2023-05-22 11:00:10
This will relaunch the debate on the course to be given to Emmanuel Macron’s second five-year term and the place of climate issues in government policy. In a report titled “The Economic Impact of Climate Action”, which was due to be released on Monday 22 May and to which The world was able to gain access, Jean Pisani-Ferry, professor at Sciences Po and member of the Bruegel and Peterson Institute think tanks, underlines the urgency of the situation: “We will have to do in ten years what we have struggled to do in thirty years. The acceleration is brutal”he asserts.
In this work of more than 150 pages, produced with the Inspector General of Finance, Selma Mahfouz, rapporteur for the mission, and with the assistance of France Strategy, the evaluation and forecasting body attached to Matignon, Mr. Pisani -Ferry, who was a pillar of Mr. Macron’s presidential campaign in 2017, quantifies the staggering cost of adapting to environmental objectives: from 250 to 300 billion euros in additional debt, cumulatively, in 2030, and up to 34 billion in additional public investment per year over this period.
To finance these amounts, it calls for “programming climate investment over three decades”pleads for a massive recourse to indebtedness and recommends setting up a “exceptional and temporary tax” on the financial assets of the wealthiest 10% of French people, up to 5 billion euros per year.
Commissioned, in September 2022, by the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, Mr. Pisani-Ferry had submitted, in November, a first progress report to Matignon. He was already warning about the “profound change in the development model” of the country that the carbon neutrality target set by the European Commission for 2050 was going to require – and the 55% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. It also debunked the myth of ‘green growth’, which would mechanically bring innovation, jobs and wealth to the country.
In the meantime, the painful pension reform, presented by the Head of State as the mother of battles, has hardly given the feeling that the climate was one of the priorities of the executive.
Six months later, the authors’ observation remains the same: if “climate neutrality is achievable”, France is not “not yet on track” to achieve this. Ten days after the President of the Republic caused trouble by calling for a « pause » in European regulations, the observation of the former Commissioner General for Planning is clear: the changes to come are like a new ” industrial Revolution “. With one question in sight: is it “Is it possible to reconcile climate neutrality and improved well-being? » According to the authors, “societies must be convinced that they do not have to choose between the future of the planet and their own well-being or even, in the long term, between climate preservation and standard of living”.
You have 47.15% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.
#Jean #PisaniFerry #calls #report #finance #climate #transition #equitably