8. Innovation or degrowth: we to choose?

Can innovation save humanity? The Solar Impulse Foundation, dedicated to innovation, has identified more than a thousand "clean and cost-effective" solutions to the environmental crisis, which it believes are necessary "to avoid asking people to make impossible efforts". Many are already ready to be deployed in everyday life. For example, a module that recovers waste heat in factories, stores it and feeds it back into the production circuit; a device that reduces the emission of toxic particles from cars by 80 percent and their fuel consumption by 20 percent. These innovations would waste fewer resources and energy, and regulations could encourage them.

So could technological innovation and so-called "green growth" reduce CO2 emissions without challenging the way our societies function? This model is far from obvious: growth is still not green and cannot decouple the increase in GDP from the increase in pressure on the environment. Planetary limits have been exceeded and innovation does not fully respond to emergencies.

A degrowth or sobriety society suggests defining other objectives than the increase of GDP, such as the level of education, health or biodiversity. It would also be more desirable with more pleasant living environments. It obviously contradicts all the paradigms of the market economy and the perspectives of unlimited progress.

Should we have to choose between these two visions of the future?

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