MB Civic

Reinventing Globalization
By Stéphane Lauer
Le Monde

Saturday 10 June 2006

Nine thousand kilometers! That’s the total average distance covered by a shot of milk, fruit, and plastics before they’re transformed into a container of yogurt and find their way into your refrigerator. In thirty years, global shipping volume has tripled while road transport in France has jumped 43% in less than fifteen years. The globalization of reciprocal trade is such that international trade represents a third of global production.

Will we be able to maintain this rhythm over the next thirty years? Not very likely. These long trips, voracious in their use of fuel, are only possible because transportation cost is barely reflected in the final price of a container of yogurt, for example. The heralded increases in oil costs due to the exhaustion of reserves and global warming linked to CO2 emissions are going to force us, experts believe, to take a new look at the global flow of merchandise in the next thirty to forty years.

In the scenario where the price per barrel goes from 70 to 180 dollars, as the Conseil général des ponts et chaussées [French “General Council for Bridges and Roads”] envisions in a report on transport in 2050, the logistical situation is likely to be profoundly changed. Diesel fuel represents 20% of the costs for a transport company that clears a 4% profit. We see that if the fuel price variable is affected, the whole economic model teeters. “We don’t pay a fair price for energy,” reasons Thierry Raes, in charge of the energy and transport sector in the PricewaterhouseCoopers consulting firm. “There’s a very perverse logic at work. Globalization’s collateral damage – social and environmental – is only very partially taken into account.”

The aberrations are easily discernible in daily life. Pears from Argentina can be purchased by a distributor for less than those produced in the European Union. Chinese strawberries have become ultra-competitive, although when they’re sold in France, they demand twenty times the equivalent in gasoline of a strawberry from Périgord. “Between a quarter and half the weight of a pair of blue jeans is given off as CO2 by virtue of the product’s outsourcing,” points out Alain Morcheoine, Director of the agency for the environment, “Ademe.”

These aberrations are all the more untenable given that global energy consumption will increase 65% from now to 2025, from – most notably – China and India’s economic catch-up. If the Chinese purchased as many cars as Europeans tomorrow, their energy consumption would be one billion tons equivalent of oil a year, or as much as the United States, Japan and Europe today.

And if the model of development for the planet based on globalization of trade were not inescapable? “I don’t believe we can turn around and go backwards,” explains Mr. Raes, but it is clear that we have insufficiently questioned certain of society’s choices in recent years.” Some are already predicting a break. “We are certainly moving towards the acceleration of intellectual globalization, which will be accompanied by a brutal reduction in product circulation,” delineates Hervé Naillon, founder of the ethical marketing company, “Les Inventeurs.” This hypothesis comes close to the thesis of a future “light economy” boosted by new technologies and preached by Thierry Kazazian, of the environmental consulting agency, “O2 France.”

For the moment, companies focused on the short-term are not thinking ahead very well to this upset. But forecasting experts are already sketching out the contours of future global trade. “During the last thirty years, we clearly favored economies of scale, with ever bigger factories capable of serving ever more vast areas. Energy constraint should lead to a reversal of that movement,” deems Véronique Lamblin, Director of Research for the “Futuribles” group.

Eight hair dryers, toasters or coffee-makers out of ten sold in the world are made in China. Is the logic of specialization by production zones tenable when the cost of energy is going to explode? “In the twenty or thirty years to come, the logic of proximity will recover the upper hand,” assures Francis-Luc Perret, specialist in logistics at the Polytechnic School of Lausanne. Isn’t Michelin, global tire leader, already following this logic with the C3M process? The company has developed “micro-production units” the size of a small truck that can manufacture large quantities of tires anywhere on the planet. Several dozen units are presently being tested. “The future belongs to organizations composed of a study center in one country and multiple production units based close to consumption zones,” Mr. Naillon imagines. A necessary, but insufficient reorganization, some believe. It is the behavior of consumers themselves, pushed to be able to buy everything right away, that will have to be developed. “Does one necessarily need to get a bathing suit purchased in January through direct mail within 24 hours?” wonders Mr. Morcheoine. “Today, people abuse the offered flow. The product arrives as quickly as possible, while we could make due with ‘just in time,’ that is, have it arrive when it was promised.”

Undoubtedly, it will be necessary to go further in inventing lighter means of transport, less voracious for fuel, that function with alternative energy sources. The present period still belongs to the pioneers. For example, in 2007, the first cargo boat endowed with a 160 m2 flying sail designed to replace cruising when wind is available will take to the sea. And prototypes of ships and planes operating on solar energy have already sailed and flown.

The hydrofoil, an ultra-fast ship with a the hull that comes out of the water at high speeds, wants to beat the around-the-world sailing record, working in collaboration with the Lausanne Polytechnic School. “If one wants to go faster by water, maritime transport can be put back in the saddle for a number of applications,” deems Mme. Lamblin. In 2002, a former engineer from the National Center of Spatial Studies invented the “thick aerostatic flying wing,” a dirigible designed to transport 500 ton loads.

The system worked, but because of the lack of economic viability, it remains on the drawing board for the moment. As the crazy flight precursors did for the aeronautics industry at the beginning of the twentieth century, will these original ideas inspire the global transport industry of 2050?

Translation: t r u t h o u t French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher . ——-

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