Amid VW Scandal, Polluted Paris Asks if Time to Dump Diesel

PARIS— Guidebooks rarely mention it, but Paris is one of the most polluted cities in the rich world. The Eiffel Tower is periodically shrouded in smog, and there’s one key culprit: France’s disproportionately heavy reliance on diesel fuel.Critics are...

People walk on the Champs Elysees during the "day without cars", in Paris, France, Sunday, Sept. 27, 2015. Pretty but noisy Paris, its gracious Old World buildings blackened by exhaust fumes, is going car-less for a day. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo presided over Sunday's "day without cars," two months before the city hosts the global summit on climate change. AP Photo/Thibault Camus

PARIS—Guidebooks rarely mention it, but Paris is one of the most polluted cities in the rich world. The Eiffel Tower is periodically shrouded in smog, and there’s one key culprit: France’s disproportionately heavy reliance on diesel fuel.

Critics are increasingly questioning the need for diesel vehicles, especially after last week’s discovery that Volkswagen tricked drivers worldwide into thinking their diesel engines were much cleaner than they really are.

Paris’s diesel-driven pollution problem is especially embarrassing for a city that’s trying to be environmentally exemplary as it prepares to host crucial U.N. talks in two months on reducing emissions. City authorities banned all traffic from central Paris on Sunday, Sept. 27, and are trying to gradually forbid diesel altogether, as they try to clean up the capital’s image.

But a nationwide crackdown on diesel remains taboo. And elsewhere in Europe—where the majority of cars run on diesel engines versus just one-seventh worldwide—few are raising the alarm.

“We must stop lying to the French by inciting them to buy so-called environmentally friendly cars,” Emmanuelle Cosse, head of France’s green party Europe Ecologie-les Verts, said last week. “Clean diesel doesn’t exist.”

Diesel engines emit about the same levels of carbon dioxide, the gas that causes global warming, as gasoline-fueled engines. The problem with diesel comes down to public health: Its engines emit several times more nitrogen oxides than do gasoline engines.

That pollution is linked to asthma, bronchitis, and increased risk of heart problems, and the World Health Organization’s France-based cancer agency says diesel fumes can cause lung cancer.

Tax Breaks and Regulations

But European consumers prefer diesel cars because they’re cheaper to fuel and maintain. In France, that’s because of decades-old tax breaks and regulations that stretch from the factory floor to the gas pump, and that the government is reluctant to lift despite growing evidence of health risks. Most trucks, public buses, and municipal vehicles run on diesel, too.

Dismantling France's deep and complex dependence on diesel could cost jobs and money in an economy with little maneuvering room.