NOTe are many of us who were delighted, six years ago, to hear the French president, Emmanuel Macron, challenge President Donald Trump on the theme “Make our planet great again”. We could imagine him as the leader of a European, then global, movement for a real transition, because France could have, by doing it well, a training capacity out of proportion to its relatively modest economic weight and its relatively low greenhouse gas emissions.
These perspectives have, it seems, begun to take shape with the establishment in 2019 of the citizens’ climate convention, which brought together 150 citizens selected to constitute a representative sample of the French population. Organized around our daily activities − housing, eating, traveling, etc. − and those linked to production and work, the work of the convention resulted in relevant and ambitious recommendations, which also have the merit of showing that the whole of society – and not just political decision-makers – is concerned by the fight against global warming. To also show that it is a question of radically modifying the way our societies operate – the notion of sobriety being put forward – and not of being content with marginal modifications.
Most of the convention’s recommendations have fallen by the wayside. More serious, the successful institutional experience that it represents has been devalued. On September 25, President Macron announced welcome measures, some of which are in line with the recommendations of the convention. However, they are the easiest to implement because they are technological in nature and generally well accepted (heat pumps rather than fossil fuel boilers, electric cars rather than diesel, etc.). Absent, however, is the coherence of the collective effort proposed by the convention. It is true that far from being consistent, most political leaders unabashedly practice the art of double-dealing when it comes to climate change.
Worsening of the disorder
Chinese President Xi Jinping is clearly aware of his country’s extreme vulnerability to climate change. He nevertheless supports the seemingly limitless expansion of the coal-fired power plant fleet.
The President of the United States, Joe Biden, does not see any contradiction between public support for the energy transition on an undoubtedly unprecedented scale, and, simultaneously, the multiplication of federal authorizations for the exploration and exploitation of new oil resources, mainly in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, on a scale that his predecessor had not even dared to envisage.
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