The commitments made during this conference will not make it possible to contain global warming to 1.5 degrees, regrets the candidate of the Greens in the presidential election of 2022.
What conclusions do you draw from COP26?
Every time a COP is held, I wonder whether to go. The last one looked like a trade fair where heads of state gave feathered chef speeches and didn’t care about the next day. The five hundred fossil fuel lobbyists outnumbered the representatives of the islands threatened with submersion in Glasgow. It is a political failure. However, the COP is multilateralism. It must be defended, because there will be no solution to the climate problem without international cooperation. Dictators or apprentice dictators, like Bolsonaro, Trump and Putin, are climate skeptics, not because they deny scientific reality, but because they reject the idea of international cooperation. Their software is them against us or us against them. We have to counter that.
The final project notably stumbled over the fact that India refused to mention the extinction of coal. This country represents 7% to 8% of greenhouse gas emissions, against less than 1% for France. How to solve the climate problem without taking on board all the emerging countries, mainly those in Asia?
You point to India’s behavior, but the problem is much bigger. The sum of the commitments, including from Europe, does not put us on the path to a warming limited to 1.5 degrees maximum. We should have gone to 65% reduction in emissions by 2030. The European Parliament has proposed 60%, the States have reduced it to 53%. The problem is conformism or complacency vis-à-vis lobbies.
The lobbies have good backs. Isn’t it rather the difficulty of changing models that explains the delay?
Governments know the reality of climate change, but they deny the climate emergency. They are installing what I call “avoidance ecology”. They only see it as a constraint. Europe says: “The United States pollutes more than we do. The United States responds: “The problem is China. »Companies demand that we set the rules for CO2 at European level, and the ministers invite to pollute twice as much as the norm.
With the Green Deal, has Europe not taken up the subject?
Yes a little. This is the impact of green votes in Europeans, of young people who walk for the climate. This is the impact of a society struck by climate change. But we remain far from the account. Since 2009, the countries of the North have pledged 100 billion dollars [88,4 milliards d’euros] per year to developing countries to help them make a climate transition and adapt. We’re not there. They remain deaf to an increasingly legitimate demand for loss and damage. When you are hit by a cyclone, are you helped to repair? The countries of the North do not want to recognize this, because they think that to do so is to initiate a judicialization of the climate issue.
Where are your allies in Europe?
The Greens are in a coalition in six European countries. They will be a priori in the next German government. There is a considerable expectation vis-à-vis France so that it in turn becomes a player in the transformation. What I saw in Glasgow is mind-blowing: seven European countries, including Germany, participated in a press conference to criticize France which, to save its nuclear power, sacrificed the climate by allying with Poland in the coal and gas lobbies in Eastern European countries. Where has the spirit of the Paris Agreement gone?
The other major challenge is to redefine Europe’s place in international relations. I want France to block all free trade agreements. My problem is not to stop trade with other countries, but to question the nature of the trade relations that are established. Agreements are concluded with Australia, whose prime minister is half climate skeptic, with China, which is the worst dictatorship after North Korea. We must stop this. The European Union must be much stronger in terms of its values and diplomacy.