Green thinking goes blue-collar
GRANDE-SYNTHE, FRANCE— Colourful condominiums with low-energy fixtures have replaced dreary old buildings. Community gardens have sprouted at the foot of public housing projects. And a flashy new fleet of buses runs on natural gas — the fare free.
It is not, perhaps, what one would expect of a bleak coastal town in a crumbling industrial area of France. But Grande-Synthe is an unlikely laboratory for working-class environmentalism.
That, at least, was the vision of Damien Carême, the town’s Green party mayor since 2001, who was elected in May to the European Parliament, which he intends to use as a larger stage to extend his idea of “social environmentalism.”
Formerly with the Socialist Party, Carême joined the Greens in 2014 and was carried to Brussels on the swelling tide of support for the party that has swept across much of Europe. The Greens garnered 9.8 per cent in the Europe-wide voting in May. In France, the Greens finished third with 13.5 per cent of the vote.
The party now faces the challenge of convincing an even greater share of voters that concern for a changing climate and the environment is a cause for all.
Carême introduced a range of changes that made Grande-Synthe an incubator of innovation as he sought to demonstrate that green policies could directly improve people’s lives.
“People have to understand that green policies are the best response to social and economic issues,” Carême said before his move to Brussels.
Grande-Synthe, a town of around 23,600 people, has suffered from the shuttering of outmoded factories, leaving it today with a record unemployment rate of 28 per cent. More than 30 per cent of households live below the poverty line.
Just 40 kilometres from the port of Calais, it has also become a way station for hundreds of migrants hoping to cross the nearby English Channel.
Despite Carême’s election as mayor, support for Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, formerly known as the National Front, remains strong.
In the European election in May, Le Pen’s party came first in Grande-Synthe but it was down six percentage points in the town from the previous elections five years ago. Meanwhile, the Greens’ score surged to 22 per cent from 6 per cent in GrandeSynthe.
“Damien Carême has succeeded in removing a contradiction that is deeply rooted in France between social and environmental issues,” said Daniel Boy, a political scientist at the Sciences Po university.
“His policies showed that environmentalism is not only for the rich,” Boy said. “Mr. Carême proved that it is as important to restore social housings as it is to build bike lanes.”
It was much the same contradiction that President Emmanuel Macron failed to address last year, when his government’s gasoline tax increase hit rural, lowincome workers hardest, setting off the yellow vest protests.