All the reports and climate experts repeat it: there is still time to act to limit global warming to +1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial era, but it must be done immediately. From the latest IPCC report to the film don’t look up, through the marches for the climate, the subject comes up with insistence in public opinion. According to a Ipsos poll for The Parisianclimate change is even an important or even priority issue for 94% of voters.
The climate policy of the future tenant of the Elysée is therefore crucial, but the subject does not print in the presidential campaign. This is why the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) asks presidential candidates to commit to submitting the decisions of the future executive to the examination of an independent authority which will issue them a “climate pass” if they these are compatible with the objectives of safeguarding the planet.
3% of enacted laws assessed on their climate impact
“Candidates, candidates, abandon vague speeches and empty promises: commit to making your mandate that of breaking the ecological impasse”, ask in a column published in the Sunday newspaper the three leaders of WWF France, Isabelle Autissier, Monique Barbut and Véronique Andrieux. “The WWF calls on you to make a commitment to submit each of the decisions of your presidential term to obtaining a climate pass”, they add.
Even if green is everywhere in political discourse, “previous presidents have not had enough green thumbs to reduce France’s ecological footprint”, estimates the WWF. ” Why ? Quite simply because nothing obliges them to do so. “In 2019, only 3% of the articles of law enacted were assessed in terms of their impact on the climate,” he notes. Hence the idea of an independent institution that would deliver this famous climate pass to the executive, after having assessed “each law, each decree, each decree, each strategic roadmap or each international commitment likely to have an impact on the French trajectory of CO2 emissions or on the state of biodiversity”.
A “climate watch”
“As a ‘climate watchdog’, this authority will determine using reliable indicators whether the decision that is being considered is indeed compatible with the French objectives of reducing CO2 emissions and protecting biodiversity,” he explains. -il, adding that “a negative opinion may lead the competent judge to declare this proposal inadmissible”. “The State has demanded iron discipline from the French in the fight against an exceptional health crisis and nothing can any longer justify today that a Head of State does not impose the same discipline on himself in the fight against the crisis. ecological”, argues the WWF.
The mandate of the next president must be “that of breaking the ecological impasse”, insists the environmental organization, inviting the candidates to think about it now in their programs. The WWF believes that “this is possible”, promising to make proposals in the coming days.