IIt’s rare to see a President of the Republic organize his own trap! Yet this is what happened to Emmanuel Macron. He thought he was making a “coup” by bringing together in the same “ring” the representatives of productivist agriculture, although at home, and those who radically criticize it.
With this umpteenth version of “at the same time”, he undoubtedly thought he would forget the dangerous concessions granted to agribusiness and the powerful chemicals lobby. He broke his teeth on someone stronger than him. To use a peasant saying adapted to the situation, he left to look for wool and came back shorn!
But we would be wrong to stop at the accident, at simple political turpitude. Because what happened on February 24 is a political event that says a lot about the fragility of those who govern us and the extent of denial in the face of an existential question. For the first time, in fact, ecology is at the origin of a political crash, thus providing proof that the questions posed by ecologists for ages are today at the heart of questions about our common future, and that they can no longer remain without answers.
However, instead of creating the conditions for a debate involving the whole of society, those in power have chosen to side with those who prefer to divide it, by making ecologists appear as the new enemies of the people – enemies who would only promise him punishments, restrictions and decline.
Coalition of Denial
This binary presentation of the world only serves the supporters of the status quo, firstly in the service of their interests which are clearly contrary to the inevitable ecological bifurcation which will save us from the worst. Brought together in what must be called the coalition of denial, they act at all levels to break any policy of adaptation to climate change in the agricultural sector, even though it is one of the leading emitters of greenhouse gases.
Examples are easy to find. Thus the Committee of Professional Agricultural Organizations-General Confederation of Agricultural Cooperatives (COPA-Cogeca), lobby of European agricultural organizations, based in Brussels and chaired by Christiane Lambert, former president of the National Federation of Farmers’ Unions who, associate to other powerful agribusiness and pesticide lobbies such as CropLife Europe [syndicat européen des fabricants de pesticides]Grain Club [lobby céréalier]Livestock Voice [lobby européen de la production animale]blocked the road to the Green Deal with the complicity of the conservatives and the far right of the European Parliament.
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