Thank you, Donald!

Dear Donald,

Now it's obvious: you love our new French president. Of course, he's not perfect: he cannot boast having been a TV star, he has no tower bearing his name, and although he's been a banker for a while, his current account balance cannot compete with yours.

But you love him. Otherwise, how could we explain that you've just made him the greatest present he could dream of just three weeks after taking office, that is a unique occasion to become history?

Our president was talking "reforms", "budget deficit", or "morals in politics". Nothing very thrilling for our local version of the "Pittsburgh worker", afraid of losing his job, if it has not already been the case. But with your move, you have just offered Macron the opportunity to embark all the population on a race to a new moon: invent the low carbon economy for real, just to show you it's possible. The strongest of all motivations!

Because, to be honest, so far we have been talking a lot, and fooling around a lot. It's not an easy go, to go low carbon for real, and actually that you know very well. It's even a very hard move. Energy - that is machines - has framed everything in the modern world, and 80% of that energy is fossil fuels. Doing without plenty of fossil energy means less machines, and therefore lowering the productivity of work, but not doing it means wars, hunger and widesprerad disasters shortly thereafter....

Now an easy question for any manager: how do you motivate your team to accomplish something really difficult? By creating a challenge! When the first motivation you have is to prove others that you can do it, you are ready to invest yourself often much more than when the only motivation is money.

And what Trump has just offered us Europeans is exactly that: the possibility of a challenge. He's giving up? Let's lead the way! Let's prove to the world that it is possible! And who can better seize that opportunity than a president who is young, therefore has to prove a stature? A president who has been elected "against" a populist, and therefore is free to choose the "for" project that he will offer? A president just beginning his term, which is the time when you can do bold moves? A president that dreams of seing Europe back as a leader in the world, and France a leader in Europe?

As a long time "environmentalist", I was afraid that, once again, our finite world (climate change being part of it) would not be in our president's mind, an ex-banker, too busy with pensions and quantitative easing, even though without our planet Earth there would be no GDP whatsoever.

I am not necessarily fully relieved today, but my, you cannot imagine how much you brought hope. Now Macron can realize that he has in France the seeds of all the ingredients he needs to do something really different. We know how to make trains, small cars and electric ones, to redesign cities and service them, to make low carbon electricity, to invent new laws, contracts, finance, agriculture, and courses for our students. We can even boast good consultancies and think tanks :-)

All we needed was the strongest desire to undertake the titanic work it requires to curb emissions. And you just gave to a fraction of the population a titanic envy to move forward. For this unique contribution, I say it again from the bottom of my heart: thank you, Donald!