The heat records recorded at the end of the week underlined the difficult living conditions, especially in town, during a heat wave. MEP Yannick Jadot (EELV) believes in an interview with the Sunday newspaper that the public authorities are “very late” in adapting to global warming, offering for its part “heat wave leave” and free public transport.
“For the moment, we are very late. Our places of life are not adapted, our cities are full of heat islands”, answers the deputy, questioned on the “degree of adaptation of France to global warming”.
“In this situation of heat wave and pollution, we need free public transport. Arrange working time, promote teleworking and adapt companies and schools to these heat. If we put in place ‘heat wave’ holidays, this would allow parents, children and employees to organize themselves”, he says.
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The ecologist deputy also proposes to “work on the morphology of cities”, to “vegetate urban centers”, and to invest “massively” in the insulation of housing.
“Unfortunately, this government, like the previous ones, refuses to do so and does not respect the objective of 500,000 housing units per year provided for by law”, he regrets.
If environmentalists support the “principle of differentiated traffic”, he regrets “that there (have) been as many, or even more, traffic jams than usual” during its implementation this week in several cities. “In the absence of anticipation, information and control, the measure failed,” he says.
Asked about the government’s action against global warming, Yannick Jadot deplores the “display”, castigating the support for the EU-Mercosur free trade agreement, the abandonment of the freight train between Perpignan and Rungis or the “barriers to renewable energies”.
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For the MEP, who is reminded of the hostility of the yellow vests to the carbon tax, it is necessary, for public opinion to embrace the environmental cause, that “the most fragile” be “exempted from efforts while they are already the most affected by pollution”.
“There is a question of fairness: we ask motorists a lot of effort, but we don’t ask manufacturers who cheat, we don’t tax kerosene at national or international level and we allow ships that spit crap morning, noon and night,” said the MP, who had supported the increase in the carbon tax initially planned by the government in January.
