The Climate (of) Crisis in the French Media

Coralie Lemke, writing in popular French science magazine, Sciences et Avenir, provides an overview of the international science tracing the recent wildfires in Australia to global patterns of climate change that could render certain highly populated parts of the world uninhabitable for humans.

AFP reports on the last announcement made by French environmnent minister Brune Poirson before her diagnosis with COVID-19: the planned introduction of plastic microfibre filters in washing machines, making France the first country to introduce this regulation.

Interviewed in Les Echos, French international relations researcher Thierry Vircoulon highlights the economic importance of climate change in Africa, focusing in particular on its impact on demographic shifts, including the contribution of climate refugees to rapid and unplanned urbanisation.

AFP reports on the government's announcement that it intends to create a network of judicial task forces specialising in the prosecution of environmental crimes; the article questions whether the project will receive sufficient funding and points out that it will not deal with major incidents, such as last year's controversial fire at the Lubrizol chemical plant in Rouen.

Olivier Monod reports in Libération on the results of a French research project that show a correlation between peaks in local air pollution and disruption of women’s menstrual cycles, linking the study to a burgeoning international interest in environmental impacts on women's health and reproduction.*

Rookie reporter Marie Zafimehy, on the website of talk radio station RTL, provides an example of the kind of ‘lifestyle’ response to French Circular Economy legislation which downplays the gravity of the issue, offering little more than a tongue in cheek greenwashing of the disposable consumer advice articles churned out by online media as clickbait: can we call this single-use plastic journalism?

Reporting in Le Parisien on a climate risk study published by a German think tank, Frédéric Mouchon epitomises the shock expressed in the national press to France being classed in the same category as famously vulnerable countries like Bangladesh.

In this blog about the climate (of) crisis, a group of Lille University master's students present a range of reports from the French media concerning the debates surrounding major environmental issues and their human impact. English versions of the articles, complete with glossaries and notes, provide an insight into how the French press is treating a range of controversial topics.

An ear, nose and throat specialist, Jean Lacau St Guily, Professor of Oncology at one of the Sorbonne's main teaching hospitals, argues that the current debates about bioethics in France tend to focus on expensive cutting-edge technology and thus exclude the realities of medicine for the underpriveleged and socially marginal patients who make up the majority of his practice.