The repetition of these actions raises questions, but it seems to me that these militant actions speak above all to a militant core. In the rest of the population they shock, they offend, they distress… and that’s the goal. But who seriously thinks that public decision-makers or citizens will change their practices because a guy stuck his skull on a painting in The Hague?
Denouncing the emergency is useful but it is not enough. There is obviously a story problem: while global warming is there, while we experience concrete and sometimes dramatic effects every day, there is a gap among these activists between the nobility of their cause and the political concretization that should follow. Without this step, nothing happens in a democratic society.
Shocking is good, but it can be comfortable: it does not allow you to confront the reality of the issues. Conversely, defining and assuming a public policy is probably less painful than sticking your hands together, but believe it, it also requires courage.
The real problem is there: in Europe, environmentalists have won the cultural battle but they have lost the political battle. Who proposes a framework and a vision, able to embark the whole population, and not only the urban CSPs who are the last to be able to afford organic, towards a carbon-free society? We must also talk to the countryside, to those who need their car… We must look the most precarious in the eye and tell them how we are going to help them renovate their house or leave behind an old diesel.
When it comes to taking responsibility, who is up to the climate challenge? Emmanuel Macron, pro-business, could have been well placed to embark with him the business world in a real ecological transition. It clearly still lacks realism. On the left, wouldn’t it be time to get out of postures? When elected environmentalists vote in Brussels on the climate package, why do they fail to negotiate ambitious climate agreements in France? In both cases, the negotiations are with the centrists, the liberals and the macronists. Why is it too difficult in Paris when they are succeeding at European level? It does not mean anything.
To govern is to make choices between bad solutions and even worse ones! It’s more difficult than doing happenings or an editorial. We cannot say that the urgency is there and refuse to sit around a table. A law is never perfect, but the ENR bill is on the table. The quality of the debates will show who is fighting for the climate, and who is fighting for his political chapel…