He had participated in the May '68 protests in Paris, and seen the plight of miners in the north of France, prompting him to study economics, obtaining a Masters from the Sorbonne in 1972.

[1] From 1971 to 1973 he was a researcher in economics at the Institut de recherche des transports (The French transportation research institute) and then from 1973 to 1999 at the Centre d'études prospectives d'économie – Mathématiques appliquées à la planification (Center for prospective studies of economics – applied mathematics for planning).

He was then a candidate of Les Verts for the legislative elections of 1986 in Seine-Saint-Denis, and became the national spokesperson of the French Green Party in 1997.

A second controversy was his opposition to reopening the Mont Blanc Tunnel between France and Italy, which had been closed in 1999 after 39 people died in a fire.

Finally, on 14 October 2001, Les Verts managed to survive a major internal crisis and changed their Presidential candidate, dropping Alain Lipietz to choose Noël Mamère, who had supposedly made the irrevocable decision not to run just a day sooner.

In 2006 Alain and his sister Hélène,[4] A former Green Senator and lawyer, sued the French government and SNCF, the national railway of France, for reparations for transporting members of their family to the Drancy deportation camp during World War II.

[6] In 2014, Alain Lipietz ranked second in the EELV (Greens) candidate list for Villejuif (94) municipal election in the Paris southern suburbs, and as a candidate for President of the Agglomeration of Val de Bièvre Archived 2014-06-25 at the Wayback Machine (which comprises Arcueil, Cachan, Fresnes, Gentilly, Le Kremlin-Bicêtre, L'Haÿ-les-Roses and Villejuif).

[8] Lipietz is a prolific academic author with most of his work spanning regional development and regulation theory, labour economics, and green politics.