BREAKING Nicolas Sarkozy, former President of France now climate skeptic, will run again

This is big. The French press today is full of stories on the former President Nicolas Sarkozy “coming out as a skeptic”. He’s running again for President, and can see the ocean of votes in speaking out against political correctness. Sarcozy will have watched the rise of Marine Le Pen and of Donald Trump. The game has changed.

Pandering to the Global Bullies no longer works. Once the fear of being called a “climate denier” is gone, there is nothing to stop half of the political divide from a phase change. (Well, nothing at least apart from lobbying, donations and gifts from the $1.5 Trillion dollar Green Machine). The Brexit shock spreads. Democracy is not dead yet. — Hat tips to Phillip and to Benoît. ROM.

French voters will get a real choice:

Sarkozy comes out of the closet as a climate skeptic

Presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy reckons that climate change is not caused by man and that the world has far bigger problems on its hands than global warming.

Nicolas Sarkozy, who is fighting to regain the presidency that he lost to François Hollande in 2012, has finally come out of the closet as a climate skeptic.

Speaking in front of business leaders Sarkozy, a candidate for Les Republicains party primary in November, told them that man alone was not to blame for climate change.

“Climate has been changing for four billion years,” the former president said according to AFP. “Sahara has become a desert, it isn’t because of industry. You need to be as arrogant as men are to believe we changed the climate.”

RFI French Press Review

Is Nicolas Sarkozy turning into Donald Trump?

The former French president who hopes to win the right-wing nomination for another shot at the top job has already shown himself adept at Trump’s populist game, playing communities off against one another in his own interest. Yesterday, Sarko was speaking to French business leaders and he said that it was simply arrogant to claim that the human race was responsible for climate change. “The climate has been changing for four billion years,” said the Republican leader, “but it wasn’t industry that turned the Sahara into a desert.”

Sarkozy told his audience that, in fact, population growth is a far more serious threat to the planet than pollution. “There’ll be 11 billion of us in a few years. Man is directly responsible. But nobody takes any interest,” he went on to say.

Back in 2007, Sarkozy assured a different audience that “we have to have the courage to define our policies while recognising that we cannot ignore the climate challenge, unless we want to destroy the very conditions upon which human survival depends.”

The email from France today:

Dear all,

This is a news that deserves to be spread: Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president of France (2007-2012) who will possibly run again for president next year, said yesterday that he is now a climate-skeptic. This is a game changer here, since France did never have any significant political voice on our side of the climate debate. Most of the mainstream French newspapers are writing on this today. I’ve put some comments on the issue on my blog here (in French, but I think the news is so important that it would deserve an English text from the skeptic side):

Also for French readers, you will find on my blog some comments on the wonderful London Conference (again, Niklas: thank you so much!)

Regards to all,

Benoît.

Image Wikimedia Photo taken by Remi Jouan

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