They have been cleaning it for decades now, they did not start just now. It’s more of an impetus to go all the way to make it swimmable. In the end, who cares as long as the result is there?
It matters because (imo) society’s priorities are wrong here and if we identify that maybe we can discuss it and persuade people.
Agree that it’s a great result overall!
In this case, you can rest assured that they’ve been doing a huge amount of work (both politicians enacting regulations, although funding could always have been better, local councils who worked on policies and outreach, scientists, and engineers) for the sake of having a clean river and more biodiversity. This effort more or less started in the 1990s. Chirac, who used to be Mayor of Paris, promised to swim in the Seine within 3 years when he unveiled a cleaning up effort in 1988. Which was obviously propaganda, but still the will was there.
Yes. Entertainment brings in money which can be used to pay for things with positive externalities.
> “I bid for the Olympics because it’s the only way to get the billions of pounds out of the government to develop the East End,” he said in 2008.
Ken Livingstone, former mayor of London. It's not for the athletes, but it's because of them.
It didn’t pan out as great value for the tax payer though.