France turns up heat on climate change ahead of Paris conference

With only a few months to go before France hosts the COP21 conference on climate change, the presidential palace offered a sneak preview of events from November 30th to December 11th.

The Élysée’s lavish reception rooms were filled with high-ranking officials, scientists, business executives, artists, representatives of NGOs and media. The half-day session was intended “to demonstrate the mobilisation and the unity of France’s team in the last stretch”, the president’s office said.

The French prime minister, Manuel Valls, opened the meeting with the usual warning that “the survival of our planet is at stake”, that the first seven months of this year were the hottest ever recorded, and that “if we continue this tendency, temperatures will increase four or five degrees by the end of the century, which would be an ecological, economic, humanitarian and security cataclysm”.

In a week dominated by the migrant crisis, the statement by France’s environment minister, Ségolène Royal, that half the world’s migrants were fleeing encroaching deserts and evaporating water supplies struck a chord.

“If no substantial measures are taken, we won’t be dealing with hundreds of thousands of refugees but millions over the next 20 or 30 years,” president François Hollande said.

Emission pledges

The gathering will seek to conclude an agreement among 195 UN member states to drastically reduce greenhouse-gas emissions so that the rise in global temperatures can be limited to two degrees this century.

“It’s late. It may already be too late,” Hollande said. Only 58 countries have volunteered quantified pledges of reductions in emissions. The deadline for national contributions is October 1st.

Hollande, France’s foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, and the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, will put pressure on heads of state and government at the UN General Assembly on September 27th and 28th. Fabius hopes to receive the text of a “pre-accord” from negotiators by early October.

At the autumn session of the World Bank and IMF in Peru, from October 9th to 11th, Fabius’s finance minister, Michel Sapin, will try to rustle up contributions to the $100 billion annual Green Climate Fund. Fabius intends to hold a “pre-COP” in early November, and the November 15th-16th G20 summit in Turkey will provide a last opportunity to tie up loose ends.

The French are determined to avoid sleepless nights of fruitless negotiations, as happened at Copenhagen. Presiding over COP21 was so risky, Hollande joked, that France was the only candidate for the job. There were nonetheless "positive signs", including the fact that "the largest emitters – the US, China and the EU, who together account for 50 per cent of greenhouse gases – have presented ambitious road maps".

High finance “has begun to integrate climate change into their calculations and investment choices”, a sign not so much of hope as of the fact that reality has sunk in, the French president said.

Stéphane Troussel, president of the council of Seine-Saint-Denis, said he hoped "COP21 will help us change the image of our department". The conference will take place at the Le Bourget exhibition park, on the sometimes dangerous RER suburban train line that runs from the Gare du Nord to Charles de Gaulle Airport.

The government will distribute free public-transport passes to the 20,000 delegates attending the conference in the hope of avoiding mass traffic jams. Another 20,000 members of the public are expected, along with 3,000 journalists, for a total of 43,000. An extra 70,000 bus and train seats will be provided each day. Electric minibuses will ferry visitors around the vast site at Le Bourget, which will become a veritable town, complete with post office, bank and restaurants.

The conference is expected to cost the government €170 million, but it should also bring in €100 million for businesses in the Paris region. Philippe Salle, who heads the catering company Elior, described COP21 as a showcase for French gastronomy. Chefs will use fresh, local food for the 412,500 snacks and meals served at Le Bourget. There will be no strawberries flown in from South America.

Video messages

The Élysée’s presentation at times resembled an evangelical tent meeting with stand-up testimonials. Valls announced that France would no longer provide export credits for coal-fired power plants, a longstanding demand of environmental groups.

Chief executives from several of France’s largest companies promised to slash greenhouse-gas emissions from their factories. The head of Michelin said he would find a way to reduce the energy required to rotate tyres.

The conference is also meant to be fun. Members of the public will be asked to transmit video messages to negotiators from prefabricated "COPBoxes" around the city. Mobile disc-jockey carts powered by vélo générateurs and solar panels will ply the streets.

On December 5th a drummer, composer and producer, Marc Cerrone, will produce a Supernature 2015 sound and light show at the Arc de Triomphe.

“I was always moved by the beauty of the planet which is our mother,” Cerrone says. “That night, the most beautiful images of our planet will be the star.”