A demonstration by opponents of the Lyon-Turin rail tunnel project is scheduled for Saturday 17 June. It was banned by the prefecture of Savoy.
We are off to the Alps today, where a sea serpent is one day to meander across the mountain by high-speed train, between Lyon and Turin. It is a project that was born in the 80s, planned for the beginning of the 2030s. Even today, no official route has been defined. A demonstration of opponents is planned today. It is prohibited by the prefecture. There was a support rally earlier in the week. Decryption with the sociologist Jean Viard.
franceinfo: This is another major infrastructure project that creates friction?
John Viard: Yes, it’s a project that must pass 250 trains per day, and it’s a project of about 160 kilometers. So there’s not just one tunnel, there’s all the access, and there are two tunnels. In fact, there is a tunnel in France, which is a little over 40 kilometers long, and a tunnel in Italy which is a little over 10 kilometers long. So it’s a huge project. You have to compare it a bit to the Channel Tunnel, it’s a bit the same effect, it’s a bit the same issue which is the link between the north of Italy, which is an extremely industrial region and effectively the France, and in particular the world of Lyon.
And it must also be said that currently, there are two valleys which are covered with trucks all day, it is the Maurienne and the Arve valley. So there’s all that on the case. Every time we take a TGV, there are people who live there, who find it appalling that we pass through their homes and we understand them. We can understand the protest of local residents, and it will actually damage landscapes, etc.
And there is another movement, which moreover initially comes from Notre-Dame-des-Landes, since the leaders of the movement are former Notre-Dame-des-Landes. They were against an airport in relation to plane pollution, there was consistency. There, we switched to trains. The goal is still to remove thousands of trucks. So they are actually against it, basically, because they are against all major projects.
There are different approaches to this climate war. There are people who want to create an ecology of degrowth, where there would be no more major projects, where we would be essentially local, and then people who say: climate war is an ecology of progress , and so we have to replace trucks with trains, so make tracks, etc.
A little earlier this week, Friday on franceinfo, the elected ecologist Sandrine Rousseau said that the existing is perhaps sufficient in terms of rail freight.
There are those who oppose today and who demonstrate, saying that this project involves the drilling of tens of kilometers of galleries, that it will destroy the mountain for economic interests. They highlight in particular the issue of water management and the impact on this resource. While the defenders of the project say that the Lyon-Turin, there is nothing more ecological, it is the reduction of road traffic.
Are we really in two irreconcilable visions?
Irreconcilable, maybe not, but it’s clear that it’s a project from the 80s, when we wanted to do big projects everywhere. That is true. Me, I think that in these projects, some will be done, others won’t. This is the essence of regulation by politics. At some point, there are strengths. Are these forces strong? Are they democratic and know what they are talking about? Personally, I believe that it rebuilds politics, but we must insist on the fact that basically, there is a rise in a form of violence which nevertheless poses a real problem.
4000 people expected to protest, including 400 to 500 radical elements, according to the Ministry of the Interior, with this call to demonstrate “Earth Uprisings” in particular, which assume, as a mode of action, civil disobedience. Some shock actions, those near Nantes last Sunday, with degraded Nantes market garden greenhouses. The government which wants to dissolve the “Earth Uprisings” extremely quickly, files being compiled.
How do we receive this kind of decision today in France, at a time when the fight against climate change must be everyone’s business?
The fight against climate change is not theirs. Everyone has to go into battle, and that’s actually what’s happening. After on each subject, there are different ways to do it. All human activity has flaws, so I’m fine with discussing that. But remember when José Bové had dismantled the McDo de Millau, he had dismantled the McDo de Millau, he hadn’t broken it, and the political sense was the same somewhere. He was saying no to the McDo on his territory, and it was a legitimate political debate. And the method was respectful of the work of the people who had worked there.
That indeed they occupy places, that there are practices which are not absolutely legal, of course that the fights can sometimes be on the edge of legality to be heard. But from there to attacking the work of the agricultural world, which is a world in great difficulty, in great suffering, and which is all the same the world which feeds us, and it is the world which manages our territories, and which will lead the carbon battle. But what I mean is that you can’t pit society against its farmers. It’s counterproductive.