers, to denounce, in a speech in the form of a trial for inaction, the general greenwashing of the conference, and to point out the responsibility of the companies represented.

On the narrative side, these associations present themselves as the heroes of one or more generations in the face of a clearly identified enemy. They advocate a shared sacrifice for a better future.

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