Last Friday Devlin and I arrived at Gare Du Nord from Bruxelles. We had read in the newspaper that Paris was suffering from a toxic smog. The pollution levels hit 180 microgrammes of PM10 particulates per cubic metre, which was twice more the safety limit of 80. The Hotel de Ville banned cars from within le Periphirique. The clear sky was not an ‘all-clear’ sign, because my throat was burning from inhaling the air.
“Shall we take a taxi?” Devlin liked to see the city.
“The Metro goes direct to St. Germain.” We were staying at the Hotel Bel Ami on Rue St. Benoit. It was down the street from the Cafe de Flore.
“Then we’ll take the Metro.” Devlin was semi-rich. He liked to save money to insure his fortune remained a fortune.
“And it’s free.” The city had opened the Metro to induce people out of their cars.
“Free?” Devlin believed in capitalism.
“The triumph of communalism.” I pushed on the turnstile. There was no resistance.
Twenty minutes later we emerged from the Metro onto the Boulevard St. Germain. The lack of horns or the rumble of cars greeted us on the sidewalk. I glanced at the headline of a right-wing newspaper.
PANIC.
The opposition leader was claiming that the ban lacked “coherence, explanation and on the ground it’s really panic”.
None of the pedestrians were running around like guillotined chickens.
“Nice.” Devlin didn’t have a car.
“Real nice.” I liked GTOs and 60s motorcycles, but a world without internal combustion vehicles was the future. As we walked to our hotel, I said, “Welcome to the new reality. No cars.”
“There’ll be cars. Electric cars.”
“There are no cars in STAR TREK. Cars are an ancient technology.”
“How so?” Devlin was willing to hear my explanation. The hotel was right around the corner.
“A car is a marriage between fire and the wheel with a little metallurgy on the side.” The inventions of the first two dated back to prehistory. “There were no cars over a hundred years ago.”
“So we’re going back to the horse?” scoffed the Irish financier.
“Heavens forbid a return to shit-strewn streets.”
“So what will replace the car?”
I pointed to my feet.
“Public transportation and walking.”
“People won’t like it.”
“They’ll like dying from asphyxiation even less.” The Great London Smog of 1952 killed over 12,000 in a month with thousands more suffering permanent damage to their lungs. “The smog here was as bad as Beijing and it’s going to get worse everywhere in the world.”
“So what are you saying?”
“Te moritum salutem.”
“Latin?”
“A dead language but that phrase means ‘those that are about to die salute you.” I lifted my middle finger to a passing car and we entered the hotel. It was 5-star. As a communalist I liked sharing someone else’s wealth and Devlin was no miser. We had reservations at Joel Aubusson’s Atelier. The restaurant served the best mashed potatos on the world and being Irish we appreciated that feat more than no cars.