Translator: Morgane Quilfen Reviewer: Hélène VERNET
A few weeks ago,
something happened to me that made me think quite a bit.
I attended a friend's birthday in a bar
and I ended up next to a guy I didn't know.
We start to chat and pretty quickly,
he asks me what I do for a living, and I answer,
"I am an entrepreneur and I own a clothing brand."
So the guy asks me, "Ah? What kind of clothes?"
and I answer, "Actually, we make clothes that last long
so that people don't need to buy new ones every other day."
At that point, the guy pauses, looks me in the eyes and says,
"Well, it'll never work.
If people don't need to buy your clothes again,
at some point, your company will not be able to grow.
Sorry, but under such conditions,
I don't see how a company such as yours could be successful."
Why does he think that way?
If I follow his reasoning,
the success of my company would be to sell ever more clothes,
even if that meant selling inferior products?
Basically, to him, success means growing no matter the cost.
If by "success" we mean an infinite increase of sales revenue
and a perpetual enhancement of profits, then he is right.
Indeed, my company is not really on the path to success,
unlike others in the textile industry who sell more clothes every year.
This is the case of Nike, H&M, Zara, Primark...
However, their growth has a consequence: every year, we make more clothes.
Between 2000 and 2014, the world clothing production doubled.
Why not, if that allows people
to not all dress in jeans, gray sweater, and white shoes.
The issue is that to make ever more clothes,
we are emitting millions of tons of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Do you have any idea of how much the textile industry represents
in the total amount of greenhouse emissions?
Dad?
(Laughter)
8.1 %.
It's as much as all the planet's road transports put together.
In this context, can we continue to want to produce more and more
and at the same time fight against the disruption of the climate?
A priori, this is not incompatible.
There are companies that plant trees
to compensate for the carbon they emit in the atmosphere.
There are guys who work on artificial carbon sinks,
which are huge machines that suck the CO2 out of the atmosphere.
And I've even heard of someone
who might have found the solution to oceans' plastic pollution.
So technological solutions that enable us to conciliate
firm growth and environmental protection are kind of plenty, right?
So, why does the climate continue to get warmer?
Why is it that, every minute,
a bit more plastic is poured into the oceans?
Why does biodiversity continue to plummet at an alarming rate?
Are these solutions enough?
To answer this question,
I've read quite a few books and experts' reports on the topic,
and the document that, to me, best sums up the current situation
is a letter that researchers have written after the climate marches of March 2019.
Let me read you a snippet.
"In our present state of knowledge, no technological solutions exist
that would allow the entire planet to enjoy our current level of comfort
without endangering both the climate and the living.
And people who claim the opposite are mistaken out of ignorance,
made miscalculations, or are lying out of self-interest."
OK, these technological solutions don't exist yet,
but there are so many people working on this
that we still have a chance to find them, right?
How big is this chance? One percent?
Let's be optimistic, 10%, so a ten-percent chance
of finding a technological solution to the disruption of the climate.
Do we take that risk?
Imagine that you and your whole family get to a sleazy plane
and the pilot tells you
there's a ten-percent chance of it arriving in one piece at destination.
Would you get on board?
Even if there was a 50% or 80% chance for the trip to go well,
neither you, nor me, nor anyone would board that plane with their family,
except for Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, but that is another story.
(Laughter)
We can't rely on technology to save us
in the face of the current climate emergency.
The only thing we can do is producing and consuming less.
Regardless of what people say
and the high-tech wonders that are waved under our nose,
we'll never be able to change this equation: producing is polluting.
It'll always be better to produce one t-shirt rather than two,
even if both are in organic cotton, and even if we plant trees.
Thus, we really have to change our mindset.
We can't consider anymore that a company's growth means success.
It is this mindset that got us in this current situation of climate crisis.
The last time I said that, a guy got up and challenged what I said.
He went saying something like,
"It's one thing to speak about degrowth, saving the Earth and ecology,
but you're quite happy when you sell your sweaters!
I feel like your speech is just a way
to differentiate yourself from other brands so that you can sell more."
Admit that it's exactly what you are thinking.
Honestly, I understand, I can't blame you!
We've seen thousand of times all these brands pretending to support
the fights against racism, homophobia, sexism, fatphobia,
just to make people talk about them, and behind sell more.
Currently, that's exactly what's happening with ecology.
In most companies, the environment is perceived as a way to increase sales.
And the paradox is that the more sales increase,
the worse the climate crisis gets.
Thus, I understand you might want to take with a pinch of salt
a speech about environmental protection that comes from an entrepreneur.
Actually, we even come to wonder whether such a company exists
that does not seek growth at all costs.
Why would my company be any different?
Well, for one simple reason: we've come to understand in my company
that the optimal size is not the maximal size.
Growing more will make us
neither more efficient or effective, nor happier.
There are five of us working for my clothing brand,
and it's enough to produce and distribute good quality clothes
and at the same time being profitable, and happy to go to work each morning.
What's the point of having 100 times more people?
What's the point of being 100 times bigger?
Companies' success is not their growth.
It's because of their obsession with growth
that we are in the current climate state of emergency.
Yet, I believe we still need companies.
We need them to heat, feed and clothe us,
but also to make our mobile phones more repairable
not to add a third camera on it;
to make our cars lighter so that we consume less energy,
not to make them more powerful;
to relocate our clothes factories,
not to make a smart jacket - what's the use of a smart jacket?
I believe we need an ecosystem of useful small and medium-sized companies,
not a world dominated by four big companies
whose single thought is to beat their competitors.
Because a beautiful resilient forest is not three big trees,
four kilometres in diameter, that would have taken over all the others.
A resilient forest, an ecologically rich forest,
it is thousands of trees of various sizes and species.
As a matter of fact, if you look around you,
useful companies that are not seeking growth at all costs are legions.
There are my energy provider, Enercoop; the baker downstairs;
Bioseptyl, the company that makes my toothbrush;
the producer from whom I buy my vegetables
and even a guy who has a fish restaurant on the banks of the river Loire.
There are millions of small and medium-sized companies
that are going great without seeking to take over the world.
Yet, this is not at all about this kind of companies
that the guy from the bar whom I mentioned earlier,
thought when he talked to me about a successful company.
How come?
There are so many small companies that are doing well around him.
Why, when he thinks about a successful company,
does he think of a big firm that is continuously growing?
Let's put ourselves in his shoes for a minute.
You are this guy,
or someone who really wants to launch a startup,
or you are already running a business, and you open the newspaper.
You'll see that record-breaking fundraisings are celebrated,
as well as sensational initial public offerings.
You'll read that a company's Grail is to become a unicorn,
meaning to be worth a billion dollars.
You'll see CEO of big companies being rewarded
by an average pay that is 83 times a caregiver's salary.
Now take a look at official awards.
You'll see that we award the Legion of Honor
to CEO of French companies that flooded the world with their products,
regardless of what it cost to our society.
It happens recently to the manager of Sanofi,
the pharmaceutical company responsible for the Depakine scandal,
a drug that caused mental and physical disorders
to dozens of thousands of children.
Now go to a bookstore
and ask if you can see the best-selling biographies of entrepreneurs.
You'll see works celebrating those who built up empires such as Nike or Apple.
You'll read that these people are showcased as examples to follow,
but little is said on what has been sacrificed for their success.
Did you know that in the 1990's,
it was discovered that children were making Nike sneakers?
And did you know that working conditions in the factories making our iPhones
are so bad that they are called "suicide factories"?
In our collective psyche, the big company is glorified,
and those who started it and are running it
are transformed into stars and erected as models for the rest of society.
Their journeys, methods and models are studied in business schools.
But History has showed us that desires for world conquest are deadly.
It is this ambition of always getting bigger and bigger,
being bigger than the neighbor,
that led us to plunder, colonize, exterminate, and enslave.
Yes, companies have a huge responsibility in increasing inequalities
and in the climate calamity we are currently living.
They are also in the best position to slow down this disaster,
and if they do not get involved, I am wondering whether we have a chance.
If we want companies' success not to occur at the expense of humans and the planet,
we have to change our definition of success.
And this starts by changing its representations.
Imagine opening the newspaper
and stumbling upon a two-page spread about Pierre Schmidt,
the CEO of a textile company in Alsace who is famous for two things:
having resisted the sirens of delocalization
and having implemented an exemplary waste water system.
Imagine that, in your bookstore,
you discover that the best-seller is a book from Thomas Huriez,
the man who succeed in bringing a jeans manufacturing branch back to France.
Imagine that in business schools
we start studying the business model of the bakery down my house
which, for 30 years, has been making the same products,
selling the same quantities, and is doing well.
Imagine how it would be if the image of success was not growth anymore.
I have good news:
those things I just described are already happening.
And it was about time.
It is about time for success to no longer be about money but positive impact.
It's time for companies to work for the greater good
and not for the enrichment of a few.
Yes, they will be smaller, but it's their size or our life,
so If you have to choose...
Yes, the definition of success is changing,
and I hope it won't stop there.
I hope that next year, when my friend will celebrate her birthday again,
and I'll find myself in a bar next to a guy I don't know,
when we'll chat and he'll ask me what I do, and I'll answer,
"I am an entrepreneur and I make clothes that last long
so that people don't need to buy new ones every other day,"
I hope this guy will pause, will look me in the eyes and say,
"Well, that will never work, everybody is doing it."
(Laughter)
Thanks a lot.
(Applause) (Cheers)