The young people of the climate movement are resuming their actions after a six-month break, Friday and Saturday.

For Camille Étienne, student and guest activist at Europe 1, the challenge of this mobilization is to show that we must not neglect the climate emergency in the midst of a health and economic crisis.

INTERVIEW

The youth movement in favor of the defense of the climate is back to school: many actions are planned for Friday and Saturday, in France, after a six-month break forced by the coronavirus crisis, confinement, numerous restrictions and school holidays.

For the occasion, the national mobilization of Youth for Climate France is adapting to the context of Covid-19, the consequences of which it does not want to obscure the climate emergency.

This is what Camille Étienne, student and climate activist, spokesperson for the "We're ready" movement says on YouTube.

Alternative actions to steps

"We managed to put this old world on hiatus for a health emergency. It was important," said the 22-year-old student at Sciences Po Paris at the microphone of Europe 1.

"We would like to show that there is an almost even greater urgency and that we have to take seriously."

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In order to adapt to a constrained health context, the activists will organize occupations of places, "sign mobilizations" or "vélorutions", veritable parades by bicycle.

"It is important to reinvent oneself and to see that there are other ways to mobilize than to take walks", concedes Camille Étienne.

Ecology "put aside"

To convince public opinion in the face of those who insist on the human toll of the epidemic in France, the student underlines the impact of climate change on mortality in our country.

Admittedly, the death of more than 30,000 people from Covid-19 is "dramatic" but, she says, "there are 50,000 people who die each year from air pollution, in France alone. The emergency is largely up to the task and we expect ambitious decisions to be taken. "

And for now, the one who had invited the population to "wake up" at the time of deconfinement deplores a shift to the background of ecological issues: "We put them aside, in a way, when we see that the Medef had asked for a moratorium on environmental laws, ”she points out.

"The plastic lobbies have pushed for ambitious laws to be delayed under the guise of a health and economic emergency when we see that these are extremely linked things."