In France, there has not been a quinquennium that has not been poisoned by the question of fuel prices. The reason for this is clear, it is because we have pursued two contradictory objectives, albeit both are legitimate in their respective ways.
There are many who believe that we must raise fuel prices to encourage a maximum of consumers to reduce their fuel consumption and also to reduce carbon emissions. In contrast, others believe that we must lower fuel prices because we cannot ask those who do not have other means of transportation available to pay more at the pump.
The choice is purely political: between the urgent and the important. On one hand, it is urgent to calm the anger of voters. But on the other hand, it is important to prepare the world for future generations. Every previous president has caved in to the demands of the urgent, and has blocked the increase in fuel prices, or at the very minimum the fuel tax.
It does not seem like this is what the current majority, which a priori has stood firm on raising prices, is about to do in the coming years.
I approve this choice. But for me, the right answer supposes a much broader vision and is articulated around the following three principles:
1. Maintain the momentum on reining in carbon emissions. That is to say, the expected fuel tax increase in order to uphold the incentive of changing modes of transportation.
2. Make the State fund compensatory subsidies schemes for people who are most in need and have more constraints. The subsidy should be personalized and set at a degressive rate to avoid the effects of a windfall and payment ceilings. However, the local departments should be allowed to manage the subsidy program.
3. Give priority to alternative means of transportation (bus, train, collective taxi, electric battery ports) in rural areas.
In my opinion, that is the essence of the problem, and it is not only a French problem: If it is easy to find in cities an alternative to using vehicles that pollute, it is much less the case in rural territories.
A growing percentage of people will live in cities, and countless technologies and social services will help city dwellers live as well as they can and at lower costs. That is because the urban market will be large enough to attract technological and social innovators and entrepreneurs.
However, those who will remain in the countryside and who are very essential for urban food consumption and the equilibrium of nature, are currently and will remain too few to attract useful and specific investments.
Rurality should nonetheless remain a priority for technical and social progress.
For example, we should be able to massively use drones to deliver goods of all kinds in these territories that have a dispersed population. Autonomous vehicle transport systems should be installed and maintained in the countryside. It is easier to manage self-driving vehicles in uncrowded roads rather than in urban traffic jams. We should especially think, invent, and encourage telecommuting, telemedicine, tele-education, remote assistance and telemonitoring programs for these territories. Such initiatives would provide these residents with the same quality of services that are available to those who are packed into cities, close to offices, hospitals, nurseries, schools, shops, police stations and post offices.
All over the world, these technologies could radically change our relationship with our work, fellowship, habitat, nature, migration, culture and social order. Particularly, in France, these technologies could help reverse the disastrous desertification of our territories and the sinister feeling of abandonment from which rural residents suffer.
To achieve this, everyone should consider sharing their means of transportation and rethink the organization of labour. And more generally, it will require that we get to know our neighbours better and partake in everything that can and should be shared.
Better than technical progress, altruism is the future.
j@attali.com