Amiens (AFP)
"Do not tell me, we're screwed in 2050," said Emmanuel Macron to students who asked him about ecology, Thursday at Jules Verne University in Amiens where he makes a visit from two days.
"We can be lucid about the consequences, say + we are not in the trajectory + but not say + we are screwed +, (...), that never", he added, estimating that "the time of the indignation was in the time of President Chirac "who had declared:" the house burns ".
"This mobilization of youth for the climate, we need it" to "convert it into action", and that it does not remain "an indignation and anger or somehow a catastrophism", added the head of the 'State.
However, he cautioned against the "tensions" that could provoke, citing for example the case of a farmer pushed to conversion when he can not afford.
"People go crazy because it creates violence, what you see sometimes in our campaigns," and "it creates a lot of tension everywhere," he warned.
This is why we must "convince those who have practices that do not work at all" and "help them change," he added, citing pesticides, mobility, businesses "to pollute less "... and in the case of citizens favor" soft transport in town "or" go to vehicles that pollute less ".
"We have to do it at the right pace, accompanying and therefore having a social policy," he added, acknowledging: "It's the mistake I made a little more than "one year" by saying "we go all out to change, we make our carbon tax, we try to push things".
But "I did not see enough that it put people in financial difficulty, because they had no choice," he added, referring to the carbon tax that triggered the anger of the "yellow vests".
"We are in the concrete, the action" and "if we really want it to move after, very quickly, we must remobilise at the European level", finally estimated Mr. Macron, arguing for " put a carbon tax on borders and finally start the real fight against biodiversity in Europe ".
© 2019 AFP