The crucial subject of the climate and environmental crisis will never have succeeded in imposing itself in the presidential campaign. Neither the last two reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), nor the marches in favor of the climate – a new demonstration is organized on Saturday April 9 -, nor the issue of energy and food sovereignty posed by the war in Ukraine will not have succeeded in giving visibility to ecological issues, which remained little present in the debates and interventions of the candidates.
In recent weeks, despite an increase, the climate has only represented between 1.5% and 5.5% of media time in the campaign, according to the barometer of the four NGOs of “The affair of the century”. “There is a growing gap between the place of the climate in the news – mobilizations, IPCC reports, meteorological events – and the place given to it in programs and interviews dedicated to the presidential election”, note the associations. The only exception, the TF1 program “La France face à la guerre”, on March 14, “may have been the only media highlight of the campaign giving an important place to climate and energy issues”. Conversely, the NGOs only counted eleven minutes devoted to the climate out of the six hours of the two issues of “Elysée 2022”, on France 2, on March 31 and April 5.
“Abandoned topic”
A relative silence in contradiction with what seem to be the expectations of the population: the environment is the third concern of the French – behind purchasing power and the war in Ukraine and ahead of immigration -, according to the latest survey carried out by Ipsos-Sopra Steria with Cevipof and the Jean Jaurès Foundation for The world. According to the same survey, this is the second issue that will motivate the vote, tied with the health system. In February, around a hundred organizations and personalities launched an appeal, in The worldto replace environmental issues “at the heart of the debate” for the presidential election, two weeks after the same request expressed by 1,400 researchers on the Franceinfo site.
When asked about the climate, “the candidates immediately shifted to nuclear power or wind turbines, but did not address the other issues of mobility, housing renovation or agriculture, which nevertheless emit far more greenhouse gases than the electricity system in France”, notes Anne Bringault, program coordinator at the Climate Action Network (RAC). The debates also dodged the loss of biodiversity, pollution, tensions around water sharing, questions about the sustainability of our economic model…
You have 49.27% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.