The two faces of Michel Barnier | EUROtoday

Who took the reins of ecological planning at Matignon? Michel Barnier, the previous surroundings minister, conductor of a significant legislation within the mid-Nineties? Michel Barnier, the candidate within the right-wing main who denounced wind power in 2021? Or one other Michel Barnier, the brand new prime minister put below stress by “the situation (…) very serious » public finances, supported by an already agitated minority and monitored by a climate-sceptic extreme right?

In an attempt to reassure themselves, environmental activists first clung to the government leader's past and his three words on “ecological debt” during the transfer of powers at Matignon, Thursday September 5.

Since then, his silence on this challenge and the political quagmire have only fueled their doubts. “We will choose on the information, as a result of we have now recognized many politicians who use sturdy phrases however then do nothing.explains Morgane Créach, normal director of the Climate Action Network. Yes, he was Minister of the Environment, however for years he has had vital positions on the transition. We will see if he reverses the cuts in credit, his funds must be seen as a political act.

For a very long time, Michel Barnier was the consultant of a really uncommon species on the appropriate. “They were all fighting for the interior, defense or Bercy. He wanted to go to the environment. That defines the character well, all the same.”summarizes Antoine Vermorel-Marques, MP (Les Républicains, LR) for the Loire, who met him in 2013 when the European Commissioner had tasked the younger scholar at Sciences Po with placing his archives so as. According to his shut pals who repeat it time and again, this “green” tropism of the brand new head of presidency dates again to his childhood in Isère spent on the foot of the Alpine massifs. In cost of a mission on the age of twenty-two with Robert Poujade, first minister of the surroundings in France between 1971 and 1974, this singularity will in any case mark the start of his lengthy profession as knowledgeable politician.

“Propensity not to disturb”

After writing a parliamentary report as a member of parliament for Savoie, he produced a e-book from it Each for all. The ecological problem (Stock, 1990). Plenty of passages wouldn’t be denied, even at present, by activists of political ecology. He evokes “the limits that exist in the Earth's capacity to support us” ; he deplores the decline in biodiversity, “the most significant biological damage of our time because it is totally irreversible”; he criticizes them “approaches guided above all by economic profit”. “The energy abundance resulting from a largely oversized nuclear fleet and the relative fall in the price of raw materials” have “led to the unbridled promotion of 'all-electric'”, he writes. Michel Barnier, a degrowth activist hidden throughout the Gaullist proper? “Growth can be harmonized with the environment”he specifies, advocating sturdy measures to guard nature.

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