The martyrs of France's environment movement - and those who want to bury it
If one single proof were needed of the justness of the environmental cause, then this is provided by the frenzied repression regularly deployed against it, writes Mediapart’s publishing editor Edwy Plenel in this op-ed article. From the anti-nuclear protests at Creys-Malville on the Franco-Swiss border in the 1970s to the recent demonstrations against agricultural water reservoirs at Sainte-Soline in west France, and including the sinking of the 'Rainbow Warrior' in Auckland harbour in 1985 and the anti-dam protests at Sivens in south-west France in 2014, the movement's martyrs have stood up against its opponents in France. These opponents are, he argues, proponents of a calamitous capitalism that is now paving the way for carbo-fascism.
InIn 1974 the first environmental candidate at a French presidential election, René Dumont, ended his debut campaign television appearance by drinking a “glass of precious water” (see the video here). “If we carry on like we are, there'll be a shortage,” he prophesied, after giving concrete illustrations and precise data to back his conviction that “we're not forecasting the apocalypse, it's here right now, among us”. Far from being a gentle dreamer, René Dumon worked out in the field. An agronomist by profession, he experienced farmers' problems as if they were his own, with the added advantage of being able to make comparisons with other countries because of his knowledge of the developing world.
