Editor's note: Green Options is pleased to welcome Heidi Strebel to our writing team! Heidi is a language and literature teacher, and freelance journalists, living in Paris, France. She'll be covering the continental beat for us here at GO.
Only left-wing anti-growth idealists believe that, because of human activity, our environment is in disastrous, ever-worsening condition. Such statements are a thing of the past, you might think, vestiges of an ignorant age before the advent of An Inconvenient Truth
If the ‘inconvenient truth’ about our environment rings true on just one side of the political spectrum, then yet another country will be putting climate change on the back burner, taking notice only when it blazes uncontrollably in the front yard of people’s lives. Just over a month ago voters elected Nicholas Sarkozy, former leader of the moderate right-wing party the Union for a Popular Movement, to the chief executive office of France. Now with his party’s clear victory in the first round of legislative elections, Sarkozy’s mandate has received further endorsement, leaving the trail open for blazing with a full agenda of promised reforms.
Former president Jacques Chirac established the Union for a Popular Movement when he was running for re-election in 2002. Since we can expect a certain degree of continuity amongst party members, Chirac’s environmental report card provides an idea of what to expect during Sarkozy’s term.