Heat waves, water shortages, forest fires… After a summer marked by the consequences of climate change in France, a new international youth strike for the climate is organized this Friday. the movement Fridays for Future, launched by Greta Thunberg in 2018, hopes for renewed mobilization and calls on all young people around the world to “to gather in front of the town halls of our cities at 11:30 a.m. to convey the emergency message of our generation on the climate and the demand for the integration of climate issues into all training”. During the last major mobilization last March, thousands of demonstrators marched around the world.
A slogan – #PeopleNotProfit (People and not profit, editor’s note) – and a demand – that governments “listen to the voices of those most affected (by climate change) and immediately begin their work to bring compensation and funding to the communities most affected by the climate crisis” – are featured this Friday.
France lagging behind on its greenhouse gas reduction targets
According to the latest inventory of the Climate-Energy Observatory * unveiled Thursday, France is not meeting its greenhouse gas emission reduction targets : major sectors continue to emit too much CO2 and carbon sinks (capable of capturing carbon dioxide such as the oceans, plants, soils) do not work as well as expected. The country aims net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050, i.e. by that time, residual emissions will have to be offset by what is absorbed by carbon sinks. However, the absorption of CO2, which remains difficult to calculate, is undermined by the artificialization of the soil, drought or fires.
In addition, the year 2021 resulted in a rebound in gross emissions (without taking into account absorption) of greenhouse gases, with the partial resumption of economic activity. France nevertheless respects the trajectory it has set for this raw indicator, according to the observatory.
While politicians are slow to respond to the climate emergency, the Fridays for Future movement is supported by a group of scientists, who, in a column published this Thursday in the newspaper “Le Monde”, calls for a stronger mobilization of the society.
* The Climate-Energy Observatory is a tool developed by the Climate Action Network and the CLER-Network for energy transition. It aims to take stock of the situation and assess the level of achievement of France’s climate and energy objectives, defined in the Energy Transition Law for Green Growth and set out in the National Low Carbon Strategy (SNBC) and the Multiannual Energy Programming (EPP). Its vocation is to allow an enlightened debate, based on a shared inventory.