How wealthy French elite avoid the consequences of the climate chaos they create

ItIt was a small town in north-east France which encapsulated the times in which we live. As a result of the unusual dryness that has hit France over recent weeks, the inhabitants of Gérardmer were left without drinkable tap water. While efforts were made to resolve the issue by taking supplies from neighbouring Lake Gérardmer, the residents of this resort town and four nearby villages were told late in July that for 48 hours they should not drink their water without boiling it first.

In response to this water shortage, the jacuzzis of five homes in the town were attacked under the cover of darkness one night and ripped apart. In the remains of their vandalised tubs the owners found notes with the words: “Water is for drinking”.

The events in Gérardmer reveal the extent to which a deeply-divided new climate order is emerging before our eyes.

On the one hand we have a world where, as France's High Council on Climate warned last year, “two thirds of the French population are already greatly or very greatly exposed to climate risk”.

Currently, every single département or county in mainland France has water restrictions. And around 100 towns or villages no longer have access to drinking water from their taps after the driest July on record.

In the Gironde département in south-west France more than 35,000 people had to be evacuated in July to escape the megafires that devoured an area of forest close to twice the size of Paris. This week up to 10,000 people from the same region have already had to move to escape new fires.
And during the second heatwave alone, which lasted from the 12th to the 25th of July, at least four people died at work in France due to a “possible link with the heat” and “during an orange or red heatwave alert”, according to the state agency Public Health France.

But another section of the world has already gone its separate way in the face of this climate disaster. This is a world fully aware that it possesses the material resources to be able to escape the climate chaos. This is the richest 1% of the population, which has a carbon footprint eight times greater than than half of the poorest people in France put together. A world that deliberately blows upon the embers to whip up global warming.

At a time when water shortages have hit France, when there are watering bans on vegetable plots and allotments, and when market gardeners are restricted in their water use, golf courses have been given a specific exemption to use 30% of their normal consumption of water.

At the end of July, to mark the end of the first wildfires in Gironde, hundreds of motorboats with gleaming engines gathered and circled for a long time off the coast where the Pilat sand dune is located, near the scene of some of the worst fires. In other words, to celebrate the putting out of megafires linked to climate change the wealthiest people in the region chose to burn fuel as a 'gesture of solidarity'.

Even worse, during this apocalyptic summer, the French billionaires Martin Bouygues, Bernard Arnault and François-Henri Pinault have hopped in private jets between Paris, Côte d’Azur and the Italian coast, flying over the fires. The perfect allegory for a rootless, disconnected class which has become estranged from climate reality and which is compromising our future.

On August 8th, just as the conflagrations in Gironde were restarting, billionaire Vincent Bolloré's jet alone emitted as much CO2 as the average French person does in two years. And in just the month of July, the French oil company Total's two private jets would have spewed out the equivalent of 66 years of the carbon footprint of an average person who wants to preserve the climate.

One last example of the climate-killing separatism practised by this elite: while Total is planning between now and 2025 oil and gas projects that are equivalent to the emissions of 18 coal power stations, the salary of its chairman and CEO Patrick Pouyanné has increased by 52%. And the fossil fuel company has announced – to the great delight of its shareholders – profits of close to 18 billion euros for the first half of 2022 alone.

The relationship between those who have burnt the most fossil fuels and those who suffer the most from climate change is cruelly inverted. This inversion exists both in terms of time – the generation today is paying for those responsible for past emissions – and socio-economic: the poor are suffering because of the unsustainable lifestyle of the wealthiest few.

In such circumstances the role of any government that really cares about climate justice would be to do all it could to reverse this relationship.

Yet on August 5th the minister in charge of environmental transition, Christophe Béchu, said of the drought that we “had to get used to episodes of this kind”. And visiting the scene of the fires in Gironde on Thursday August 11th the prime minister Élisabeth Borne merely noted that the government was going to “continue to work”.

As for the economy and finance minister Bruno Le Maire, contrary to the recommendations of the United Nations he stubbornly refuses to tax the excess profits of the major fossil fuel companies. Meanwhile Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom have brought in a temporary tax on oil and gas firms to help the least well-off households cope with the current crisis.

Members of the French government have instead – vainly - urged restraint by asking “all French people” to “switch off the WiFi” during their holidays or to “reduce the air con a bit”.

These deplorable declarations should not be mistaken for signs of political naivety. Rather, they reinforce a dominant narrative: that the current catastrophe is the dire consequence of the actions of all individuals.

This narrative enables the government to brush aside the huge climate disparities between the ultra-rich French and those who are modestly off. Between those who use their ultra-polluting private jets just as they would a taxi and those who, reduced to living on the outskirts of towns and cities, often don't even have access to public transport. It's a narrative that deliberately hides the fact that the financial assets of France's 63 billionaires produce as much greenhouse gas as 50% of all French households.

By perpetuating this status quo when it comes to the environment and by rendering invisible the true destroyers of the climate, the government is legitimising the rich elite's climate separatism.

In doing so it forgets that the trickling down of wealth will not put out the megafires. And that the struggle for the climate is also a class struggle.

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• The original French version of this opinion article can be found here.

English version by Michael Streeter