After midnight, Paris, the City of Light, is submerged deep darkness, extreme. The lighting of the windows goes out, one after the other, until the busiest streets are transformed into a disturbing black hole.

The reason is the effect of the war in Ukraine, solidarity in the face of the impending winter of scarcity and more than 60 French nuclear reactors, electricity suppliers, in maintenance or in a state of corrosion.

There was a show at the Bastille opera. The building, built of glass by Uruguayan architect Carlos Ott, looked like a Christmas tree in the presentation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare’s play.

As in Cinderella, it’s over and, as the British said when the theater ended due to the German “Blitz”, “The West End has gone dark”.

The lights go out, until it was like a glass ghost bordering the square. Its stairs disappear into the shadows and the blue and yellow solidarity poster for Ukraine turns into a dull, colorless screen.

Place de la Bastille, where the prison and its monument commemorating the revolution of July 1830 were located, is lit only by the waning moon and the bars that defy the mandate of solidarity.

The mayor of Anne Hidalgo subjected the Parisians to a “Ecology by force”which cost him no more than 1.75 percent vote in the presidential election.

He transformed the city into a huge bike path and trout and in an eternal public construction site. Your running lights light up the road, while the others go out. the Parisians they started forcibly selling their cars. Passengers’ headlights help to walk without tripping.

Millions of tourists have returned to Paris in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic to find that the lights go out in the city they came to visit.

At the Eiffel Tower, this monumental Parisian symbol, the lights go out at one in the morning. It doesn’t blink every hour to beautify the city and make tourists delirious with their selfies. Only its red light remains, on the tip, for safety reasons.

After the war in Ukraine

This is the response of the French in the aftermath of the war in Ukraine, to the need to save energy and reduce consumption in order not to be cold next winter.

Most of the French are willing to make an effort, in the face of this shortage, because Vladimir Putin has cut off gas to Europe due to the war and energy prices have become exorbitant.

Six out of 10 French people, or 63 percent, will do so reduce energy consumption “to limit the increase in prices and the risk of shortages in the consumption of energy, electricity, gas and petroleum products”, according to a survey by the newspaper The echoes and Montaigne Institute.

But at least on two conditions: that “everyone participate in this effort”, on the part of the population, businesses, the state and local communities and “the guarantee that prices do not rise”. 15 percent want the effort “to be limited”.

When the leaders of Total Energies, EDF and Engie called on the French to “immediately limit energy consumption”, this was the answer.

dark colored glass

Businesses started shutting down shop lights at midnight. Despite being in liquidation for the entire season, the majority accepted the challenge.

The boutiques that didn’t are like headlights in the dark of the street, when Paris has become a dangerous city, with robberies, knife attacks to start branded watches, bracelets and necklaces, on the street or in the subway, day or night.

The red dress of Naf Naf, in the window of the Faubourg St Antoine, appears as a beautifully illuminated traffic light in the middle of the dark. It is a guide.

In Rosie, the brasserie fashionable in Paris, the lights are still on as well as the Café Milou, in front of the square.

Orange, the telecommunications company, complied. The curtain falls and there isn’t even one of the new Apple models on sale.

In Etam, the mannequins in their underwear have gone to sleep. Nothing is visible. Every dream of a beach holiday expands in the face of this darkness of war

Insecurity

In the rue de Charonne, the street whose terraces suffered the simultaneous terrorist attacks in Paris, the merchants obey the rationing warrant. The lights are out, except for one rebel: the Blue Libellulle boutique. The rest is obscure. From the Beirut restaurant to the Neapolitan Nove pizzeria or the Coss or Isabel Marrant boutique.

The Parisians “á dodo”, as they say to small children in France to go to sleep. After midnight only very few lighted windows are seen. In the streets regular lighting is maintained but LED, that is widespread and scarce.

The Passage du Chantier is good luck. There are furniture shops and cabinetmakers’ workshops, but also condominiums and houses. People choose the flashlight and don’t go it alonefor safety, to cross it.

“Will you join us?” asks the photographer for a bigger wedding Clarione to be able to reach the door of your house.

A family of Bosnian “gypsies” has settled in the Passage, who sleep there with their children and ask for alms during the day. Along the streets, there dozens of people sleeping in tents, outdoors.

“Everything is needed to save energy. We must be in solidarity and, above all, far-sighted. But the effort must be joint and not too long, ”warns Albert Gallimard, who lives nearby and leaves the Rosie brasserie.

Reduce consumption

Most French people of all categories of the population say they are “ready to cut back on their consumption,” says the survey. The echoes.

But he observed that “professional cadres and intermediate professions seem more determined than popular categories to make the sacrifice”.

At the same time, those under the age of 50 are more predisposed than those over the age of 50, those who live in cities than those who live in the countryside, and the French who manage without problems with those who must be restricted.

Actions

The efforts are different. In Paris, 82 percent will prefer the “ECO” program in the dishwasher (almost everyone has it), just ahead of 79 percent who will use LED bulbs.

72% will “unplug the electronics in the house at night” and 67% will “turn down the heat in the house by at least one degree” from next fall. 66 percent will “reduce the water temperature of the shower” and 64 percent will “limit car travel.” Filling the standard tank of a diesel car costs at least 120 euros in Paris.

She has arrived “the heat wave”To France, a heat wave with unbearable temperatures of 40 and 42 degrees in the south, in a country with very few air conditioners. 45 percent are ready to “use coolers or fans less.”

But only 10 percent will do it unconditionally. The rest requires it to be a joint effort, by the whole of society and for some time.

But beyond the will and solidarity, the study shows that a significant part of the French have already begun to reduce their energy consumption but to economic reasons.

One in two people said in recent months that they have given up traveling by car and adequately heating their home, due to the skyrocketing energy and fuel prices and the bills they will have to pay, many a year.

Paris, correspondent

CB