Operation to make up for lost time, Thursday March 14, in Matignon. After postponing the meeting several times, Gabriel Attal receives the heads of nine environmental associations. Everyone arrives weighed down by their apprehensions about this new prime minister. In just a few weeks, the latter has tried to calm farmers by backing down on environmental standards and has already slashed the “green budget” by 2.2 billion euros, the sector most affected by the recent energy savings plan. 10 billion euros.
“I wanted to express to you a mea culpa on the absence of hearing from the associations on the agricultural crisis”says Mr. Attal in the introduction, before insisting on “the complicated economic and budgetary reality” but also to recall that he, unlike the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, had never used the term “ecoterrorist”, an expression that will be banned in his government, he promises.
“He was above all in a listening posturesummarizes Antoine Gatet, president of France Nature Environnement. We needed to hear that the General Secretariat for Ecological Planning [SGPE] continued to exist and that he could possibly stand up to the Minister of Agriculture. »
Two hours later, the activists left, still waiting. Where is the ecological planning promised by Emmanuel Macron in 2022? Does this strategy, which must integrate decarbonization trajectories at the heart of political decisions, really exist beyond the PowerPoints prepared by the SGPE?
Since the start of the year, the situation has been paradoxical. This week, the government was able to boast of a 4.8% drop in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2023, according to data from the Interprofessional Technical Center for Atmospheric Pollution Studies (Citepa) published Thursday March 21th. Even if it is difficult to separate the structural from the cyclical – mild temperatures, sobriety suffered due to inflation, growth at half-mast, etc. – this result puts France a little further on the path to its commitment to 55% reduction in GHGs compared to the 1990 level, the first step towards carbon neutrality in 2050. “To maintain our trajectory in 2023, our objective was to emit less than 397 million tonnes of greenhouse gases. We emitted 385 million tonnes”welcomed Emmanuel Macron on X.
“It’s a very difficult time”
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