PARIS — France’s far-right National Rally should have had an easy time capitalizing on the widespread furor over the government’s handling of this week’s heat wave.
But at these temperatures, everyone’s toast.
The record-breaking heat has thrust climate change to the forefront of the national debate ahead of next year’s presidential election, forcing the National Rally to confront its previous efforts to downplay the issue.
In 2022, then-party leader Marine Le Pen had promised to “turn the page on punitive environmentalism” during her presidential campaign. The next year, she had slammed the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for being overly “alarmist” after it published a report stressing that much more needed to be done to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
