French TV Star Puts Royal, Sarkozy & Political Establishment On Spot W. Green Pledge - Reuters

[hatrack]

PARIS - French television star Nicolas Hulot has jolted mainstream politicians by threatening to run for president unless they do more for the environment, but has he managed to push green issues to the top of the agenda? Hulot, 51, became a household name by flying over some of the world's most beautiful spots for a popular nature programme. Now an environmental campaigner, he has urged mainstream candidates to sign his green manifesto.

Faced with the possibility of having to run against him, few have dared reject outright his ideas, which include introducing a steadily increasing carbon tax and appointing a deputy prime minister for sustainable development. Socialist candidate Segolene Royal and others have said they will sign his "ecological pact", a pledge to put the environment at the heart of public policy, and conservative frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy signed on Friday. But they have stopped short of endorsing all his ideas, and whether the winner of next year's election will do more to protect the environment remains to be seen.

"To them (Sarkozy and Royal) the pact is certainly just a scrap of recycled paper, and if they win, they will create neither a carbon tax nor a deputy prime minister in charge of sustainable development," weekly L'Express said. Hulot says it is up to politicians to make it pointless for him to run, by embracing the environmentalist cause, but he has not yet decided whether they have done enough. He is expected to announce in the coming days whether he will run for president.

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Since launching his pact in November, he has overshadowed France's main environmentalist party, the Greens, and their candidate Dominique Voynet, who polls show has the support of around 1-2 percent of voters, to Hulot's roughly 10 percent. "The Greens have been robbed," said Daniel Boy, research director at Sciences-Po university. "They feel that the environment has been stolen from them."

After polls suggested Hulot was far more popular, Greens veteran Voynet, who has helped mould her party into a left-wing movement, asked Hulot in an open letter to join forces with her. But he rejected his former ally's advances. "You chose politics, I chose another path," he said in left-wing daily Liberation. "What I am doing is neither on the right nor on the left, or even in the centre," he added.

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http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/39623/story.htm

[illinoisprogressive]

1. Danm French

And i can say that as I am half french and just joking. Vive la France!