Chronic. It was enough to devote a few minutes a day to listening to the radio or television during the presidential campaign to hear this question: “How do you explain that the environment and the climate have not made it into the debate? »
In the mouths of political interviewers, the question is reminiscent of the false candor of an arsonist surprised by the resurgence of fires. As the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) brought together in “The Business of the Century” have pointed out on several occasions, the questions put to the various candidates or their representatives have barely touched on the climate issue. The question of the collapse of biodiversity has been completely ignored.
According to the estimates of “The case of the century”, the climate will have occupied only about 5% of the time of the debates animated by the major audiovisual media, during the campaign which is ending. This virtual absence has major effects on our collective perception of the real risks of the current climate change.
The political interview is in fact performative: questions that are not asked disappear from public conversation, and lose their importance in all strata of society. What is not talked about cannot be important.
The habitability of the planet, within a few decades? A second-order question. Organizing the adaptation and resilience of society and economies in the face of what is already inevitable? A non-subject. In terms of political tactics, there is little interest for the candidates to work on a matter reduced to the minimum portion during the debates. Little suspicious of environmentalists, the think tank The Shift Project has thus classified only two of the twelve projects initially in the running as “close” to the climate objectives of France, those of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Yannick Jadot.
Hence this paradox: while opinion polls establish the environment as a major concern of the French people – often in second or third position – three-quarters of the votes went, on April 10, to programs devoid of any ambition in this regard.
It’s not that surprising. The intellectual training and the professional culture of political journalism have led for decades to privilege economic issues, immigration, insecurity, without forgetting the discursive strategies of each other, the clashes of egos and the tactics of apparatus . Environmental, technical and off-putting questions are only ever touched upon.
You have 54.61% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.