When he was going to East-Berlin, a few months after the fall of the Wall, the attention of the visitor was attracted on the large city squares by the queues around trucks which have been transformed in travel agencies. Berliners would, at last, can see again their closed relatives or discover neighboring countries. But it was not all. Women were also pressing themselves around street desks set to buy tights. Their sale had been forbidden by the regime because this consumption habit was imported from capitalist countries. So their political leaders didn’t deprive themselves to intervene on the most intimate aspects of women daily life in forcing them, during winter, to wear wool socks.

It is difficult not to make the rapprochement with the decisions taken these last days by elected ecologists who have judged useful to suppress the Christmas tree usually erected on a city square, to forbid the coming of the Tour de France or to try to ban from children minds the “air dream”. It is the same logic which has inspired the occupation movement which, at the end, has forced the government to abandon the airport project in Notre-Dame-des-Landes. Retrospectively, we can ask ourselves if it would have been possible to build the hydro-electric dams and the TGV lines, investments which are deeply useful to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, if these movements had existed in the past.

The protection of environment is a major priority and the developed countries which in the past have been the major emitters cannot back out themselves of their obligations. But the politician recuperation of these issues, especially in France, has frequently lead to decisions which were contrary to the expected results and which risked to provoke in the future a grave destabilization of the political and economic equilibriums. The best example is given with the increase of the benefits offered to diesel after the “Grenelle de l’Environnement” in 2008. To get a light reduction of CO2 emissions, the cities sanitary situation was aggravated with the propagation of small particles. The French Sanitary Authority has estimated that during the 2016-2018 period, that had represented 40 000 deaths per year. We could make a similar observation about the priority given to bikes and bicycles to the detriment of safety. Last figures are eloquent. They just represent one tenths of the journeys but almost half of the deadly accidents.       

France is, among developed countries, one of these which have the lowest emissions of greenhouse gas, for good and for bad reasons. The good one, it is its nuclear power production which avoids to the country to use the worst polluting energy source, coal. Yet it is necessary to admit it and not to concede to ecologist pressures. The Fessenheim arbitrary closing is an example of these pressures and of what must not to be done. The bad reason, it is that if France emits a low CO2 level, it is also the consequence of its industrial activity reduction. Instead of producing, the country imports. Emissions caused by consumption are done outside of France. The good answer is, in the same time, to pursuing investments in de-carbonized power production with, at the first place, nuclear, and to put an end to the de-localization trend along with fitting our plants with equipments allowing to reducing emissions.

Climate warming is caused by the accumulation, in the atmosphere, of greenhouse gas. In order to adopt appropriate policies it is necessary to include two indisputable points. Emissions damage is global. The action of one country alone makes sense only regarding the level of its emissions. If these ones are marginal, climate stake is rock-bottom. Each country responsibility is not only based on its yearly emissions but also on the inventory of its past pollutions. During the last 50 years, Europe has accumulated 150 billion tons of CO2, China 230 billion and the United States 300 billion. In 2018, the emissions of these three groups of nations were only equal to 50% of the world emissions.

So France responsibility, which represents only 10% of the Europe emissions, is inversely proportional to the place this issue occupies in the national political debate and in its economic and environmental choices. Inside Europe, emissions reduction commitments by the States have been defined from a reference year, 1990. So France has suffered a double penalty. The country, thanks to its nuclear power production had already that year a low level of emissions. It was difficult to it to do much better. To the contrary, Germany which had just inherited with the unification, of Eastern provinces heavily polluting and uncompetitive plants did not have to make a lot of efforts to reduce its emissions. It was enough to close these plants which would have been closed anyway. Its emissions are today, per capita, twice bigger than the French ones. This reasoning can be applied too to Poland: its power production comes, for 80%, from coal power plants. Half of the mines are located in Silesia where Greenpeace is implanted and where it supports Polish miners.

Ecologic activism has not only generated negative decisions for environment. It has harmed the whole economy and major industrial activities which did not need it like the car industry or tomorrow aeronautics when air travel emissions represent only 3% of the French total. The closure of short flights on destinations which are served by High Speed Trains would be a good idea if these lines where not used for connections to international flights. If that project is achieved without discernment, several provinces will be penalized. Foreign investors will hesitate to create activities there and tourism will be affected.

Consequences are also politic. It is not possible to govern a country being against everything or almost everything. The left, by conviction from some ones which are attracted by wrong ideas and by electoral calculus for most of them has tried to conquer ecologist electorate through making promises. It has alienated itself from all these who were not ready to follow it on these issues, about European renouncement or about illusions related to the “green society” for instance. But it did worse. It has relegated at a second place in its project what was its “raison d’être”, the construction of a society where wealth was better shared, where public services were efficient and supported by the State, where welfare protection was guaranteed and where, at last, everyone could aspire to a better life. The result in the 2017 election has been disastrous and the prospects for 2022 are not better.

This week will be celebrated the Earth Day. The commitment in favor of environment will be reaffirmed during meetings gathering heads of States. We will assist at spectacular announcements, with promises on a very long term. But the daily reality in France frequently consists in negative decisions, in social progress brakes in the name of the protection of “future generations” and sometimes in threats on private life and fundamental freedoms as we already have seen it in several cities. The responsibility of political leaders, in France as in other countries, it is to open the road of the life and not to put traps on it.