[RÉACTION] Wind turbines in Étretat: cultural and landscape terrorism

Last Tuesday, June 4, the media The sailor announced the reopening of recreational and professional fishing activities in the Fécamp wind farm, officially commissioned since May 15, with its 71 off-shore wind turbines. Electricity production should supply 60% of Seine-Maritime, or 770,000 inhabitants. Fabien Bouglé, expert in energy policy, author of the book Wind turbines. The dark side of the ecological transitionwho has been denouncing the environmental and financial disaster of wind turbines for twelve years, gives us his analysis.

Gabriel Decroix. What do you think of this installation?

Fabien Bouglé. This is the culmination of more than ten years of procrastination on the subject. It is the third offshore wind power plant installed in France, and it is also the third ecological disaster, after Saint-Nazaire, Saint-Brieuc and, now, Fécamp. I struggle to materialize this scar on the heritage, natural and cultural face of France. It’s a real disaster. Especially since not a few days ago, French nuclear power plants had to be shut down due to an excess of electricity from wind power. In reality, we don’t need this electricity. It is a triple disaster and a triple betrayal: ecological, environmental and, finally, economic. The French have lost three times. By purchasing subsidized electricity and reducing the production of nuclear electricity, we are exploding the cost of the French electricity bill. In addition, they will pay for the French energy mix to destroy their natural and landscape heritage.

GD This park is located in the panorama of the famous cliffs of Étretat. He greatly inspired Claude Monet and, in a tweet that you recently relayed, you mention his painting The Cliffs in Étretat, in the caption of a video of a young foreign tourist who comments on the site. For what ?

FB I relayed this tweet, which still had 25,000 views and which was retweeted 800 times, because this young foreign woman is very symbolic of the disappointment that tourists who come to discover the cliffs embodied by Monet’s work can have. . The young woman wonders if these are not boats that she sees offshore and realizes, stunned, that they are wind turbines. She is amazed to see the sacrifice of this natural and cultural heritage and she wonders how France could let this happen. Then she says she would like to take them off, but she can’t. The external view it brings helps alert the French about their own heritage. Moreover, Marion Maréchal, during her campaign, also spoke about the cliffs of Étretat.

GD Since we are talking about Claude Monet’s painting, we could mention the trial of this young environmental activist from Riposte Alimentaire who attacked another of his paintings, Poppies, exhibited at the Musée d’Orsay, by affixing a red sticker to the work representing a vision of Apocalypse. Are there no other ways to warn about rising temperatures than taking cultural property hostage?

FB In fact, this act of cultural terrorism is perfectly in line with the act of ecological terrorism that constitutes the presence of wind turbines at sea in Fécamp. In the name of ecology, we are ready to endanger the integrity of a work of art and sacrifice cultural and natural heritage by installing wind turbines! Through a sort of conjunction of History, Claude Monet finds himself at the heart of these actions of desire to destroy French heritage.

It is all the more interesting since there is a real awareness of the subject with two events: on the one hand, the decision of the Council of State to stop the wind turbines in the village of Combray, which risked attack on the work of Marcel Proust. On the other hand, the decision of a prefect to prevent wind turbines which would harm the landscape expressed in the work of Camille Pissarro. We see clearly that, behind all this, there is resistance to these terrorist, economic, cultural and ecological acts carried out against France.

GD Rather than a desire for destruction, don’t you simply think that the State is pursuing an ecological agenda with the objective, in 2050, of achieving carbon neutrality by relegating heritage to second place?

FB Wind turbines constitute a religious symbol of ecological religion, which replaces bell towers in heritage and imposes its presence in extremely powerful strategic and symbolic places, visible from very far away, such as the landscapes of Marcel Proust and Camille Pissarro. or Claude Monet. Behind this presence of wind turbines off the coast of Étretat, there is this reminder of “we are present and we impose ourselves on the world”.

When, with around twenty people, we infiltrated a conference of wind power promoters, the MP François Brottes, who deployed the law to accelerate the production of intermittent energy in 2013, told me: “We want to replace your bell towers with our wind turbines! » I wrote it in my book The dark side of the ecological transition and this has never been denied since 2019. Ecology is therefore a real religion which destabilizes our energy system to subjugate us, and whose symbol is a wind turbine like a cross, a Star of David or a crescent. What saddens me is that there is still no awareness and we must scream that France is truly a target.

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