- Emmanuel Macron will speak this Friday, at 6.30 p.m., in front of the 150 citizens drawn by lot from the citizens' convention for the climate, at the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (Cese), their base camp.
- The opportunity for a new flowing speech on the climate, a theme that the President of the Republic likes to address? The NGOs of the Climate Action Network fear it and warn against the big gap between speeches and small steps, on the ground.
- These associations also opened hostilities this Friday morning, by taking stock of the climate actions undertaken by Emmanuel Macron since the start of his five-year term.
What will Emmanuel Macron say this Friday evening to the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (Cese) this Friday evening? The President of the Republic must speak at 6.30 p.m. in front of the 150 members drawn by lot from the Citizen's Climate Convention. Launched in October, this unprecedented experiment in democracy aims to offer solutions to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030.
At Cese, its base camp, the convention begins its fourth weekend of work this Friday. Its conclusions are expected in April. They will be submitted "without filter" to referendum or to the vote of the Parliament, engaged Emmanuel Macron who made of this convention one of its responses to the crisis of yellow vests.
"A big gap between speech and small steps"
Will he come and encourage them this Friday evening? Or draw up before them the “environmental” assessment at mid-term of their five-year term? The Climate Action Network (RAC), a federation of 22 environmental associations, fear in any case that "this new voice on environmental issues is in line with the previous ones". "A communication operation where we gargle small advances, small measures, criticizes Jean-François Julliard, director general of Greenpeace France. "Make our planet great again," adds Cécile Duflot, director of Oxfam France, who denounces "dangerous duplicity". “These beautiful words give the illusion of action. In reality, there are many contradictions between commitments and actions, ”she continues.
So, the RAC launched the first salvo this Friday morning, presenting its report of two and a half years of Emmanuel Macron's actions on the climate.
"Missed opportunities"
The NGOs already point out the overruns each year of the carbon budgets [of the ceilings of greenhouse gas emissions] that France has fixed in the law, sector by sector, to be in the nails of the Paris agreement on the climate. "They were exceeded by + 4.5% in 2018, says Morgane Créach, director of the RAC. The report cites in particular the transport sector as the bad student. New cars emitted more CO2 in 2018 than in 2016 and road transport of goods increased at the expense of rail and river freight, ”point out the associations.
"The government has had the opportunity on many occasions to correct the situation via the major laws it has undertaken," continues Morgane Créach. It is the law on the orientation of mobility, the Egalim law, the energy climate law ... Or the last finance law passed last December. If they include advances, they remain in our eyes as many missed meetings because they do not take the measures that are required today. "
"The glaring example of palm oil"
But there are worse things for the RAC associations. They also denounce the gap that there is, sometimes, between the impetus for the climate and nature that Emmanuel Macron is trying to instill on the international scene and the policies conducted at home. For Véronique Andrieux, Director General of WWF France, a striking example is that of palm oil. Used in the food industry and as a biofuel, world demand for this inexpensive oil explodes, leading to massive deforestation where production is concentrated. Mainly in Indonesia and Malaysia. "France has an ambitious position on the European scene, where it is pushing for the discussion of binding regulations on imported deforestation," says Véronique Andrieux. It is also one of the rare countries to have adopted a national strategy to combat imported deforestation which includes not only the impacts on deforestation, but also the protection of natural ecosystems. "
Only, this SNDI has been stopped for a year, regrets Véronique Andrieux. “Above all, at the same time, the government is doing its utmost to prevent the tax advantage enjoyed by palm oil for agrofuels from being removed, even though this removal has been voted by parliament. The director of WWF recalls the cacophony of last November, when in the midst of examining the 2020 budget, the deputies voted to postpone to 2026 the deletion of palm oil from the list of biofuels which benefit from a favorable tax regime. Faced with the outcry over the postponement, the Assembly backed down the next day, against the advice of the government. "We therefore expected palm oil to be released from biofuels on January 1, 2020," says Véronique Andrieux. In reality, this is still not the case. On December 18, we learned that the government is pushing behind the scenes for the publication of an order that would modify the definition of palm oil. This is so that palm fatty acids remain eligible for tax exemption. "
Not just France?
For the RAC, this is a sign that the government favors the interests of a large company at the expense of the common interest. In this case, it would be Total, which imports palm oil for the Mède biorefinery [Bouches-du-Rhône] to make biodiesel.
A finding that worries these NGOs at the start of a new decade that will be decisive in the fight against climate change. Jean-François Julliard does not pin elsewhere than France. "We could draw the same negative balance for the vast majority of countries today," he notes. However, if there is not a serious questioning of our models of society today, if we do not tackle in-depth transformations of our economic model, our modes of production and consumption, we will fail to stem this global climate crisis. "
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