The party's only specialist on environmental matters
was recently convicted of domestic abuse. His supposed replacements are loyal
to his 'localist' approach, far from the reality of climate change.
By Clément
Guillou
Published
on December 9, 2022 at 17h35, updated at 17h35 on December 9, 2022
When member
of the European Parliament Hervé Juvin was convicted of domestic violence, as
revealed by L'Obs in November, the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) lost
one of the only two potential ministers Marine Le Pen liked to quote for her
promised government. It was also the worst possible moment to part ways with a
man who inspired the party's environmental policy, named "localism".
The RN's strong presence in the Assemblée Nationale now means it needs to
position on issues it was not highly interested in until now, but which.
Climate change and possible energy shortages are now inevitable aspects of the
political agenda.
Environmental
protection is asserting itself as the second highest priority for French
voters, behind purchasing power: a party aspiring to govern cannot reasonably
leave its thinking on the subject underdeveloped. The new president of the RN,
Jordan Bardella, is aware of this: "Our political family would be making a
big mistake if it behaved as blindly on the environmental issue as the left has
done on immigration for the past 30 years. We can no longer afford to deny,
it" he recently told Valeurs actuelles.
With Mr.
Juvin, the RN had strengthened its doctrine on environmental matters. It
proposed a wide-scale counter-referendum project in 2021, after the citizens'
convention on climate. The referendum would have been about the environment,
food security, energy, concreting, green spaces and carbon tax at borders. The
fight against free trade is also at the heart of the party's thoughts. Although
it has abandoned its denial of global warming, the RN does not propose anything
that responds to this issue, or anything that would meet France's climate
objectives.
In addition
to "localism," the RN wages two of Ms. Le Pen's personal battles: the
rejection of wind turbines and the defense of animals, as well as a rather
vague "protection of our landscapes". None of this is by accident,
said a former party official: by associating two electorally promising niches
with a nationalist ideology that cannot be applied in isolation, the RN gives
the illusion of being interested in environmentalism without losing votes.
Climate
skepticism
According
to Stéphane François, a historian of the radical right and political
environmentalism, the whole thing is "greenwashing": "Their
defense of the countryside is not environmental, but sentimental and patriotic.
It is not a defense of rare or threatened natural environments. The relocalization
of industrial production is not necessarily pro-environmental either,
especially when they slam renewable energies. And the RN wants voters to keep
their way of life and not to be dissatisfied, so it does not turn its back on
the productivist society; as the environmentalism of the new right would,"
in reference to the only theoretical movement of the far right that has
seriously tackled the environmental question.
Can the
place left vacant by Mr. Juvin allow the RN to take a step forward in its environmental
thinking? Our interviews with the local officials who are expected to take up
the issue do not suggest a revolution. A working group is being put together.
It would include Andréa Kotarac, Mr. Juvin's right-hand man in his mini-party
Les Localistes and president of the RN group in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
regional council; Pierre Meurin, the coordinator of the RN lawmakers in the
sustainable development committee at the Assemblée Nationale; and Mathilde
Androuët, who sits in the analogous body at the European Parliament.
All of them
reject what they call "media environmentalism" and
"punitive" environmentalism, which they say are "taken hostage
by far-left currents of thought," as opposed to "working-class
environmentalism" and "real environmentalists, the French who grow
organic tomatoes in their garden." They display their skepticism towards
climate objectives in many ways. "The RN lives on the same planet as you:
yes, there are limits to its exploitation," said Mr. Kotarac. "But by
saying, 'We're going to die if the targets aren't met,' we end up with morons
who glue their hand to the road and prevent people from going to work."
Mr. Meurin, on the other hand, puts things into perspective: "We may well
achieve carbon neutrality, but it will be difficult to force India to stop
coal-fired power plants."
'The Greta
Thunberg sham'
On the
energy front, massive support for nuclear power remains the key of the RN's
policy. The three elected officials struggle to name a scenario that would make
it possible to achieve carbon neutrality, but they are careful not to say that
France should give up its greenhouse gas emission targets.
Skepticism
toward global warming experts remains another marker of far-right
environmentalism. Few experts are quoted beyond engineer Jean-Marc Jancovici,
whose support for nuclear power is retained by the Lepenist party, but not his
demand for reducing energy use. Ms. Androuët mocks "the Greta Thunberg sham,
which reeks of lobbying, Malthusian stuff," as well as "the COPs,
because there can be no unilateral solution," or the notion of
"scientific consensus." "Global warming is real, but the real
question is how much of it is due to human activity. The debate is still
open," she said, recommending Steven Koonin's Unsettled: What Climate
Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters. It is a bestseller in
the United States despite receiving criticism from the scientific community.
The climate-skeptic work of this physicist who worked for Barack Obama's
administration questions the extent of man's influence on global warming.
The RN's
position can be summarized as an absence of constraints, which is at odds with
its usual positioning in favor of a strong state. Hence the use of the
referendum on environmental questions and the confidence in "French
expertise." "I am not interested in simplistic and unrealistic
solutions, said Mr. Meurin. "Everything appeals to me as long as the French
accept it." However, he admits that there is a "certain amount of
constraint on energy renovation" and thinks that a plan to develop
transport links at the entrance to cities, with park-and-ride facilities, could
be a prerequisite for reducing the number of cars in the city.
'Protection
of the home'
Under Mr.
Bardella, the RN's work on the environment is unlikely to deviate from an
identity-based theory, in line with Mr. Juvin's thinking. The young party
president believes that the issue of climate change must be treated in
"ideological coherence with all the questions" raised by the Front
National (the RN's former name) throughout its history, particularly demography
and globalization.
One of Mr.
Bardella's most active aides on the subject feeds off new-right thinking.
Pierre-Romain Thionnet, an anti-liberal who has just become the head of the RN
youth movement, is also a reader of the late Catholic integral environmental
journal Limite and quotes the English conservative philosopher Roger Scruton.
He believes that environmentalism must be conceived in the etymological sense,
as "the protection of the home, from the Greek oikos," and that the
protection of the environment has the "protection of the diversity of
civilizations, peoples and cultures, a part left aside by the left wing's
environmentalism."
Ms.
Androuët, a political mentor for Mr. Bardella's, also has a
"heritage-based vision of the environment." "An
environmentalist," she said, "preserves the environment in which he
was born, which has grown his entire chain of ancestors." By extension,
the MEP believes that people are naturally made to "live, grow and work on
the land on which they were born. It is an environmental tragedy and an
aberration to tear people away from their natural environment to put them in
towers here." She added this comparison: "It's like when you rip
animals from their natural area, they're not right."
Clément Guillou
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