Our anniversary event “80 years of Parisian, 80 headlines”
The very first issue of Le Parisien appeared on August 22, 1944, in the midst of the liberation of Paris. To celebrate this birthday, we have selected 80 historical or emblematic “headlines” of their time. Sport, news items, conquest of space, presidential elections, disappearances of stars… They tell the story of eight decades of current events. We have chosen to tell you behind the scenes. A series to discover until the end of the year.
Green is the color of hope. So, this Wednesday, June 3, 1992, Le Parisien replaced its traditional blue logo with a banner that smells of chlorophyll. This is because the blue planet could really do with it, which was already suffocating, even then, under evils that have become so familiar to us now: gases, deforestation, air pollution…
It was at the bedside of this turned upside down globe that 120 heads of state, 700 United Nations officials and 30,000 delegates from five continents came to lean that day in Rio. Gathered for two weeks in Brazil for “the most important international conference of all time”, they all have the word “ survival ” in mouth.
“Survival”. This is what we are talking about when our newspaper recalls that the Aral Sea has lost half its surface and saw its level drop by 13 m due to lack of water. That Morocco has didn’t see any rain falling since the beginning of the year and famine is progressing throughout Africa. The culprit unfortunately has the face of humanity, addicted to overconsumption, oil and gas.
“CO2 emissions have increased by 25% in a century”, we wrote, quoting – already – the Intergovernmental Climate Study Group, created in 1988. This ancestor of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is categorical: “If emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere continue at the same rate, their total concentration should double between 2025 and 2050, which will increase air temperatures by 1.5 to 5°C. »
Eleven days to save the Earth
In this month of June 1992, the planet is already in a fever, the temperature having increased by 0.5°C since the last century. “Eleven days to save the Earth”, headlined Le Parisien on interior pages. The newspaper’s special correspondent in Rio, Jacqueline Meillon, however, did not hide his pessimism. “If the principle of reducing carbon dioxide emissions has been retained, no date of application has been set,” writes the environment specialist. This promises great arguments at best, and at worst, simple compromises. »
Well, well… This reminds us of the outcome of almost all the climate conferences that will follow. These great raids invariably end in pain. At best by promises. At worst, by a status quo. Thirty-two years ago, our newspaper gave agronomist René Dumont speaksthe first candidate to run under the environmentalist label in a French presidential election in 1974.
If he had then only collected 1.32% of the votes and was then considered a Cassandra, how can we not read today, in the light of current climate change, his words like those of an oracle. “We will have to stop building large cars that consume a lot of fuel, develop public transport and no longer highways,” said the environmentalist at the opening of the Rio summit.
When he pleads, in a vacuum, for the development of solar and wind power, we smile. Because thirty years later, renewable energies have come a long way. As for deforestation, the progression of which is measured every year in the Amazon and in the primary forests of the world, Dumont already described it as an insatiable ogre intended to satisfy only cattle breeders and therefore lovers of red meat. “When we deforest in Brazil, it’s for our fast food restaurants,” accused the former presidential candidate.
A candidate whose campaign manager was a certain Brice Lalonde. As a worthy heir to his mentor, Lalonde became Minister of the Environment in the Rocard government in 1990, then in 2007 ambassador in charge of climate negotiations. It was only after this front page of Le Parisien, redecorated in green, that environmental protection took a preponderant place in society. And in the newspaper.
“Neither power nor means” to save the environment
Ten years later, Jacques Chirac will shake up the leaders of the planet at the fourth Earth Summit in Johannesburg (South Africa) by telling them his famous: “Our house is burning and we are looking elsewhere. » A phrase suggested to him by the geopolitologist and historian of ecology Jean-Paul Deléage, close to Nicolas Hulot. This same Hulot whom we will meet disappointed in a hotel in Copenhagen the day after the COP in December 2009.
VIDEO. “Our house is burning”: when Jacques Chirac warned about the fate of the Earth
The climate conference is a fiasco. Under the title “lessons from failure”, the special correspondent of Le Parisien interviews the future Minister of Ecology, who blurts out: “It’s a missed opportunity. A tsunami of despair sent to the face of the world. We’ve thrown our kids into a sea of uncertainty and we’re all hungover. »
Premonitory for the one who resigns with a bang from his post in August 2018, believing he has “neither power nor means” and denouncing the “policy of small steps” in environmental matters. He ends our interview with this meaningful sentence: “I am struck by the speed with which we saved the banking system but by the inability of leaders to save humanity. »
One year later, on September 11, 2019, actor Lambert Wilson drives the point home, also deploring in Le Parisien that “we are digging our own grave”. “Rich or poor, we are on the same boat and it is taking on water everywhere,” laments the actor, very involved with the Greenpeace association. In this special issue devoted to the environment, produced after two summers of scorching temperatures, we tell the desperate fight of Longyearbyen (Norway) against global warming.
This city located near the polar circle, where the ice floes are shrinking, has become the symbol of a world map that has lost its way to the north. But this number, called “Come on, let’s go green”, is intended to be optimistic. Focused on concrete solutions to help us find a second wind. A weekly sequence is announced on “daily actions that can change the situation”.
On February 5, 2022, Le Parisien gets involved and launches the bimonthly supplement “My Land”. Food, transport, housing, leisure… we can draw from it “positive and concrete” solutions to preserve the planet, with the idea that “small streams will make big rivers”. “Every drop counts”, insists the deputy editor-in-chief in her editorial Laurence Voyer. The Ma Terre logo, like that of Le Parisien in June 1992, turns… green. More than ever the color of hope.
