Every Saturday we decipher climate issues with François Gemenne, professor at HEC, president of the Scientific Council of the Foundation for Nature and Man and member of the IPCC.
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France returned to the electoral campaign, after the dissolution of the National Assembly decided by Emmanuel Macron, and the victory of the National Rally in the European elections on June 9. According to François Gemennne, ecology was largely absent in the European campaign and this will still be the case in the campaign for the early legislative elections of June 30 and July 7. “We’re not going to lie to each other, the only question in these elections is whether we want the extreme right in power or not. And ecology will inevitably appear as a fairly secondary issue in this matter. What is more surprising is that it was also absent from the European campaign, while it is in the European Parliament that the standards which are really the most important, the most structuring, in terms of politics are voted on. environmental“, he said.
franceinfo: How do you explain that? ?
François Gemenne : Have you ever heard of the British parliamentary elections of July 5, 1945? These are the famous elections where Churchill was soundly beaten. However, Churchill emerged from the Second World War as a hero, he had led the Allies to victory, he was a national icon. So why is he beaten? Because it evokes bad memories in the English, it is too associated with the war, and voters want to turn the page.
“With the climate, the news is always bad, and more and more so, and so we don’t really want to be associated with it, when we are in the campaign.”
François Gemenneon franceinfo
But there are plenty of other subjects that also carry bad news, and yet we talk about them : insecurity, unemployment, public debt…
It’s true, but there is a big difference: for these subjects, the candidates have a miracle solution! It is often bogus, but it makes people believe that the problem can be easily resolved. With climate change, there is no miracle solution; we know that the impacts do not depend only on our future greenhouse gas emissions, but also on past emissions and the emissions of others. That’s the whole problem. Your record in the fight against climate change will not immediately translate into drops in temperatures. So it’s not easy to sell in the countryside. And that brings us to a huge paradox, the more serious the situation, the worse the news, the less we talk about it.
It is also the role of journalists to talk about it. But the problem is that the climate is often considered a separate problem, and entrusted to specialized journalists. And they are not the ones leading the political debates. And for the political journalists who lead the debates, the climate often appears to be a somewhat technical subject, and therefore an area into which they do not dare to venture too much. And besides, it’s the same for politicians themselves. It is readily considered as a subject distinct from the major economic and social subjects, while these subjects are obviously deeply contingent on the response we are going to give to climate change. While health, migration, peace, trade, all these subjects will be transformed by climate change.
“We still cannot really see climate change as an economic and social problem of primary importance.”
François Gemenneon franceinfo
We think that it is an environmental subject, that is to say, in media terms, a separate subject, which must be covered in specialized broadcasts and for which we can count the minutes of air time. As a result, the subject is rarely discussed in electoral campaigns.
But it’s a subject that concerns people…
Of course, all opinion surveys say it: 80 to 85% of French people are concerned or very concerned about climate change. But it is not because we are concerned about something that we necessarily make it a political priority. For example, I imagine that many of our listeners, at the moment, are concerned about the ongoing conflicts in Gaza or in Ukraine, but is that what determined their vote? Not necessarily. We know well that international issues are rarely a priority determinant of the vote, which is rather focused on immediate interests. And since the climate is by nature an international subject… So we find ourselves with another paradox: we often expect governments to act for the climate, but we never really give them a mandate for that.
When we talk about it, it is often from the angle of technical solutions: the electric car, or the thermal renovation of housing, for example. For the subject to take a real place in electoral campaigns, there would need to be a real discussion on the model of society we want. What, ultimately, is the democratic project that we want to put behind the transition? And that goes far beyond the somewhat binary debates that we can have on “sobriety versus technology”, or even on “green growth versus degrowth”. The real question concerns the fundamental principles of the social contract. What does freedom mean in a decarbonized world? Do we agree to modulate certain individual freedoms to guarantee the exercise of collective freedoms? What does equality mean in a decarbonized world? The same carbon budget of two tonnes for everyone? And above all, what does fraternity mean in a low-carbon world? Are we ready to expand our political community, to accept that the consequences of our actions affect all living beings? These are the fundamental questions that the climate should ask us when electing our leaders. On the condition that we can still talk about freedom, equality and fraternity after June 30.