Tour de France polluter and macho, Christmas tree to be removed… The first steps of environmental mayors are accompanied by controversy. Are you not afraid of caricaturing the cause and harming the thesis of popular ecology?
This is not how I would approach the question. From my point of view, green mayors are the target of an ad hominem attack on a system that is no longer in line with the aspirations of French women and men. A neoliberal, consumerist system.
Before, when we did not have the power and we were in this desire to transform social organizations, we were despised, dismissed, qualified as romantic utopians. There now that we are in the exercise of power, it goes up a notch, it becomes more violent. We are Green Khmers, Ayatollahs, Amish… It’s always the same mechanics.
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Which ?
There are three leitmotifs among the critics: the question of the perverse effect first. If you want to reduce the place of the car in the public space, you will carry over elsewhere and create traffic jams and pollution. Second, we hear that we are taking ridiculous measures. When I cut prestige spending in 2014, I was told it was ridiculous and populist. I warned my colleagues: “You are going to experience this”. And on a larger scale because now there are many of us. The third criticism concerns the endangering of freedoms and precious gains that would have come from our history. We are accused of denying traditions.
When we question the model of mid-mountain ski resorts and the Wauquiez snow cannon plan, we are told that access to the mountains of the working class is undermined.
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Behind these three permanent criticisms, there is something else hidden. Technology, which is nothing in itself, is today at the service of a neoliberal ideology, made up of acceleration, fractures between populations and financial profit. If these goals are those of a few, they are not those of society. I warned my colleagues: “You are going to experience this”. Photo DR
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Today we see the fabrication of a duel between Greens who are progressive and other decreasing, penitents … For me, this is the debate of cornered people. However, the best defense is attack. According to Castex, there would be the good eco-productivists, technoscientists, those who deliver neonicotinoids, and others who would be for the return to the oil lamp, as Macron says. This is absurd. In fact, on the one hand, there are green people who watch how we transform our lifestyles to conserve what is dear to us and work on issues of equality and sustainability and, on the other, the supporters of this ultraliberal model who always want to go further. Where we advocate equality of territories in access to digital technology, they are already in 5G and are preparing 6G in urban centers, in a desire for financial profit.
You are an engineer. Is everything to throw in 5G?
Yes, I am an engineer, I worked for 18 years in the industry. What strikes me is this headlong rush and this duplicity of the system. Macron changes his speech even more often than Sarkozy. Contrary to what he said at the Citizen’s Climate Convention two and a half months ago, he now explains to us that he loves 5G and that those who refuse it are Cro-Magnon men.
In the encyclical Praised, the Pope explains how technoscientists sweep aside all criticism as an attack on what is dear to them: acceleration and financial profit.
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Does this union of the left that you succeeded in Grenoble appear to you to be feasible at the national level? Do you believe Yannick Jadot or Jean-Luc Mélenchon capable of abandoning the idea of an individual adventure?
I am convinced that a space of victory is possible and that we can unite, all, behind the same project whose political backbone will be green but also bring together all the themes of the humanist arc.
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The collective approach is the only one that can allow us to go to victory.
“I am convinced that a space of victory is possible and that we can unite”. AFP Photo
And you, are you as interested as it is claimed in this presidential adventure? I am interested in this collective approach. Yannick Jadot is part of that team. I do not have a competitive relationship with him. We belong to this same political space which must find a way to offer a political outlet to the cultural majority. The one who believes in the fight against inequalities, in feminism, in the energy transition, in the preservation of the environment, in a Europe and a France worthy of their history… I believe in them fundamentally.
Interview by Florence Chédotal
1973. Éric Piolle was born in Pau (Pyrénées-Atlantiques). Engineer graduated from the National School of Industrial Engineering in Grenoble, he worked for 18 years as a senior executive in industry. He is married and the father of four children. 2014. Elected in Grenoble, he became the first ecological mayor of a large city in France. He was re-elected last June. He made his entry into public life in 2010 by becoming a regional environmental advisor for Rhône-Alpes. 2019. He publishes Growing Up Together, cities awaken hope (ed. The links that liberate).
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