Ecology is dead, long live ecology – liberation

The ecological transition seems to live its crossing of the desert: French and European declines, budgetary restrictions, downgrading in political priorities and disappearance in the commitments of the economic world … Difficult not to see the end of a dynamic that the last months had already stolled. Should we prepare us to bury it?

Even though a part of the political spectrum surfs on an supposed « ecological fed up », The barometer « The French speak climate 2 025 » shows broad support from opinion to climatic policies. Double the renewable energy park, refuse trade agreements that do not respect national commitments, develop rail transport: so many measures that bring together more than two-thirds of respondents. The ecological transition can therefore benefit from more consensual support than the current partisan debate on the question does not believe it. Provided, as the ADEME barometer has shown for years, that the distribution of the effort of the effort is equitable, prior to its social acceptance.

But we must not blind ourselves by imagining that the subject can federate alone. If the environment is an importance theme for the French, it suffers phenomena of hierarchy. According to the climate parlon barometer, it only arrives at fifth position of the subjects that most concern, behind purchasing power, insecurity, health, immigration.

In short: potentially consensual subject, but not priority.

Let us see at least half full full: to rethink our approaches around the ecological transition could prove to be fertile to gain ground, in a political space which caricures environmental subjects, and while public opinion does not share the vocabulary of initiates of environmental activists. We have reached the limits of a plea based on the reality of global warming. It is no longer a question of fighting to make an observation accepted, but of taking a new existential deal seriously which requires rethinking all the subjects. The ecological transition therefore abandons its name to take a thousand others: worthy accommodation, job planning, health, food for all, etc.

For environmental activists, this implies adopting new methods of mobilization, seeking to gain on the surface of contact with the general public by the infusion in other social concerns. The time is to build large coalitions with other civil society organizations. We must find a difficult balance, by building transversal claims to different subjects (environmental, health, social, etc.), while preventing some of these facets from eclipizing others. Marriage is not easy: on the one hand, we must abandon our tendency to isolate environmental issues. But on the other, it is essential to continue to support and bring often purely ecological issues, pillars of the transformation of our socio -technical systems. These two objectives allow together to build a credible base in the ecological transition, both social and material.

Environmental activists know this, the net balance of ecological transition is positive. But being right alone, in a case like ours is to be wrong. We must now adapt our objectives, strategies and tactics to show and live, in the concrete, an ecology that answers associated questions in the collective imagination to other subjects than ours. Is the ecological transition dead? Long live health, jobs, food, in short … Long live the ecological transition!