Around 260 mobilizations are listed throughout France by the site 26september.org, calling for marches “for the climate, for the living, for peace, for social justice”.
“We have come to ask you for accountability,” is written in an open letter to the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron, published on this site, which claims 51,000 signatures.
This march comes at the end of a record summer in terms of heat in Western Europe, against a backdrop of global warming caused mainly by the combustion of coal, oil and gas.
In Clermont-Ferrand, the march was interrupted by an accident: a car forced its way into the procession, slightly injuring four people.
In Arras, between 100 and 200 people, including the environmentalist presidential candidate Marine Tondelier, who came with her newborn Léon in a pram, marched.
“Global warming is here, everyone sees it, especially this summer, but it has already been happening for a while. So we are calling for an emergency adaptation plan,” declared Nathalie Flautre, 70, retired, who took part in the march organized in Arras (Pas-de-Calais).
“We have gone backwards on many levels, that’s why we are here too, we have to move,” she said, assuring that “ecology will be essential in my choice”, on the occasion of the presidential election in May 2027.
Jean-Paul Dallene, 56, farmer in Oppy (Pas-de-Calais) and member of the national office of the Association for Sustainable Agriculture (Apad), judges that there needs to be “awareness and all citizens need to change their way of life a little, or even a lot, to try to reduce the climate impact”.
“I’ve been coming to this type of walk for five or six years. When I changed my practices on my farm eight years ago, I immediately became aware of the issues,” he added, emphasizing that “climate change strongly impacts agriculture but agriculture is also a source of solutions.”
The promoters of this day are calling for emergency, adaptation and mitigation plans, financed by the taxation of superprofits from fossil fuels and the arms industry, as well as a tax on the wealth of the richest.
“This summer alone, more than 8,000 people died in France due to the heatwave. And at least 500,000 hectares of forest have burned in the European Union,” said Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg in a message published on social networks. “Yet, at this very moment, our political leaders are deliberately choosing to further aggravate this crisis,” she added, affirming to support the marches in France.
Several climate marches have taken place in recent years, including a March of the Century in March 2019 in which more than 300,000 people in the region participated, according to the organizers.
The Minister of Ecological Transition Monique Barbut must submit a national adaptation plan to climate change to the Prime Minister on September 30. This work mobilized numerous ministries on various themes (natural risks, businesses, agriculture, water, etc.) in order to “better prepare for next summer” and “accelerate our adaptation action more generally” according to the minister’s office.
