Will this affect French politics in the run-up to the 2017 presidential election? Not really. The radical Left's share has been in steady decline anyhow, while the real action is on the far right, where the National Front is trying to keep Sarkozy's Republicans from poaching on their xenophobic, fear-mongering turf. Nor will Cosse's decision help rescue the Socialists, also in steep decline, though EELV's previous decision to affiliate with the radical Left did cause some Green deputies to withdraw from Hollande's increasingly conservative though nominally Socialist majority.But finally little EELV is not in a position to change the national calculus all that much.
So what is at stake? Here's what. The big environmental question in the aftermath of the Paris Climate conference is how to implement all those lofty goals and good intentions. Prevailing logic says that market structures need to be adjusted so that private corporations will find it profitable to convert to sustainable energy and not destroy the planet. Only market forces can effect change on this scale--that's the orthodoxy we largely hear about.
Of course some disagree. Naomi Klein's book This Changes Everything famously argued that capitalism itself will need to be subdued before we can properly address the climate issue. The experience of the last generation, with massive disinformation campaigns sponsored by ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel interests, with continued expansion of oil exploration, development of new fossil fuel technologies, and political intransigence by coal interests here and abroad--all this might suggest that Klein has a point. Capitalism is a dubious ally, and we humans have a lot riding on this question.
And here's where the repositioning of France's Greens takes on significance. France's Left Party officially adopted an eco-socialist platform several years ago, on the premise that public sector ownership and initiative would be necessary to effect rapid, large-scale renewable energy conversion. With its long tradition of state ownership and public economic direction France is a logical place for this alternative approach. The prior decision by former Green Secretary General Cécile Duflot to withdraw her party from the market-based consensus and affiliate to the Left was an eco-socialist maneuver, a vote of no confidence in market solutions. Cosse's wing of the Greens would like to reconsider. Meanwhile Duflot is preparing to run for President, starting more or less now, on a platform that will definitely describe an eco-socialist approach.
Might this reframing of the climate issue apply in any way to us Americans? Well, we do have a socialist in the presidential race for the first time in a long time. We also have some state state-sponsored climate measures--Obama's executive orders on coal-fired plants and auto emissions--though one would hesitate to call this socialism. But Americans bring a deep-seated belief that while public measures--tax credits and other public subsidies--can help advance the conversion process, only private-sector innovation, cost reduction, profit enhancements of various sorts can get the job done. In any case a full program of eco-socialist, state-driven realignment of our energy sector is probably not in the cards here (and not in France either). But if veteran campaigner Cécile Duflot indeed runs on this issue, in a country where 'Socialist' is a mainstream party, not a pejorative epithet, it may add an interesting dimension to the discussion of this existential issue, rather than leaving it to those disembodied market forces--or their corporate agents-- that have brought us to the brink.
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