"We will soon run out of water."
On April 19, 1974, René Dumont, the first environmental candidate in a presidential election, addresses the French behind their television set.
"Before the end of the century, if we continue such an overflow, the water will run out," he warns.
We are a few weeks away from the first round and the spiritual father of the Greens is trying to capture his electorate with an extremely alarmist speech for the time.
This strategy does not pay off.
René Dumont obtains… 1.42% of the votes.
To convince the French to vote green, should we insist on the seriousness of climate issues at the risk of splitting?
Or on the contrary, reassure and unite by focusing on concrete solutions?
With each election, the question resurfaces among the Greens, who are struggling to get rid of this perilous crest line.
48 years later, and while the climate emergency occupies a much more important place in the concerns of the French, Yannick Jadot logically preferred the second option.
Without more success.
“I see that it was not the right electoral bet.
To make voices, it was necessary to amplify the anger more, to instrumentalize it, to find scapegoats (…).
I could have overturned the table, pointed out the culprits, said to what extent the diagnosis imposes radical transformations on us.
Maybe I got too involved in showing the way, ”he diagnosed on France Inter on Tuesday.
“We cannot claim to be an ecologist, and therefore want to shake up an established system, by campaigning very conformist, lacking in audacity: it does not work”, pushes Sandrine Rousseau into our columns.
To read alsoSandrine Rousseau: “At Europe Ecology-the Greens, it is so tense that it could explode”
"To make voices, it was necessary to amplify the anger more"
Should the candidate Europe Ecology - The Greens have focused on the climate risk and put forward the most radical aspects of his project?
Even before the results, doubts assailed his camp.
“To ape Macron and apologize for being green without enjoiller (Editor’s note, motivating) the movement, we are not perceived as useful, neither by NGOs nor by voters”, Julien Bayou was indignant on Saturday in a internal message with the air of indictment against the positioning Yannick Jadot.
Julien Bayou has since tried to smooth things over, but the sequence reveals how the party is struggling to find the tone to address concerns about the environment, without alarming or reassuring too much.
“EELV is torn between a pole of protest and the need to become a government party to break a tradition of failures in the presidential election, analyzes Sylvie Ollitrault, political scientist at the CNRS and specialist in activism.
The environmentalist candidate must continue to speak to eco-anxious people while showing that he can negotiate, consult, make alliances.
»
Read alsoJadot dredged by Macron, criticized by his family
For a long time, the party chose to emphasize the seriousness of the issues and to highlight its radicalism.
Driven by a victorious Eva Joy in the primaries against the very popular and consensual Nicolas Hulot, the 2012 campaign had highlighted the ecology of fights, the former magistrate not hesitating to arouse controversy.
The candidate had been particularly critical of the spirit of conciliation of the PS… A posture which had pushed a certain Yannick Jadot to leave the campaign.
Approaching 10% after the primaries, Joly collapsed in the polls and won only 2.31% of the vote.
“More into green populism”?
The presidential election should have been a turning point.
After its success at the Europeans and in certain large cities at the last municipal elections, EELV, led by Yannick Jadot, already saw itself as the leading party of the moderate left, like the PS of yesteryear.
"
"
I started this campaign saying we must appease society to lead this great transformation " ecological, explained Jadot on France Inter.
“Reassuring could have been a profitable strategy if Jadot had succeeded in taking the lead, but that was not the case”, continues political scientist Sylvie Ollitrault.
With his
mea culpa
on France Inter, Yannick Jadot leaves the question of the posture to adopt in abeyance.
Like the second round of the primary, which opposed the most reassuring candidate - Yannick Jadot - and the most radical candidate - Sandrine Rousseau -, the hearts of the cardholders are still swinging.
“It's true that we are sometimes too
good students
.
We should perhaps give a little more in green populism, but it is not in our DNA, observes Morgan Jasienski, member of the Jadot campaign team for the presidential election.
Excessively, this amounts to taking voters for buzzards, which does not look like us ”.
Read alsoEELV: after the presidential election, the current close to Yannick Jadot on the verge of imploding
Conversely, some activists would have expected Jadot to go further in appeasement, to be heard beyond activist circles: “I am convinced that hope is more motivating than fear.
The posture of appeasement could have borne fruit if we had trusted each other, but we did not go far enough.
We understood too late, at the time of the big meeting of the Zénith (Editor’s note, de la Villette, in Paris, March 27), that we had lacked ambition, ”slips a member of the campaign.
A call to evaluate the “presentation” of the project
In reality, it is difficult for the party to depart from a certain number of alarming speeches: “The scientific facts are alarming and the eco-anxiety legitimate.
We have to verbalize it, tell the truth, otherwise we produce a mechanism of repression and denial which aggravates the panic, ”said Delphine Batho, leader of the Génération Écologie party, spokesperson for Yannick Jadot during the presidential election.
Still, this truth, believes the former Minister of Ecology, “should not be terrifying, paralyzing”.
His party has just launched a consultation on the causes of the failure of political ecology in the presidential campaign.
The contributions are already numbering a thousand according to Delphine Batho.
EELV did the same, asking its voters to evaluate their project carried out during the campaign "from its construction to its presentation" and "the reasons" for the failure.
What may help to find the right balance.
