FRANCE CLEANS UP IN GREEN PUSH

[Anonymous]

France Cleans Up in Green Push
PARIS
oct 07  – Stamping camembert with a “carbon footprint” rating. Charging
Parisians for the empty Bordeaux bottles they discard. Banning high
speeds through the pasture-lined highways of the Loire Valley.France is
trying to clean up its act, readying measures this week aimed at
reversing its image as environmental laggard and making it a pioneer in
the fight against global warming  and other threats to the Earth’s
well-being.Yet environmental groups fear the measures, to be finalized
at a conference Wednesday and Thursday, will be too watered down to
make a difference in France’s carbon emissions and have little impact
on worldwide efforts to reduce the pollution that is warming the planet.

President Nicolas Sarkozy isn’t letting those fears slow his push to raise France’s eco-profile.
He
put global warming high on his agenda after his election in May,
creating Europe’s most powerful environment ministry and berating the
United States for its resistance to emissions cuts. At the United
Nations, Sarkozy urged developed countries and major polluters to
commit to a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050.Sarkozy’s
friendly relations with President Bush  have had no apparent effect on
U.S. climate policy, but the French president is reaching out to other
Americans, too: Al Gore, who won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for his
work against global warming, will be at Sarkozy’s side at this week’s
conference in Paris, Sarkozy’s office said.At twilight Tuesday, the
Eiffel Tower’s twinkling lights went out for five minutes – along with
lights at the Elysee presidential palace, the prime minister’s office
and other sites – to call attention to energy consumption and its
consequences.The measures to be announced Thursday came out of three
months of talks among activists, farmers, businesses and government
officials that have been fraught with friction.They made no progress on
nuclear energy – which Sarkozy champions and environmental groups
reject – or on biofuels, the junior minister for ecology, Nathalie
Kosciusko-Morizet said in an interview.

Still, she insisted the conference was a crucial first step.
“We
want to see what we can do ourselves, with the idea to be exemplary, to
be pioneers,” she said in an interview. “We think that there are new
markets, a new economy” to be tapped in making the French more
environmentally conscious, she added.Ideas emerging include stickers on
food packaging indicating how much carbon dioxide was emitted in making
the product, lowering speed limits on roads throughout France to
encourage fuel efficiency, charging households per pound of garbage
they produce, charging money to drive in big cities, requiring
environmentally “clean” cafeteria food and refitting historic mansions
to make them more energy efficient.

Greenpeace International
director Gerd Liepold was unimpressed.”There’s nothing groundbreaking
in this,” he said. “What is happening in France is what happened in
other European countries 10, 15 years ago.”France is more dependent on
nuclear energy than any other nation and falls behind several European
neighbors in recycling, energy conservation and cleaning up
agriculture. France was later than other developed nations in banning
use of asbestos, and concerns are mounting lately about the long-term
health risks.Genetically modified crops are another sensitive topic in
this country that values its agriculture. The conference may produce a
temporary freeze on them, but activists say that is not enough.Yannick
Jadot of Greenpeace France said Tuesday that if the conference doesn’t
lead to a long-term ban on genetically modified crops, it will be a
“total failure.”Jim Leape, director of the World Wildlife Federation,
urged Sarkozy to get the European Union  to take a strong stance on
emissions cuts ahead of crucial global warming talks in Bali in
December.”France needs to lead … industrialized countries to stand up
to this challenge. President Sarkozy’s peers will be paying attention,”
he said. 

[Author]

October 25, 2007 at 10:48 AM