© Denis Allard
Paris, May 9, 2021. In the procession of a March for the climate, in the center of Paris. The demonstrators denounced the possible abandonment of the referendum to include climate protection in the Constitution. PICTURED: Cyril Dion (blue shirt), French writer, director, poet and environmental activist.
Look up (“look up”)! The watchword of more than 140 “climate, social justice and peace marches”, planned this Saturday almost everywhere in France (Paris, but also in Lyon, Strasbourg, Bordeaux, Nevers, Tours, Ajaccio, Brest or Saint-Pierre de La Réunion) is a reference to the film Don’t Look Upwhich was a Christmas hit on Netflix.
569 organizations (NGOs, unions, collectives and some companies) call for demonstrations, deploring that reality joins fiction, that as in the satire on political and media blindness in the face of the arrival of a comet destroying the Earth, “most decision makers […] minimize the danger” climatic. The marches are intended to be apolitical, even if parties like EE-LV or LFI have announced that they want to participate, as well as the environmental candidate, Yannick Jadot.
It is for the organizers to push all the presidential candidates but also the media, leaders of multinationals or «experts» economic “to raise our heads, to look climate change in the face”. They hope for a massive influx, in order to “to show” candidates that the theme of the climate “concerns as much, if not more, than other themes”from “make the climate movement visible by showing its ability to mobilize”all in “offering a space for expression to all those who consider that social and climate justice must be at the center of political decisions”.
Politico-media disinterest
For now, the conclusion is: climate change takes the background of the presidential campaign. “In France, in 2022, the greatest threat that humanity has ever known is passed over in silence in the middle of an election period, while our future is at stake”the organizers are alarmed.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a cataclysmic new report on February 28, drawing up a picture of the current and future upheavals generated by climate change (displacements of populations and species, extreme heat waves, submersion of coastal cities, etc.). But he was mentioned very little if at all by the candidates and the prime-time media. According to the “More climate in the media” association, quoted by the organizers of the “Look up” marches, the main television news (from TF1, France 2, France 3, Arte and M6) have together devoted only three short minutes to the report, the day of its publication.
This media disinterest dates from before the war in Ukraine. Since February 14, the organizations of the Affair of the Centurye (Greenpeace, Oxfam, Our business to all, Foundation for nature and man) measure the weight of climate issues in the presidential debate every week. Their climate barometer shows that the subject has not since exceeded the bar of 2.8% of media time in the campaign. It fell to 1.5% of “media noise” the week of March 2 to 8, despite the publication of yet another alarming study, in Nature Climate Change, according to which the Amazon is approaching a “ tipping point” that could turn it into a savannah.
“100% climate” debate on Twitch
Faced with this silence, the NGOs of the Affair of the Century have decided to organize Sunday from 4 p.m. an event complementary to the climate marches on Saturday: a debate between candidates «100% dedicated to the climateon the Twitch channel of political streamer Jean Massiet. On Friday, Anne Hidalgo, Yannick Jadot, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Fabien Roussel and Philippe Poutou had confirmed their participation.
This weekend of mobilization “for the climate” also wants to be a mobilization “for social justice”car “the poorest are also the most affected by climate change, even though they are the least responsible for it”, recall the organizers of the marches. To this is added since the war waged by Russia in Ukraine a mobilization “for peace”since, say environmental activists, “the climate march is not disconnected from the news. Oil and fossil gas, responsible for climate change, are financing Putin’s war”.
One question remains. Why not add to this triptych “for the climate, social justice and peace” a fourth element: for the living? Because the collapse of biodiversity, the sixth mass extinction of species caused by Homo sapiens, is the other great crisis that threatens humanity. Just as important as that of the climate (the two crises being moreover linked), it is even less present in the speeches of the candidates as in the media. This other meteorite which rushes at us at full speed, we should also dare to look it in the face.