Polluted Paris can really take your breath away

FILE - In this March 14, 2014 file photo, the Eiffel Tower, is photographed through the smog in Paris. Paris police have lowered speed limits and ordered a halt to trash burning Wednesday, March 18, 2015 as part of emergency measures triggered by a spike in air pollution — months before the city hosts a major international climate conference. (AP Photo/Jacques Brinon, File)

It won’t change the course of the huge UN climate change conference being held in Paris next month, but the 50,000 official delegates and associated hangers-on from 195 countries expected to attend the huge global gabfest should be aware that the fabled City of Light is rushing to make a mighty, though belated, effort to demonstrate it really cares about the environment.

What has sadly become one of the world’s dirtiest and most ­polluted cities is trying to be what French environment minister ­Segolene Royal calls “exemplary” ahead of what is grandly known as the 21st Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and will be the planet’s biggest such ­gathering.

But the drive to show it cares isn’t proving easy in a city in which 80 per cent of ­vehicles run on diesel, the so-called “devil’s fuel”, and Parisians, according to the office of Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo, thoughtlessly dump a staggering 350 ­tonnes of butts from 1.6 billion ­cigarettes on to the streets every year. These take between four and 12 years to break down, and most end up in the River Seine.

The Spanish-born Hidalgo, horrified by images that went around the world this year showing the Eiffel Tower barely visible through the pollution — when Paris was registering higher levels of nitrogen oxides than even Beijing on a bad day — is waging a brave battle to change French ­habits.

But change isn’t coming easily for this beautiful and enchanting city, the world’s most visited tourist destination, attracting more than 84 million visitors a year.

A 2015 ranking of European cities by the Soot-Free Cities group, linked to the EU, has given Paris an F for fail mark, listing it as the cellar dweller among 23 leading cities when it comes to emissions and sustainable transport.

Levels of particulate and nitrogen oxygen to which Parisians are exposed have been reported by monitoring agencies at times to exceed EU limits by 40 per cent and 90 per cent respectively, with the proliferation of diesel cars and other vehicles the main villain.

Hidalgo has said she wants to “eradicate diesel” by 2020 and has made moves to achieve that goal. Next year all big trucks and buses built before 2001 and cars assembled before 1997 will be banned from the city’s roads. But with millions of diesel-spewing vehicles in Paris the political challenge is enormous.

The Socialist national government led by President Francois Hollande relies for most of its support on less well off French people who overwhelmingly favour diesel over petrol. Government tax breaks for diesel make it cheaper. Political consequences would likely follow any concerted attempt to crack down on diesel use by raising taxes on it.

Royal has said: “When we encouraged diesel for years, when you have millions of people driving on diesel, millions of workers going to work in their diesel cars, it’s not from one day to the next that you can punish them because they made these choices, and they don’t have money to replace their cars.”

Hidalgo has sought to demonstrate her earnest efforts against Paris’ pollution ahead of the UN conference by holding a widely publicised car-free day known as “Une Journee Sans Voiture”. Private cars were not allowed to drive through the city’s centre between 11am and 6pm.

But this didn’t gain the city the brownie points for which Hidalgo was hoping. The restricted scope of the official “car-free” area that was demarcated drew scorn, with a writer in the influential newspaper Le Monde pointing out that only 200,000 of the 2.2 million people in central Paris were affected by it and only a third of those actually owned a car. “The fact that a Sunday was chosen doesn’t help,” the paper said.

Authorities seem to be having little more success in making pro­gress over the other great bugbear that conference delegates are bound to be confronted with: the in-your-face smoking and littering of cigarette butts that are the bane of the lives of municipal cleaners in Paris (or would be if so many didn’t smoke and litter themselves).

The French enjoyment of smoking is nothing new. The country consumes a staggering 47.5 billion cigarettes a year. At least 1.6 billion of those are smoked in Paris. But the habit is out of control. Despite attempts at imposing curbs, Parisians of all ages, young and old, smoke and pollute everywhere. There is not a street or a pavement or a drain that isn’t strewn with cigarette butts. It is impossible to walk along a street without doing so in a haze of smoke.

Optimistically, on September 1, local authorities announced a fine of €68 ($104) for anyone throwing down a butt instead of putting it into a bin. Anecdotal evidence ­suggests they need not have bothered. Parisians overwhelmingly are disregarding the new rules. And there seems little prospect of any meaningful reduction in the staggering 350 tonnes of cigarette butts thrown on to the streets each year, releasing dangerous nicotine, lead and cadmium into the environment.

The Paris mayor’s office has pointed out that the sheer volume of the cigarette pollution is affecting the city’s water. It has been found to be shortening the lifespan of trees where butts are constantly thrown into their bases. But, still, most Parisians seem unmoved.

There is some slight progress in the fact, for the most part, ­Parisians seem to have accepted they should not smoke inside restaurants or trains on the famed Metro system.

They are uninhibited and uncaring, however, in the way they smoke in sidewalk cafes, and still show no signs of being willing, even in the most chic and upmarket arrondissements, to do other than toss their butts on to the pavements even when bins are nearby.

Setting ambitious global emissions-reduction targets is all very well, but getting people to mend their puffing ways and do more than just pay lip service to them is the real challenge.

It is, it seems, the Parisian way.