“The fundamental questions are not asked”, deplores Magali Reghezza-Zitt, lecturer in geography at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) and signatory of a forum published Tuesday, February 1 on franceinfo in which 1,400 scientists call on presidential candidates and the media to “getting out of climate inaction”. “We look through the small end of the telescope, with oppositions that are very violent, quite caricatures, binary”, says the researcher. “These are questions that affect all democratic issues”, she insists.
franceinfo: We are talking about the price of electricity, the price of energy, of nuclear power. Are we talking about environmental issues all the same in this campaign?
Magali Reghezza-Zitt: The problem is how we talk about it. That is to say, when we look at the question of electricity and relate it to the question of climate change. We have a problem with decarbonizing the energy sector as a whole, and not just electricity. Today, on electricity, we are for or against nuclear power. We are on binary debates and substantive questions are not asked. How are we going to decarbonize the entire energy sector? How are we going to limit fuel poverty? How are we going to reduce territorial inequalities? How are we going to develop training, employment, health issues, quality of life issues?
“We are looking through the small end of the telescope, with oppositions that are very violent, quite caricatural and binary. The French for the moment do not have the choice between different options or tracks which can be very varied and which will be challenges for the next five years.
Magali Reghezza-Zitt, lecturer in geography at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS)at franceinfo
What we are asking is that at some point, these questions be asked, put on the presidential agenda, beyond these caricatures to present projects, different visions because there are a challenge for action for the next few years.
How to expose these subjects during a presidential campaign?
These are not complex theories. It is really a question of saying that today we have an inventory of the situation and of the needs, because France is committed and that there are security issues for the populations, economic and social. Behind it, you have to tell yourself that you have several voices and this is precisely the place for a democratic campaign, to say to the citizens: “Where, me candidate, if I am elected, I want to go to achieve these objectives. “
The first subject is first of all to recall that environmental questions are not only questions of ecology. These are questions that affect all democratic issues: employment, training, social security, housing, transport inequalities, etc.
Does ecology interest voters?
When we look at opinion polls and when we look at the work we do with sociologists, the environment is still in the top three concerns of the French. We have experience, when we talk about the environment, the rooms are full. This is of great interest to young people, but it is also of interest to all categories of the population. We have a unique chance today, it is to be able to put a ballot in the ballot box to decide on the paths, the paths that we will take in the future.
You say that ecology, the environment are very present. This is one of the concerns of the French. However, the environmental candidate, Yannick Jadot, his campaign is slipping.
There are two things. First, this forum is non-partisan. The scientists who have signed come from all political stripes. The subject, precisely, is that the environment cannot be reduced to ecology. These questions cross all social issues, on the right, on the left or in the centre. Whatever party you are in, you need to ask these questions So, there is indeed the environmentalist candidate, but all the other candidates, when they talk about their program, they talk about these environmental subjects.
When we talk about legacies, for example, how are we going to bequeath buildings, when part of it is in a flood zone? A part will be subject to the rise in sea level? That we have houses that will crack because of the risk of drought? So, we can clearly see that behind it is a set of subjects. On employment, the reconversion that will have to be undertaken in relation to environmental issues, biodiversity, climate, oceans, it is jobs that will be destroyed and jobs that will have to be recreated. We have major subjects of reconversion of the agricultural, tourist, industrial, transport, school housing sectors. It irrigates all the political debate.