On the eve of the opening of COP27, the international summit on global warming, Emmanuel Macron had made a promise on Twitter. “Do you have any questions about the action we take for ecology? Ask me. I will take the time to answer you”, had launched the President of the Republic. His first responses to these interpellations “more or less precise and more or less sympathetic”were put online on Sunday, November 13 in a video of about twelve minutes.
Franceinfo noted three inaccurate assertions by the Head of State.
One of the condemnations of the State for climate inaction concerns its five-year term
His comments. The President of the Republic answered a question on the double condemnation of the French State for climate inaction, in the Grande-Synthe and Affaire du siècle files. “We were condemned for climate inaction over the period 2015-2018” when “France has not been on target”replied President Macron, considering that this condemnation was not “not for [sa] apple” despite his role in the previous five-year term, at the Elysée then as Minister of the Economy.
The cheking process. Emmanuel Macron is right to say that the conviction in the Affair of the Century file is based on the period preceding his first five-year term. But the other conviction, in the Grande-Synthe case (North) is a little more complex. The Council of State did not stop at the 2015-2018 period to enjoin the government to make additional efforts in the fight against global warming. “Pretending that this file relates to a past period is inaccurate.reframes for franceinfo Corinne Lepage, lawyer for the town of Grande-Synthe (and former presidential candidate of 2002). It concerns the present and future period, the ability of France to respect or not its obligations for 2030, and for the moment, it is not.
In November 2020, in a first decision, the body pointed to a decree of April 21, 2020 “having postponed until 2020 and in particular after 2023 part of the effort to reduce emissions to be made”. With this decree, the government had decided to allow itself to pollute a little more in the short term over the period 2019-2023 (-6%) and to make up for this delay in the following period (-12%). An error for the Council of State, which estimated in July 2021 “that it emerges from the various elements transmitted (…) that this 12% reduction objective cannot[it] be reached if new measures [n’étaient] not adopted in the short term”. The deadline for taking new measures had been set for March 31, 2022. Judging that nothing had been done, Corinne Lepage again seized the Council of State on April 1. This procedure, which will take a few months, is still ongoing.
France’s greenhouse gas emissions are falling at an insufficient rate
His comments. In the wake of his response on climate inaction, Emmanuel Macron multiplies the arguments suggesting that France is in the nails of its objectives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the engine of global warming. “We worked hard, there is proof, it is simple: during the past five-year period, 2017-2022, we reduced our emissions twice as fast as we had done in the past five years. twice as fast”he congratulates himself, before adding: “The objective which was ours in 2020, which was to reduce our emissions by 20%, we achieved it in 2019, that is to say before the closures linked to Covid”.
The cheking process. On France’s trajectory, the latest report from the High Council for the Climate, an independent body created by the President of the Republic in 2018, is very clear: “France’s response to global warming is progressing, but remains insufficient.” On the acceleration of the reduction of emissions touted by Emmanuel Macron, the HCC notes that “the rate of reduction estimated over the period 2019-2021 (-1.9% per year) is close to the rate observed over the decade 2010-2019 (-1.7% per year)”. For the moment, France is well within the limits of the carbon budget that it has set for the period 2019-2023, but it is “mainly due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as the increase in the emissions cap of the second carbon budget during the revision of the SNBC2”.
Above all, the High Council recalls that France will have to revise its objectives upwards. The European Union has adopted a more ambitious reduction target for 2030, going from -40% to -55%. Like all Member States, France will have to revise its objectives upwards. “This implies a doubling of the annual rate of emission reductions to around -16 Mt of CO2 equivalent (-4.7%) on average over the period 2022-2030, which must be compared to the observed annual reductions of -8 .1 Mt eqCO2 (-1.7%)”warns the HCC.
The measures of the Citizen’s Climate Convention have been largely watered down
His comments. Among the questions selected, that of the blogger Bon Pote asking Emmanuel Macron when he counts “respect [sa] speech” and “apply the measures proposed by the Citizens’ Climate Convention”. “We said yes to 146 proposals [sur 150] and we move on”replied Emmanuel Macron, citing a few measures such as the ban on certain domestic flights or the moratorium on the creation of commercial areas on the outskirts of cities.
The cheking process. Initially, the President of the Republic had promised to submit “without filter” the Convention’s proposals to Parliament or to a referendum. On arrival, the 150 citizens drawn by lot had judged the way in which the government had resumed their work very harshly: 2.5 out of 10. By analyzing the Climate and Resilience law, the main vector of this work, franceinfo had found that 22 % of the 46 measurements repeated had been taken without modification. The others were truncated or watered down, with a reduction in their perimeter or an extension of the deadlines.
The ban on certain domestic flights cited by Emmanuel Macron is a good illustration of this observation. The participants in the Convention proposed to prohibit journeys that could be made in less than four hours by train, the cursor was lowered to 2h30 by the government. That “concerns eight routes which in 2019 represented only 10% of metropolitan air passenger traffic”, noted the High Council for the climate. In September 2022, the Reporterre site noted that this ban had still not come into force, blocked at European level.
The moratorium on commercial zones mentioned by the President of the Republic is also a reduced version of a measure proposed by the Citizens’ Convention, that of“prohibit any artificialization of land as long as commercial, artisanal or industrial rehabilitation or wasteland is possible within the existing urban envelope”. As Actu-Environnement explains, logistics warehouses and areas of less than 10,000 m² are not concerned. “80% of commercial surface projects are below, the average commercial surface being 2,000 m²”criticized the Climate Action Network at the time.