The association for the defense of the environment wrote to the deputies of the Côte-d’Or while a parliamentary report envisages the state guarantee for the extraction of fossil resources in the world until 2035.
Open letter from Friends of the Earth Côte-d’Or of November 10, 2020:
Thanks to your votes, let’s not let France align with a temperature increase of + 4 ° or + 5 ° C
for the attention of the deputies of Côte-d’Or
M Rémi Delatte
Mrs Yolaine de Courson
M Didier Martin
Mme Fadila Khattabi
Mr Didier Paris
Copy to media
Subject: End of financial support for the exploitation of fossil fuels abroad
Ladies and gentlemen, the deputies
We are in 2020 and the French State continues to financially support the extraction of fossil fuels in the world, from the Arctic to Mozambique via Yemen, and far from the Paris Agreement.
On October 12, the government submitted a report to Parliament on the decarbonisation of France’s export financing.
This “Climate Plan”, presented by the government as “ambitious”, proposes to financially support new oil projects until 2025 and gas until 2035.
Export financing?
Export guarantees are tools that make it possible to financially help companies active on French soil to export. In short, the State guarantees loans granted by commercial banks for transactions abroad, via the Assurance Export subsidiary of Bpifrance. If there is a problem, it is the taxpayer who compensates the bank, not the company. This type of public subsidy makes it possible to remove the risk from projects that might not see the light of day without the support of the public authorities, but also for companies to borrow cheaper from banks. Since 2016, Bpifrance has taken over this activity, previously operated by Coface, for the account and under the control of the State.
Many OECD countries have such an export credit agency and subsidize fossil fuels through them. Between 2016 and 2018, the G20 countries provided through them $ 31.6 billion per year in financial aid for fossil fuels. In France it is at least 9.3 billion since 2009 for oil and gas.
The “Climate Plan” proposed by the French government is aligned more with Total’s growth trajectories than with the scenarios recommended by the IPCC, an intergovernmental panel on climate change.
The funding that the French State wishes to commit on behalf of taxpayers leads us to run the risk of an increase in global temperature from + 4 ° C to + 5 ° C by 2100.
COVID, the fires that set the world ablaze, the worrying thaw of the polar caps which are starting to emit methane, a gas that massively attacks the ozone layer … are all consequences of human activities that have not respected the environment in which we operate. Do we really want to continue on this path? Consider following the example of economic theories that nature is an “externality” when it is the very foundation of our survival?
Rather than projecting us into a dangerous unknown, the government should get down to building, as of today, a just transition strategy for employees in extractivist sectors and a roadmap for the development of renewable energies.
This is what a growing part of the French population wants.
Ladies and Gentlemen MPs, we ask you, on November 12 during the budget vote, to put an end from 2021 to all export aid in the fossil fuel sector. This by voting all the amendments going in this direction.
cordially
Friends of the Earth Côte-d’Or
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