Huge wildfires in Gironde, in the Landes and in the Var. Back-to-back heatwaves across the country. Severe drought hitting agriculture hard. This summer, France has been put under severe strain by the forces of nature.
Last winter, the country had already gone through several months punctuated by a series of weather fronts and storms (Goretti, Ingrid, Nils, Pedro), causing major flooding across mainland France.
With only a few months to go until the next presidential election, environmental issues are therefore expected to occupy an unprecedented place in the political debate. Long championed by the left, the topic has now become unavoidable, pushing the right and the far right to try to take it on.
For, today, "in view of the delays and the seriousness of the situation, France no longer has a choice: it must adapt, and fast", warns the Réseau Action Climat association, which challenges the record of recent successive governments, which "have not taken the necessary measures to prepare the country for the effects of climate change".
And yet the alarm has been raised for several 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 changes observed are unprecedented over decades to millennia".
