Finally concrete, finally a precise program, a costing, finally a basis on which to debate. This is in any case what was said in the entourage of the environmental candidate, yesterday, while savoring (with this press conference) the entry into a new stage of the campaign, a phase in which we would no longer speak of this Popular primary which has polluted all discussions on the left for weeks. If in addition the Covid is soon no longer the number 1 subject of the concerns of the French, then, ahead of the campaign! And forward the reconquest. Yes, because the problem for ecologists is that since Yannick Jadot’s victory in the Greens primary and his declaration of candidacy, his score in the polls has continued to drop. It is now at 5% in most polls, down 3 points in one month.
Will the publication of its program reverse the trend?
To tell the truth, to see the candidate of ecology at such a low level was rather unpredictable. There is of course the change in the perception of the French on nuclear power: they understood that in the future we would need electricity in quantity and that French nuclear power was an asset. But for the rest, now everyone thinks ecology, speaks ecology, promises ecology. Logically, we could have a 15-20% party, as in Germany for example.
This does not happen again in France because ecologists have been robbed of Ecology, or more exactly concern for the planet. This concern has invaded the public debate. All political parties have their panoply of green, sustainable, responsible measures. And now that planet is no longer the exclusive object of the Greens, we look at the rest of their program, and we see that (unlike the German Greens, for example) it is more than ever an extreme left program . So, there is of course the inevitable restoration of an ISF multiplied by 4, there is the (equally inevitable) increase in income tax for those who already pay the bulk of it. There is the citizen income, nearly 1000 euros per month given to all young people without resources from the age of 18. There is the creation of nearly 220,000 civil servant positions (100,000 nurses and caregivers, 65,000 teachers, 30,000 personnel for justice and youth, but obviously nothing for the police or the gendarmerie). In short, public money is flowing.
Is there an environmental specificity, measures that they are the only ones to propose?
There is indeed a specific environmentalists but what makes the difference with the other parties is that this specificity, this fringe of their fight is either dogmatic or caricatural. Dogmatic as can be the ban on the sale of thermal engine cars in 8 years or the ban on hunting on weekends and during school holidays, dogmatic also as the installation of 3000 wind turbines on land while each new mast erected has become a battle. And caricatural as can be the green mayors of big cities with the banning of the Christmas tree or the boycott of the Tour de France. This is the original sin of the French Greens, who have not at all acquired the culture of government of other ecologist parties in Europe. The more moderate among them want to force the French to change their behavior quickly (and I would even say brutally); the most diehards want to go so far as to change consciences and place all their fight on the moral level. Something to worry a very large majority of French people.