France accounts for 1 per cent of CO₂ emissions. Is this a cause worth embracing Green Bolshevism for?
In the French film La Horse, the patriarch, played by Jean Gabin, delivers a harsh line: “Progrès? Oui. Merde? Non.” Yes to progress, no to bullshit.
In “Les Illusionistes” (The Illusionists), Géraldine Woessner, editor-in-chief of the daily Le Point, along with journalist Erwan Seznec, meticulously and relentlessly expose the nonsense spread by environmentalists. It is a rare voice in France — still too isolated, but for that very reason, all the more deserving of attention.
The mainstream media keeps insisting that Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National poses the greatest threat to France. According to the authors, this is a grave mistake. In reality, it is the Greens who present the most imminent, yet underappreciated danger. By monopolising the role of whistleblowers, they conceal their true nature behind constant virtue signaling.
French environmentalists are not only enemies of technology and capitalism but also of democracy and science. By pushing degrowth policies and fighting aggressively against nuclear energy, they appear not only indifferent to society’s well-being but also blind to the realities of international competition.
The two main pillars of the Green movement are shared with environmentalists in other countries: Malthusianism — the belief that there are too many people on Earth and too few resources — and the degrowth mindset, an aversion to technology and economic development.
Both ideas gained popularity across the English Channel in the early 1970s, when the May ‘68 rebels felt ideologically abandoned by the Communist Party. It was during this time that the US-based Friends of the Earth opened its Paris office and began building its network. One of its top priorities was to translate Paul Ehrlich’s book The Population Bomb, which warned of an impending apocalypse due to overpopulation. Soon after, the organisation shifted its focus to opposing a major expansion of France’s nuclear energy program.
Macron oversaw the demolition of France’s nuclear sector and did his best to bury decades of work by top engineers
Another major influence has been philosophers hostile to technological progress, such as Jacques Ellul, Ivan Illich, and Hans Jonas. The latter, a disciple of Martin Heidegger, had a profound impact with his concept of the “principle of responsibility”, arguing that we should stop viewing progress in optimistic light and instead see it through the prism of fear.
To Jonas the most important question a person should ask himself before taking any action is: what are the worst consequences we can imagine? He advocated for listening to “prophets of disaster” as a way to safeguard the future. This idea, later reframed as the precautionary principle, made its way into the 1992 Maastricht Treaty. Two years later, it was incorporated into French law. Woessner and Seznec understand this as a transformation in the French mindset: from now on unfounded scientific doubt about an imagined scenario can block innovation.
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However, the French political landscape only truly turned green during the 2007 presidential campaign. At the time, environmentalist candidate Nicolas Hulot was seen as the dark horse of the election. He agreed to withdraw from the race on the condition that the candidates sign his “Pacte écologique”, a blueprint for France’s green transformation. It included all the proposals that would later become staples of the environmentalist agenda: implementing a carbon tax that would increase over time (an idea later rejected in the streets by the Gilets Jaunes), eliminating subsidies for farmers, and freezing infrastructure projects.
However, the common thread running through the evolution of the French Greens has always been their vehement opposition to nuclear energy.
The book quotes an activist from the 1970s: “the atom embodied everything we wanted to overthrow … concrete, authoritarianism, energy appropriated by the elite.” It epitomised what the then-in-vogue philosopher André Gorz, a disciple of Sartre, called “electro-fascism.” It’s hard to fathom, but back then, environmentalists protesting the construction of the innovative Superphénix reactor called it a “nuclear Auschwitz.”
The decisive blow did not come until 2011. By then, the Greens were gaining popularity, and the French Socialists had to form an alliance with them to secure electoral victory. Nuclear energy was taken hostage by opportunists on the Left. Another political pact was signed — in exchange for their support, future Socialist president François Hollande agreed to shut down French nuclear power plants. Reports prepared by environmental NGOs to justify this decision claimed — contrary to the facts — that wind and solar energy would be enough to fill the gap in electricity production left by the closure of nuclear reactors. A parliamentary committee on the loss of energy sovereignty, established in 2023, later questioned the French policymakers responsible for this decision. It turned out none of them had ever considered what impact it would have on the country’s energy supply.
The book reminds us that misleading the public and the political class with distorted forecasts was not limited to France. In Germany, Green-affiliated Minister of Economics and the Environment Robert Habeck was forced to admit that a 2022 report published by his ministry — which argued that there was no alternative but to shut down nuclear power plants — was not true. German reactors could have continued operating, and German industry would have been better off during the aftermath of the Russian invasion on Ukraine.
President Macron has projected the image of a politician championing the renewal of France’s nuclear sector. Yet, as a member of the Hollande government — which signed a pact with environmentalists to reduce nuclear energy’s share in the national mix from 75 per cent to 50 per cent, effectively shutting down 24 reactors — he was among its gravediggers.
Macron was not only overseeing the controlled demolition of France’s nuclear sector but also did his best to bury decades of work by top engineers when he shut down the experimental Astrid reactor. This reactor was a continuation of the shuttered Superphénix, a project aimed at closing the nuclear fuel cycle — that is, efficiently reusing nuclear waste — which could have secured France’s energy independence in the long-term by reducing reliance on external uranium deposits. Then, in 2020, he shut down the Fessenheim plant, which had been rated among the best-managed nuclear facilities by the state nuclear safety agency.
During the 2022 campaign, Macron changed his tune. He presented himself as a strong supporter of nuclear energy, announced the construction of six new reactors, and committed to maintaining nuclear’s share in the energy mix at 50 per cent by 2050. Yet, three years after Macron’s bold declarations, construction on the announced reactors has still not begun.
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The Malthusianism of environmentalists and their conviction of impending catastrophe lead many of them to view democracy as incompatible with saving the planet. The superstar of French environmentalism, Jean-Marc Jancovici — known for his media appearances and for advising politicians such as former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal — argues that climate catastrophe cannot be stopped without coercion and that the “Chinese model” may be the only solution.
Shaped by Club of Rome reports, he scorns the freedom to raise a family and calls for more effective methods of population control, dismisses personal freedom and proposes a lifetime limit of up to four air trips per person. While he claims to respect the life of the planet, he perceives human life as a burden, envisioning a future where elderly people are denied medical care to avoid prolonging life, as long lifespans mean more CO₂ emissions.
As Woessner and Seznec demonstrate, publications by French environmentalists often invoke the idea of a “benevolent green dictatorship” as the only way to preserve the world from climate catastrophe. Antoine Bueno, a journalist and advisor in the French senate, has argued that democracy requires consensus, and if the goal is to achieve carbon neutrality, that luxury cannot be afforded. At the same time, he assures the public that there is no need for concern, because the only rights that will be affected in the fight against climate change are “the right to property, the right to free movement, and entrepreneurial freedom.”
It’s worth pondering: in the name of what do the French Greens justify such radical measures? Thanks to nuclear energy, France accounts for only 1 per cent of global CO₂ emissions. Is this a cause worth embracing Green Bolshevism for?
According to one of Jancovici’s associates, he does not believe in human intelligence. Woessner and Seznec’s book is a defense of human intelligence, in line with the tradition of a country that, at a certain point in its history, identified itself with reason. “Les Illusionistes” is an attempt to revive a certain idea of France — one that, from Condorcet to de Gaulle, saw the nation’s mission as the promotion of material progress, accessible to as many people as possible. If Europe is to climb out of the hole it finds itself in, it will need a France free of the green superstitions and errors that Woessner and Seznec expose.
