During a Council of Ministers meeting on Wednesday, August 24th, President Emanuel Macron explained that “we are living through the end of abundance.” According to Euractiv, the president was referring to the looming end of “limitless availability of products, energy, and water.”
Macron also said he wants to end “carelessness” and that he foresees a “great turning point,” ostensibly in the form of economic rationing.
Immediately before the Council of Ministers meeting, Pascal Canfin, MEP and chairman of the Environment Committee under the European Parliament, was interviewed by the RTL, a French broadcasting company. In the interview, the committee chairman outlined in greater detail the points that President Macron summarized. Canfin called on Macron to “decree the general mobilization for energy sobriety.”
As a glimpse of what may come under a Macron-declared end of abundance, MEP Canfin gave examples of measures individuals have already taken as a foreboding of energy scarcity:
cutting off wifi, unplugging household appliances, capping the temperature of their air conditioning.
To secure compliance, RTL reports, Canfin favors
a form of police to address those who do not play by the rules of the collective interest.
According to Euractiv, in preparation for the August 24th Council of Ministers meeting, France’s Minister of Transport Clément Beaune said
he is ready to put banning private jet flights on the agenda of the European transport ministers meeting in October.
In an interview with French newspaper Libération, the National Secretary of the French Greens, Julien Bayou, went further. A member of the National Assembly, Bayou intends to propose a bill “to ban private jets” altogether. Using twitter accounts to track the flights of private jets, Bayou explains how members of his green movement can “raise awareness of the link between inequalities and pollution.”
It is unclear where President Macron stands on the issue of banning private jets.
