Ecology: the right and the macronie are struggling to settle on environmental themes

After Emmanuel Macron who compared them to the Amish who remained in the age of the oil lamp, it was Nicolas Sarkozy who attacked yesterday the strange ideas of the new green mayors.

And when Nicolas Sarkozy lets off steam in front of an audience, in this case in front of real estate professionals gathered at the International Market for Real Estate Professionals, he does tons of it.

If we listened to the ecologists, he explained, we could no longer build the Eiffel Tower nowadays because an "association which defends orange toads with blue dots would prevent us from doing so".

Success guaranteed in the room.

And of course, as a cycling fan, he defended the Tour de France.

All this has a goal: to discredit the ecologists, to send them back to the ridiculous of their proposals.

Yet beyond the right word, I'm not sure it's very productive politically.

Why ?

Because to ridicule is not to suggest.

It has become obvious to everyone, on the left as well as on the right, environmental issues must be integrated into political programs.

But the right, just as much as the macronie, has a problem with ecology.

A minister told me recently that within the majority, we are realizing that all the work carried out during the legislature, all the laws passed on the subject of the environment are not making an impression on public opinion.

The woes of Ministers Hulot and Rugy did not help, of course.

But beyond these turpitudes, and to put it simply, the ecologists as their name suggests have captured the green subject, they have preempted the "Environment" brand.

The other political parties run after them, as best they can.

For example by attacking in good standing the projects of green mayors ...

Except that in all these controversies, we retain the "punchlines", not the substance.

There are even more boring.

Look at the case of the Tour de France, supposedly macho and polluting.

We can no longer count the number of debates that this has provoked, so many opportunities for the Tour's opponents to advance, insidiously, their cause.

It's an old political technique: you set up a debate, and everyone has to position themselves in relation to you.

So, of course, the first political victims of these excesses are the ecologists of Europe-Ecology who aspire to rule one day.

They are not all in this case, but for them to see the debate twisted by topics like the dead Christmas tree is a lot of time waste.

The other victims are the right-wing parties and La République en Marche which still do not manage to set the green tempo.

This is the feat achieved by the apostles of degrowth and punitive ecology: they invented the negative sum game.

Their ideas harm their little comrades and do not benefit others.

Hats off to the new kids.