“The climate emergency is being marginalized by political games,” regretted Le Monde’s solemn front page this Thursday. Earlier this week, France’s two houses of parliament finally abandoned a monthslong tug-of-war over the text of a constitutional amendment, which, if approved by referendum, would have enshrined the state’s obligation to “guarantee the preservation of the environment and biological diversity.” The amendment ultimately failed to gain the approval of the conservative-dominated Senate — leading prime minister Jean Castex to formally withdraw the reform on July 6.

The proposed amendment was one of the lingering demands of the Citizens’ Convention on Climate (CCC), an experiment in participatory democracy that assembled 150 randomly selected people to draft proposals for cutting France’s greenhouse emissions. Although those proposals were ultimately diluted by an omnibus “climate and resilience” law approved this spring, many of the CCC’s original ideas were refreshingly extensive and radical — confirming the staying power of the demands for climate justice brought to the forefront of French politics by the gilets jaunes revolt of 2018 and 2019. Less than a year before the presidential elections slated for next spring, the potential amendment was a final, albeit cosmetic, way for Emmanuel Macron to varnish his environmental record.

Fearing the economic and legal implications of an environmental “guarantee,” Bruno Retailleau, leader of the Senate’s conservative majority, lauded the amendment’s defeat as a “failure for the advocates of degrowth.” Stanislas Guerini, a member of the National Assembly and executive officer of Macron’s La République En Marche! party, likewise quoted by Le Monde, pontificated that the “Right is looking away from the climate emergency and misses, once again, a rendezvous with history.”