Climate Politics After the Yellow Vests | Dissent Magazine
▻https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-yellow-vests-uncertain-future
So far, the #gilets_jaunes have been far more effective in underlining the flaws of neoliberal climate policy than in proposing alternatives. But other movements are filling in the gaps. Since September, near-monthly climate marches in France and neighboring countries have brought tens of thousands of protesters into the streets to demand meaningful action on climate change, including about 200 in Montceau-les-Mines in December. Even those who weren’t wearing yellow vests overwhelmingly shared the sense that their struggles were one and the same. Borrowing a phrase from Nicolas Hulot, they chanted, “Fin du monde, fins de mois / Mêmes coupables, même combat” (“End of the world, end of the month / same culprits, same fight”). Poll after poll shows climate change to be a top concern for growing numbers of French voters, as for many of their counterparts around the world. Nicolas Hulot remains by far the most popular political figure in France, with a 75 percent approval rating. (He is practically the only one to clear the 50 percent mark.) A petition mounted by four environmental groups in mid-December, threatening legal action against the French government if it did not take immediate, concrete measures to honor its climate commitments, quickly became the most successful in French history. With 2.1 million signatures as of this writing, it outpaces the petition credited with kickstarting the yellow-vest movement by almost a million.
Still, it took the gilets jaunes to send out the kind of SOS signal that the rest of the world was willing to hear. They have set the tone for the rest of Macron’s first term, and may yet augur a new era in French politics, if not European politics writ large.