'The response seems very timid': where does ecology fit in the presidential race?

Huge wildfires in Gironde, in the Landes and in the Var. Repeated heatwaves across the country. A period of severe drought causing serious damage to agriculture. This summer, France has been severely tested by the forces of nature.

Last winter already, the country went through several months marked by a succession of weather fronts and storms (Goretti, Ingrid, Nils, Pedro), triggering major flooding across mainland France.

With only a few months to go until the next presidential election, environmental issues are therefore expected to occupy an unprecedented place in the political debate. Long championed by the left, the topic has now become unavoidable, forcing the right and the far right to claim it too.

Because today, "given the delays and the gravity of the situation, France no longer has any choice: it must adapt, and quickly", warns the NGO Réseau Action Climat, which questions the record of the most recent successive governments, which "have not taken the measures needed to adapt the country to the effects of climate change".

Yet the alarm has been sounding for years. As early as 2013, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) was stating that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal and, since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia".

The report also underlined that "the years 1983 to 2012 probably represent the warmest 30-year period in the Northern Hemisphere in the last 1,400 years".

Political leaders out of touch

An issue that more and more citizens are taking into account. In a survey published on Monday 24 August (source in French), Ipsos reveals that 64% of French people felt "anxiety or fear" for the health of their loved ones and 48% for their own health during the summer of 2026.

The polling company also shows that French people "expect above all solutions from the public authorities": 79% of respondents want public measures to help the population cope with heatwaves.

For its part, Ademe reported last year that 6.3 million French people are moderately eco-anxious, with initial symptoms that should not be allowed to worsen. "2.1 million are highly eco-anxious, with intense and chronic symptoms" and "420,000 of them have mental health that is genuinely at risk", the study (source in French) noted.

The problem is that they are not necessarily being heard by political leaders. "Most of the parties and presidential candidates seem out of touch with the everyday realities of French people who have been badly affected" by recent events, says Anne Bringault, programme director at Réseau Action Climat, speaking to Euronews.

"Faced with an unprecedented challenge for humanity and biodiversity, with the many deaths caused by heatwaves, the economic losses, particularly for farmers, the homes destroyed by wildfires and nature dried to a crisp, the political response looks very timid indeed and nowhere near matching French people’s expectations or their perception of the concrete impacts of climate change", she adds.

Speaking on France Inter (source in French) this Tuesday, Jean-Marc Jancovici, founder and president of the think tank Shift Project, was even more scathing, insisting that the political class is "in a form of denial" about climate change.

Causes brushed aside

A view shared by Eva Morel, secretary-general of QuotaClimat. "We have the feeling that elections are really moments when environmental issues struggle to find a way through", she laments to Euronews, before attempting to explain the reason for this lack of interest. "In fact, they themselves are not encouraged to understand and to put forward ambitious ideas on this issue, because the media reception of their statements is generally quite favourable on the subject."

She goes even further. "Above all, we cannot hope for a constructive debate on the issue if, when climate catastrophes occur, we only talk about the facts and do not try to understand what lies beneath them – both the causes and the structural solutions that would make it possible to remedy them", stresses Eva Morel.

She then cites the events of summer 2026, which sparked discussions focused "mainly on the findings and not necessarily on explanations". "So, for instance, we talked more about the climate, which is almost unavoidable. But we talked less about fossil energy", she regrets. "From that point on, we cannot really expect the proposals from the various candidates to be convincing when it comes to tackling the root of the problem", the expert continues.

Politicians just doing politics

"Which of the candidates puts at the heart of their programme the fact that the world is going to change? No one", snaps Jean-Marc Jancovici. The programmes of potential or declared candidates for the next presidential election are stripped of coherent environmental measures. "You find contradictions everywhere", says the president of Shift Project.

And with good reason, says Eva Morel: "It is very difficult in a political system that rewards demagoguery to ask candidates to address a crisis that profoundly destabilises citizens’ ways of life and still come up with an attractive project."

"Right-wing and centrist parties are staying in their lane, like Édouard Philippe, who chose to highlight migration issues during his visit to Mayotte", says Anne Bringault. Eva Morel concurs: "But even when it comes just to adaptation, the right as a political family still does not see it as a political question."

As for the left, "electoral opportunism, in a context of competition to hoover up green votes, seems to play a significant role there", continues the programmes director at Réseau Action Climat. "What we see is that today the environmental programmes of left-wing parties are still more fleshed out than those of the right, and that has been the case for several years. [...] What we find interesting is how closely political discourse mirrors scientific discourse. And today, that seems to be happening more on the left."

The National Rally, king of disinformation

On the other side of the political spectrum, the National Rally "is hurriedly trying to throw on a green costume by advocating simplistic solutions that are scarcely realistic financially or technically, such as rolling out air conditioning everywhere", says Anne Bringault.

"In fact, they latch on to the hot topics of the moment. And since climate is now one of those hot topics, they latch on to it. It is purely opportunistic", adds Eva Morel, who acknowledges that the National Rally has rowed back on its statements about the credibility of the IPCC or the reality of global warming, even if this "is not enough". "The problem is that their political software has not taken environmental issues on board at all. They have no proposals that would genuinely protect us from the consequences, let alone tackle the causes."

She also criticises the party led by Jordan Bardella for the disinformation it engages in. "These are narratives that are deliberately orchestrated because they work with public opinion, exploiting moments that attract a lot of attention. [...] It has been shown that this is a strategy of obstruction that works. It blocks the implementation of public policies that are supposed to be effective", explains the expert, who cites the example of low-emission zones.

"And what we fear is that alongside this obstruction there is also an effort to discredit political opponents and environmental defenders, essentially by demonising them. And by doing that, they push the solutions away from the problem, even though the problem itself is highly visible", concludes Eva Morel.