Time is counted.

Thursday, July 29 is the day 2021 is exceeded. And each year, the situation becomes more tense: the Earth's resources are being depleted more quickly.

For planetologist and emeritus research director at the CNRS, Jean-Loup Bertaux, controlling overpopulation is one of the challenges of this race for the clock, as he explains on Europe 1 on Thursday.

INTERVIEW

It would take 1.7 times the planet Earth to absorb our current functioning.

This Thursday, July 29, we reached the day of the overrun, calculated each year by the NGO Global Footprint Network.

This date had been postponed last year under the effect of confinements, but it is returning this year to its level before the Covid crisis.

For Jean-Loup Bertaux, "there are too many of us" on the planet and overpopulation is the first enemy of ecology.

The planetologist and emeritus research director at the CNRS was invited to the morning of Europe 1 on Thursday.

A balance of "4.5 billion inhabitants"

Each year the day of the overrun advances: November 4 in 1980, August 7 in 2010 and finally July 29 in 2021. A trend clearly emerges: we consume too much.

But for the planetologist, it is impossible to reduce this overconsumption.

"Go tell people who don't consume a lot in developing countries that they should consume less, they will laugh in your face and legitimately, they will consume more. Rich countries consume a lot and they are democracies: no president does would be elected by proposing to tighten the belt ", he develops.

Before ensuring: "Frugality, so I do not believe very much."

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Jean-Loup Bertaux leans for another solution: to monitor overpopulation. The more humans we are on Earth, the more resources are depleted: "Today, we are 7.9 billion inhabitants and we would be in equilibrium if we were only 4.5 billion inhabitants with a similar average consumption ", assures Jean-Loup Bertaux. And it gets worse. Each year, 84 million additional people populate the planet, "that is to say the population of France added to that of the Netherlands", compares Jean-Loup Bertaux.

And the planetologist goes even further.

For Jean-Louis Bertaux, the CO2 reduction efforts undertaken by several states around the world "could be annihilated by population growth".

"We had gained 0.5% per year in the last decade but as the population increased by 1.1% in total, the total production of CO2 increased by 0.6%", he explains.

Should we stop having children? 

Biodiversity largely damaged, massive extinction of species and increased pollution ... Overconsumption caused by overpopulation is wreaking havoc.

But then should we really have children?

In his book

Demography, Climate, Migration: The State of Emergency

, Jean-Loup Bertaux does the math.

It would be necessary to fall back to 40 million French people only to achieve ecological balance.

A third less than today.

>> Find the Tête-à-tête every day at 7.40 am on Europe 1 as well as in replay and podcast here

This phenomenon is all the more worrying on the African continent, in the midst of a demographic crisis. In 2017, the Community of West African States (CDAO) therefore signed the Ouagadougou Charter. It sets a target of fewer than three children per woman by 2030. As regards China, which has put an end to the one-child policy, Jean-Loup Bertaux is more confident. "People have gotten used to a comfortable life. They have found that they live better if they have fewer children. And so, I don't think the demographics will start to rise again," concludes -he.