{"id":135365,"date":"2021-04-24T07:10:24","date_gmt":"2021-04-24T07:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobinmag.com\/2021\/04\/macron-france-climate-resilence-law-environment\/"},"modified":"2021-04-24T07:10:24","modified_gmt":"2021-04-24T07:10:24","slug":"changing-our-individual-behavior-isnt-going-to-save-the-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/04\/24\/changing-our-individual-behavior-isnt-going-to-save-the-planet\/","title":{"rendered":"Changing Our Individual Behavior Isn\u2019t Going to Save the Planet"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

Two years since his fuel tax hike was sunk by the Yellow Vests protests, Emmanuel Macron\u2019s new climate law again exhorts the French to show \u201cwillpower\u201d in the fight to \u201cmake the world great again.\u201d But the law does nothing to impose limits on the most environmentally damaging businesses \u2014 instead blaming climate change on citizens\u2019 failure to alter their habits.<\/h3>\n\n\n
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\n French president Emmanuel Macron attends a virtual Earth Day Climate Summit at the Elysee Palace in Paris on April 22, 2021. (Ian Langsdon \/ POOL \/ AFP via Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

In September 2018, Emmanuel Macron\u2019s government announced a tax hike on gasoline products \u2014 claiming this would drive the shift in consumer behavior needed to fulfill France\u2019s emissions-reduction commitments. Dismissing the complaints of his chronically discontented subjects, Macron suggested that tweaks such as these would guide individuals toward a more responsible and ecologically sustainable way of life. The sum of these changes could \u201cmake our planet great again<\/a>,\u201d the goal Macron had set for himself when Donald Trump announced the United States\u2019 withdrawal from the 2015 Paris climate agreement.<\/p>\n

This opening gesture toward something resembling environmental reform quickly degenerated into the first crisis of Macron\u2019s presidency. Despite its green facade, critics claimed that the real purpose of the hike was to compensate for a tax cut on France\u2019s largest fortunes that had entered into effect that year. \u00a0Starting in late November 2018, motorists donning yellow vests began occupying roundabouts around France<\/a>. Each Saturday, the Yellow Vests, or gilets jaunes<\/em>, took to the streets by the hundreds of thousands, often in daylong clashes with riot police. Macron quickly backpedaled, withdrawing the proposed hike in mid-December 2018.<\/p>\n

Two and a half years later, the dust of the Yellow Vest revolt<\/a> has settled. Macron’s government is now adding the belated final touches to its environmental agenda in the form of the proposed \u201cclimate and resilience\u201d law. Currently being debated by parliament, the legislation has drawn fierce criticism from NGOs and the divided left-wing opposition as a patchwork of half-measures, toothless prohibitions, and meek incitements. In response to the debate that the Yellow Vests have forced opened since late 2018 on a socially just energy transition, Macron is doubling down on an environmental politics grounded in corporate self-governance and individual responsibility.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n

Falling Short<\/h2>\n \n

In early February, in the lead-up to parliament\u2019s consideration of the law, the Ministry of the Ecological Transition released a report by the Boston Consulting Group<\/a> (BCG), a global management consultancy giant. According to its authors, France is well on its way to cutting annual greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent of 1990 levels. In a circuitous though ringing endorsement of Macron\u2019s environmental agenda, BCG writes that \u201cthe potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions thanks to the measures already taken during the five-year term and proposed in the new Climate and Resilience law is altogether in accordance with 2030 targets, assuming their full and determined [volontariste<\/em>] execution.\u201d<\/p>\n

The devil, of course, is in the details \u2014 that is, what authors call a \u201cfull and determined execution.\u201d In a textbook example of bureaucratic doublespeak, they then skirt through a kaleidoscope of variables, probabilities, and eventualities that complicate the idea of an already accomplished transition. A full 115 million metric tons of CO2<\/sub> must be shaved off France\u2019s annual carbon diet by 2030, but it turns out that this is anything but guaranteed. \u201cOnly a small part of the potential total, representing approximately 21 million metric tons of CO2<\/sub> reduction, seems likely to be attainable,\u201d the report states. The next 57 million metric tons is \u201cpossible\u201d; another 27 million metric tons, almost a quarter of the remaining gap, \u201cdifficult to attain.\u201d<\/p>\n

With these projections, the BCG report is circling around the fact that France is lagging far behind its emissions reduction commitments. In fact, if in its most optimistic perspective France could indeed come close to the 40 percent target, this objective \u2014 brandished throughout the report \u2014 is obsolete, another fact BCG authors don\u2019t care to acknowledge. In December 2020, European heads of state set a new target of cutting emissions by 55 percent, relative to 1990 levels.<\/p>\n

Macron needs praise from private consultancies like BCG because of the growing chorus in France calling out his foot-dragging \u2014 much at odds with his initial promise of environmental action. Indeed, back in November 2018, just as the Yellow Vests crisis was beginning to occupy national headlines, the government had even created a High Council on Climate (HCC), meant to rally scientific expertise behind his agenda.<\/p>\n

As an institution, it is the relic of an era when Macron was viewed in many elite global circles as a leading voice on climate reform, the brash young modernizer to contrast with the Trumps and Jair Bolsonaros of the world. Bringing together climate scientists, economists, and a litany of experts and engineers, the HCC would be charged to evaluate and advise the government on the energy transition.<\/p>\n