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 exclusive feature |
 
The motorists of Paris are up in arms. In a nod to conservationism and environmental prioritization, City Hall has closed the highways bordering the Seine to all traffic between July 15 and August 15, reserving the roads instead for cyclists, skaters, and pedestrians. The bouquinistes, whose green metal book crates line the banks of the Seine, fear that business will plummet, as do the five-star restaurants whose survival is dependant upon the bank accounts of diners driving in from afar. Everyone in Paris is preparing for a huge headache – with bottlenecked drivers honking and yelling – in the same irate, yet resigned manner with which they
While environmental concerns have won out over motor vehicles – for one month at least – in the French capital, many Europeans are quick to point out that, across the ocean, Americans continue to emit carbon monoxide at an alarming rate. Why, some Parisian motorists are surely wondering, must they cede the highways to pedestrians, while the USA's smokestacks cough up, without a worry, one third of the world's greenhouse gas emissions? Stateside, I-95 is as jammed as ever, and families off for weekends at the beach yawn through bumper-to- bumper traffic inside their yacht-sized cars, freon-cooled to a frosty 50 degrees. 
And while the Greens were having their field day in Paris at the inauguration of this "environmental caviar" month, in Genoa George W. Bush warned the other heads of state at the G-8 conference that they should not expect his delegation in Bonn to support the environmental pact being hammered out there. French newspapers are filled with photos of the President at the summit. In each one, he is grinning like a schoolboy who believes he is liked by his classmates; who is so confident that he is surrounded by friends, that he does not realize that their smiles are derisive. And as the President continues prancing about the globe in his reverie of constructing the righteous world, the 178 other countries allied around the Bonn agreement speak of the beginning of the end for the United States. Journalists write about America's fateful decision of isolationism, and yet the U.S. seems completely unaware of even taking such a drastic step. The unified 178 hail their solidarity as the "biggest advance in ten years for the rest of the world." Bush smiles at the camera, and the Europeans laugh at his attempts to present his party as "champions of the environment," and his natural park photo-ops. Still, Bush's schoolboy grin remains constant in the photos, as he assures the rest of the world of his commitment to cooperate with his international "friends and allies." And the President does not even realize that, as far as Europe is concerned, he has just cut off the very arm he is attempting to extend in a handshake. 
Yet the President is merely protecting his nation's status as the world's only Superpower. After all, energy consumption is essential for keeping our systems running without a hitch, and retaining our position as the leaders of the free world. Americans could never resign ourselves to riding oven-like metro cars to work every day, or stand for traffic jams caused by recreational cyclists. So, while the office secretaries in New York wrap themselves in woolen cardigans to protect themselves from the chill of full-blast cooling systems, Paris is in the throes of another heat wave, with air conditioning virtually non- existent. As the New York secretaries, wrapped in their autumn outerwear, type away on state-of-the-art computer systems, across the ocean the office manager at the New York Times' Paris bureau charges into the assistants' room, a mini-crisis on her hands. "Does anyone know how to work a Mac?" she calls out. The French fashion journalist she has on the phone is distraught. The journalist has an article to write, and she has never used a computer in her life. It is nothing like her typewriter. Before, she simply fed the paper by hand, and she could see the ink staining the page as she typed. Now, with the Mac, the journalist can't figure out where the letters are going when she hits the keys, and she doesn't know how she will make the machine release her article when she is finished. Will someone who knows computers go over to give the panicked journalist a lesson? I laugh, amazed that there are still people in the modern world who have never used a computer, and offer that Macs are generally very user-friendly. The office manager reminds me that this means nothing for a woman who can't find the power button on the chassis. Still, the French technological world is not completely backwards. The week following the G-8 summit, Le Monde and Lib‚ration announced with great fanfare the incorporation, by December 2002, of 33 new television channels, to supplement the 5 basic ones already in existence. This addition will make channel "zapping" more involved, and French wives will have to wait six times as long for their husbands to verify each channel to ensure nothing is on, before they may get their kiss good night. And, the daily papers exalt, televisions will even be made with built-in cable decoders, to eliminate the need for external de-scrambler boxes! Soon, the French will be able to waste as much time absorbed in nonsense as their transatlantic cousins. The retired and stay-at- homes of France will no longer have to be victims of cultural imperialism; no one will be forced to spend his days, or chew his tv dinners, watching reruns of American sitcoms from the eighties – for the opportunities to create domestic trash will be exponentially increased. Yet, despite this historic announcement, Parisians are still groaning. They huff about the traffic jams in central Paris, and wonder what action City Hall will take to fix the headache. The answer is simple. It will soon be la rentr‚e – the end of summer (commerce-savvy shops have already changed the mannequins in their storefronts into autumn attire) – and before long everything will be back to normal. Come the fifteenth of August, cars and tour buses and sputtering motorbikes will own the highways along the Seine once again. And if that reminder doesn't sufficiently lift the spirits of Paris' two million-plus city-dwellers, they ought just to keep in mind the thirty-three channels coming soon to an apartment near you. If the tv magnates have their way, France will soon have taken another step towards American-style consumerism, and no one will need to worry about the pollution level of the air, or the bottlenecked traffic any more. The entire country will be at home, glued to the tube.
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