World News: French Presidential Candidates Overlook Raging Wildfires, Global Warming

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Category: World News - Europe

Published on Thursday, 16 July 2026 11:19

Written by Olivier Longhi

The increase in fires in France and Europe illustrates the multiple effects of global warming. A central subject of the decades to come, it is nevertheless absent from electoral speeches one year before the presidential election.

While woods and forests are burning, entire companies of firefighters are struggling to defeat fires, some of which are beyond comprehension, some are crying foul at the country's lack of equipment to deal with these fires scattered throughout the country.

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"Our house is burning and we are looking elsewhere!"

Certainly, and obviously, confronted, like others, with global warming, France will have to quickly equip itself with a heavy fleet of water bombing planes and Canadairs, whatever the cost, because the security of forest areas, and therefore of biodiversity, and the safety of populations depends on it. However, another obvious fact is necessary, far from global warming, which cannot exonerate the latter, namely that many fires were the work of arsonists, some of whom were arrested and awaiting trial.

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Antiphon and material

The influence of global warming must therefore be put into perspective in the outbreak of the fires but not in the conditions that allowed these fires to develop. Because it has now become a summer antiphon: France and Europe have become prey to climatic conditions every summer, even from the end of spring, that favor the disasters we know.

An essential question therefore arises, regardless of the need to equip oneself with the essential equipment to fight fires: how to prepare for these fires, some of which can be described as mega-fires? In an apocalyptic atmosphere with an acrid smell of smoke and burnt wood, it is singularly worrying to note that the only ones to feel concerned by these repeated fires are the firefighters, and the victims, who have been warning for years about the weakness of the resources allocated to civil security.

And while the electoral campaign for the 2027 presidential election opens with a bang with an avalanche of candidates, it is clear that none of them has proposed a particular plan or a coherent and constructed project to try to fight against the consequences, in this case the fires, of global warming. While it is certainly very complicated to fight against pyromania, which is unpredictable by nature, it is on the other hand possible to anticipate the effects of global warming in the spring on sensitive areas.

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Carbon energies

This lack of consideration for the issue testifies to the lack of interest of politicians, apart from ecologists, in these disasters while revealing, with a certain acuity, how much the problem has not been integrated as a whole. The use of carbon-based energies tending to increase the production of greenhouse gases, and therefore of global warming, is still at the heart of electoral programmes.

However, the effects will be other than environmental or climatic, since the risk of fires will lead to an increase in insurance policies, a reflection and an induced cost on the maintenance of forest areas, private property and the establishment of residential areas, and, of course, water management.

Drought, a direct consequence of global warming, as a result of the rational use of the resource, can no longer be underestimated and remain the sole concern of farmers. The hillside lakes, often criticized, could thus multiply to offer water reserves no longer dedicated to agriculture but to extinguishing fires.

These are all elements, among many others, that are currently absent from speeches and programmes, even though, as Jacques Chirac said at the United Nations in 2002, " Our house is burning and we are looking the other way."

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Bio: Olivier Longhi has extensive experience in European history. A seasoned journalist with fifteen years of experience, he is currently a professor of history and geography in the Toulouse region of France. He has held a variety of publishing positions, including Head of Agency and Chief of Publishing. A journalist and recognized blogger, editor, and editorial project manager, he has trained and managed editorial teams, worked as a journalist for various local radio stations, was a press and publishing consultant, and was a communications consultant.