Public concern about the environment and government desire to keep up with novel technology are fuelling a new generation of French companies developing alternative power. By ROSS TIEMAN
The most public face of French concern about global warming is that of newspaper photographer turned TV presenter Nicolas Hulot. Hulot, whose pedagogical TV travelogue Ushuaïa Nature has become a national institution, published a book last November intended as a wake-up call on climate change to the country's political class.
"Global warming will provoke health catastrophes, social dramas, epidemics," he warns. "Scientists no longer doubt it, public opinion is convinced, why are our leaders waiting to act?"
According to one survey, 43% of the French population would like him to run for president. That helps explain why politicians are beginning to take him very seriously indeed. The most popular socialist candidate for this year's presidential election, Ségoléne Royal, has said she is 'ready to work with' Hulot. A rival socialist candidate, Laurent Fabius, went so far as to promise he would make Hulot number two in his government if he was elected president. Nicolas Sarkozy, the leading centre-right candidate for the presidency, respects Hulot's stand and has himself championed the idea of an enlarged environment ministry with some responsibility for energy and transport. Hulot, meanwhile, has called for a deputy prime minister whose job would be to check all legislation for its environmental impact.
Concern about global warming is widespread in France. A TNS Sofres poll for regional newspapers found, for example, that 83% of those living in the south-west of France were worried about the future of the planet. But Jean-Marc Jancovici, a leading French expert on climate change, says many people fail to make the connection between their patterns of consumption – for example, use of motor vehicles and purchases of cheap clothes from China – and global warming. So when 20,000 people marched in London last November to protest about inaction on climate change, the turnout in Paris was only 200. And, he says, politicians are failing to make the link for them. 
The French tend to look to the government, rather than the private sector, to sort out such problems. And to be fair, thanks to policies dating from the 1973 oil-price shock, France has been a relatively good citizen with re |