The world is currently facing a pandemic crisis in the form of the coronavirus, and France is one of the most affected countries with more than 130,000 cases and 24,000 deaths as of this writing. The Gilets Jaunes slogan comparing the end of the world and the end of the month now reverberates as a haunting prophecy.

The strict quarantine applied in France to slow the spread of the virus is rubbing salt into the wounds of a country that has recently experienced an exceptionally long period of social unrest. From the start of the Gilets Jaunes uprising almost a year and a half ago to the mass movement against a proposed pension reform, the streets of the country have seen huge mobilizations, with the question of climate change and solidarity at the core of those popular movements.

What the pandemic confirms is that the scars of exploitation and injustice become all the more visible in periods of intense crisis.

The parallels that can already be drawn between the pandemic and climate crisis will be crucial for approaching climate politics going forward.

Central to this comparison are the blatant inequalities in terms of who is most affected and the call for broad restructuring of economies and societies, and in this comparison can be found the material to reimagine political responses to both Covid-19 and the climate crisis.

Macron 2.0?

After adopting a warmonger’s attitude in calling for the nation to fight this invisible enemy, President Macron has recently changed his tone. He’s no longer the commander in chief assembling his troops and preparing the nation for sacrifice. He has rather become a caring figure, concerned about the pain and sacrifice that his people are enduring, worried about the rising inequalities that the Covid crisis feeds.

In a recent interview with the prestigious liberal newspaper the Financial Times, the former investment banker declared himself open to changes and ready to put in place unorthodox social and economic measures at the national and European level. When asked by the journalist about the relationship between this crisis and climate change, the French president asserted that it would serve as a “wakeup call” and exhorted “developed countries to take action right now before it is too late.” These words, which could have come from Greta Thunberg, have left observers with a lot of questions.

One concrete question that quickly comes to mind: What could the climate action plan for the rest of Macron’s mandate look like, and to what extent could it be different from the current approach?

Past visions of a ‘Green’ Macron

Although it might not directly answer the question, it is enlightening to analyze this sudden change of heart in the light of two and half years of Macron’s leadership. It seems reasonable to believe that Macron had planned to focus the last portion of his five-year term on climate and environmental concerns, in what can be understood as the third step in his re-election strategy:

Accelerate the process of desegregating the rigidity of the French social system and labor law. Liberalize the economy and ensure that social security is reduced to a safety net while creating an economic environment favourable to investors, in what the economic orthodoxy would call a “modernization” effort.

Construct an image of himself as a European leader and visionary, profiting from the unwillingness of Merkel and Germany to take up this role.

Turn to issues of environment and climate change to consolidate the “progressive” and even planetary aspects of this visionary profile, thus ensuring he would be viewed as responsive to the “progressive” wing of his electoral coalition.

If this last point was likely already part of Macron’s initial strategy, the August 2018 resignation of popular former Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot weakened his credibility on the matter. Hulot’s decision was triggered by the administration’s lack of real climate ambitions and seeming proximity to industry and fossil fuel lobbies.

Two months later, in October 2018, the Gilets Jaunes uprising started, ignited by a proposed tax on diesel, a measure that exacerbated social inequalities and was broadly understood as an example of unfair and unsustainable climate action. Macron’s unwillingness to even compromise, let alone sacrifice, any major economic interest at the altar of climate change, was made clear to all upon the ratification of the free trade agreement CETA in July 2019 in spite of strong parliamentarian and popular opposition.

The citizen counsel and the ‘participatory card’

Macron’s approach to the climate question has been in a process of development since that time. It was certainly influenced by the performance of the French Greens (EELV) in the 2019 European elections, in which they secured almost 13 per cent of the vote and became the third party nationally behind Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National and Macron’s La Répulique en Marche. The fact that this “green wave” was felt across Europe and particularly in Germany was another factor pushing Macron to revise his strategy.

Before the start of the pandemic, Macron’s response to the electoral need to deal with the climate question relied on getting results from the “Citizens’ convention for climate.” This convention was set up as one of the outcomes of the “Great debate,” a three-month national consultation with citizens’ assemblies across the country in which Macron personally participated. During a series of televised “shows,” he displayed his concerns for everyday people’s problems, often with a paternalistic tone, alternately reassuring and chiding his fellow citizens about what was possible and what was not.

This living exercise of public consultation (a term familiar to anyone who has ever wandered into the world of the European Commission) was designed to respond to demands for direct citizen involvement in political decisions that were made clear during the Gilets Jaunes protests. The Citizens’ convention on climate comprised 150 members drawn by lot and given the task to discuss and propose a set of measures to reduce national carbon emissions by 40 per cent by 2040.

On April 11, 2020, the convention, brought together via video-conference, produced a list of 50 proposals to the government. While this list has not yet been made public, enough of the text has been leaked to reveal that, particularly in light of the ongoing Covid crisis, the proposals are already outdated. Some of the proposals do go in the right direction — “building renovations, limitation of urban expansion, support for biking options in urban and rural areas, etc.” — but as a whole they are tainted with the sort of sustainable development thinking dear to the United Nations and other international institutions. This approach was already clearly insufficient before the current crisis, and the convention’s proposals are now that much further from responding to the clarion call for massive societal change brought forward by the pandemic.

In terms of the current crisis and its possible consequences, it seems that perceptions of risk, collective danger and preparedness will remain unsettled among the general public at least for a while. For people in power, giving the impression that everything will be done in the same way, and at the same scale, as it was before could prove a poor strategy, risking the perception of being as out of touch. Macron seems to have acknowledged and understood this point. This is why he has declared himself open to “outside the box” thinking, claiming that he “feels the profound need to re-invent something new.”

The need to implement radical change

The Covid-19 crisis is providing precious hints concerning the climate breakdown and the way it should be approached by policymakers and politicians.

Both phenomena are external physical crises concretely impacting physical bodies — including through the direct threat of death — which differentiate them from the more abstract components of the financial crisis, for instance. And we have witnessed during this crisis that drastic measures taken early, including mass testing, quarantine and social distancing, have proven efficient in different countries and contexts.

Bailing out the fossil fuel or aviation industries without restructuring them, reskilling their workers and reframing their management would represent a total denial of the climate emergency

The importance of urgency illustrates what climate activists and the scientific community have been calling for: that swift and radical climate action will not only preserve us from future catastrophes but will also reorganize the way we currently approach issues including production and the extraction of raw materials. The climate crisis is ongoing, and we have enough scientific evidence to measure it. Avoiding or delaying needed measures must now be judged in the light of the current health crisis.

If Macron is sincere about the need for change, we must ask if this will translate into a moratorium on investment by French companies in fossil fuels, particularly those gas-related investments responsible for half the increase in CO2 emissions since 2012. At a time when the price of oil has dramatically plummeted — reaching even the nonsensical depths of negative value — will there will be a restructuring of the fossil fuel sector, organized by the state and involving concrete support for workers?

Bailing out the fossil fuel or aviation industries without restructuring them, reskilling their workers and reframing their management would represent a total denial of the climate emergency and, indeed, of the essence of what “governing” means.

For the front lines, here and beyond

The Covid crisis, like the climate crisis, is another important revealer of the structural injustices created by our capitalist economic structure, as well as our imperialist and colonialist history. It exposes a situation in which the “frontline communities”, the people most affected by the crisis, are the same socio-economic groups already facing economic, gender and racial discrimination.

Seine-Saint-Denis, the poorest department in France, has especially high numbers of people affected by and dying because of COVID-19. This is also a department mainly inhabited by ethnic minorities from former French colonies. The reason for this specific vulnerability lies at the intersection of precarity, lack of decent housing services, and a reduced number of hospitals and doctors. The high rate of employment in the building and care sectors, the latter very often occupied by women, is another factor that explains the toll being taken on this segregated community.

When surveying this situation, it is impossible not to think of all the frontline communities in the Global South losing their homes and habitat to the rising seas, or enduring the devastating effects of the increased occurrence of devastating climate events like typhoons and floods.

What the pandemic confirms is that the scars of exploitation and injustice become all the more visible in periods of intense crisis. The social and ecological transformation needed in the post-pandemic era must confront the massive pauperization of working people organized by the neoliberal state of play. The French case suggests that any further dismissal of this idea will increase the social and political decomposition already taking place in many European societies.

The rise of new alliances

If Macron were to forget his pledge for change made to Financial Times readers, he could still rely on civil society and social movements in the country to remind him of the need to radically change his approach to climate policies.

In an open letter published March 27 under the slogan “Plus jamais ça!” (“Never again!”), 18 representatives of leading trade unions and other social organizations called for a clear and definite change to Macron’s neoliberal policies, demanding a strong response to the crisis, including an immediate halt to all layoffs, a rent freeze and the requisition of unoccupied houses to shelter homeless people.

The notion that brave climate policy must be intrinsically linked to the reorganization of our social and economic structures seems increasingly to take root organically among different progressive actors and civil society across societies

The open letter also dives into what should be done after the first aid package is distributed and the time comes for economic reconstruction. And here again the message is clear: the road to follow is one that links the ecological transformation of the economy with the redistribution of wealth, alongside the rebirth of the necessary public services to sustain this transformation. The question of food systems is also addressed, with signatories demanding the reorganization and re-localization of agricultural systems.

If the term “Green New Deal” is not mentioned in the open letter, the general claim and demands are in line with what has been heard on the other side of the Atlantic, particularly in the GND proposals made by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders. The notion that brave climate policy must be intrinsically linked to the reorganization of our social and economic structures seems increasingly to take root organically among different progressive actors and civil society across societies.

The question that remains is what those new coalitions should do if Macron’s resolutions disappear as fast as they emerged, which would be suggested by France’s decision not to review its carbon emissions for the 2019-2023 period.

The answer may lie in the new alliances that are emerging, the bridges being built, and in the clear necessity to learn from healthcare and other public and private-sector workers who have held society on their shoulders, and who will soon demand justice and recognition for their work.

If the climate movement, in alliance with other social forces, can help to bring the demands of frontline communities in France, Europe and the Global South to the forefront of the coming struggles, then “Plus jamais ça!” may soon become an assertion and not just a hope.