ZFE: "The disinformation campaign has reached such levels that it is no longer possible to debate the real problems caused by this device"

The political class seems to have lost all courage in the face of the complexity of the ecological transition. At the first sign of difficulty, it backs down rather than working to improve the measures in question. And since there is no shortage of difficulties, the role of the legislator increasingly consists of undoing the work it itself had painfully accomplished in recent years. Arising from the Mobility Orientation Laws (2019) and Climate and Resilience Laws (2021), low-emission zones (LEZs), which aim to gradually ban the most polluting vehicles, are the latest victim of these parliamentary palinodes [ their abolition was voted on by MPs on Tuesday, June 17 ] .

The case illustrates all the mechanisms at work to halt the ecological transition: false information disseminated ad nauseam by populists, lack of awareness and anticipation on the part of the government and local executives, failing support for households in difficulty...

In terms of information manipulation, the ZFE have been well served. First of all, contrary to popular belief, they are not primarily a climate measure but a public health measure . Even if the ZFE are part of an ecological policy, their primary objective is to improve air quality in the most polluted urban areas to avoid the 40,000 premature deaths per year that result, according to Santé publique France. It appeared necessary to reduce the circulation of older vehicles, which are more polluting because they are produced according to less stringent particle emission standards. Opponents of the ZFE saw this as the signature of "punitive ecology" .

The latter also led citizens – and parliamentarians – to believe that significant traffic restrictions would be imposed in some forty urban areas. In reality, these ZFEs should only have been enforced in two urban areas whose pollution levels exceeded the current health thresholds: Paris and Lyon.

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