"A timid response": environment in the presidential race
Huge wildfires in Gironde, in Landes and in Var. Repeated heatwaves across the country. A period of severe drought hitting agriculture hard. This summer, France has been severely tested by the elements. Last...
Huge wildfires in Gironde, in Landes and in Var. Repeated heatwaves across the country. A period of severe drought hitting agriculture hard. This summer, France has been severely tested by the elements.
Last winter, the country had already endured several months marked by a succession of weather fronts and storms (Goretti, Ingrid, Nils, Pedro), which triggered major flooding across France.
With only a few months to go before the next presidential election, environmental issues are set to occupy an unprecedented place in the political debate. Long championed by the left, the topic has now become unavoidable, forcing the right and far right to engage with it.
Because today, "given the delays and the seriousness of the situation, France no longer has a choice: it must adapt, and fast", warns the association Réseau Action Climat, which questions the record of successive recent governments that, it says, "have not taken the necessary measures to adapt the country to the effects of climate change".
Yet warnings have been sounded for years. As early as 2013, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) stated that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia".
"The years from 1983 to 2012 are probably the warmest 30-year period in the Northern Hemisphere for at least 1,400 years", the report also underlined.
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 institute also indicates that the French "expect solutions first and foremost from the public authorities": 79% of respondents want public measures to help the population cope with heatwaves.
For its part, a study by Ademe published last year estimated that 6.3 million French people are moderately eco-anxious, showing early 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 parties and presidential candidates seem out of touch with the everyday reality 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 burnt down in wildfires and a parched natural environment, the political response looks very timid and nowhere near matching the expectations of the French or their perception of the concrete impacts of climate change", she adds.
Speaking on France Inter (source in French) on Tuesday, Jean-Marc Jancovici, founder and president of the Shift Project think-tank, which focuses on the climate transition, was even more scathing, saying the political class is "in a form of denial" about climate change.
Causes being overlooked
A view shared by Eva Morel, secretary general of the association QuotaClimat. "You get the feeling that elections are moments when it is really hard for environmental issues to find a way through", she laments in an interview with Euronews, before trying to explain this lack of interest. "In fact, politicians themselves are not encouraged to understand and to put forward ambitious ideas on this issue, because media coverage of their statements on the subject is generally quite favourable."
She goes even further. "Above all, we cannot hope for a constructive debate on this issue if, when climate disasters occur, we talk only about the diagnosis and do not try to understand the underlying factors – both the causes and the structural solutions that could be put in place to address them", stresses Eva Morel.
She cites the events of the summer of 2026, which sparked discussions focused "mainly on observations and not necessarily on explanations". "So, for example, we talked more about the climate – which is more or less unavoidable. But we talked less about fossil fuels", she regrets. "From that point, you cannot really expect the proposals of the various candidates to be convincing when it comes to dealing with the root of the problem", the expert continues.
Politicians... doing politics
"Which of the candidates puts the fact that the world is going to change at the centre of their programme? No one", says Jean-Marc Jancovici, in his own forthright way. In his view, the programmes of declared or potential candidates for the next presidential election are devoid of coherent environmental measures. "You find inconsistencies everywhere", says the president of the Shift Project.
For Eva Morel, this situation can be explained in particular by the difficulty, in "a political system that rewards demagoguery, of asking candidates to tackle a crisis that profoundly destabilises citizens' ways of life and still come up with a project people find attractive".
On the right, climate struggles to gain ground against traditional priorities such as immigration or law-and-order issues. "Right-wing and centrist parties are sticking to their usual lanes, like Édouard Philippe, who chose to put migration issues centre stage during" his trip to Mayotte, says Anne Bringault. Eva Morel agrees: "But even on adaptation alone, the right as a political family still does not see it as a political issue."
In his manifesto, Édouard Philippe mentions the word "ecology" only once. "We believe this ambition hinges on an effective policy for decarbonising our economy, preserving biodiversity and stepping up investment in the excellence of French energy and agricultural sectors", he writes, without going into further detail.
For Gabriel Attal, environmental policy for the time being appears to fall more within a logic of competitiveness and innovation than one of constraint. The Renaissance candidate is advocating an energy mix combining nuclear and renewables, and wants to make the climate transition a lever for investment and growth.
As for the left, "electoral opportunism, in a context of competition to capture green votes, seems to play a significant role", continues Anne Bringault. This competition is all the fiercer because the Greens are struggling to present a united front and to impose their agenda with 2027 in sight, while Jean-Luc Mélenchon is trying to occupy this space by putting forward proposals such as "eco-regions" or writing into the Constitution the principle of the "green rule", under which we should not take more from nature than it can regenerate.
"What we are seeing is that today, the environmental platforms of left-wing parties are still more substantial than those of the right, and that has been the case for several years", continues Eva Morel. "What we find interesting is the extent to which political discourse mirrors scientific discourse. And right now, that seems to be happening more on the left."
The RN, king of disinformation
At the other end of the political spectrum, the Rassemblement national (National Rally) strongly rejects what it calls punitive environmentalism and opposes wind power, while making nuclear energy a cornerstone of decarbonisation.
The party "is hastily trying to dress itself in green by promoting simplistic solutions that are barely realistic in financial or technical terms, such as widespread air conditioning", says Anne Bringault.
"In fact, they focus on whatever is dominating the news. And because climate is now part of the hot news agenda, they focus on it. It is purely opportunistic", adds Eva Morel, who notes that the RN has rowed back on previous statements casting doubt on 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 integrated environmental issues at all. They have no proposals that would genuinely protect us from the consequences, let alone address the causes."
She also criticises the party led by Jordan Bardella for spreading what she sees as misleading information. "These are narratives that are deliberately orchestrated because they resonate with public opinion and allow them to instrumentalise moments that attract a lot of attention. [...] It has been shown that this is a strategy of obstruction that works. It blocks public policies that are supposed to be effective", explains the expert, who cites low-emission zones as an example.
"And what we fear is that, alongside this obstruction, there is also an effort to discredit political opponents and environmental defenders by demonising them. And by doing that, they push the solutions further away from the problem, even though the problem itself is highly visible", concludes Eva Morel.
