ous. We’re not even free to do our jobs
anymore,” said Mr. Hamon, adding that
he would quit the business at the end of
the year. “At least he could have asked
our opinion.”
But Mr. Cueff says he doesn’t under-
stand why, on the one hand, the state
barred town governments in 2017 from
using glyphosate, but still allowed its use
on farms cheek by jowl with small towns.
“This is a contradictory message,” he
said. “Here in Langouët there are no con-
tradictory positions.”
It is that implacable logic, fed by the
pall of environmental fear that hangs
over all of France, that is governing the
decisions of Mr. Cueff’s colleagues in
small towns across the country.
“There’s obviously a problem. Either
it’s toxic or not. And so we decided to get
out in front of it,” Bertrand Astic, the
mayor of Boussières, near the Swiss bor-
der, said in a telephone interview. “I’ve
assumed my responsibility to protect my
citizens.”
Mr. Astic has banned glyphosate and
he, too, is being fought by his local pre-
fecture.
“We rural mayors are faced with a real
decline in our environment,” he said.
“The trees are dying. The insect popula-
tion is in free fall. You look around the
hillsides here, there are huge brown
patches. We’ve had three droughts in a
row. Climate change is taking place be-
fore our eyes.”
Back in Brittany, Mr. Cueff in confident
that the palpable weight of circum-
stances — this summer’s staggering
heat — has put public opinion on his side.
“Twenty years ago we were a bit
alone,” he said. “They thought we were
exaggerating. Today it’s the opposite.
People come to me and ask if they can’t
do more.”
At the solar-heated apartments he has
had built, the heating bill is about $180 a
year. “People say, ‘Good God, if this is
ecology, this isn’t so bad,’ ” he said.
“You see, the big ecological ideas, they
create anxiety. And if you are in that
logic, you get depressed,” he said. “But
here we are showing that there are solu-
tions.”LANGOUËT, France — If France is
going through an ecological awakening,
its spiritual center may be here in Lan-
gouët, a quiet village in Brittany, where
the environmentalist mayor has become
a folk hero to fellow small-town officials
all over the country.
Dozens of mayors are following the ex-
ample of Langouët’s leader, Daniel Cueff,
even though the French state has rapped
him on the knuckles, dragged him into
court and told him that he, the shepherd
over a mere 600 souls, had no right to ban
pesticides by ordinance from his village.
The other French mayors, from the
Alps to the Atlantic, don’t seem to care
and have passed their own restrictions in
as many as 40 small towns.
Meanwhile, the citizens in Langouët
have plastered public spaces on the vil-
lage’s empty main street with signs ad-
dressed to the national government’s re-
gional representative: “Madame pre-
fect, let our mayor protect us!” A hand-
scrawled sign where fields end and vil-
lage begins makes the same point.
When Mr. Cueff was hauled before the
tribunal in the regional capital, Rennes,
this summer, 1,000 people were on hand
to applaud him.
Mr. Cueff, a steely eyed 64-year-old
veteran of the environmental wars who
earned his chops four decades ago in
fighting a nuclear reactor, is used to be-
ing considered an outlier. Not this time.
“Isn’t the mayor of a village called on
to fill in for the state’s deficiencies?” he
asked in an interview in his wood-pan-
eled office — powered by solar energy,
like the other municipal buildings.
“France voted for the European direc-
tive to protect the population from pesti-
cides. It’s not doing it,” he said. “I don’t
want to be accused of nonassistance to
people in danger.” His desk was piled
with letters of support from across
France.
After a scorching summer in which the
French were frightened by successive
record heat waves, brutally underscor-
ing the reality of climate change, there is
a premium on politicians who are seen to
act. The Greens made a strong showing
in last spring’s European Parliament
elections, environmentalists are on the
rise and establishment politicians are
genuflecting.
The lesson has not been lost on Presi-
dent Emmanuel Macron, who recently
declared, “I’ve changed,” in matters eco-
logical.
He has made a show of new envi-
ronmental initiatives, taking on Brazil’s
president over fires in the Amazon, con-
vening a citizens’ panel for recommen-
dations on climate change, rejecting a
heavily criticized trade agreement with
Latin America on environmental
grounds, and insisting that members of
his cabinet focus on the environment,
and not just the minister for “ecological
transition and solidarity.”
With important municipal elections
coming up next year and the Greens ben-
efiting from solid support in France’s cit-
ies, Mr. Macron has his eyes on the polls.
France’s leading pollster, Jerôme Four-
quet, writing in the newspaper Le Figa-
ro, recently described rising envi-
ronmentalism as possibly the “new ma-
trix” underlying the nation’s cultural
identity, taking the place once occupied
by Catholicism.
The president has even expressed
cautious support for the newly notorious
mayor in Brittany, saying of Mr. Cueff: “I
support his intentions, but I can’t agree
when the law isn’t respected,” even
though “the mayor’s motivations are
good.”
Mr. Cueff scoffed. “In politics, it’s not
the intention, it’s the practice,” he said.
As with elsewhere in rural France, the
rolling fields of corn and wheat sur-
rounding this village creep up right to
the doorsteps of the residents’ homes —
along with whatever chemicals are ap-
plied to those crops.
The farmers tending their fields are
not supposed to spray pesticides unless
the wind blows at less than six miles an
hour. But this is Brittany, a peninsula
thrust into the Atlantic, where the wind
blows in strong from the ocean.
The mayor has spent much of his ca-
reer trying to put into practice what he
calls “the ecology of action, not incanta-
tion.” In 2003, he became the first mayor
in Brittany to install solar panels on pub-
lic buildings; the school toilets use recy-
cled rainwater.
On May 18, Mr. Cueff banned the use of
pesticides within 450 feet of any
dwelling, putting much of the village off
limits. Some of the farmers were furious,
the powerful farmers’ union was fiercely
opposed and its national president,
Christiane Lambert, mocked Mr. Cueff
on the radio, asking, “Why not cars,
too?”
In late August, a judge struck down his
ordinance after the central government
argued against it, saying the mayor was
“not competent” to make the decision.
“We had to create an electric shock,”
Mr. Cueff said. “To put the farmers on no-
tice and make them move.”
Juries in the United States have
awarded a handful of enormous judg-
ments against Monsanto, in cases
brought by people who claimed that thecompany’s popular weedkiller RoundUp
had given them cancer. Thousands of
similar lawsuits are pending.
Tests on the people of Langouët
showed levels of glyphosate — one of the
most widely used herbicides and the ac-
tive ingredient in RoundUp — in their
urine up to 30 times the recommended
limit. It was especially high in children.
“The parents are traumatized,” Mr.
Cueff said.
“We were really shocked,” said Hélène
Heuré, the local librarian, who has two
children in the village’s elementary
school. Her own level was nine times the
limit.
“Of course, it’s scary,” she said. “And
the mayor said he would try to find a so-
lution. We’ve got to question this kind of
agriculture.”
Feelings are still raw among the half-
dozen farmers, mostly dairy farmers,
who practice what Mr. Cueff called “con-
ventional” agriculture.
“This is a catastrophe,” said Domi-
nique Hamon, standing next to his milk
tanker at the edge of the village.
“We’ve been here to feed people, and
now they are making us out to be danger-The Mayor Who Banned Pesticides and Became a Hero
French Cities Step In
Where They Say
France Has Failed
A permaculture farm, above, in Lan-
gouët, France, that was developed on
land provided by the village. Left,
farmland in Langouët. Fields sur-
rounding the village often creep up
right to the doorsteps of the homes.PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREA MANTOVANI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESGERMANYGGFRANCEBoussières2 50 MILESDetaiDetail areaDetaDetailaailSWITZ.ITALYSPAINBELELGIUMEL100 MILESRReReReeneneennnnnnnesLangouLangouëtuëtuëuëtëtParisParririisssBRITTBRITTBRITTRITITTTTANYTTTTANYTTNYY FRFRANCERRARANNNNNNNCENCCCCEEEEETHE NEW YORK TIMES
Langouët, France, is a quiet village in
Brittany, a peninsula on the Atlantic.“We were really shocked,” Hélène Heuré, the librarian in Langouët, said of
the level of glyphosate, a herbicide, found in the urine of her and other locals.
An organic shop in Vignoc, a nearby town. A scorching summer with succes-
sive heat waves has the French paying closer attention to climate change.By ADAM NOSSITER‘The trees are dying. The
insect population is in free
fall. You look around the
hillsides here, there are huge
brown patches. We’ve had
three droughts in a row.
Climate change is taking
place before our eyes.’
DANIEL CUEFF, the mayor of Langouët,
France, who earned his chops in the
environmental wars four decades ago in
fighting a nuclear reactor.A4 THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019
N