Harry Vassallo | Wednesday, 18 February 2009

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In July 2007 France launched its Grenelle Environment, a far-reaching initiative to mainstream environmental concerns, giving them concrete applications closely linked to economic competitiveness. It was intended to be a French initiative with global outreach. In far away Malta, I too was asked for my response.
The bulk of the proposals were unquestionably positive and the idea of seeing France elbowing its way to be seen to be a global leader on all things environmental could not be bad news to anyone. The buzz in the ointment was radioactive.
Amid the bouquet of long awaited initiatives lurked the bug of nuclear energy. France had not been converted. Besides, its new President had already been busy selling nuclear technology far and wide, right up to our doorstep as a matter of fact.
Nuclear reactors and technology were to become a major export of France under the Sarkozy presidency. From Finland to China passing through Libya, Nicholas signed deals and promises of sale as though there was no tomorrow.
I was not too easily swayed by all the wonderful eco-initiatives. They would involve millions of well meaning people in numberless activities voluntary and commercial but the underlying ethos of the project stank as badly as last week’s uneaten Lobster Thermidor. I said so in slightly more diplomatic terms and was informed that my considered opinion would go on record somewhere in the vast recesses of the French state archives. I was flattered.
Just last Thursday I stumbled across a programme on France 3, http://video.aol.com/video-detail/pices-conviction-uranium-le-scandale-de-la-fpart-3/784178446/?icid=VIDLRVENT05 that blew the Grenelle Environment bouquet to bits. All over France dumps containing extremely dangerous radioactive waste contaminate the countryside and in not a few places also urban areas, 300,000,000 tons of it. Scandal is too mild a word for it.
Decades of cover-ups and stifled cries of alarm were documented. The journalists were able to point out that permanently sited monitors of radioactivity just happen to have been planted just where the radioactivity was lowest. The incestuous relationship between regulators and operators was indecently exposed. It was conclusively established that the French nuclear industry is above all political oversight communicating directly and exclusively with the Presidency.
That documentary is quite probably far more determining than Al Gore’s The Inconvenient Truth. If the Grenelle Environment was intended as a colossal public relations exercise on a global level, this one TV documentary explodes it forever. If it had been hoped that France would take commercial advantage of the world’s conversion to everything ecological, now one must hope for even greater gains since the cleanup operation will swallow up decades of tax revenue from eco-technology. It was a clipped, laconic account of a nightmare with no concession to sensationalism.
Speaking to French friends about the programme I was shocked at their lack of response. They expect no protests, no riots and revolts. Most people will barely notice.
Nuclear power is a given in France: decades of propaganda knowing their origins in de Gaulle’s Force de Frappe strategy and rooted in France’s home-territory uranium mining industry. For generations the French have lived with nuclear energy, with governments of all colours giving it their blessing. It is an acquired truth in France almost impossible to shake, a huge advantage for those who want to carry on with business as usual.
The contamination of vast areas all around France is too horrible to accept. The idea of a deception of such magnitude perpetrated for so long is hard to grasp. The mountainous and extremely long term costs to make all such sites safe is a nightmare few will want to face in the middle of the worst financial crisis the world has seen for generations.
If we have cause for self-congratulation that we in Malta have escaped clutches of the nuclear industry so far, we have not escaped the mental paralysis crippling the French.
Our scandal is not uranium based but property based. The best and brightest of us have not yet got our heads around the idea that far in excess of 50,000 properties stand vacant and are doomed to stand vacant forever.
Some people still believe that the price of property in Malta is high because property is scarce. Just as the French want to believe that nuclear energy is cheap, we want to believe that what we paid for our homes was a good price. Nobody wants the market to crash so nobody admits that such a surplus is a horrifying threat and an intolerable burden on the future. Both parties in parliament have competed to increase it. Both have an interest in preserving our illusions.
When reality finally overwhelms the cover-ups in France, President Sarkozy will be long gone. He’s counting on it just as all his predecessors have done. When our bubble finally bursts will anybody blame Lawrence Gonzi or any of his predecessors? We all hope that they will all be long gone because it suits us to do so, because blaming someone will be poor satisfaction when that mess eventually hits the fan. In both cases the present generation and its immediate predecessors have ruinously burdened the next. In our old age most of us will bleat in excuse that we were not aware of the facts. We will be lucky to have just silent contempt in response.

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