• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
Historic Deal Reopens B.C. Indigenous Land to Fracking, Promises Land Restoration March 19, 2023
Repsol Abandons Plan to Ship Canadian LNG to Europe March 17, 2023
Biden Approves $8B Oil Extraction Plan in Ecologically Sensitive Alaska March 14, 2023
U.S. Solar Developers Scramble after Silicon Valley Bank Collapse March 14, 2023
$30.9B Price Tag Makes Trans Mountain Pipeline a ‘Catastrophic Boondoggle’ March 14, 2023
Next
Prev

Equity, Fairness Connect Climate Community with France’s Yellow Vests

March 21, 2019
Reading time: 6 minutes
Full Story: Climate Home News @ClimateHome
Primary Author: Natalie Sauer @natalielsauer

Daniel James/Twitter

Daniel James/Twitter

20
SHARES
 

In Paris on Saturday, March 16, more than 100,000 people according to organizers—36,000 according to local authorities—poured into the streets to demand climate action.

  • Be among the first to read The Energy Mix Weekender
  • A brand new weekly digest containing exclusive and essential climate stories from around the world.
  • The Weekender:The climate news you need.
Subscribe

The city’s largest-ever climate march was taking place while across town a group of gilets jaunes—the protest group known for their hi-vis vests—were engaging in some of the worst violence of their entire three-month revolt against declining wages, rising inequality, and other consequences of globalization.

The division between those demanding social justice and climate justice fits neatly with a widely-held view of the gilets jaunes as opposed to climate action. The initial protests were sparked by a rise in diesel tax, which would have cut pollution but landed the cost on drivers. This was too much for those living in poor neighbourhoods, isolated by cuts to public transport.

The narrative that this amounts to a popular rejection of efforts to fight global warming has been co-opted internationally, most prominently by Donald Trump.

But amid the well-heeled climate marchers was a significant scattering of the distinctive vests. In the Place de la République, François Boulot walked out to address the crowd wearing his yellow gilet.

“The social and ecological emergencies are inseparable: the fight against the end of the world and the end of the month are the same. We will not be able to operate the ecological transition without an equitable wealth redistribution,” said Boulot, who has been a prominent figure in the gilets jaunes. “How can you impose another tax on people already rummaging the bins to feed themselves?”

Rather than recoiling from climate action in the face of the gilets jaunes, France is reckoning with what fair climate policy looks like and how it is decided.

President Emmanuel Macron, the unifying object of ire for his top-down style of governing, has attempted to defuse the protests, first by dropping the tax, then, when that had no effect by convening a national ‘grand debate’ on four controversial issues: one of them the ecological transition. The series of town hall events ended on Friday.

Meanwhile, for 18 consecutive Saturdays, the gilets jaunes have occupied more than 30,000 roundabouts across the country, erecting makeshift sheds in which political opinions are traded back and forth.

A week before the climate march, at one of those ephemeral agora on the Champs-Élysées, Jerôme Rodriguez watches as police wheel water cannons into the square. Two powerful jets gush on to a small crowd under the Arc de Triomphe.

“Come on jackets! Time to go home now,” Rodriguez grins, a pair of sunglasses masking the eye he lost in the protests.

For this self-styled figurehead of the gilets, the climate issue is “not the priority”. Protestors are focused on full fridges and “dignified life”, he says.

“Eventually, when we obtain the first things, ecology will have its place, because kids talk a lot about it, and we have been told about it our whole lives. But nowadays, people aren’t concentrated on this. It’s a shame, of course. But we need to get them to live well so that we can interest them in the project,” Rodriguez says.

This is not entirely supported by data. The French Institute of National Opinion (IFOP) found 85% of lower professional categories (employees and workers) and 83% of the non-working population are worried about global warming. Young people are marginally more concerned about the issue, according to a different survey.

A group of women walk by wearing badges demanding climate justice. Meanwhile, Rodriguez, whose celebrity within the movement is obvious, is surrounded by a cluster of pensioners, an elderly woman in a motor wheelchair festooned with bags and a man wearing a farmer’s cap. The average age of the gilets jaunes is 45, according to recent analysis, and they are predominantly working to lower middle class and lean to the political left. For more than half of the participants, the movement represents their first political action.

If there is one thing that unites the gilets jaunes, it is the sense that responsibility for change lies with those at the top of society and government: “Plus de banquise, moins de banquiers” (More ice sheets, less bankers) is one of the many slogans associated with the movement. Macron, a former banker who has fashioned an image abroad as a defender of the Paris climate deal with his catchphrase ‘make our planet great again’, is a symbol of wasteful, hypocritical consumption at home.

“Ask Macron when he travels by plane, plus all of the cars that follow him,” Rodriguez says. “And that guy tells us: ‘Be careful’”.

“Not to mention his tableware, his bread and all of that!” another protester Sylvain yells.

“And his carpet!” another calls out. (Macron and his wife Brigitte reportedly spent tens of thousands of Euros on cutlery at the Élysée Palace and €300,000 on a new carpet.)

Marie-Claire, a pensioner who did not wish to give her family name, says: “You know, people who live precariously, they’ve made ecological efforts before the capitalists. Because they’ve already made efforts not to consume electricity. Not to consume too much water. You know, there are people who do not iron their clothes, because it costs too much electricity. I’ve known that, and my daughter does not iron her laundry. Children take a five-minute shower. We were ecologists well before anyone else.”

“The real polluters, who are they?” Akli, also a pensioner, bounces back. “We forbid old cars. But we leave Ubers and big Lamborghini to circulate. The jet-setters, the cargo ships, we allow them to burn heavy petrol. No one comes to ask them to burn anything else but fossil fuels.”

One manifesto has been widely circulated by the gilets jaunes, calling for among other things, increased building insulation and an aviation fuel tax. But the movement has yet to adopt a coherent program or set of goals.

Because of this, any snapshot of the gilets jaunes is bound to fail to grasp the full picture. Other prominent figures are building bridges with environmentalists. Priscillia Ludovsky, whose petition opposing fuel price hikes attracted more than one million signatures and catalyzed the movement, has joined with Cyril Dion, a figurehead of the environmental movement, to urge Macron to meet a series of demands, such as a reduced VAT on organic produce and heftier taxes on polluting companies.

Mostly, the gilets jaunes shunned Macron’s Grand Débat, meaning that the two conversations, one encouraging a dialogue with established institutions and the other rejecting the president’s authority, have mostly run in parallel. Occasionally they have crossed over, with some gilets jaunes participating in the state’s fora.

Rodriguez says Macron’s forum is “just about getting more information so that he can sell us his electoral program—which we don’t want. We can organize very well by ourselves, we can carry out debates. See, we’re debating today.”

The sense that the state is not listening has led to calls for a citizen’s referendum initiative (RIC), under which citizens would take an active role in the formulation of laws. This would, advocates say, ensure that the interests of the people are represented even as the climate crisis is addressed.

“The gilets jaunes, whether you like it or not, have succeeded where 30 years of social battles have failed: putting the question of social justice at the centre of the debate,” philosopher Pierre Dardot and sociologist Christian Laval wrote in December: “Better, they have posed a fundamental question for humanity about the link between social justice and ecological justice.”

Far from the protests pouring cold water on the issue, suddenly, it seems all of France is talking about climate change.



in Climate Action / "Blockadia", Energy / Carbon Pricing & Economics, Environmental Justice, Food Security & Agriculture, Jobs & Training, UK & Europe

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

Environmental Defence Canada/flickr
Shale & Fracking

Repsol Abandons Plan to Ship Canadian LNG to Europe

March 18, 2023
266
U.S. Bureau of Land Management/flickr
Oil & Gas

Biden Approves $8B Oil Extraction Plan in Ecologically Sensitive Alaska

March 14, 2023
137
United Nations
Air & Marine

UN Buys Tanker, But Funding Gap Could Scuttle Plan to Salvage Oil from ‘Floating Time Bomb’

March 10, 2023
100

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

David Dodge, Green Energy Futures/flickr

U.S. Solar Developers Scramble after Silicon Valley Bank Collapse

March 14, 2023
502
Environmental Defence Canada/flickr

Repsol Abandons Plan to Ship Canadian LNG to Europe

March 18, 2023
266
Behrat/Wikimedia Commons

Hawaii Firm Turns Home Water Heaters into Grid Batteries

March 14, 2023
485
NTSB

Ohio Train Derailment, Toxic Chemical Spill Renews Fears Over Canada-U.S. Rail Safety

March 8, 2023
1.4k
EcoFlight

Historic Deal Reopens B.C. Indigenous Land to Fracking, Promises Land Restoration

March 19, 2023
298
Rebecca Bollwitt/flickr

Fossils Stay ‘Oily’, Gibsons Sues Big Oil, U.S. Clean Energy Booms, EU Pushes Fossil Phaseout, and Fukushima Disaster was ‘No Accident’

March 14, 2023
223

Recent Posts

U.S. Bureau of Land Management/flickr

Biden Approves $8B Oil Extraction Plan in Ecologically Sensitive Alaska

March 14, 2023
137
EcoAnalytics

Canadians Want Strong Emissions Cap Regulations, Not More Missed Targets

March 14, 2023
145
U.S. National Transportation Safety Board/flickr

$30.9B Price Tag Makes Trans Mountain Pipeline a ‘Catastrophic Boondoggle’

March 14, 2023
267
Raysonho/wikimedia commons

Purolator Pledges $1B to Electrify Last-Mile Delivery

March 14, 2023
93
United Nations

UN Buys Tanker, But Funding Gap Could Scuttle Plan to Salvage Oil from ‘Floating Time Bomb’

March 10, 2023
100
Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons

Biden Cuts Fossil Subsidies, But Oil and Gas Still Lines Up for Billions

March 10, 2023
193
Next Post
Lion M/Facebook

Montreal Electric Bus Manufacturer Introduces E-Truck for Urban Deliveries

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}