2024-01-23 18:41:12
This summer, a total of 50 concrete measures will be proposed in the national adaptation plan for climate change this summer, indicated Christophe Béchu, Minister of Ecological Transition.
Almost a year, to the day, after announcing that we had to get out of « denial » on January 30, 2023 and anticipate the consequences of global warming throughout France, including overseas, Christophe Béchu, Minister of Ecological Transition and Territorial Cohesion, launched on January 23, his plan “France is preparing at +4°C” at the end of the 21st century. The National Adaptation Plan for climate change, for a period of five years, should be presented this summer. This project has « the ambition to announce 50 concrete measures. We are not going to just state realities. We are going to change regulations, legislation, ways of doing things and (elements of) labor law », promised the minister, at the end of a conference organized on the morning of January 23 in an amphitheater of the Jardin des Plantes, at the National Museum of Natural History, in Paris. Beforehand, at the end of February 2024, at the end of a seminar, the government should give guidelines. Then at the end of March a national debate will be organized to bring together concrete proposals.
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Because the idea is to immediately anticipate the consequences of global warming which is inevitable. « The repeated crises that we are experiencing, with the drought (especially in 2022)extraordinary forest fires (60.000 hectares) north of the Loire, in regions which did not know, insisted the minister. And to add: High water temperatures which favor the formation of extremely strong cyclones, particularly overseas. All this shows that we need to raise our level of ambition ». It would therefore be less costly and more prudent to anticipate climate change than to face it. These were the messages given by many experts on Tuesday morning.
Unexpected and unpredictable consequences
Jean-Marc Jancovici, president of the Shift Project and partner of Carbone 4, stressed that the « limiting warming to +1.5°C was dead », except in the event of a major pandemic which would lead to the disappearance of three-quarters of humanity. Because to contain the rise in global temperature, to the most ambitious level set by the Paris Agreement, at the end of COP21 in December 2015, « it would now be necessary to reduce by 8 % per year global carbon dioxide emissions. So stop emissions from India this year and those from Europe next year. », indicated Jean-Marc Jancovici to show that such an effort seems impossible to maintain. He is also in line with Arthur Auboeuf, co-founder of the corporate citizen Team for the Planet, who indicated « that the impacts are not linear or proportional to the increase in temperature ». Clearly, the consequences of warming will be unexpected and unpredictable, even if we are already counting on a doubling of the duration and intensity of heat episodes, with heatwaves lasting more than two months, with consequences for the railway networks, roads… Furthermore, no department will be protected from the consequences of climate change which may seem contradictory: such as floods in the north of the country with record temperatures on the same day in the south of the metropolis.
Cities without insurance
Many actors have therefore called for a change in the model of society and even « the creation of a new social contract », according to the senator from Loire-Atlantique, Ronan Dantec, from the environmental group, who welcomed Christophe Béchu’s initiative to prepare France for a warming of + 4°C. The senator recalled that certain French municipalities were already no longer able to obtain insurance to protect themselves from climate risks. Pascal Demuger, general director of MAIF, indicated that faced with the increase in claims, the price of insurance policies for individuals « could double by 2050 ». And that certain risks will worsen « such as marine submersion and swelling shrinkage of clay soils » which already concerns 11 million individual houses in France. For municipalities that are no longer able to obtain insurance, the general director of MAIF recommends « the creation of a cooperative system » where each insurer would be forced to contribute. This is a concrete proposal which could be included at the end of the public debate.
More « climate change is only the third cause of biodiversity loss, after land use change (due to the artificialization of soils, Editor’s note) and the exploitation of species »recalled Sandra Lavorel, ecologist, research director at Grenoble-Alpes University and CNRS gold medalist in 2023.
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