Paris (AFP)

"Passionate" and "combative" for some, "divisive" or even "brittle" for others, Secretary of State Brune Poirson defends the anti-waste bill and her pragmatic vision of ecology on the front line.

Entering the government in June 2017, this 37-year-old French-American woman kept her job, despite the departures of her supervising ministers, from the smashing resignation of Nicolas Hulot to the scandal sweeping François de Rugy.

Now under the orders of Elisabeth Borne, she faces the sometimes heated parliamentary debates on the bill to fight against waste. The tone rose in September in the Senate dominated by the right, which is hostile to a key measure, the deposit of plastic bottles.

"I am young, I am a little silly, I have less experience than you, I am not political", ended up launching ironically Brune Poirson, provoking the ire of the centrist Hervé Maurey.

It faces "a form of hazing", but "a little basic parliamentary psychology should not prevail over the merits", defends former Minister Hubert Védrine, who accompanied his first steps in politics.

The socialist prefers to praise the "atypical personality" of the Secretary of State for the Ecological Transition, and "her experience in the field, in an emerging country", far from the "course of politicians who begin with high school and then student demonstrations".

Because after a mission in the United Kingdom within a foundation for innovation (Nesta), this lover of yoga - and of younger kung fu - spent several years in India (2009-2014), first in the office of Sam Pitroda, an adviser to the Prime Minister.

She then worked there for the French Development Agency and then for Veolia in order to develop "drinking water access networks" in front of "mothers who walk for hours and hours and who expect as much to have access to water. "

This visit to one of the giants of water management who obtained a "Pinocchio Prize" from the NGO Friends of the Earth, hardly convinced by the good Indian works of the "multinational", earned him criticism in the green environment.

"I was put on trial in witchcraft", rejects this young mother of a 4 year old girl, judging "that there is no more time for backward ideological battles".

- "Climb the towers" -

Back in France, the one who voted younger for François Bayrou signed up with Emmanuel Macron, because "it was someone - and I claim that naivety - who fought against malevolence, smallness, cynicism ".

For the 2017 legislative elections, the graduate of the London School of Economics and the Kennedy School of Harvard chooses the department where she grew up, Vaucluse, and the 3rd district, the ex of Marion Maréchal-Le Pen. As soon as elected, she was bombarded secretary of state.

At the Palais Bourbon, the ongoing anti-aspi debates are less tense than at the Senate. But Brune Poirson once again attracts the wrath of environmentalists, with the vote aiming at the disappearance of single-use plastic packaging in 2040. "Too late" for the NGO WWF or for the successful actor Pierre Niney, and the '"incantation" according to the right.

"I could have made myself better understood," she admits. "This illustrates the difficulty in carrying out the transition because it would be a lie to say that getting out of disposable plastic takes less than twenty years."

Even among "walkers", confrontation is sometimes difficult with "historic" ecologists and their more radical vision.

And his offensive style annoys some. "She is too much on the attack, not convincing," said a deputy. "To be rather young and rather pretty, it can unleash passions, but that does not explain everything. We cannot say that we change the planet each time that we defend the slightest beautiful idea".

"She may have a slightly irritating side, an ability to climb the towers, to do a little too much", but "she works, she is brilliant", nuances another.

And Brune Poirson deplored: "In a man, it is said that it is authority, the grip, a desire to move forward; in a woman, it becomes brittle".

© 2019 AFP