An exceptional man has just passed away. His name was Daniel Kahneman. It was in Paris that he should have seen the light of day, in 1934. His parents, Lithuanian Jews, had chosen France as their home in the 1920s, but it was during a family visit to Palestine then under British mandate that the man who defined himself as “the grandfather of behavioral economics” was born. A very modest self-definition for a man including the American essayist Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the famous book on the improbability of an event (The Black Swan), put certain works at the same level as The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. Rightly so: the work of Kahneman, a psychologist by training and winner of the “Nobel Prize” in economic sciences (which he never studied!), is a necessary counterweight to an exclusively mathematical approach to economics, which it has established itself as a behavioral science.
Why pay homage to the author of System 1 / System 2. The two speeds of thought in a column dedicated to the energy transition? Because the actors in this one, a bit like in The good, the bad and the ugly, are divided into two categories, those who think that technological innovation will play a major role, making it possible to reconcile economic growth and carbon neutrality, and those who bet on “a change in behavior”. In this last group, the former are treated as “technosolutionists”, a supposedly infamous accusation which places you in the category of, as desired, naive or unconscious, or even optimists who think that human beings will know, as they have. always done, use the resources of one’s infinite intelligence to find solutions and adapt.
The “behavior-solutionists” have another characteristic: they do not believe in the economy, which they decry, even though prices are undoubtedly the most effective way of changing behavior: the energy crisis comes from us give a masterful lesson. Nothing like a good increase in gas or electricity prices to reduce consumption. On the other hand, they love regulations and prohibitions: their definition of nirvana is, for example, limiting the number of plane flights, not to mention limiting the size of housing.
Think for ourselves
Here we are, a priori, far, very far from the work of Daniel Kahneman! And yet. Take for example those on biases, which lead him to demonstrate that we systematically overestimate our ability to predict and control future events. After all, aren’t these biases common to techno-solutionists (“we will manage to curb climate change through our intelligence as we have always taken on the great challenges of humanity”) and behavior-solutionists (“we are going into the wall”) ?
The difference, however, is that the former believe that it is necessary to work today on multiple technological avenues, through investment in innovation, in order to prepare for several scenarios. The latter? They feed a guilty, even apocalyptic discourse which outlines a terrifying future if we do not change Today our lifestyles through constraint. However, the obligations and prohibitions that they recommend have political consequences that they underestimate, precisely because of the prediction bias: the recent agricultural revolts in Europe show this.
We could multiply the examples based on the lessons from the work of Daniel Kahneman, but undoubtedly the main one lies elsewhere. Like all great scientists, Kahneman teaches us to think against ourselves. And it is certainly in this openness to methodical doubt and curiosity to move towards what we do not yet know, and not in certainties asserted with aplomb, that the most effective solutions are found for carrying out energy policies. and climate. “People are infinitely complicated,” Kahneman said. And the world too – a good reason to be wary of all simplistic solutions.
Cécile Maisonneuve is founder of Decysive and advisor to the Ifri Energy and Climate Center
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