A mission on the "ecological divide" launched at the last minute before the fall of François Bayrou

A mission to try to lessen the climate skeptics' offensive against the ecological transition. On Monday, September 8, a few hours before failing to gain the confidence of the National Assembly, the now-resigned Prime Minister, François Bayrou, signed a letter to launch a mission "which will aim to document and quantify the extent of the ecological divide as well as to formulate recommendations to mitigate its effects," according to the document that Le Monde was able to consult.

This idea was put forward by the Minister for Ecological Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, during her New Year's address on January 28. At the time, attacks from the far right and the right against environmental agencies were increasing. During his general policy statement on January 14, Mr. Bayrou himself criticized agents from the French Biodiversity Agency who "come to check the ditch or the watering hole with a weapon on their belt, on a farm that is already on edge, it is a humiliation, and it is therefore a mistake." A few months after the agricultural crisis and in the wake of Donald Trump's election in the United States, many political leaders described ecology as an effort demanded by the "elites" from the working classes and workers.

^Ms. Pannier-Runacher's proposal was then validated by Emmanuel Macron and François Bayrou during an ecological planning council on March 31. "In this political context where many political figures were promoting the idea of ​​ecology for the bobos and against the working classes, we wanted to have real work done by economists to assess the consequences of climate change, pollution and the collapse of biodiversity in different territories and on different categories of the population," explains the minister's office.

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