Who took charge of ecological planning at Matignon? Michel Barnier, former Environment Minister, author of a major law in the mid-1990s? Michel Barnier, the right-wing primary candidate who denounced wind power in 2021? Or another Michel Barnier, new Prime Minister under pressure from “the situation (…) very serious” public finances, supported by an already agitated minority and overseen by a climate-sceptic far right?
In an attempt to reassure themselves, those involved in the environmental cause first clung to the past of the head of government and his three words about “ecological debt” during the transfer of power to Matignon, on Thursday, September 5.
Since then, his silence on this challenge and the political quagmire have only fueled their doubts. “We will judge based on the evidence, because we have met many political leaders who use strong terms but then do nothing.explains Morgane Créach, CEO of the Climate Action Network. Yes, he was the Minister of the Environment, but for years he has had critical positions on the transition. We will see if he reverses the credit cuts, his budget will have to be considered a political act.
For a long time, Michel Barnier was the representative of a very rare species on the right. “Everyone was fighting for the inside, the defence or Bercy. I wanted to go to the midfield. Although it defines the character well.”“This is the story of Antoine Vermorel-Marques, a member of parliament (Les Républicains, LR) for the Loire, who met him in 2013, when the European Commissioner asked the young Sciences Po student to sort out his archives. According to those close to him, who repeat it again and again, this “green” tropism of the new head of government dates back to his childhood in Isère, at the foot of the Alpine massifs. Entrusted at the age of 22 to the mission of Robert Poujade, France’s first Minister of the Environment from 1971 to 1974, this singularity will in any case mark the beginning of his long career as a professional politician.
“Proneness not to disturb”
After writing a parliamentary report as an MP for Savoy, he wrote a book based on it. Each for all. The ecological challenge (Values, 1990). Many passages would not be denied, even today, by political ecology activists. He mentions “the limits that exist in the Earth’s capacity to sustain us” ; deplores the decline in biodiversity, “the most significant biological damage of our time because it is completely irreversible”; He criticizes the “approaches guided primarily by economic profit.” “The energy abundance resulting from an oversized nuclear fleet and the relative fall in the price of raw materials” have “It led to the frenetic promotion of “all electric””, he writes: Michel Barnier, a decadent camouflaged within the Gaullist right? “Growth can be harmonized with the environment”precise, advocating firm measures to protect nature.
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