<
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/09/world/europe/paris-little-belt-climate-change.html>
"Across the street from a block of dense office buildings in western Paris,
Bernard Sokler was surrounded by trees, weeds and crickets, as he tended to a
bush of purple wildflowers in a largely forgotten strip of land.
Mr. Sokler, 60, and his team look after the greenery around a set of disused
train tracks that circle Paris, known as the Little Belt, that the city is
pushing to revitalize as it aims to mitigate the effects of climate change.
With temperatures recently soaring to as high as 95 degrees Fahrenheit, the
project is intended to offer some respite for the city’s residents — though it
will come at a cost to the flora and fauna that now call the tracks home.
“If you want a true nature reserve, you can’t let humans in,” said Philippe
Billot, who oversees Mr. Sokler and other gardeners on part of the Little Belt
as part of his work for Espaces, an environmental group that, among other
things, helps take care of green spaces in the Paris region. “But,” Mr. Billot
added, “Paris will be one of the worst cities in terms of global warming, so we
need to open places like these.”
Paris has just half the green cover of Berlin and Madrid, and the dense suburbs
surrounding the French capital put the green of the countryside even farther
out of reach. Central Paris is typically two or three degrees Celsius (three to
five degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than its suburbs, and that difference can
stretch to 10 degrees during extreme heat waves as buildings trap the excess
heat."
Via
Future Crunch:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-child-poverty-leprosy-conservation-california/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
