Macron suggests the EU take a “break”from more environmental regulations
h/t To NetZeroWatch
The left side of politics is fracturing over climate and energy. The Green Party of France is calling Macron irresponsible and accusing him of “climate denial” for the sin of daring to suggest the EU already has enough environmental regulations:
[Macron] insisted that, when it comes to the regulatory side, the EU is “ahead of the Americans, the Chinese and of any other power in the world.” During a speech on how to revive the French industry on Thursday at the Elysée, President Emmanuel Macron called for “a European regulatory break.” “We have already passed lots of environmental regulations at European level, more than other countries,” he said. “Now we should be implementing them, not making new changes in the rules or we are going to loose all our [industrial] players.” — Politico
Macron was not suggesting anything as radical as actually unwinding Green legislation. But the mere act of not pandering 100% to sacred Green goals meant pushback for apostasy was swift and hard and a complete overreaction:
“…from the left there has been only rage. ‘Absolutely irresponsible’ cried the Green MP Sandrine Rousseau, who said it wasn’t fewer environmental regulations that were needed: ‘On the contrary, we have to increase them.’
Her party colleague Sandra Regol levelled that most damning of accusations at Macron, that of ‘climate denial’, adding that he was ‘taking France back to the 1980s’.
Notably, these quotes are so toxic that the rest of the media are not mentioning them. After all, if Macron is a “climate denier” for not racing full tilt on the Green Express, it says something about the cult of Green. Let the absurdity shine.
“Build Back Better” has suddenly become “Build Back Factories“
Macron is clearly trying to speak the language of the jilted working class (even if he may not do much to live up to it). He was not trying to woo the Green voter. No wonder the Greens felt outraged. He threw an event on Monday for 200 foreign business leaders to attract investment and was even talking to Elon Musk…
Macron vows to build back factories, boost France’s economy shaken by pension protests
While Macron woos investors to help re-industrialize France and reduce Europe’s dependence on China and the U.S., protesters follow him around the country, banging saucepans to protest economic injustice and his leadership.
More than 200 international business leaders are expected Monday at the Choose France’ event staged at the palace of Versailles to promote foreign investment.
[ABC News (US)] Elon Musk was a surprise visitor, meeting first with Macron at the Elysee Palace with discussions about “significant progress in the electric vehicle and energy sectors,” as well as digital regulation, the president tweeted.
By far the most interesting write up was from Gavin Mortimer of The Spectator:
Is Macron finally taking on the cult of net zero?
The far-left France Insoumise were also outraged. ‘It’s not as if there’s a [climate] emergency’, tweeted a sardonic Damien Maudet. One of the party’s MEPs, Manon Aubry, thundered that Macron ‘is now using the same rhetoric, word for word, as the European right and far right, who want to kill the implementation of the rest of the European climate package’.
It’s almost like democracy still matters in France? Macron appears to be afraid he is losing voters and that French elections might follow the recent swing in the Netherlands where the Farmer Citizen Movement (the BBB) came from nowhere to win an astonishing 23% of the vote:
At the same time that the CGT and the French Socialists have been shedding supporters, Marine Le Pen has been attracting followers, many of them blue-collar workers who once voted left. Her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, founded the National Front in 1972, growing it from a fringe party to one that reached the second round of the 2002 presidential election by latching onto the two preoccupations of the working-class: immigration and deindustrialisation.
This same sense of grievance accounted for the success in April of the newly-formed Farmer Citizen Movement in the Dutch regional elections. As Eva Vlaardingerbroek wrote in The Spectator, the Movement had tapped into the ‘larger conflict between the authoritarian green agenda being pushed by our government and the silent majority paying for it all’.
The truth is that net zero has become a bourgeois cult, and their self-absorbed domineering has been tolerated for too long.
As the yellow vests told the environmental lobby as they took to the streets in 2018 to protest against a green fuel tax: ‘You talk about the end of the world while we are talking about the end of the month.’
Years of protests have achieved some kind of deferred pain for Macron, adding to the pressure for him to get back to reality:
Credit rating agency Fitch last month downgraded France’s sovereign credit rating, citing the protest movement. “Political deadlock and (sometimes violent) social movements pose a risk to Macron’s reform agenda,” the agency wrote. –– ABC News USA
But make no mistake, only last week Macron was giving tax credits to all the fashionable Green causes:
It follows a series of incentives announced by Macron last week to support innovative industries and transition towards greener technology. They include tax credits in fields like battery production, electric cars, hydrogen and wind power, as well as accelerating authorization for industrial projects. — Business Standard
So the new talk of a pause is a good but tiny step. It’s merely a deceleration on the race to Green Hell, but perhaps the momentum is shifting?
More heartening than anything is that Macron appears to care at all what French voters think.
We’re so used to voters being irrelevant to the UniParty — perhaps the recent Dutch elections have rattled the cage?
Photo: Defense Visual Information Distribution Service