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French weekly magazines review 1 November 2015

The electric car may not, after all, save the planet. The expensive little vehicles could well contribute to global warming. Is your child polluted? Probably. And what is François Hollande doing with his last few months in power? Secretly trying to get re-elected, says L'Express.

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Continuing our series "Bad news for the environment," satirical paper Le Canard Enchaîné reports that the electric car is not the answer to catastrophic global climate change. There are two problems. The first is the batteries, the production of which generates so much carbon dioxide, you'll have to drive your electric car for between 50,000 and 100,000 kilometres before you and your vehicle become what the experts call carbon neutral.

Since electric cars are essentially intended for short trips, many experts fear that most of them will never reach the crucial transition point. And then there's the question of the electricity you use to recharge the bally thing: 80 per cent of French electric power comes from nuclear generating stations, each with its safety problems, huge output of radioactive waste and negative impact on the landscape and population in Niger's uranium belt.

None of which seems to worry the Ecology Minister, Ségolène Royal, who will happily give you a cash grant of 10,000 euros to help you buy one of these cleverly disguised polluters. Worse, the same minister is to embark on the establishment of a huge national network of recharging stations, seven million of them, at an average cost of 10,000 euros per unit.

Future generations may look back on the era of the internal combustion engine as a sort of environmental golden age.

The cover story in this week's Le Nouvel Obsérvateur asks "Is your child polluted?" The answer, of course, is "yes!"

On the basis of an exclusive study carried out by the magazine on 63 children, we can reveal that samples of their hair show each child exposed to an average of 20 substances known to disrupt the human nervous and hormonal systems.

Herbicides, insecticides, anti-fungal treatments, veterinary chemicals and, shock, horror, traces of dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, the active ingredient in Agent Orange, notoriously used by the US to defoliate the Vietnamese jungle, still causing cancers and congenital defects in local populations today, are among the dangerous-sounding molecules discovered.

Age and geographical location seem to have little impact on exposure: all our children are in danger! But of what, exactly? Reproductive malfunctions, obesity and a diminution of the intelligence quotient are some of the impacts currently being investigated by medical science.

Food, soap, detergents, animal care products, cosmetics are just some of the obvious sources. And the power of the industrial lobbies which produce the poisons, notably the pesticide industry, is such that virtually nothing is being done to limit their spread.

L'Express gives the front-page honours to François Hollande, along with the headline "The beginning of the end".

The magazine paints a picture of a leader who has lost his way, a potential candidate for re-election who has no idea what to do with his remaining months at the national helm. Hollande's time in office has been marked by increased unemployment, decreased security and a sharp rise in intolerance, according to L'Express. The state is no more respected, no more efficient, nor structurally any better than when Hollande took up the top job. He's been at least a disappointing president, at worst a disaster.

And L'Express says the French left wing is permanently weakened as a result, that the problem is not internal division within the socialist household but the collapse of the entire building. A situation which could leave French voters with the choice between conservative Nicolas Sarkozy and far right Marine Le Pen in the second round of the 2017 presidential race.

Le Point says Nietzche is yer only man. The German philosopher has been dead since 1900 but Le Point believes that his ideas on fanaticism, xenophobia, socialism, education and migrants have never been more relevant. A dose of Nietzche is the answer to the current climate of stupidity and depression.

Nietzche was the exact opposite of mainstream. He was opposed to unreflecting tolerance, culture without effort, the past as an easy explanation of current ills. He would probably not have liked the internet . . . too many facts, not enough ideas.

He might not have liked contemporary diplomacy either, since he insisted on the importance of conflict in human history, had no fear of wars, whether symbolic or real. What he hated was compromise, the cowardice which we call consensus.

They could do with a few volumes of Nietzche over at Marianne where the cover laments the recent spate of urban violence, general public rudeness and gang warfare, wondering why the Republic appears to have thrown in the towel.

The core of the problem is an exhausted and demoralised police force, worn out by the overtime required in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo killings, unsure what judicial reforms mean for them and the criminals they are supposed to combat. It's all grist to the far right mill. And the best the current administration can do is offer some vague synthesis between justice and the forces of law and order. Cowardly compromise, to quote Nietzche.

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