Paris, like much of northern France, is under snow this morning. The result is beautiful - what is normally a grey and beige city is vividly black and white - but also slightly alarming. As was the case last winter the city doesn't really seem equiped to cope with snow, and cars and pedestrians are crawling along unsalted roads and pavements. Alarming too are the announcements of a potential power cut at 7 o'clock this evening. Temperatures are roughly 6 degrees below their seasonal average and hence the demand for electricity is correspondingly high. It is worrying that the French grid is not prepared to cope with a situation that while extreme is not that extreme, and it is curious that despite all the media coverage I have yet to hear a single request from any public body asking individuals to limit their electricity consumption. The possible black out is presented as something that has a high probability of occuring - tonight there is a 50% chance of snow and a 60% chance of a power failure - rather than as something over which we have any control. Worrying also that the previous record for electricity consumption was in January of this year. What this means is that for all the talk about climate change over the last 12 months people have done nothing to reduce their energy use. France generates 85% of its electricity from nuclear power stations which for all their bad press are actually fairly good in terms of carbon emissions. So perhaps there is a false sense of security in France regarding electricity - we produce a lot of it and we produce it cleanly so why bother limiting our consumption? And worse than this there has for a long time been a conscious policy in France of encouraging electricity use as this will support a major national industry; half of all electric heaters in Europe are installed in French houses. There is at the moment a rather unpleasant debate taking place in France about national identity which has predictably turned into a slanging match about Muslims and immigrants. Seen from an outsider's point of view a short-sighted, protectionist obsession with monolithic heavy industries - nuclear, aeronautic, automobile - seems as much a part of French identity as drinking wine and eating pigs.