Dry rivers, destroyed crops, tens of thousands of hectares burned… France is going through a particularly virulent summer, with repeated heat waves – on the eve of the weekend of August 15, we are going through the fourth wave heat of the year – and a historic drought. A taste of what awaits France in the future, such summers being called upon to multiply and intensify as global warming progresses, in the absence of ambitious measures to limit global CO2 emissions.2.
Restrictions on water consumption are in force in a large part of the country, and a hundred municipalities no longer even have drinking water, forced to supply themselves by tanker truck, according to the Minister of Ecology, Christophe Bechu. The Gorges du Verdon, usually very busy with tourists in the summer, had to be closed to navigation. In the fields, some crops die for lack of watering. And conflicts over the use of water, more than ever a precious commodity, are on the rise, with damage and theft in particular.
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Drought favors fires. The monster fire of Landiras, in Gironde, which the firefighters had managed to fix after weeks of intense fighting in July, resumed on Tuesday August 9, consuming nearly 6,000 new hectares, or as much as the annual average of the territory. French in one day, on a single fire. And forest fires are spreading to northern regions of the country that are usually spared.