“Persona non Greta”, “Fall of a climate icon”: the German press slams activist Greta Thunberg after her ambiguous comments and actions concerning the war between Israel and Hamas. Reacting to the decolonial soup tinged with wokism that she served on November 12 in Amsterdam during a climate demonstration – “As a climate justice movement, we must listen to the voices of those who are oppressed and those who fight for freedom and justice” – a man came on stage to remind him that he was coming to talk about ecology and not the political opinions of Greta Thunberg.
Does the fall of the Swedish icon signal the rise of climate skepticism and climatorelativism in Europe, until now relatively spared compared to the United States? Studies and analyzes are multiplying to point out “climate fatigue”: between anxiety, discouragement, aquoibonism and annoyance, public opinion is reportedly tired of this omnipresent subject in the media. A fascinating article from the latest issue of the journal Green, under the pen of Jean-Yves Dormagen, also attempts a cross-analysis of political-ideological sensitivities in the light of what he describes as a “new ecological divide”.
This observation of climatic fatigue is, however, surprising: if we stick to the French alone, is not preserving the environment their second concern, as shown by a survey by the Environment Agency and of energy management (Ademe) and the Research Center for the study and observation of living conditions (Crédoc), published last July? Result which was not intuitive in a worrying economic and international context.
Let us therefore try a complementary hypothesis: what if the problem came not from those who are subject to climate policies – us –, but from those who inspire and implement them? What if, in terms of climate fatigue, the only real fatigue was that caused by “climate-opportunists”, who, under the guise of fighting for the climate, recycle old anti-capitalist, degrowthist and Malthusian ideas? When the head of Ecologists-EELV, Marine Tondelier, takes a position against the construction of a factory manufacturing rock wool, an insulating material necessary for energy renovation, we no longer understand. Or rather, behind its denunciation of “a completely anachronistic industrial project” because it consumes electricity and water, everyone understands that something else is at stake. “Ecology without the class struggle is gardening,” exclaims support from the Swedish muse on Lyon-Turin rail tunnel, which will eliminate tons of CO₂ emissions from road traffic. The contradiction is blatant… and tiring for a public opinion which would appreciate that those who proclaim themselves progressives shed the mask to show themselves as they are: deeply conservative.
Caricatured among environmentalists, inconsistencies are just as annoying when they are the work of the rest of the political class. The list is long. Denounce the artificialization of land in terms of housing while promoting the energy sources that consume the most land. Promote electric cars, heat pumps and reindustrialization without questioning – and even by increasing it! – the cost per megawatt hour output from a nuclear power plant. Stigmatize individual houses on the outskirts of cities while pursuing a housing policy that destroys supply on the new home market and makes city centers inaccessible. Defend food sovereignty while continuing policies that have weakened it, leaving Brussels free to reduce cultivated areas and agricultural production. Don’t throw any more away…
The method chosen is ulcerative, which smacks of paternalism: “Don’t do that! We will protect you.” The economy of subsidies supplants that of innovation, the society of trust becomes a society of confrontation – territorial, generational, political – and of infantilization. Except that by dint of being treated like children, European citizens are starting to react as such at the polls. Spoiled children? Maybe. But above all terrible. “How dare they?” Greta must be thinking.