Chamonix (France) (AFP)

After a night at altitude, Emmanuel Macron visited the Mer de Glace on Thursday morning, to illustrate the damage caused by global warming and promote the ecological shift announced for the rest of the five-year period.

Wednesday evening, the head of state took the little train that goes up to the famous glacier, accompanied by a group of experts and association leaders, with whom he had dinner to discuss the impact of global warming. He will detail Thursday, in Chamonix, measures to protect Mont Blanc.

The head of state wants to make ecology one of the two priorities for his end of his five-year term, which is mired in pension reform. A month away from the municipal elections, the Head of State wants to get out of this tunnel and focus on a subject that is now unavoidable, including in the ballot boxes.

To open this chapter, Emmanuel Macron chaired an Ecological Defense Council on Wednesday at the Elysée Palace. At the exit, Elisabeth Borne, Minister of the Ecological Transition, confirmed an extension of natural parks and measures to adapt to floods.

The State is also committed to eco-responsible practices: annual fee of 200 euros to encourage officials to cycle or car-pool, stop purchasing plastic items for single use, bicycle parking and electric terminals on its sites . The Council also announced the creation of a protected area for the Mont-Blanc site by the end of the year. Measures that environmental associations have generally deemed insufficient.

For his dinner Wednesday in the hotel overlooking the Mer de Glace, Emmanuel Macron brought together luminaries such as the famous climatologist Jean Jouzel, the biologist Camille Parmesan and the biodiversity specialist Anne Larigauderie, from IPBES, who published the last year a chilling report on the disappearance of species.

Around the table were also leaders of associations like Michel Dubromel, president of France Nature Environment, and personalities, including the South African explorer and adventurer Mike Horn, back from the North Pole where he alerted about the melting ice-creams. Mike Horn also returns from the Dakar rally, hated by environmentalists.

- 120 meters of ice lost -

Thursday morning, the president will descend the 500 steps which lead to the famous glacier, alternating gray rocks and bluish living ice, of which the accelerated melting in recent years - more than 120 meters of ice lost in a century - is the illustration the most dramatic of the impact of global warming in France.

He must then detail, in Chamonix, measures to protect Mont Blanc and its ecosystem, threatened by overcrowding and incivility. The massif, which rises to 4,809 m, will be further protected by the entry into force of a prefectural order for natural protection.

In recent summers, several incongruities or degradations have enamelled the climbs of Mont Blanc, whose slopes attract each year 20,000 visitors: the landing of a private plane not far from the summit so that two Swiss mountaineers only have to climb the last few meters, a Briton who had mounted a rower without succeeding in lowering it, Latvians who had tried to climb a 10-meter mast to float their flag ...

The authorities have also decided to make reservation in a refuge compulsory, to fight against wild bivouacs.

Emmanuel Macron will then stop in Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, for lunch with local elected officials. With local associations, they want to challenge him on the pollution caused, in this valley of the Arve, by the passage of too many heavy trucks.

Laurent Wauquiez, president of the region, with the mayor of Chamonix Eric Fournier, supported by LREM, asked him in an open letter to regulate the most polluting trucks in the Mont Blanc tunnel and to develop rail in the valley.

"I cannot prohibit trucks from passing," replied the head of state to the Dauphiné Libéré, advocating a European policy of fleet renewal, to avoid penalizing only French truck drivers.

The president will pass about ten kilometers from Contamines-Montjoie, where five of the eleven cases of coronavirus have been detected in France. In Saint-Gervais, a school was closed for the week because one of the sick, a child, was educated in Saint-Gervais during the contagion period. Since then, in Haute-Savoie, a hundred people have been tested, all negative.

© 2020 AFP