The Environmental Community: Who Can Advance the Environmental Cause in France?

With this issue 435 of Futuribles, we begin a new series of articles on energy questions and climate change — an enormous subject, the systemic character of which became clear to us when the French Minister of Ecological Transition Nicolas Hulot resigned in late August 2018. Hulot deplored the lack of greater — political and popular — support to enable real influence to be exerted on government policy and an ambitious project of ecological transition to be promoted in the face of the challenges posed by climate change. In this first instalment, we concern ourselves with the question of the actors involved in environmental questions: who are they, what weight do they have, and what are their actual motivations?

Daniel Boy, a specialist in public opinion and political ecology in France, offers a broad conspectus of environmental actors, from the supranational to the local level and ordinary French citizens, taking in national public bodies, elected or consultative, on the way. He shows, for example, what their positions are on ecological questions, how that has evolved, and how it might put them in a position to act (or not) in this area.