Macron in the land of Justin

In the Arthurian legends there is a character known as the Fisher King.

He has been wounded in his thigh and as a result is gravely weakened and decrepit. He lives in a condition of slow but never quite ending death. In certain versions of the legend the ill health of the ruler is causing a corresponding sickness within his kingdom: the crops are failing, the land is turning into a wasteland and his subjects are suffering. And this link between the health and virility of a leader and the health of his kingdom can be found in other premodern societies as well.

While we may no longer believe that the fitness of our rulers affects the harvest I wonder if there isn’t still a vestige of this belief in the way we react to our own politicians’ physical appearance? The land to the south used to be a peaceful place ruled over by a young and elegant couple but recently it has been plunged into darkness — an aging, lame leader has ushered in an era of grave moral turmoil and the kingdom is roiled with scandal and corruption. To the north things are different: a young and beautiful king has replaced a grey-haired ruler and he now presides over a peaceful and progressive realm.

I live in a land that lies over the seas to the east and we, too, have a young and handsome leader, one who has even gone so far as to compare himself to the Roman God, Jupiter. His name is Emmanuel, meaning God is with us, and he arrives tomorrow on an official visit to the land of Justin.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with feeling positive about one’s country, and if having a young, shiny guy in charge can help engender a form of positive patriotism so be it. But where this attitude can get troublesome is when it prevents us from being critical or leads us to apply double standards. JFK was a young, glamorous leader (who held court in the distinctively Arthurian realm of Camelot) so many chose to turn a blind eye to his treatment of women. An older or uglier man such as Donald Trump or Harvey Weinstein is judged by a different set of rules.

Without wishing to fall into moral relativism or anti-system pessimism (they are not “all as bad as each other” and I am happy to have Emmanuel Macron as my president rather than Marine Le Pen) I think it is worthwhile examining this tendency to project a leader’s physical persona onto his policy and to give the young, clean guys an easier ride. Since Justin Trudeau’s easy ride came to an end last week with his decision to nationalize Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline and since readers of National Observer are doubtless aware of all the intricacies of that saga, I would like to look at the situation here in France instead.

When Emmanuel Macron was running for office, the environment was almost totally absent from his campaign, but after assuming power he started referring to it more and more frequently. He even went so far as to appoint the popular TV presenter and environmentalist, Nicolas Hulot, as his minister for the environment, a position which holds more power than the name might suggest as the ministry also has responsibility for shaping transport and energy policy. When Donald Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement, Emmanuel Macron made a concerted effort to fill the void and position himself as a clean, green alternative. He even posted videos on social media inviting American climate scientists to move to France. Was this good political sense or was it a genuine conversion? And does it even matter so long as the outcomes are positive?

My work as an environmentalist frequently takes me to Brazil and in particular to the Amazonian state of Amapá. It is a bucolic, poor and sparsely populated part of Brazil, cut off from the rest of the country by the mouth of the Amazon. It is a part of the country that feels isolated and remote yet by an accident of colonial history it also shares a 670 km border with the French department of Guiana. France’s largest land border is not with Italy, Spain or Germany but with Brazil.

Last year two stories played out on either side of that border, one of which received abundant media coverage and the other of which passed virtually unnoticed. And yet on the face of it the two stories were almost identical: Brazilian president, Michel Temer, opened up an area of the Brazilian Amazon to commercial mining and French president, Emmanuel Macron gave his authorization to a large gold mine in the French Amazon. A concerted outcry by NGOs, the foreign media, and supermodel, Gisele Bündchen, forced Michel Temer to revoke his decree while Macron’s decision raised barely a whisper of protest.

In response to criticism about the proposed gold mine (a joint venture between London-based Nordgold and Canada’s Columbus Gold) the French government argued that illegal mining was already taking place in this area and that regularizing these activities would allow for greater environmental oversight while also creating more employment and tax revenue. Almost exactly the same arguments were put forward by Macron’s older and more scandal-stained Brazilian counterpart and with even more justification since average incomes on the Brazilian side of the border are four times lower than on the French side. And yet it was the Brazilian project that got halted and not the French one.

Part of this discrepancy in reactions is to do with the iconic status of the Brazilian Amazon as a precious natural treasure that is seen as belonging to humanity as a whole and which needs to be protected. The French Amazon, by contrast, does not provoke the same reactions; indeed many people are not even aware that there is a French Amazon. Doubtless Brazil’s problems with corruption and criminality played a part as well: it is highly probable that a mining operation in France will be a cleaner and better-run operation than its Brazilian equivalent. But I can’t help thinking that the Fisher King syndrome was at work here as well. Macron seems cleaner, greener and just that little bit younger so an almost identical decision made by him elicits — at least for the time being — a different response.

Macron’s grace period will end, just as it did for Justin Trudeau, but in the meantime one thing we can do is to turn the myth inwards and recognize that we too are wounded kings and not just passive subjects. The wound we are suffering from is caused by fossil fuels that are destroying our climate and an extractivist economy that is destroying the ecosystems on which we depend for our life. And, as in the Arthurian legend, the healing will come when the right person appears and asks the right question. Simply to fight against the fossil fuel or the mining industry will not be sufficient. We are dependent on them. Not just in obvious ways like the fuels we use for transport or heating but in less obvious and more insidious ways too. The growth in productivity and GDP that fossil fuels enable allows us to fund our public schools, our hospitals and our pensions. Turning off the tap of fossil fuels means asking very difficult questions about these dearly held and precious things. And for all the Tesla bros and solar energy enthusiasts bear in mind that switching to a 100% electric economy will mean building new nuclear plants and digging those copper mines in the Amazon. At some point we will be forced to choose — do we carry on with this slow death or do we opt for something else. And if so what might that other thing be?

There are no easy answers but what the Grail myth teaches us is that we do no not need the answers, we just need the right person to ask the right question. In the myth the question that finally heals the King is a simple one: Whom does the grail serve? Perhaps we can rephrase it for our times: Whom does the fossil fuel economy serve? Whom do we serve? What is our society for? Or perhaps it is a different question altogether and, as in the legend, it will be many years and many false turns before we stumble upon it.

Whether they are young or old, healthy or sick, ultimately our politicians are only as good as we are, both collectively and as individuals. And we are only as good as the questions we are prepared to ask. It is a hugely challenging chapter in our lives that is opening, the beginning of a journey that may or may not end well. But we are on that journey already and have no choice but to carry on.