The RN also threatens the energy transition
“Let’s close our eyes and imagine France next Sunday, after the decisive second round of the legislative elections,” suggests the German weekly The Time. “The country is governed by a Prime Minister who reveres Holocaust deniers, with a Minister of Health who intends to treat the sick according to their origins, a Minister of Family who demonstrates against gay marriage, an Environment Minister who wants to dismantle wind turbines and a Minister of Foreign Affairs who still considers himself a great friend of Putin..” The climate is only indirectly mentioned in this frightening composition of an RN government. The international press has not looked much into this theme. We do not blame it. It has mainly tried to understand how a far-right party arrived at the gates of power in France, in 2024.
But we, at Climate, for a year and a half now, we have been offering you every week to decipher what is happening on the planet for the climate through observations, alerts but also solutions… We often talk to you about the energy transition, that is to say the need to leave fossil fuels for energies that emit less greenhouse gases. Climate experts believe that this transition must be implemented as quickly as possible to limit global warming. What would it become if the RN governed? “Sabotaged”, summary Greenpeacewhich recalls Marine Le Pen’s wish to “dismantling wind turbines” and to establish a “moratorium on the construction of wind turbines”.
A militant word, that of Greenpeace? Certainly, but the economic media Bloomberg, not really known for his radical ecological positioning, says nothing else: “If it were to form the next government, the National Rally would put an end to the development of wind energy and abandon the ban on the sale of petrol and diesel cars planned for 2035,” he specifies. Before adding that the extreme right in power “would also relax housing renovation requirements and limit projects aimed at excluding the most polluting vehicles from large cities.”
In short, a 180 degree turn in “the energy priorities of the EU’s second largest economy”, notes Bloomberg. Wind turbines seem to have crystallized all the hatred of the RN, because they symbolize the “submission” to European rules. “By imposing wind turbines on our territories, (the European Union) is distorting our landscapes and subjecting us to an energy that will never be as powerful as nuclear power,” can be read on the X account of the far-right party, which says it is betting everything on nuclear power, with the construction of 20 new reactors by 2045.
For Greenpeace, this choice to abandon renewable energies in favor of nuclear power would have a completely opposite effect to that put forward by the RN: given the current state of the nuclear fleet and the construction deadlines for new reactors, it could “inflate electricity bills” And “weaken France’s energy sovereignty by increasing its dependence”. Not to mention the costs.
And the collateral victims would be the approximately 177,300 jobs in green industries, according to calculations by the Jean-Jaurès Foundation. With, as a bonus, a delayed exit from gas and oil… So an energy transition in peril.
Good luck for this start of summer which we hope will be good for you all the same. We will meet again on August 29.
In short
Carbon tax of 96 euros per cow in Denmark
The Danish government is proposing a tax on greenhouse gas emissions from livestock farming. According to the bill, which is expected to be approved by parliament by the end of the year, “The tax will amount to 16 euros per tonne of CO equivalent2 emitted by livestock, and it will increase to 40 euros in 2035,” precise CNNThe Danish dairy cow, which represents the majority of the livestock, emits 5.6 tonnes of CO equivalent.2 per year. The carbon tax for a cow would amount to 96 euros. The revenue generated will be donated to a fund to support the energy transition in the agricultural sector. Denmark will be “the first country in the world to introduce a real tax on CO2 in agriculture”, “, says Jeppe Bruus, Minister of Finance. For more details, go to here.
Brazil reconnects with reservoirs against desertification
Since Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva returned to power last year, the Brazilian government’s program to build giant rainwater tanks is back on track, after years of scarcity under President Jair Bolsonaro. The tanks are a symbol of the policies of President Lula’s party. “against desertification and exodus” in Sertão, the most arid region of the country, in the northeast of Brazil, where one in seven Brazilians lives, recalls The CountryThe Spanish daily met some of these farmers for whom “life has changed” thanks to these rainwater tanks. To read their testimony, it is here.
Caution, fragile
Micronesian coral featured on the cover of the June 28 edition of Science Advances is here to remind us of its beauty as much as its vulnerability. Last spring, corals around the world suffered a massive bleaching event, the fourth since 1985, due to extreme marine heat waves. In the current context of global warming, researchers have tried to identify the reefs that are most at risk and those that could better withstand heat stress. They show that “by 2080, (there is expected to be) a shift in the onset of coral bleaching from late summer to spring in most coral reef regions,” which could lead to irreversible damage to coral populations. To learn more, click here. here.
