“The Barnier government is preparing to undermine ecological policies on the altar of budgetary austerity” | EUROtoday
Lhas “ecological debt” is among the authorities’s new leitmotifs. It is promoted by a courteous prime minister, former minister of the setting, who succeeds Gabriel Attal who didn’t even fake to despise the topic. We can due to this fact marvel: may this be an indication of lastly critical ambitions in environmental issues? Unfortunately no. The idea of “ecological debt” doesn’t maintain water: it’s out of date, inappropriate, shaky. Worse: at this stage it’s accompanied by critical setbacks within the combat in opposition to the ecological crises that influence us.
Let’s first keep away from a misunderstanding. There “ecological debt” by Michel Barnier will not be the one that’s the topic of passionate debates and tough negotiations on a worldwide scale: that which we now have gathered with regard to the international locations of the South as a result of our huge predation – previous and current – of their pure sources and that which ends up from local weather change for which the populations of those similar international locations are probably the most violently affected and but the least accountable. Moreover, Michel Barnier will not be contemplating for a second strengthening our local weather solidarity: quite the opposite, he’s making ready to massively lower public improvement assist.
For the Prime Minister, it’s in regards to the debt we depart to our kids by now exceeding nearly all planetary limits with the whole lot we take and destroy. In reality, Overshoot Day, which marks the second when humanity has consumed the entire pure sources (forests, fish, arable land, and many others.) that the Earth can renew in a single 12 months, is falling yearly: in 2023, it arrived on May 5 for France.
In his basic coverage speech, Michel Barnier attracts a parallel between two money owed: the primary, the monetary debt of the State, and the second, this ecological debt in the direction of our kids. Putting these two realities on the identical stage is to start with aberrant given the dangers related to each: with out underestimating the problem of our public debt, “ecological debt” refers to habitability – more and more threatened – of the planet and the residing circumstances – more and more degraded – of humanity and all residing issues. Nothing much less!
It is simply as flawed to use a creditor/debtor logic in the direction of nature. Climate disruption, the extinction of species and the contamination of residing organisms are sometimes irreversible on our time scale. They should not “refundable”. We are attempting right here to cover actuality by Excel spreadsheet accounting, disembodied, devitalized, dehumanized.
You have 56.42% of this text left to learn. The relaxation is reserved for subscribers.
https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2024/10/15/yannick-jadot-le-gouvernement-barnier-s-apprete-a-saper-les-politiques-ecologiques-sur-l-autel-de-l-austerite-budgetaire_6352103_3232.html