French retreat casts a pall over climate conference
French President Emmanuel Macron has become the latest world leader to suffer at home for trying to impose green taxes.
Prime Minister Edouard ´ Philippe announced yesterday that the French Government will temporarily suspend a carbon tax plan that triggered weeks of often violent protests nationwide.
To help curb climate change, the Government had proposed the taxes, which were slated to take effect in January and were designed to wean consumers off diesel and other polluting fuels and to favour electric cars.
But the price increases those taxes represented led to social unrest unseen in recent years. “No tax is worth putting in danger the unity of the nation,” Philippe said as he announced the suspension.
Macron is hardly alone in his frustration. Leaders in the United States, Canada, Australia and elsewhere have found their carbon pricing efforts run into fierce opposition.
The French Government’s announcement came as delegates from around the world gathered in Katowice, Poland, for a climate conference designed to advance guidelines for how to meet the demands of the 2015 Paris agreement.
Macron has ranked among the most passionate advocates of curbing climate change by any and all available means, and his Government’s reversal is likely to cast a pall over this week’s conference. Delegates are grappling with a world that has fallen far short of the commitments made in Paris.
As France’s experience shows, there are myriad obstacles when the benefits of staving off climate change are felt long term, while the costs hit home now.
The proposed fuel taxes represented in the eyes of many an urban ignorance of the reality of life in rural areas relatively unserved by trains or other forms of public transportation. France has more diesel cars than any other European country.
Suspending the carbon tax will mean that billions of euros will have to be saved elsewhere, possibly in the form of spending cuts that could affect the social services that many yellow-vest protesters also cherish.