The consequences of climate change are more visible every day, even if their media coverage accentuates the perception of the phenomenon. This is not new. At the beginning of the twentieth century, on the contrary, there were fears of a cooling that would make the Earth, like the Moon, a dead planet. This fear inspires novelists. Jules Verne proposes a Journey to the Center of the Earth and Ray Bradbury, in his Martian Chronicles, imagines that Earthlings will have to emigrate to Mars to survive. Soon after, there were concerns about the presence of unidentified flying objects in the sky and the possible arrival of aliens.

The exaggeration of threats is used to raise awareness of the reality of a phenomenon. But there is no doubt, despite the protests of climate skeptics, that the accumulation in the atmosphere of the greenhouse gases produced by industrial civilization has caused a rise in temperature. If effective measures are not taken to curb this trend, the consequences will become increasingly serious in the future. But then two facts must be taken into account. It is the accumulation of emissions that is at the origin of the phenomenon and it is distributed globally and not according to the behavior or measures adopted locally.

For a long time, the BP Group published a census by country and by source of statistics on CO2 emissions generated by energy production and consumption. The Energy Institute has taken over and its latest publication for the years 2013 to 2023 gives a very precise vision of the challenges facing the world and the distribution of responsibilities. Global emissions rose from 32.7 to 35.1 billion tons, an increase of 8%, while there was a global awareness of the need to reduce them, particularly on the occasion of the Paris Agreement in 2015. National trajectories have been very different from one country to another.

The United States, long the largest emitter, has significantly reduced its emissions, from 5.2 to 4.6 billion tons. This is mainly due to the replacement of coal with natural gas in electricity generation. New extraction techniques have allowed shale gas to be competitive. Coal consumption has fallen from 900 to 525 million tons in ten years. Conversely, China's emissions increased by 2 billion to 11.2 billion tons.  India is on the same trajectory with an increase of 47%, to reach 2.8 billion tons. Both countries have increased their coal use from 4,000 to 4,710 million tons and from 600 million to 1000 million tons, respectively.

France emits little and less and less CO2: its emissions have risen from 340 to 260 million tons. Even if we take into account the emissions accumulated in the past, its role today is marginal. Compared to the population, and compared to other developed countries, its emission level is one of the lowest. This is the result of past decisions, such as the construction of large dams and the commissioning of nuclear power plants. Today, in the name of the environment, we could not even imagine such projects. France's annual contribution to global warming is therefore extremely low and in sharp decline.

Thus, the place that these issues occupy in the political debate with its consequences on economic choices is completely disproportionate. It may even have led to decisions that ran counter to the initial objectives, such as the project to reduce nuclear production, which has now fortunately been abandoned, and the closure of the Fessenheim power plant. 

But for the future, a heavy ecological bill is to be expected. Investments will be necessary to protect France, its territories and its population against the effects of climate change. Forests will have to be managed so that, due to droughts, they are not ravaged by fires. We know how to do it. The development of the Landes provides proof of this. It will also be necessary to build many more basins to regulate the flow of rivers to protect the inhabitants from flooding, which is likely to multiply. Finally, France must prepare for the gradual extinction of the use of fossil fuels, with all the consequences that this will have on housing.

But it is not these obvious priorities that are being chosen in the name of the environment. All the attention is focused on reducing CO2 emissions, whereas, as we have just seen, France's contribution is insignificant. We have favored the ecologist bill with measures penalizing the economy and worsening an already worrying state of public finances. First, there is the proliferation of new regulations that weigh on the productivity of companies, on farmers and on purchasing power by leading to higher production costs.

The housing insulation policy is proving to be ineffective because the costly aid allocated does not take into account either the nature of the energy used or the occupancy status. As long as the heating is powered by electricity and since it is more than 90% carbon-free, there is no point in subsidizing work. As for the occupancy status (individual or collective, owner or tenant), it is decisive for the completion of this work. As much as these are easy to quantify and their burden is attributed directly to the owner who occupies the dwelling, the problem is, for example, in a condominium building partly occupied by tenants, most often insoluble.

But the regulations that prohibit the rental of poorly insulated housing, due to the complexities of carrying out the work, will cause a major housing crisis in an already tense sector, whose main victims will be young couples who will not be able to find housing and the most disadvantaged social categories who will be evicted without any way of finding housing.

The latest measure adopted this time at the European level is the priority given to electric vehicles with the ban on the sale of new combustion models in ten years. As French electricity is decarbonized, this will allow a reduction in emissions which is minimal on a global scale. But this is not the case for Germany and even less so for Poland, since their electricity is still largely produced with coal. The vehicles are not very successful because the prices are too high, which again requires public subsidies, which will also largely benefit imported cars. The consequences for companies and therefore for employment will be very serious, whereas no other region in the world has imposed such radical measures.

This is the ecologist bill. Instead of preparing the country for the consequences of future disruptions with their consequences on the environment and the daily lives of the French, the State seems obsessed with the mission it considers itself responsible for remedying the disruption itself, which is beyond its reach. The real priority should therefore be to prepare the country to face this situation. Appropriate investments and actions to change the behaviors would mitigate the impact on the population. Paying the ecological bill through this policy would thus offer much better results than focusing only on the ecologist bill over which France has no control.