“The right must clearly put the ecological transition at the heart of its project”

AAs the United Nations climate conference (COP27) comes to an end, the UN environment program sounds the tcocsin of global warming “catastrophic” 2.5 ºC at the end of the century. The imperative and the urgency of the ecological transition no longer need to be demonstrated. And yet we are moving so slowly…

One of the reasons relates to the acceptability of the decisions envisaged. Often unpopular because perceived as socially unjust and unbearable, they further fracture our country. Finally, the energy crisis, which is superimposed on the climate crisis, raises fears of a social Armageddon.

We must first clearly put the ecological transition at the heart of our project. Environmental protection is too important an issue to be confiscated by radical political forces that caricature it. The political debate cannot be structured around the urgency of the ecological question (we are all convinced of this), but around the solutions to respond to it.

Transmission of natural heritage

Banning barbecues and defacing works of art will not advance the cause. Let’s not hesitate any longer: the right historically carries the discourse of pragmatism, which we so need in the face of the ideological delusions of the far left, and of the conservation and transmission of heritage, including natural ones. It is therefore perfectly legitimate to take up the subject.

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We then need to reconcile all social categories, all generations, all territories around the same environmental ambition. The growing divide between so-called “peripheral” France and that of the center of the metropolises is morally and socially unbearable. It is the application of a two-speed ecology, of which the middle and popular classes are the only debtors.

Our responsibility is to denounce and resorb it. Preserving our planet, the cohesion of our society and the purchasing power of the French can no longer be antagonistic principles. Just one example: on the scale of the Greater Paris Metropolis, the Republicans supported the expansion of the low-emissions zone (ZFE), encompassing 79 municipalities, to remedy the solitary initiative of the mayor of Paris, who had confined it to the sole perimeter of the capital, making Paris an impassable oppidum.

This risk of amplifying territorial fractures reappears while by 2025 all agglomerations of more than 150,000 inhabitants will have to limit the circulation of the most polluting vehicles on their territory. With 43 EPZs, the question of the exclusion of the middle and working classes, relegated to the fringes of cities, will become more acute. It is by the sheer force of lacework carried out with the local councilors that these geographical wounds will be sutured, that the constraints on freedom of movement will be accepted and that purchasing power will be preserved.

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