At the moment when the limits of the capacities of natural systems become obvious, resistance to essential changes grows. And the supporters of unbridled liberalism have been joining forces for some time now with unconditional fossil and fissile climate-skeptic populist groups who reject any development towards a sustainable world in the name of “don’t touch my way of life”.
Neoliberal positions are known: the function of companies is to maximize return on investment and extra-economic impacts (social and ecological) are not their business. The far right adds to this a mythification of the nation seen as one piece and immutable, an attraction to dominant postures and authoritarian regimes, a supremacist conception of society and the world, in which nature can be cut and forced. thank you. A former ultraconservative Polish minister summed it up by rejecting homosexuals, cyclists and vegetarians from the same movement, having in common not to be “real men”…
The alliance of rights: major ecological risk
The toxic effects of the alliance between the right and the far right were not long in coming. At the level of the European Union (EU), the tone was set from the 2nd half of 2023. Even before the European elections of June 2024 reinforced these two political currents, the review of chemical substances was postponed and the plan for reduction of rejected pesticides. Then the farmers’ revolt resulted in the spring of 2024 in reducing the “greening” of agricultural policy to almost nothing and perpetuating a short-term productivist model that was nevertheless fatal to the vast majority of farmers.
The nature restoration system – a commitment made by the EU in 2022, during COP 15 on biodiversity – only passed the milestone last June in a watered-down and extremely accurate version, the Austrian minister of the environment having validated it against the advice of his government. The scenario was similar for the directive on the “duty of vigilance of companies in matters of sustainability” (CS3D), weakened after long disputes between European authorities. Directive preceded by that on “the publication of sustainability information by companies” (CSRD). Both are denounced by the right and the far right as “bureaucratic monsters”.
As for the ban on imported deforestation (for various agricultural products, it is necessary to prove that they do not come from land deforested after January 1, 2021), it was postponed for a year, after having also been threatened with strong relativizations. The push from the hard right in the European Parliament, but also within EU member states, is increasing pressure to renegotiate various commitments, in particular the ban for 2035 on the thermal engine, a major source of CO2 emissions within the EU.
Another worrying horizon: the presidential election in the United States. The first election of Donald Trump in November 2016 coincided within a few days with the entry into force of the Paris Climate Agreement, from which the United States then withdrew. The program for his second term is known: leave the Paris Agreement again, massively relaunch fossil fuels, unravel environmental commitments. A fatal acceleration of the race towards the abyss.
The ecological theme was practically absent from the American campaign and the considerable investments in the transition of the Biden government passed over in silence. In March 2023, Congress prohibited pension funds from referring to sustainable finance criteria, a decision overturned by a presidential veto.
Combining technical and behavioral innovations
Simultaneously, fearing pretenses and lame compromises, all other circles are working to denounce “technosolutionism”. Carbon offsets, electric cars and even wind turbines are in the crosshairs. However, the transition requires combining technical optimizations, renewable energies, circular economy and sobriety, none of these components being able to do the job alone. But we must set conditions: the electric car, with an engine with an energy efficiency triple that of the combustion engine, requires that it be powered by renewable electricity, that its components be recyclable and recycled and that we rethink mobility.
Carbon offsetting authorized by the Paris Agreement must be limited to incompressible emissions (clearly defining what is meant by this) and meet sustainability criteria. The abuses observed call for strict regulation. But it would be a shame not to be able to finance “nature-based solutions” (reforestation, maintenance and rehabilitation of plant cover), especially since their capacity to store carbon depends on their biological wealth.
Another recurring criticism: according to certain historians, new sources of energy would never replace old ones but would inevitably be added to them. This is questionable, particularly with regard to wood energy, then overexploited, which coal largely replaced as a heating source throughout the 19th century. And today, we must have enough renewable energies available to claim to move away from fossil fuels (oil and gas) and fissile energy (a third of the electricity produced in Switzerland is produced in nuclear power plants), which constitute 75 % of our energy consumption. Sobriety and technical optimizations will not be enough.
A mobilizing economic and social story
To overcome ecofatalism, ecological demands must lead to positive economic and social prospects. It is about both reducing our ecological footprint by a factor of 2.5 and waging a resolute fight against social inequalities to move towards an economy prioritizing utility, inclusion and the common good.
So, transition means passing:
- from obsolescence and waste to the circularity of matter and objects;
- from fossil and fissile energies to renewables and sobriety in uses;
- from global underbidding to fair trade and local resilience;
- from above-ground finance to sustainable finance;
- from industrial agriculture to agro-ecology – the only way to feed a growing population without degrading the soil, the climate and the peasant condition;
- from the multiplication of ecotoxic molecules to substances with established safety;
- from priority to aeronautics and road to (re)deployment of rail.
These options have the advantage of offering an excellent employment record. In 2019, the UN reported that implementing the 2030 Agenda would require 380 million new jobs by 2030. In the United States, renewable energy provides 24 times more jobs (1 million) than coal mining (42,000). As for the circular economy, the EU estimates that it would generate 700,000 jobs in Europe by 2030. In many countries, the energy transition faces a significant lack of labor and, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO), presents a positive balance of 18 million jobs – and 8 million for the circular economy. In France, the Secretariat for Ecological Planning announced in spring 2024 that if 150,000 jobs would be lost by 2030 due to the ecological transition, it would create 400,000 new ones.
Faced with the attractiveness of far-right discourse, Canadian activist Naomi Klein proposes ecological populism. For his part, the director of the Potsdam Research Institute on the effects of climate change, Ottmar Edenhofer, considers it necessary to develop a story that can reach conservative circles, based on the conservation of a natural heritage entrusted to humanity not to destroy it but to make it bear fruit.
To win the game, the popularization of ecological facts is essential in the face of disinformation on (anti)social networks, but it is above all the description of desirable social and economic perspectives which will move the lines. Therefore, it is up to the movements attached to the transition to formalize and explain their socio-economic models as much as possible; whether we support it or oppose it, the urgency is to debate it very concretely. Because, wrote Edgar Morin in The Way“it is no longer enough to denounce, we must now speak out”. In order to bring together majorities to finally change course.
