'Response seems far too timid': what role for climate in presidential race?

Massive wildfires in Gironde, in the Landes and in the Var. Episodes of repeated heatwaves across the whole country. Severe drought gravely affecting agriculture. This summer, France has been sorely tested by the elements.

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Already last winter, the country went through several months marked by a series of weather fronts and storms (Goretti, Ingrid, Nils, Pedro), causing major flooding across France.

With only a few months to go before the next presidential election, environmental issues are expected to take an unprecedented place in the political debate. Historically championed by the left, the topic has now become unavoidable, pushing the right and the far right to seize on it.

Because today, “given the delays and the severity of the situation, France no longer has a choice: it must adapt, and quickly”, warns the association Réseau Action Climat (Climate Action Network), which challenges the actions of recent successive governments that, it says, “have not taken the necessary measures to adapt the country to the effects of climate change”.

Yet warnings have been issued 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 observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia”.

“The years 1983 to 2012 are probably the warmest 30-year period the Northern Hemisphere has experienced in the last 1,400 years”, the report also stressed.

Politicians out of touch

An issue that more and more citizens are taking into account. In a survey published on Monday 24 August (source in French), Ipsos reveals that 64% of French people felt “anxiety or fear” for their relatives’ health and 48% for their own health during the summer of 2026.

The polling institute also indicates that French people “primarily expect solutions to come from the public authorities”: 79% of respondents want public measures to help the population cope with heatwaves.

For its part, a study by Ademe published last year estimated that 6.3 million French people are moderately eco-anxious, showing early symptoms that should not be allowed to worsen. “2.1 million are highly eco-anxious, with intense and chronic symptoms” and “420,000 of them have mental health that is genuinely at risk”, the study (source in French) noted.

The problem is that they are not necessarily being heard by political leaders. “Most parties and presidential candidates seem disconnected from the everyday realities of French people who have been badly affected” by these events, says Anne Bringault, programme director at Réseau Action Climat, speaking to Euronews.

“Faced with an unprecedented challenge for humanity and biodiversity, with the many deaths caused by heatwaves, economic losses, particularly for farmers, homes burned by fires and nature dried out, the political response seems very timid and not at all commensurate with French people’s expectations or their perception of the concrete impacts of climate change”, she says.

Speaking on France Inter (source in French) this Tuesday, Jean-Marc Jancovici, founder and president of the climate-transition think tank The Shift Project, was even more scathing, claiming that the political class is “in a form of denial” when it comes to climate change.

Causes being overlooked

A view shared by Eva Morel, secretary general of the association QuotaClimat. “We have the feeling that elections are really times when ecology struggles to find a way through”, she laments to Euronews, before trying to explain the reason for this lack of interest. “In fact, they themselves are not encouraged to understand and put forward ambitious proposals on this issue, because the media reception of their statements is generally quite favourable on the subject.”

She goes even further. “Above all, we cannot expect a constructive debate to take place on the subject if, when climate disasters occur, we talk only about the situation and do not try to understand the underlying factors – both the causes and the structural solutions that would make it possible to address them”, stresses Eva Morel.

She then cites the events of summer 2026, which sparked discussions focused “mainly on observations and not necessarily on explanations”. “So, for example, we talked more about climate, which is almost unavoidable. But we talked less about fossil fuels”, she regrets. “From that point, we cannot really expect the proposals put forward by the various candidates to be convincing when it comes to addressing the root of the problem”, the expert continues.

Politicians doing… politics

“Which of the candidates puts the fact that the world is going to change at the centre of their programme? None of them,” snaps Jean-Marc Jancovici. In his view, the programmes of potential or declared candidates for the next presidential election are devoid of coherent environmental measures. “You find inconsistencies everywhere”, says the president of The Shift Project.

For Eva Morel, this situation is explained in particular by how difficult it is, in “a political system that rewards demagogy, to ask candidates to tackle a crisis that is profoundly destabilising for citizens’ lifestyles and still put forward a desirable project”.

On the right, climate issues struggle to gain traction against traditionally favoured themes such as immigration or law-and-order questions. “Right-wing and centrist parties stay in their lane, like Édouard Philippe, who chose to highlight immigration issues during “ his trip to Mayotte “, says Anne Bringault. Eva Morel agrees: “Even when it comes just to adaptation, the right as a political family still considers that it is not a political issue.”

In his manifesto, Édouard Philippe mentions the word “ecology” only once. “We believe that this ambition requires the implementation of an effective policy to decarbonise our economy, preserve biodiversity and increase investment in the excellence of French energy and agricultural sectors”, he writes, without providing further detail.

For Gabriel Attal, ecology for now appears to fit more within a logic of competitiveness and innovation than one of constraint. The Renaissance candidate advocates an energy mix combining nuclear and renewables and intends to make climate transition a lever for investment and growth.

As for the left, “electoral opportunism, in a context of competition to win environmentalist votes, seems to play a significant role there too”, continues Anne Bringault. This competition is all the stronger because the Greens are struggling to appear united and to impose their line ahead of 2027, while Jean-Luc Mélenchon is seeking to occupy that space by promoting proposals such as “eco-regions” or enshrining in the Constitution the principle of the “green rule”, according to which we do not take more from nature than it is able to regenerate. This is also a way for him to position himself on environmental issues and not leave the monopoly on this theme to environmentalist parties alone.

“What we can see is that, today, the environmental programmes of left-wing parties are still more substantiated than those of the right, and that has been the case for several years,” continues Eva Morel. “What we find interesting is the extent to which political discourse mirrors scientific discourse. And today, that seems to be happening more on the left.”

The National Rally, king of disinformation

At the other end of the political spectrum, the National Rally strongly rejects what it calls punitive ecology and opposes wind power, instead making nuclear energy a pillar of decarbonisation.

The party “is trying to hurriedly don a green costume by advocating simplistic solutions that are hardly realistic financially or technically, such as widespread air-conditioning”, analyses Anne Bringault.

“In fact, they focus on hot-button current affairs. And since climate is now part of those hot topics, they pay attention to it. It is purely opportunistic,” adds Eva Morel, who acknowledges that the National Rally has rowed back on its statements about the IPCC’s credibility or the reality of global warming, even though this “is not enough”. “The problem is that their political software has not integrated environmental issues at all. They have no proposals that would genuinely protect us from the consequences, let alone address the causes.”

She also accuses the party led by Jordan Bardella of disseminating, in her view, misleading information. “These are narratives that are deliberately orchestrated because they work in public opinion, instrumentalising moments that generate a lot of attention. […] It has been shown that this is an obstruction strategy that works. It blocks public policies that are supposed to be effective”, explains the expert, who then gives the example of low-emission zones.

“And what we fear is that, alongside this obstruction, there is also an effort to disqualify political opponents and environmental defenders by demonising them. By doing that, they push the solutions away from the problem, even though the problem is highly visible”, concludes Eva Morel.