You have to hand it to Emmanuel Macron. The young president of France has trumped Trump in the art of the deal, and global climate change may be slowed as a result.
Back in June, when President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would be stepping back from the Paris climate accord, Macron stepped up.
With a sly dig at Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan, Macron launched the “Make Our Planet Great Again” competition, offering research grants to scientists to continue their work in the more welcoming climate of France.
Last week, Macron announced 18 winners. Thirteen of them work in the United States, as did most of the 1,822 applicants.
“I jumped at the promise of a five-year contract!” Alessandra Giannini said. The professor at Columbia University’s Earth Institute told The Washington Post she was weary of chasing short-term federal grants to support her work.
Grant recipient Camille Parmesan, of the University of Texas at Austin, told The Associated Press that Macron’s appeal “gave me such a psychological boost, to have that kind of support, to have the head of state saying ‘I value you what you do.’”
Christopher Cantrell, an expert in atmospheric chemistry at the University of Colorado Boulder told Reuters that the chance to work in a French laboratory with world-class expertise and state-of-the-art computer models, his salary covered for five years, was “an opportunity that wasn’t available in the United States.”
“I’ve been disappointed with this whole administration, as to how they … view the world of science and policy-making,” Cantrell said.
Winning candidates, among other qualifications, had to be known for their climate change work and propose a project that would require three to five years, covering Trump’s current presidential term. A second round of grants is to be awarded next year in partnership from Germany. In all, $70 million will be devoted to about 50 projects.
The grants were just the start for Macron. On Dec. 12, the second anniversary of the Paris accord’s conclusion, world leaders gathered in Paris for his “One Planet Summit.” Its goal was to drive practical, worldwide progress toward the Paris accord’s objectives. Progress was indeed made, including the following pledges:
From a group of 225 investment funds, including the largest public pension fund in the U.S., a promise to lean on 100 of the world’s largest corporate greenhouse-gas emitters, pressuring them to reduce their emissions and disclose climate-related financial information;
From the Gates Foundation, $300 million to help farmers in Africa and Asia fight the effects of climate change;
From the Hewlett Foundation, $600 million to nonprofits working on climate change;
From the World Bank, a promise to stop financing upstream oil and gas projects, beginning in 2019;
And from the third-largest insurance company in the world, AXA, a promise to reduce its investments in coal by $2.8 billion.
Trump wasn’t invited to the summit. It was Macron, the 39-year-old former investment banker who showed how the art of the deal can be done.
He began with a clear goal and a well articulated plan.
The first sentence on his nation’s Make Our Planet Great Again website (www.makeourplanetgreatagain.fr) is: “The fight against climate change must change scale and become irreversible.”
His action plan for France (“1 planet, 1 plan”) offers a table of contents that alone is inspiring, from putting an end to fossil fuel energy and committing to carbon neutrality, to making France the No. 1 player in green energy, to increasing international mobilization on climate diplomacy.
Oh, if only our president would plan such work, would work such a plan!
“On the 1st of June, President Donald Trump decided to withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement,” says a message from Macron on his Make Our Planet Great Again website. “This decision is unfortunate but it only reinforced our determination. Don’t let it weaken yours. We are ONE planet and Together, we can make a difference.”
Oh, let’s. Let’s do that. Here or in France or anywhere around the globe. Vive la France for showing us the way!