This project of mega-basins of water angers environmentalists. Result, a demonstration prohibited and which degenerates, dozens of wounded gendarmes, and an act of vandalism Sunday, October 30, a pipe supposed to feed these future basins cut by demonstrators. All were not simple Green activists, there were also ultra-left activists including around forty S files, according to Gérald Darmanin who saw fit to accuse them of “ecoterrorism”.
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On the side of the Greens, officially, we reject violence but we brandish “civil disobedience”, a practice as old as ecological activism. It dates back to the early 1970s and challenges the Greens to radicalism. And division: an eternal dilemma, illustrated by the welcome given this weekend to MEP Yannick Jadot. He was booed, whistled by some activists, the car he had borrowed was even tagged with the inscription “Crevure”.
Clearly, for the most radical activists, Jadot is soft, notabilised ecology. However, remember that in his career, Yannick Jadot himself practiced actions of “civil disobedience”. As head of Greenpeace France, he was even sentenced for having entered a military nuclear site. Except that since then, he has been campaigning to make the Greens a more reasonable party of government, capable of coming to power, of managing reality.
Some elected ecologists have chosen to run after these radicals. This is the case of MP Sandrine Rousseau. Listening to him, if Yannick Jadot was heckled, it was because he had looked for it: “The way he presents ecology questions” and he must “finding a combat ecology”she says.
Sandrine Rousseau@sandrousseau): “Yannick Jadot must hear that we need to find the ecology of combat” pic.twitter.com/cy46cetDVv
— BFMTV (@BFMTV) October 30, 2022
For his part, Jadot denounces violent actions which “rot the social mobilizations” and “will kill political ecology” he said. Speak loudly to galvanize the convinced or advocate a certain moderation to cast a wider net, this cleavage is not new, but the gap is now widening at the very heart of the party. And at a time when the environmental emergency is essential, it is the very future of the Greens which is in question.