Researchers and representatives of environmental NGOs have just published a Tribune explaining that in the name of the ecological fight, they oppose pension reform. Because “to work more is to produce more, it is to pollute more”. However, they refuse to go to the end of their logic by drawing the only conclusion that is necessary, namely that it is the pay-as-you-go system itself that is ecocidal. Without saying so, the solutions they advocate call it fundamentally into question. Unfortunately as always in a decreasing perspective and not sustainable development.
The forum in question echoes a chronic of the journalist of World Rémi Barroux entitled “The climate, a blind spot in pension reform”. Its author was surprised and regretted that the last report of the Pensions Orientation Council of September 2022, on which the reform currently under discussion is based, does not take into account the impact that climate change will have on working conditions. However, there is nothing surprising in this.
Several links can be made between climate and pensions. First, the difficulty. Rising temperatures will make outdoor work more difficult than it is today. Certainly, but it is difficult to see how such hardship could be taken into account in the pension system. It is very different from the criteria which, today, make eligible for the professional prevention account. Since January 1, 2018, there have been six of them: night work, repetitive work (on an assembly line), work in successive alternating shifts (3×8), work in a hyperbaric environment (underground or under water), in a noisy environment or exposed to extreme temperatures. Global warming could not be assimilated to this last criterion. Nor to any other for that matter. Because, it is understood, these criteria have two characteristics. The first is that they can be measured. Thus the carrying of heavy loads, awkward postures, mechanical vibrations and exposure to dangerous chemical agents were removed as hardship criteria because their exposure thresholds were considered uncontrollable.
The second characteristic of these criteria is that the worker cannot avoid them. Being exposed to such hardship is an integral part of the jobs eligible for the professional prevention account. Not so with global warming. With such a criterion, any worker likely to work outdoors could assert a right to hardship. Its exposure to rising temperatures would be all the less quantifiable if it were not consubstantial with one profession or another. And above all, even assuming a warming of 4°C in mainland France, extreme heat will always be limited to the year. Working conditions will therefore obviously be adapted so that workers are exposed to them as little as possible. We do not see how the pension system could today take into account such hardship that is both future, too broad, unmeasurable and… hypothetical!
Demographic one-upmanship
Another link between climate and pensions, a corollary of the first, global warming will have an impact on life expectancy. By promoting allergens and the rise of diseases and parasites, it will have overall effects on health. Certainly, but once again the pension system can only take into account the current evolution of life expectancy, not what it could become.
In their criticism of the reform, the environmental NGOs go further by noting that working more means producing more and therefore polluting more. With this criticism, we finally get to the heart of the problem, but in a partial and biased way. Critics denounce the fact that by pushing back the retirement age from 62 to 64, not only is the overall amount of pensions to be paid reduced, but in addition we are counting on productivism to finance them (the more we work , the more activity we generate, the more jobs there are and the more old-age contributions there are). It’s true. But we must not forget to say that, if we count today on productivism to balance the regimes, it is because the demographic evolution imposes it. In other words, if the pension system is not ecological, it is not only because it depends on economic growth. This is primarily because it depends on population growth. It is misleading to denounce one without mentioning the other. Especially since demographic escalation is the real engine of a system based on intergenerational solidarity. This is the basis, for the distribution to work, you need more active people than pensioners. So more and more workers are needed. Especially when life expectancy increases! It is, moreover, an antiphon perfectly digested by society. Everyone knows that “we have to have children to pay our pensions”. But having more and more children isn’t exactly green… That’s an understatement. Population growth is one of the fundamental determinants of the increase in our environmental footprint. More people means more carbon emitted and more needs for energy, food, materials, etc.
The distribution is therefore not ecologically sustainable. To green our pensions, we have no choice but to abandon it. This is also very exactly what the proposals outlined, implicitly or not, by environmental NGOs would lead to: sharing working time and taxing robots. Financing the same retirement pensions by working less and taxing the capital amounts to getting out of distribution. Because it is fundamentally decoupling employment and retirement by making the company pay. It is also part of a decreasing logic of depression of activity. Logic that could be very detrimental to the balance of diets. Because any increase in the cost of production is reflected either in prices (purchasing power effect) or in employment… And fewer jobs means fewer pension contributions and a worsening of deficits.
There is only one alternative solution: the transition to capitalization. It, at least, is not based on demographic one-upmanship. In capitalization, everyone contributes for themselves. But ecologists castigate it on the grounds that savings finance “mainly fossil fuels, which therefore accelerate climate change”. They are right. A funded pension system would only be green if the pension funds created to invest retirement savings had the obligation to invest in the transition. Which just suggests a great opportunity for the latter. Because it will be very easy to assign ecological specifications to pension funds. What if capitalization was the lever we lack to green our business? Not reduce it, but make it sustainable. Capitalization could be key to financing the investments necessary for decarbonization and allowing the development of sustainable finance. This is undoubtedly a historic opportunity to be seized. But will the CGT, the Greens and Greenpeace be ready to support such a pension reform?
* Sustainable development adviser to the Senate, Antoine Buéno recently published The collapse of the world will probably not take place (Flammarion).