Dear Aseem, dear colleagues and friends,
Many thanks for sharing this opinion piece. There is one important thing that I would like to add to your analysis, which is the problem of diesel, which is a story of government mishaps, policy failure, corporate corruption, and generalized cheating. It also has little to do with climate change. The starting point is that the French government has been subsidizing diesel engines and gas since the 1950s by making consumers pay lower levees for diesel gas and lower taxes when registering a vehicle with a diesel engine, compared to regular gasoline. This has something to do with the greater efficiency and cost-efficiency of diesel engines, which are more expensive to produce and buy, but which use a cheaper form of combustible and consume less. For this reason, they can be cheaper to use in the long run. This probably also has something to do with French car makers Peugeot, Citroën and Renault, which had a competitive advantage on diesel engines. The problem is that diesel is dirtier than gasoline. It produces more PM 10 and PM 2.5 and more NOx, which are all dangerous for health and the environment. Given that the use of diesel engines is widespread not only in France, but also in most of Europe, in 2008 the European Union adopted two directives to limit especially the emissions of PM 10 and NOx, which can both cause respiratory damage above certain concentrations, particularly NO2. Even if particularly dangerous, PM 2.5 are difficult to regulate, mainly because there is no technical solution readily available. Consequently, new vehicles with diesel engines had to be equipped with a particulate filter, which catches most PM 10 but can break engines. Some of the yellow vests are those who until few years ago kept sales of diesel cars made before 2008 high, because they were without particulate filter. This came more or less at the same time as the widespread diffusion of direct injection diesel engines, which are even more energy efficient than their predecessors. Diesel engines seemed to have a bright future ahead. Then came the EPA, Volkswagen and the dieselgate, which was basically about car makers installing some cheat devices inside diesel engines that managed to artificially reduce NOx. Moreover, it turned out that, in everyday use, almost all diesel engines produced much more NOx than in test conditions. This is the gas that is particularly dangerous for health and contributes to environmental and ocean acidification. Now, it has been a couple of years now that governments all over Europe, including France, started taking fairly aggressive measures against diesel and car makers began phasing out diesel engines. The days of diesel seem to be over. Some of the yellow vests are those who keep buying diesel cars despite all the communication about the related public health issues. As you can see, this has little or nothing to do with climate change. It is more of a public health issue. On top of that, diesel engines produce less CO2 than comparable gasoline ones. The issue is that many French feel fooled by successive governments, which have been promoting diesel for decades. A historical opportunity was missed in 2012 right after the election of François Hollande. One of the first measures taken by the new Socialist government was to lower levees on gas. They could have reduced them more on gasoline than on diesel, therefore removing the subsidy for diesel, but they did not. The current government aims at removing the subsidy for diesel. Further lowering levees would have made no sense with regard to energy efficiency. Instead, they chose to increase them on diesel. The decision was taken several months ago and increases were progressive. However, this happened at the same time as the price of crude oil temporarily increased on global markets. Over a couple of months, the price of diesel increased of about 20 cents. It was also untimely. Now crude prices are low again and the price of diesel is almost back to where it was this summer. Still, this was a lot for many people. Moreover, the pneumologist who lied in front of the French parliament about the lack of risk related to diesel was recently sentenced to six years because of conflict of interest with an oil company. This contributed eroding the confidence of many people in institutions. It is difficult for many to understand why, after promoting diesel for decades, the government turned against it over the last three years. What I do not understand is why the current government and the media present this issue as if it was related to climate change, when it has more to do with public health. Maybe they thought that climate change would have been more popular. Another hypothesis could be that they fear for liability for the health consequences of excessive levels of NOx. There is another factor that I would not exclude with regard to the yellow vests, which is external influence. There is no doubt that the movement has a popular following and that there are many people in France that believe that taxes are too high, that there is too much corruption among the elites and that policies are not always fair, including myself and many of those who voted for the current government. However, the discourse on taxes does not strike a very French tone. It sounds more American to me. There are some clues that suggest that the movement is not completely self-organized. Maybe it is a coincidence, but Steve Bannon was on tour in France few weeks before the beginning of the movement, and apparently met with some potential clients of his consulting firm on the extreme right of the political spectrum. The movement started with an online petition that was launched in May, that collected 300,000 signatures, but that led to concrete follow-up in the form of a protest organized through Facebook only in November. Russian media speak of another US-led “color revolution”, which can be the sign of either pure speculation or their own involvement. No one can tell. For the time being, these are only hypotheses with no material proof. Only time will tell, maybe. Back to our diesel engines, in the 1990s we managed to phase out leaded petrol and install catalytic converters in all vehicles. This also took years. Many people protested, but we managed to do it. Why shouldn’t we manage this time around? I am convinced that, if governments and media do a better job explaining the problem to people, it will be easier to implement the only solution possible, which is phasing out diesel in personal vehicles in the long run. These are my five cents. Warm regards, Jon Jon Marco Church, Ph.D. Associate Professor University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne IATEUR - BP 30 - 57 rue Pierre Taittinger - 51571 Reims Cedex, France Tel. : (+33) (0)3 26 91 37 45 - <http://www.univ-reims.fr/> www.univ-reims.fr New publication: “Urban climate change mitigation and adaptation planning: Are Italian cities ready?”, Cities, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2018.11.009 From: gep-ed@googlegroups.com <gep-ed@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Aseem Prakash Sent: Thursday, December 6, 2018 7:46 PM To: gep-ed@googlegroups.com Subject: [gep-ed] Can the climate movement survive populism? Lessons from 'yellow vest' protests Friends and Colleagues: We published this opinion piece today: "Can the climate movement survive populism? Lessons from 'yellow vest' protests" <https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/419953-can-the-climate-movement-survive-populism-lessons-from-yellow-vest> https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/419953-can-the-climate-movement-survive-populism-lessons-from-yellow-vest <https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/419953-can-the-climate-movement-survive-populism-lessons-from-yellow-vest> <https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/419953-can-the-climate-movement-survive-populism-lessons-from-yellow-vest> Can the climate movement survive populism? Lessons from 'yellow vest' protests | TheHill thehill.com France faces a widespread protest against President Macron’s new climate proposal. The so-called "yellow vest" protests were prompted by the proposal for “green” levies on transportation fuel. ______________________________________ Aseem Prakash Professor, Department of Political Science Walker Family Professor for the College of Arts and Sciences Founding Director, UW Center for Environmental Politics University of Washington, Seattle <https://faculty.washington.edu/aseem/> https://faculty.washington.edu/aseem/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gep-ed" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to gep-ed+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com <mailto:gep-ed+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com> . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gep-ed" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to gep-ed+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. 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