Paris will make itself greener and its streets cooler by creating "urban forests," Mayor Anne Hidalgo says. Her strategy, unveiled recently, is to create new urban parks and gardens, adding 30 hectares (74 acres) of green space and plantation of 20,000 new trees by the end of 2020. She said the €72-million ($84-million) plan would create the largest garden in the city around the Eiffel Tower.

The first phase is now expected to take place on an unused train line planned to create a green belt in the city, similar to the High Line Park in New York.

"We have an obligation to act today to avoid making this city impossible to live in down the road," Hidalgo said in an interview with Le Parisien.

Vincent Viguie, a scientist at the Paris-based International Research Center on Environment and Development, believes the city can create microclimates and reduce street-level temperature by reducing amplification of the heat off sidewalks and buildings.

France is blooming marvelous

European plantations are growing by an area the size of 1,500 soccer fields every day and France is leading the way. This despite the huge forest fires witnessed in recent years as temperatures rise.

Forests cover almost a third of France, due in part to increased protection and a decline in farming. The country is the fourth most forested in Europe, after Sweden, Finland and Spain. Since 1990, France's overall wooded or forested areas have increased by nearly 7%, that is 90,000 square kilometers (34,500 square miles), or about the size of Portugal.

Europe's heat wave: Desperate times call for desperate measures Gritting in summer? In the Netherlands, one municipality is spraying salted water on its roads to stop them from melting or cracking in the extreme heat. The salt extracts moisture from the air, which in turn cools the asphalt. Much of Germany's autobahn network has asphalt coated with a special substance that absorbs moisture more quickly, according to local authorities.

Europe's heat wave: Desperate times call for desperate measures The great whitewash Austria's railway network has deployed an army of workers to paint a 5-kilometer stretch of rail track white. It wants to test whether the paint will help the steel tracks, which can expand and buckle during a heatwave, to stay cooler. The metal can rise to 70 degrees Celcius. Rail travelers near Blundenz, about 60 kilometers south of Lindau on Lake Constance shouldn't notice any difference.

Europe's heat wave: Desperate times call for desperate measures Customers keep their cool Businesses face potential revenue losses if consumers sit out the sticky weather at home. Germany's Bayreuth Festival saw a wave of returned tickets for performances of composer Richard Wagner's operas due to a lack of air conditioning in the theater. The Berlin Dungeon, on the other hand, helped tourists to stay cool by filling coffins with icy water and inviting visitors to dunk their heads.

Europe's heat wave: Desperate times call for desperate measures Too hot to handle Europe's nuclear power stations rely on water from nearby rivers or seas to cool reactors used for electricity generation. A power plant at Grohnde, in central Germany, was due to be shut down on Friday afternoon because the water in the nearby Weser river was thought to be too hot. Lower Saxony's environment ministry said the plant would remain closed until the river temperature has fallen.

Europe's heat wave: Desperate times call for desperate measures Riot trucks repurposed In the German city of Wuppertal, a water cannon truck has been put to what environmental activists would say is a much better use. Some 40,000 liters of water was sprayed on the side of roads to keep the much-loved trees alive, which city officials said also aids road safety. After all, falling dead trees are a danger to traffic. City workers have also distributed 400 water sacks to younger trees.

Europe's heat wave: Desperate times call for desperate measures Never mind the planet The heatwave has prompted a continent not known for air conditioning to consider, in unison, installing the temperature cooling devices. According to Google Trends, searches for air conditioning (Klimagerät in German, or climatisation in French) and similar terms have skyrocketed over the past week, along with "pubs with air conditioning near me" in Britain, which spiked 2,100%.

Europe's heat wave: Desperate times call for desperate measures The ice creams are on me During exceedingly hot temperatures, European zoos have begun freezing their animals' food to help them stay cool. Fruit, vegetables and even fish have been turned into popsicles on which the animals can feast. In the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg, the public has been asked to watch out for grazing horses, cattle and sheep left without sufficient water and shade. Author: Nik Martin



Total too

The head of French energy firm Total said recently the company would invest $100 million annually on a new forest preservation and reforestation project.

"We want to set up a business unit to invest in projects that will preserve forests," Chief Executive Patrick Pouyanne said. "The most effective way today to eliminate carbon, for less than $10 a ton, is reforestation," he added.

"This is not philanthropy," he added. "It's about investing in the medium and long term. A project for the forests, it has to last a long time to be positive for the planet."

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From little acorns, great oaks grow

According to a study carried out by the University of Zurich on 520 big cities around the world, from now up to 2050 urban areas located in temperate regions will experience a climate change that would be similar in effect to them shifting 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) south.

A study released in July said that a massive campaign of reforestation could help battle climate change. The study by ETH Zurich and published in Science said a large-scale operation could capture two-thirds of man-made carbon emissions and reduce overall levels in the atmosphere to their lowest in almost a century.