It is the story of a globetrotter who has traveled the planet all his life and whose images “seen from the sky” have captured the beauty of the world.
This nature so loved, today in danger, Yann Arthus-Bertrand dedicates his latest film to it, “Legacy” - “heritage” in French -, broadcast this Tuesday, January 26 on M 6 at 9:05 pm.
Sometimes hypnotic sequences shot from drones by local operators.
In accordance with his convictions, he gave up flying.
An ode to the wild fauna decimated by man and to the forests which are going up in smoke, his work is also a cry of anger against the excessive growth which consumes the Earth.
A message to his grandchildren, too, to whom he would have liked so much to leave a planet less suffering.
And a call to action.
While they had never met before, we offered to the director and the Minister of Ecological Transition to comment together on certain key passages of the film.
Faced with a Yann Arthus-Bertrand who criticizes the State for not doing enough for the environment and tackles Emmanuel Macron for his anti-green trips, Barbara Pompili defends the measures adopted after the Citizens' Convention for the climate without lend flank to the givers of lesson.
Despite these images which should terrorize us, humanity seems to continue to live as before… Yann, is the State doing enough?
YANN ARTHUS-BERTRAND.
What I want to show in this film is that man cannot put his incredible intelligence at the service of a change in civilization.
The State is only the mirror of French society.
What are people asking of politicians?
Employment and purchasing power.
We must not wait for change from above, but from below.
Barbara Pompili has an impossible job, she fights against the Grail of any government: growth.
The environment ministers are breaking their mouths because we cannot fight growth.
She has real, deep convictions and tries to do what she can, me, this job, I wouldn't be able to.
BARBARA POMPILI
.
We can fight, we must fight!
In view of the terrible observations of your film, either we give up, or we say to ourselves that we cannot and that we must fight, each in his place.
There are those who alert, inform, and others who are there to try to make things happen ...
READ ALSO>
Yann Arthus-Bertrand's call for the climate: "We urgently need to decarbonize our lives"
Environment ministers have to face lobbies.
Is it hopeless sometimes?
Newsletter My Earth
The environment and responsible consumption
Subscribe to the newsletterAll newsletters
BP
The day I get desperate and feel helpless, I will stop.
But I am extremely combative, I have, pegged in me, this faith that it is urgent to move forward.
Yes, there are lobbies, but they will only win if there is no one in front.
Some people are focused on the short term and say to themselves that we are not going to get out of it, my job is to find solutions, to convince otherwise.
And it starts to move.
Companies are realizing that they can die if they do not take this turn in the ecological transition.
This is the opportunity to find another mode of development that will also create jobs.
The industrialization of agriculture, for example, has emptied the countryside.
By recreating agriculture that is more respectful of nature, we can reverse things.
YAB
Why are agriculture ministers still fundamentally anti-progressive people?
To appoint people so reluctant to change, what a huge lack of political courage!
BP
On many subjects, we are moving forward together with the Minister of Agriculture.
But its challenge is also to convince the agricultural world to accelerate its transformation towards a more ecological model without leaving farmers without a solution, and that does not happen overnight.
There is the weight of the past, inertia, old modes of operation that must be tweaked ... Even in this ministry, public procurement is not green enough ...
YAB
Are all meals organic here in your ministry?
No.
You are the fifth Minister of Ecology to whom I ask.
Just that, why is it so complicated, Madam Minister?
BP
Because it takes years to evolve, to change contracts, to find partners.
If it's to get organic in South America, no.
Me, I want local organic.
And not just the ministry.
Organic has been introduced into all public catering and thanks to the Citizen's Convention, there will soon be 5% of quality products in all collective catering.
YAB
We must all consume organic.
Otherwise, you help Monsanto, it's simple.
You have to be radical on this.
"I'm talking about the end of the world and you're talking about straws!"
»Launches the director.
“What we find in the stomachs of the albatrosses that we see in your film are also cotton swabs…”, replied the Minister./LP/Olivier Corsan
The sinews of war is money ...
BP
We are going to set up a food check so that people in greatest difficulty can buy organic, local and quality products.
YAB
Yes, but what do we do for all this organic under plastic as far as the eye can see in supermarkets?
BP
Within a few years, this plastic packaging will be gone.
We are moving forward on this point, with the obligation, for example, to sell products in bulk.
YAB
It has not entered into force?
BP
No, but two seconds!
If we do it overnight and they don't have a solution, we put people in difficulty… They work on it and experiment.
Already, since January 1, we can no longer sell straws or cotton swabs, cutlery or plastic plates.
YAB
I'm talking about the end of the world and you are talking to me about straws!
BP
No, stop saying that.
What we find in the stomachs of the albatrosses that we see in your film, are also cotton swabs… In less than two years, we have banned the ten plastic products most present in our seas… We can say that it is not enough, but it had to be done.
And it's done.
Yann, you told us you were shocked by the backtracking on neonicotinoids ... (Editor's note: first banned in 2018, these insecticides can be used again thanks to certain exemptions for beet growers)
YAB
Macron has done you a dirty trick.
You are a green minister and you take it in the face when you arrive.
It's a dirty trick because I think you have some real beliefs and you were forced to accept.
BP
Yes it was a hard time to go.
But I don't want people to think that decisions are made for me.
Of course, from time to time you have to compromise, but I have assumed that decision.
This is also the transition, it is not a long quiet river.
Sometimes there are jerks.
There, I was confronted with a problem which had not been managed and which had to be resolved.
But what is important is that there are no more neonicotinoids in France and we are almost there.
Today, 92% of these products are no longer used with us.
In four years, frankly, it's not that bad.
Among the strong images of “Legacy”, this cattle feedlot near Young, in the department of Rio Negro, in Uruguay./M 6 / Yann Arthus-Bertrand
Looking at the images of factory farming, we wonder if we should not all be vegetarians?
YAB
Me, I still eat fish by selecting species that are not endangered, but these images of crowded calves in pain make you want to be vegan.
BP
I am not a vegetarian, I like good meat, but I am very careful with my consumption and I eat as little industrial meat as possible.
YAB
We're not radical enough on this
BP
Eating meat is not in itself shocking.
The question is to reduce our consumption and focus on quality meat.
Yann, you challenge the religion of growth and yet it is still the first religion in the world.
YAB
I challenge it, but I am aware of myself taking advantage of it because I make films financed by patrons living on growth.
I am a child of growth… Besides, I am not talking about degrowth, one has the impression that it has become a bad word, but post-growth.
BP
There, with 5G, many will want to change cellphones.
However, the environmental weight of digital technology is growing and three quarters of digital greenhouse gas emissions are linked to equipment.
Not replacing your phone if it still works or buying refurbished products is a gesture for the planet.
That's what I did.
On 5G and his opponents qualified as "Amish", Emmanuel Macron "let himself be carried away as always", denounces Yann Arthus-Bertrand./LP/Olivier Corsan
You talk about 5G, the President of the Republic called his opponents Amish ...
BP
He explained this when he met members of the Citizens' Convention last month.
He pronounced this sentence after somewhat strong words from certain green mayors with the history of Christmas trees
(Editor's note: “dead trees”, according to the green mayor of Bordeaux)
and of the Tour de France
(Editor's note “macho and polluting »According to the green mayor of Lyon).
He was clearly thinking of them when he spoke.
YAB
But that was bullshit on his part.
He got carried away as always.
PODCAST. Climate convention: how mistrust developed between Macron and citizens
Isn't there this image that sticks to environmentalists wanting to return to the candle and the plow?
YAB
It's really changing.
I have been voting green since I was 25, more for romanticism than for efficiency, the Greens have never been able to get along.
BP
That's why I left them, but they're still friends.
YAB
Today, if we do not change radically, the next generation will experience extremely difficult times.
We are at war and there is no vaccine against climate change.
BP
We must stop scaring people, seeing the climate threat only as a source of anxiety.
I have a 17-year-old daughter, and as a mother I cannot tell her that in ten years it will be worse and that she will have a horrible life.
I have to tell him: warming, we're taking care of it because we want to build you a good life.
YAB
But these are
empty
words!
The Secretary General of the United Nations said it again recently: we are heading towards an imminent climate catastrophe.
To be afraid, on the contrary, is necessary.
In front of a precipice, if you're afraid, don't go.
Otherwise you jump.
You have to live with open eyes, tell children things.
What I am hearing here is a small measure of what should be done.
And you know deep down that a lot more needs to be done.
BP
Yes, but instead of where I am, I'm not going to wait for everyone to have enlightenment and take charge to move forward.
We don't have time… There, I have money thanks to the recovery plan and I invest it where I think it can be most useful for decarbonizing France.
It's hard work, but if I don't, who will?
In the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, “we were able to stop the economy to save lives.
But now, faced with the weight of the economy and the crisis, what does ecology weigh?
»/ LP / Olivier Corsan
In your film, you point out, Yann, that we have found money in the face of Covid-19… That is to say that we should be able to find some for the climate?
YAB
What happened is unique.
It is a historic shock.
A time when everything really stopped.
We were able to shut down the economy to save lives.
But now, faced with the weight of the economy and the crisis, what does ecology weigh?
Everyone dreams that it will start again as before.
BP
This crisis is turning things around.
Scientists have shown that damage to biodiversity, and in particular deforestation and species trafficking, promotes pandemics.
It must be a strong incentive to act.
We cannot spend our life experiencing crises and running after them.
We have to anticipate.
YAB
For 50 years we have been talking about environmental protection and what are the results today?
In the biomass of vertebrates, 98% are man and his domestic animals, wild animals represent only 2%.
It's crazy !
We are consuming the Earth, eliminating everything that is not human.
Why not ban, for example, within three years, the import of Brazilian soybeans to fight against deforestation in the Amazon, I have the impression that we are never radical enough.
BP
We have a strategy on imported deforestation.
We have refused to ally with Brazil on trade agreements for this reason.
We refused to sign the agreement with Mercosur
(Editor's note: common market which brings together several South American countries)
!
We can say that it is not enough, but
it is (she slaps the flat of the hand on the table)
.
Finally, international trade takes the climate into account.
YAB
.
It is never enough, we know that.
BP
Five years ago, before the Paris agreement, we would never have considered stopping air links when there is an alternative by train.
Five years ago, there were still a dozen coal or oil-fired power stations in this country.
There won't be any more in two years.
YAB
Renewable has developed, but has not avoided fossil fuels whose consumption has increased.
BP
It's because we haven't worked enough on sobriety or waste.
YAB
Make a law that requires all gas stations to display a label on pumps, much like on cigarette packs, to warn of the impact of a refueling on the climate.
BP
We're going to look at that, yes.
It is not difficult to do.
Knowing that, already, in the law, we will ban advertising for fossil fuels.
By leaving the ministry, “what I want is to have been useful, that we have really structurally lowered our greenhouse gas emissions and slowed down the erosion of biodiversity” ./LP/Olivier Corsan
What major breakthrough would you like to leave by leaving this ministry?
BP
I don't want to be in the symbol, I don't care about the spectacular or having my name on a plaque.
What I want is to have been useful, that we have really structurally reduced our greenhouse gas emissions and slowed down the erosion of biodiversity.
And that is not always very spectacular.
