Even when making wishes, an often innocuous exercise, one must be wary of the weight of words. Saturday December 31, 2022, Emmanuel Macron uttered a short sentence that was very poorly received by many actors in the climate cause.
surprised at the appearance “singular” of these speeches “force to talk about a future that in truth we do not know”the President of the Republic first reviews the crises of the past year. “Who could have predicted the wave of inflation thus triggered? Or the climate crisis with spectacular effects again this summer in our country? », asks the Head of State. After long passages on pensions and the need to work more, he will then speak only once again about this theme, affirming that the “ecological transition is a battle that we must win”.
Barely a few minutes devoted to one of the challenges of the century, a questioning of the predictability of global warming… The presidential words were immediately perceived as a symptom of disconnection by several experts. “Who could have predicted the climate crisis?” It’s funny, it’s exactly one of my favorite quips to poke fun at politicians who live outside the real world.”tweeted Gonéri Le Cozannet, geologist and co-author of the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Paleoclimatologist Valérie Masson-Delmotte, invited to the Elysée Palace on August 31, 2022 to raise awareness among the government, took up the little phrase of the wishes while relaying documents from the latest IPCC report on the consequences of global warming in Europe. “It’s a speech that misses the meaning of history. It could have been held in the 1980s, not in 2022”told Franceinfo Magali Reghezza-Zitt, geographer and member of the High Council for the Climate (HCC), created in 2018 by Mr. Macron.
“Macron acts as a tactician, not a strategist”
“It’s appalling, and it went straight to the hearts of everyone working on these subjects.analyzes Matthieu Auzanneau, director of the Shift Project, a think tank dedicated to drawing the outlines of a carbon-free France. The Kyoto Protocol dates back to 1997, Jacques Chirac spoke of “our house that is burning” more than twenty years ago… You have to be totally inconsistent to write and then pronounce these kinds of sentences. Most worrying is to say the same for inflation, which started in September 2021 and is also a symptom of resource scarcity. This means that the best informed person in France does not understand the structural springs of these crises which are all linked and are not cyclical. He pays for himself with words, acts as a tactician and not as a strategist. »
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