The greens would love Macron, if he weren’t so
easy to hate
Macron’s term has been marked by lofty speeches and
limited progress on environmental goals.
BY LOUISE
GUILLOT AND KARL MATHIESEN
April 22,
2022 6:21 pm
Emmanuel
Macron had five years to win over green voters — it hasn’t worked.
Now he's
undertaking a last-ditch effort to appeal to them ahead of Sunday’s runoff
against far-right candidate Marine Le Pen.
For
green-minded voters, the choice on Sunday might seem obvious.
Macron's
record may not enthuse climate campaigners, but he's running against a
nationalist who has pledged to slow down decarbonization efforts, dismantle
wind farms and place a moratorium on new wind and solar power. She has also
blamed “the economic model based on international free trade” for “the
majority” of greenhouse gas emissions.
But in
Wednesday's TV debate she jabbed at Macron by calling him a "climate
hypocrite" — and it hit a nerve.
Experts and
environmentalists point out that Macron's five-year term was marked with
sweeping declarations of intent but patchy delivery, raising doubts about his
sincerity on climate issues.
Macron's
last-minute green pivot “is driven by electoral gain,” said Thomas Pellerin-Carlin,
director of the Jacques Delors Energy Center, a think tank. “It’s something
that he could have done in 2017, 2018, 2019.”
Starting
low
Macron's
thinking on environmental issues has evolved "considerably,"
according to Pascal Canfin, former director of the World Wildlife Fund in
France and now a European parliamentarian with the Macron-allied Renew Europe
group.
When he
first met Macron in 2012, the president-to-be was “a classic industrialist,”
Canfin told La Croix, and tried to convince Canfin of the benefits of
developing shale gas in France.
As
president, Macron developed clear rhetoric backing climate action, said Anne
Bringault, a member of the French Climate Action Network. But “there is a gap
between his lyrical musings and his results” both nationally and
internationally, she said.
Five years
ago, Macron campaigned on a platform that included banning problematic
pesticides, reducing the size of France's nuclear fleet, slashing air pollution
by introducing clean-air zones, and by France taking a lead in global climate
diplomacy.
He fell
short on almost all of those areas.
Just one
year into his presidential term, a fuel tax increase that was part of an effort
to combat climate change enraged commuters and businesses outside the largest cities
and sparked the massive Yellow Jacket protest movement.
“We warned
[Macron] for a long time that if the revenues from this tax weren’t given back
to the most disadvantaged households … there will be resistance,” Bringault
said. “And this led to the Yellow Jackets.”
The chaotic
months of street violence forced Macron to rethink how to draft and implement
his climate policies, and led to the creation of the Citizens’ Climate
Convention — a group of 150 randomly chosen people tasked with advising the
government on the green transition.
The
president hailed the convention a success, and France's sweeping climate law,
which was passed last March, drew on recommendations from the convention. Aimed
at contributing to the EU objective of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 40
percent by 2030, the law bans fossil fuel advertisements, certain domestic
flights and new cars emitting more than 95 grams of CO2 per kilometer by 2030.
It also create a new offense of ecocide.
But members
of the citizens' convention accused the government of watering down their
recommendations on reducing emissions, boosting the circular economy and
greening agriculture — which undermined any political gain for Macron.
Macron's
decision to create a High Council on Climate, an independent body that advises
the government, was more widely considered a success. But it also highlighted
his government's failings: Successive assessments showed France isn’t reducing
greenhouse gas emissions fast enough to meet its objectives under the Paris
climate agreement, a view backed by a French court ruling against the
government.
These ideas
are typical of Macron's strategy on environmental issues, which isn't
"integrated" but amounts to "layering" new initiatives one
on top of the other — which doesn't lead to significant transformation,
according to Pellerin-Carlin.
Macron's
new pledge to put his future prime minister in charge of “environmental
planning” and task them with coordinating long-term measures to decarbonize the
economy across various sectors — an idea pushed by far-left candidate Jean-Luc
Mélenchon — is more promising, said Pellerin-Carlin.
But its success
will depend on whether Macron makes changes to administrative structures, he
warned.
When his
former environment minister, Nicolas Hulot, resigned in 2018 over his
frustration at lack of progress on key issues, Macron "didn't change these
structures ... he changed one person."
Questionable
climate champion
In Brussels
too, Macron's commitment to climate issues has faced heavy criticism.
France
insisted on having nuclear energy and gas power stations labeled as green
investments under the EU taxonomy, pushed back against the greening of the
Common Agricultural Policy and has called for the sale of new combustion engine
cars to stop in 2040 and not 2035 as proposed by the European Commission.
Macron also
recently pressed for a rethink of the EU’s Farm to Fork strategy, which aims at
greening agriculture, due to the impact of the war in Ukraine.
Diplomats
have also voiced disappointment at what they see as a lack of progress on EU
climate legislation — the so-called Fit for 55 package — under France's
six-month presidency of the Council of the EU, which began in January.
France's
efforts "[do] not seem to match Macron's renewed interest in climate"
following Mélenchon's strong results in the polls, said a diplomat from an EU
country. The only piece of legislation "the French seemed to care
about" is the EU's proposed carbon border tax known as CBAM, which Paris
has long championed, the diplomat said. “They have successfully let other files
rot away.”
A French
presidency spokesperson expressed surprise at the characterization, saying in a
text message: “The Council’s position on the CBAM was adopted in an extremely
short time. All the Member States tell us that the French Presidency is
characterised by a steady pace on all the other texts of the [Fit for 55]
package.”
Macron was
initially more successful at positioning himself as a climate champion on the
international stage — particularly in the months following his election in 2017
when U.S. President Donald Trump was preparing to announce his withdrawal from
the Paris Agreement. In a video that went viral, Macron subverted Trump's
campaign catchphrase with a call to "Make the Planet Great Again."
He also
courted Chinese leader Xi Jinping and launched the One Planet Summit, in an
attempt to bring together countries that remained committed to the Paris goals
— efforts that helped to keep the ambitions of the global climate pact alive
despite the U.S. retreat.
“That was
quite a useful role at the time and I think he should be given credit for
that,” said Lola Vallejo, climate program director at the Paris-based Institute
for Sustainable Development and International Relations.
But the
role of climate champion also served to boost his personal brand and carve out
a space for himself on the international stage.
“He was a
very shrewd politician and knows how to talk about the climate emergency in a
way that resonates with people internationally, especially in a time where
everyone was so desperate with how Trump was talking about that issue,” said
Vallejo.
That has
since changed. In the run-up to last year's COP26 global climate summit in
Glasgow, British diplomats privately voiced frustration at France’s
contribution.
With the
U.S. presidency back in Democratic hands, said Vallejo, “there was less space
for Macron to reap political gains from such a personal commitment.”
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