Ferghane Azihari is the son of Comorian emigrants whose parents “did not only flee material poverty. They also escaped pollution that kills six to fifty times more in sub-Saharan Africa than in Western Europe”. From the introduction, the tone is set for this fascinating critique of the current ecology in our countries. He dismantles one by one the declinist, Malthusian and anti-capitalist arguments of these movements which, warm and sheltered, dream of becoming good savages again. He demonstrates that far from ravaging the planet, the technical progress opposed by Greta Thunberg, Nicolas Hulot and others has made it possible to greatly improve the human condition, including in the poorest countries. In a dream world, hunter-gatherers have in reality destroyed more through their overexploitation of resources than agriculture has made it possible to reduce. Technical progress and the industrial revolution have gradually made it possible to reduce pollution in developed countries as well as reducing working hours. The real solution is therefore to believe in technical progress, associated with individual property which allows the protection of wealth as opposed to collective property, where no one has an interest, as shown by the state of the ZAD of Notre-Dame des Landes. Regressive ecology is a luxury of rich countries; are we going to force emerging countries to remain at their current economic level, or even regress? The author also shows that the most radical ecologists are for the most part anti-capitalists who have been reconverted after losing their clientele to technical and social progress, and that this explains their hatred of property and progress.
A work that goes against the grain and is ultimately beneficial at a time when prophets of doom are almost the only ones with the right to speak.
Ferghane Azihari is a public policy analyst, general delegate of the Free Academy of Human Sciences and member of the Society of Political Economy.
Christian Chouffier