Paul from Paris

Mont Blanc tunnel (French side)

Anniversaries and memorials are often marked in France, a country that takes its history seriously.

On this day in 1999, a fire broke out in the Mont Blanc tunnel, killing 39.

The Mont Blanc tunnel links Chamonix, France, to Courmayeur, Italy, a distance of more than 11 kilometers (more than 7 miles). When it opened in 1965, it was the longest road tunnel in the world.

Since 1965, the Mont Blanc tunnel has been used by truckers. As the volume of exchanges between France and Italy (and beyond) has grown, so has the number of trucks that use the Mont Blanc tunnel.

On 24 March 1999, a truck carrying flour and margarine caught fire deep in the tunnel. Causation remains disputed or unsettled, but the fire may have been started by a discarded cigarette, sucked into an air filter. The fire grew and spewed great quantities of toxic fumes. Despite the intervention of firefighters, the fire wasn’t completely extinguished for more than two days.

After the fire, the Mont Blanc tunnel remained closed for three years, during reconstruction and renovation work. The tunnel operator today takes pains to emphasize measures taken to improve tunnel safety.

Traffic volume remains a contentious point with residents on both sides of the tunnel. Tunnel use by especially polluting vehicles has been curbed, but realistic alternatives to truck traffic, especially  road/rail multimodal combinations, have been a long time coming and are still off in the future.

The legal and managerial question that the Mont Blanc tunnel disaster leaves with me: how much initiative should tunnel managers show to ensure the safety of tunnel users? My question is one of effort, not money (because the Mont Blanc tunnel generates revenues through tolls). Are managers obligated to actively keep abreast of developments in tunnel safety –which certainly evolved since 1965– and make use of innovations? If so, does their obligation know any limit?

Incentives influence market choices.

This statement should be unexceptional, hardly newsworthy. But an onslaught of end-of-the-year news reports in France suggests otherwise.

More than 2.2 new passenger cars will be sold in France in 2009. This figure is up from a recent average of 2.0-2.1 million vehicles. It ties sales in 2001 (2.25 million), and approaches sales in 1990 (2.3 million).

Sales are up for all French automakers, with double-digit jumps in December sales compared to same-period sales in 2008.

Incentives have everything to do with this.

France has a cash for clunkers program: for cars more than 10 years old, and provided that the beneficiary buy a new car by 31 December 2009 (it being understood that the new vehicle can be delivered later, in 2010), the beneficiary will receive € 1,000. About 570,000 people are expected to benefit from the program in 2009. Starting 1 January 2010, the amount of the payment will fall to € 700.

France also has a sliding-scale, ecological bonus-malus program: cars that emit little CO2 are entitled to a bonus (usually from 200 to 1,000 euros); those that emit more than 130g CO2/km are subject to an eco-tax. CO2 emissions are a proxy for fuel efficiency, so the measure also favors fuel-efficient cars. Although originally presented as tax-neutral, car buyers have strongly favored smaller, fuel-efficient vehicles.

Finally, car-makers have added additional “bonuses” or price cuts that match or multiply the state-run programs.

With all these incentives, I’m not surprised that new-car sales in France have risen in 2009. But some questions remain:

• What will be the effect of the €300 drop in payments effective 1 January 2010? In France, cash for clunkers isn’t an all or nothing proposition; the payment amount will drop gradually. The ecological bonus-malus system will be fine-tuned but will stay in place. Few new cars sell for less than € 6,000, so the €300 drop represents a price change of less than 5%: for a small car selling for € 9,000, the dip represents 3%. Is this amount really enough to drive consumer choices?
• What price effect have the state-run programs had on new-car spending? Do consumers decide, beforehand, to spend a predetermined amount (for example, € 15,000), then bargain for the most car they can get at that price? In which case, have automakers been able to move buyers towards marginally more expensive vehicles (for example, a € 16,500 car), or vehicles with more options (for example, a special interior treatment priced at € 1,000)?
• Why do so many consumers wait until the end of the bonus period before they buy a car? One could just as easily expect an uptick in sales towards the beginning of the year, when bonuses are paid; or in the autumn, when new-model cars come out. Are consumers saving up? Have they considered the new car as a Christmas present?
• How many consumers behave opportunistically? Under the French plan, a beneficiary must hold title to an old vehicle for at least six months before she benefits from the program. Have families arranged for the 85-year-old grandmother to transfer her old car to her 25-year-old granddaughter, in order to help the granddaughter to buy a new vehicle? More fancifully, have families been trying to insure out-of-commission clunkers sitting on cinder blocks in a garage?
• What do plans to help the automotive sector reveal or hide about consumer spending generally? Is consumer spending up, or is it down; and how much do changes in automotive spending account for the broader change in consumer spending? For instance, when consumers buy a new car, do they cut their beer and pretzel budget? Or is the purchase of a new car a marker of renewed or buoyant consumer confidence (with beer and pretzel sales remaining strong)? If consumers are making trade-offs when they buy a new automobile, what purchases do they cut back?

For years –decades!– I’ve been sending greeting cards at the holiday season. In the USA and UK, the custom is to send cards before Christmas; in France, people send cards after the New Year.

Amidst news chatter about the Copenhagen conference and calls to “save the planet”, and because the environment does matter, I decided to do things differently this year:

• Instead of sending a printed card by the post, I send a pdf –of the card I otherwise would have printed– by e-mail;
• Skeptical whether this would have any impact on the environment, I figured out what I otherwise would have spent (for printing, for postage), rounded up, and made a contribution to an worthy environmental organization: the World Resources Institute, “an environmental think tank that goes beyond research to find practical ways to protect the earth and improve people’s lives”. WRI is a thoughtful, responsible (4 star rating on Charity Navigator) group, global in its vision, modest when speaking of its accomplishments.

Ulva armoricana, referred to colloquially in French as algues vertes and in English as sea lettuce, proliferates along the Brittany coast.

Fertilizer runoff and animal waste from intensive agriculture cause the proliferation.

Its effects include large amounts of plant matter that wash ashore. When the plants decay, they can generate toxic fumes that may have caused the death of animals and a worker.

In an interview with French daily Libération, the French junior minister for ecology, Chantal Jouanno claimed to seek transparency about adverse health effects for people and animals, and hopes that a study will lead to an action plan.

What sort of action does Jouanno envisage? Picking up more sea lettuce, including at sea. The junior minister doesn’t venture an estimate of what collection efforts cost now or are likely to cost in the future.

What about reducing the effluents responsible for the problem? Don’t expect much, replies in essence Jouanno. At least not for two years. What’s special about two years? Nothing, so far as the environment is concerned. Everything, where politics are concerned: French presidential elections will occur in 2012.

To my eyes, sea lettuce is a classic example of a failure to address a problem. Indeed, sea lettuce is a problem, recognized as such; there are no defenders of sea lettuce. There are, however, defenders of intensive agriculture, that has made Brittany an agri-business powerhouse. Some of the costs of this achievement have been socialized and passed on to commons: rivers and sea coast, and the flora and fauna that inhabit them. So long as the official French response ignores costs and benefits, and focuses on harvesting-at-sea, I have trouble giving credence to bolder French schemes on issues like global warming.