The former mayor of Bègles (Gironde) is releasing a book, "Ecology to save our lives" (Editions Les Petits Matins, 160 pages, 14 euros), this Thursday, in which he takes an uncompromising look at the class Politics. For him, ecology is above all left.
In "Ecology to save our lives", you are not tender towards a political system described as cynical. And yet, you say, we have to keep fighting…
MOM CHRISTMAS. There is no other system than democracy. We are realizing it in the face of the state of the world. But there is never a fatality: human societies have never resolved to the disaster. We must therefore resist this fatality which would consist in submitting to a system guided by the market and short-term interest. And suggest paths that are other than those of the apocalypse or collapse.
Why have environmentalists always had so much trouble addressing the lower classes?
I quote in my book a number of thinkers of ecology, such as Bernard Charbonneau and Jacques Ellul, to show that ecology was not born yesterday. The first of them lived in the 19th century, like the American Henry David Thoreau who is the theorist of civil disobedience. They were never heard by the majority. Their great strength and at the same time their weakness is that they have always endeavored to show the complexity of the world: we must not stop at a single element of the chain but we must analyze the whole chain to understand why this or that link is breaking. The new deal of this 21st century, thanks to climate generation and the fact that this accelerator has been the covid, is that there is now a planetary awareness of ecology.
How can you ensure that what you call the ecology of human emancipation does not turn into punitive ecology?
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What is punitive is the current system. Today, the utopians are those who want to maintain the status quo of a liberal and productivist system that leads us into the wall, while the realists are the ecologists who propose a society in which we will fight human fractures and whose the aim is to bring about fairer and more united societies.
You denounce the "neither right nor left". Is this criticism aimed at your political family?
Yes, we were trapped in this “neither right nor left” trap, which is, moreover, an invention of the Italian fascists. As environmentalists struggled to find their place between their criticisms of capitalist productivism and those of Soviet productivism, Antoine Waechter (Editor's note: Greens candidate for the presidential election in 1988) had taken up this slogan of "neither right nor left " There is nothing worse, however, than this in-between. In reality, ecology is a new component of the left. But not the productivist left, the sovereignist or anti-European left. It is around ecology that the left will come together and offer new hope.
Does Yannick Jadot not embody this fluctuating line between the right and the left that you criticize?
I did not agree with the tactic he used for the 2019 European elections and I was wrong since he was right to go only with the green ones. But a tactic does not make a strategy. Fort this result where we found ourselves in a dominant position within the left, it would have been necessary to launch the day after the Europeans a rallying initiative on ecological objectives. It is now being done. But I see that there are cleavages within Europe Ecologie-les Verts (EELV) between a branch which wishes a gathering of the left and another which would be ready for agreements with a part of the center and the right . We have seen the limits of compromise…
Why do you prefer to speak of ecological reconstruction rather than ecological transition?
I think that the term ecological reconstruction, which was used for the first time in 2013 by two authors who are called Christophe Bonneuil and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, and which is now reused by the economist Gaël Giraud, is better suited to the situation as that of ecological transition. Because this last expression suggests that things will be done smoothly. But no, contrary to what some people tell us, ecology is a battlefield. We have in front of us adversaries that we saw besides wake up at the time of confinement: the automobile industry, the Medef, all those who demanded that we reduce environmental standards.
There is no agreement in Lille between Martine Aubry and the Greens. Whose fault is it?
This is also linked to the character of Martine Aubry. I went to support the Greens in the first round in Lille, I found them determined, with very serious ideas. They are right not to want to be dominated. The Greens have been subjected to others for too long. I have been elected four times to Bègles (Gironde), because there were agreements with the socialist big brother. Now the balance of power has changed. It's not about being in revenge, it would be stupid. We have won a cultural victory and if we want it to become a political victory, we must have generous ecology.
What role must Nicolas Hulot play for ecology?
I'm shared on Nicolas Hulot. He is the best of us in terms of education and he is a great whistleblower. But I criticize him for wanting to make ecology a sort of gathering tool beyond all political cleavages. However, at a given moment, there is always a confrontation and one must go through this phase before arriving at an ecology that brings people together. Hulot has experienced this himself: he blew Chirac and Sarkozy's ear, he was Macron's minister and he saw the limits of the exercise. He ended up being humiliated by Macron. His voice remains useful but be careful not to depoliticize ecology.
Emmanuel Macron do not understand the ecological issue according to you?
I'm not sure of it. I think that his social background, his culture, his training create a kind of screen that does not allow him - even if he is very intelligent - to understand what ecology can bring as a tool for transformation. He has a class perspective on society. It is clear that ecology is a philosophy which is foreign to him and he has at the head of his government a man who is not at all green. I do not see it putting in place effective ecological transition tools. This is demonstrated by the aid given without compensation to Renault. And then he is also obliged to a certain number of large groups which brought him to power. It is necessary, at some point, to give change…
In the end, the coronavirus crisis was more than a revealer?
This episode of the coronavirus, which made the invisible visible, which showed the extent of the inequalities, which accelerated them - between comfortable confined people and those who lived a nightmare - underlined the vulnerability of our system. We depend on the Chinese for our medicines, on the Brazilians for the feeding of our cattle, etc. But this is only one aspect of what we are going through. We know there will be other pandemics. But the real threat to humanity is climate change, which is a time bomb. During the coronavirus, we focused our gaze on the old, the most vulnerable, but we must not forget that those who come out the most dented in this crisis are the young. They can no longer go to university, they will enter the job market in a context of unemployment and recession. This generation knows that it will also have to face climate change that endangers their lives and that of their children. We leave them a hyper-fragile world: they cannot change it, they can only repair it.
