The Planetary Politics of Everyday Life
Forging an effective ecological transition requires improving people's daily lives
The pervasive narrative surrounding the ecological transition in advanced liberal democracies, particularly in France, has hit a brutal reckoning with reality. Far from a smooth, technocratically managed glide path towards sustainability, the transition project is increasingly mired in popular discontent, political backlash, and what the authors of the La Fabrique Écologique note aptly diagnose as a burgeoning “ecological refusal.” Typified by the “Yellow Vest” protests that rocked France from 2018 to 2020, ecological refusal is not the same as climate change denialism, but rather rests on the sense that the politically assigned costs of ecological transition are intolerably high and unfairly distributed.
This stance is not, as some might superficially claim, a mere failure of communication, a deficit in public understanding, or the temporary friction of adjustment. It signals something far more profound: a structural crisis born from the collision between ecological imperatives and the deeply fractured, unequal social landscape forged by decades of neoliberal policy and governance failures. The note from La Fabrique Écologique dissects the pathologies of the current approach and proposes a radically different course — one that recognizes that ecological sustainability cannot be built upon the ruins of social cohesion and everyday well-being.
The dominant paradigm for promoting ecological transition, implicitly or explicitly, has operated under a dangerous illusion: that the sheer gravity of the climate and biodiversity crises, scientifically validated and amplified by catastrophic events, would suffice to generate popular consent. Policies derived from this paradigm — carbon taxes, stringent regulations, mandated technological shifts — have often been designed in a socio-political vacuum, assuming a resilient social fabric and a capacity for adaptation that simply does not exist for vast swathes of the population. The well-intentioned focus on making the transition “desirable” through better narratives, citizen assemblies, or highlighting “co-benefits” fundamentally misreads the nature of the resistance. A glorious ecological future is a luxury; the core issue is present material possibility and perceived justice. When ecological policies translate into higher fuel costs, unaffordable housing retrofits, inaccessible clean food, or threatened livelihoods, without tangible and immediate improvements in daily life, they are perceived not as pathways to a better future, but as further burdens imposed by out-of-touch elites upon populations already struggling with precarity and economic stagnation.
Central to the note’s analysis is the identification of what the authors call “prisonniers écologiques” — ecological prisoners. This concept transcends simplistic class binaries, encompassing not only the working poor but also significant segments of the squeezed middle class. These are households and individuals trapped by circumstance: low or stagnant incomes, high fixed costs (rent, mortgages, energy), geographical constraints (rural or peri-urban car dependency, poor public transport access), and limited capital for green investments (EVs, home insulation). They often desire to make ecologically sound choices — for health, for cost savings, for their children's future — but are structurally barred from doing so. The current policy regime, despite subsidies and support mechanisms often poorly designed or insufficient, effectively punishes these groups for their lack of exit options. They bear the brunt of price signals designed to alter behavior, without possessing the means to alter their own. This isn’t an accidental outcome; it’s the predictable result of attempting a major societal transformation without addressing the underlying inequalities and vulnerabilities systematically generated over decades. The ecological prisoner is a stark manifestation of a system demanding adaptation from those least equipped to adapt.
This predicament underscores a profound failure of governance. The prevailing approach often reflects a technocratic mindset, prioritizing decarbonization metrics above all else, or relying excessively on market mechanisms whose distributional consequences are severe and politically toxic. The state, often captured by specific industrial interests or constrained by austerity logics, fails to orchestrate a transition that builds broad social consent. Instead, its actions often appear arbitrary, contradictory (e.g., energy transition vs. biodiversity protection conflicts ), and inequitable, reinforcing the perception that the costs are socialized downwards while the benefits accrue elsewhere. Public participation exercises, like the Citizens' Convention for Climate, while potentially valuable, risk becoming performative if their outcomes are ignored or if they are expected to substitute for, rather than inform, robust political decision-making capable of mediating conflicting interests and guaranteeing fairness. The result is not just policy failure but a dangerous erosion of trust in institutions and the fuelling of the very populist, anti-green backlash that threatens to derail the transition entirely.
The note’s core proposition, therefore, constitutes a necessary, if challenging, inversion of the dominant logic: improve daily life first, in order to enable the ecological transition. This is not about sidelining ecological goals or merely packaging them differently. It is a fundamental strategic reorientation grounded in a socio-political reality: large-scale transformations require broad and deep social legitimacy, which can only be built if the process demonstrably enhances, rather than diminishes, the quality of life and economic security of ordinary people, particularly the most vulnerable. Ecological effectiveness, in this framing, becomes a “co-benefit” of policies primarily aimed at alleviating the material pressures faced by the ecological prisoners.
This requires a concrete policy agenda radically different from the status quo. The proposals put forward for debate exemplify this logic:
Aligning Prices for Justice: Actively using fiscal tools (like differential VAT rates) to ensure that essential “clean” goods and services (e.g., organic food, train travel) are priced competitively with, or even cheaper than, their “dirty” counterparts. This directly tackles the affordability barrier for ecological prisoners, making the sustainable choice the economically rational one. Complementary mechanisms like solidarity loyalty cards could further target support.
Integrating Health and Environment: Embedding environmental determinants of health (pesticides, air pollution) directly into mainstream public health strategies, like national cancer plans, and funding remedial actions and support for affected sectors (like agriculture) through social security budgets. This frames ecological action as a direct investment in public well-being, leveraging a domain where public support for state intervention is traditionally strong.
Combating Collective Waste: Shifting the focus from individual behavioral nudges to tackling the systemic drivers of waste embedded in production, distribution, infrastructure, and consumption patterns (e.g., planned obsolescence, excessive packaging, urban sprawl inducing long commutes, advertising driving overconsumption). This reframes waste as a structural problem requiring collective, systemic solutions, potentially identified through deliberative citizen processes.
Furthermore, the call for genuine “co-construction” with citizens, particularly at the local level, must be understood not as a procedural add-on but as a core political necessity. It is the indispensable mechanism for tailoring solutions to diverse local realities, leveraging citizens’ expertise of their own lives (“expertise d'usage”), negotiating the inevitable trade-offs and distributional conflicts inherent in the transition, and, crucially, rebuilding the frayed bonds of trust between the state and society. This requires moving beyond consultative exercises towards shared decision-making frameworks that give real weight to local and citizen input without abdicating the necessary role of representative democracy in setting broad goals and ensuring national coherence.
In conclusion, the analysis provided by La Fabrique Écologique powerfully argues that the ecological transition in France, and likely elsewhere, is stalled not because the science is unclear or the public unwilling, but because the dominant strategies have ignored the fundamental prerequisites of social justice and economic security. The “ecological refusal” is a rational response from those who perceive the transition as yet another threat in a long line of economic shocks and policy failures. Escaping this deadlock demands more than incremental adjustments; it requires a paradigm shift. Ecological goals must be radically re-embedded within a broader political project focused on strengthening social safety nets, reducing inequality, enhancing public services, and tangibly improving the everyday material conditions of life for the majority. Only by making the transition synonymous with social progress and tangible benefits for the “ecological prisoners” can the necessary social coalition for deep, systemic change be forged and sustained. The path to ecological viability runs directly through social justice.