France ups the stakes with a green "revolution"

A tad belated but I just couldn't let this one pass. Last week, these words emerged from France's environmental policymaking forum:

"From now on, every major public project, every public decision will be judged on its effect on climate, and on its carbon cost. Each public decision will be judged on how it affects bio-diversity. The onus won't be on ecological decisions to prove their merit, but on non-ecological projects to prove they can't be done any other way. Non-ecological decisions must be taken as a last resort. It's a total revolution in the way we govern our country."

So who said them? An environmental activist fantasising about what could be? Nope, these were the words of French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who's promised, among other things, to outlaw energy wasting lightbulbs by 2010, ban the commercial growing of genetically modified food and feed crops, and to use the precautionary principle for all future government decisions.

As the story on our international site says: "If yesterday's words become laws, and those laws become deeds, it could be the spark that changes the world".

La Vie Verte has a good round-up of happenings at the forum and Brian at Eco-Geekery celebrates the announcement.