A taste of global warming
The government is largely responsible for France's staggering heat-wave death toll, writes Jeremy Landor from Paris
The oak tree in the gardens of Versailles palace, in whose shade Marie Antoinette liked to sit 230 years ago, has died in France's summer heat wave. It is just one of many casualties.
Almost 11,500 mainly elderly French people succumbed to the excessive heat. In Paris, 300 bodies still lie unclaimed in morgues. As the scorching days passed, hospital and burial services became more and more overwhelmed. Beyond the costs in human lives, agriculture has been devastated. Finally, holidaymakers on beaches in the south of France have returned home without tans because the sun has been obscured by billowing smoke from forest fires.
Only wine producers are celebrating what will be, they say, a good year for quality.
The popular uprising which swept Louis XVI and his shade-loving wife Marie Antoinette to the guillotine in 1789 is not likely to be re-enacted. But there is widespread anger and confusion over the French government's failure to respond to the crisis while its ministers were on holiday.
This anger and confusion partially stemmed from the inability of the French health care system, considered one of the best in Europe, to provide basic services to the elderly, those most affected by the hot weather.
In one retirement home, 10 people died in August. The staff of one certified nurse and four untrained aids for 79 residents were unable to cope. "If the four other staff had been qualified, some cases of dehydration could have been avoided," the nurse said to the press. "But because they are not trained, they cannot recognise the symptoms."
The director of the home said proper care requires three certified nurses and 20 aids. One 91-year-old resident said, "One of my great friends died. She had just celebrated her 100th birthday. We were like sisters. A few days before she died she was fit and alert and she was still playing the piano."
The government is accused of scapegoating the director of health services, Lucien Abenhaim, who resigned on 18 August, taking the blame for the summer's public health catastrophe. When accused of failing to respond because ministers were on holiday, the government pointed to Abenhaim, claiming he did not inform the ministers of the seriousness of the crisis. Copies of e- mails have been passed on to the press that show that he initially told a minister that things were under control, then a few hours later told him of a worrying situation of increased deaths in the hospitals. Deaths this August were five times the number last year.
Public anger at the government's complacency comes out in letters to the press. One written by Serge Kerloch in Nice claimed that his 76-year-old uncle was forced to leave a hospital prematurely due to a shortage of beds. He subsequently died because of the heat. Kerloch complains of the lack of remorse on the part of the Minister of Health.
A group of doctors who released a statement to the French press linked the shortcomings to the reluctance of the state to fund a health service for an aging population.
"This was a holiday epidemic which has set the price of living beyond the age of 60 at the cost of a refrigeration system, of a ventilator or the wage of a temporary auxiliary nurse who could make sure that dozens of elderly people with a fever of 42 degrees in unventilated hospital wards where the temperature reached 37 degrees would get something to drink," they said.
Prominent physician and author of books on health services and the elderly Dr Denis Labayle blamed governments of the last 30 years for making decisions on public health for purely financial reasons.
"For many years the health service has not benefited from any serious forward planning," he said. "Management is based solely on the idea of short-term profitability." He condemns the lack of statutory minimum standards for retirement homes that lead to a lack of proper primary care and result in more emergency cases in hospitals.
Farmers whose crops wilted in the fields and whose animals have either died, or slowly starve without grass to eat, are also angry at the government. In this case the anger is directed at a 500 million euro aid package, considered by many to be insufficient.
At the very least, the crisis was not nationwide. Agriculture in the southern regions of France has been less seriously affected by the drought than elsewhere in the country. "There is a very old culture of water and irrigation here which means that people cooperate to face a drought," a water engineer told the press. Water consumption is falling in the south as a result of judicious management while it rises in the rest of France. Many fruit growers succeeded in producing crops in spite of several weeks of temperatures of around 40 degrees.
Some non-irrigated crops suffered serious decreases in production, including wheat, olives and lavender. Honey producers were hit by a lack of blossoming on lavender bushes. Animal farmers have been hardest hit though. In regions where animals are raised intensively, like Brittany, cattle, pigs and poultry kept in sheds have virtually cooked in their stalls. August's oven-like temperatures killed five million chickens, and 750,000 pigs.
In the central highland regions of France too (le massif central) a shortage of grass in the pastures and high fodder prices have left farmers wondering whether they have a future losses equivalent to two years income. The 1.8 billion euros lost by farmers here accounts for half the national agricultural losses of around four billion euros, according to the largest farmers' union. Farmers are likely to run out of feed as winter sets in because they have already depleted their reserves. Some areas need hundreds-of-thousands of tons of animal fodder, some of which will have to be imported.
Small farmers are critical of the government's aid programme, which they consider paltry and partial to government supporters. A spokesperson for the Peasant's Confederation, the second largest farmers union, told a French newspaper, "The payment of lump sums to local areas is not being done openly and this could give rise to fears of distribution according to political affiliation." He added that compensation payments for fodder were not what they seemed, "Straw is only a basic food, you have to add nutrients to it. They are more expensive and there is no question of government help."
As the hot summer wore on, 40,000 hectares of tinder-dry forest burned, with Algerian fire fighters among those who came to help. France's Mediterranean forests flared up so quickly because the traditional mix of tree species no longer exists. There are too many quick-growing and commercially viable pine trees that burn more easily than oaks, and fewer olive trees, which slow the spread of fire.
Between the refusal to prepare for the demographic revolution, stubborn adherence to neo-liberal economic policies, cruelly intensive farming, marginalised peasants and planting the wrong trees, the overall picture is of a country ill-prepared for the challenges of global warming.
