5 . Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo has long worked to make her city less dependent on cars. She wanted to see more people using bicycles to get around. Over a number of years, the city government set limits on cars and increased the amount of bike paths from 200 kilometers to over 1,000 kilometers.

This year, Parisians are not complaining about too much automobile traffic. Instead, they say there are too many bikes. “Now, it’s really like a bike traffic jam(阻塞),” Thibault Quere, a spokesperson for France’s Federation of Bicycle Users, said. ”It’s kind of a good difficulty to have, especially when we think about what Paris used to be.”

Some famous roads along the River Seine are completely closed to cars. Now you see people riding bikes, running and walking with their families along the river. In another part of Paris, a bike path on Sebastopol Boulevard is one of the busiest in Europe, after opening in 2019. In one week in early September, it reached a record high of 124,000 riders.

The city will host the Summer Olympics in 2024 and plans to add more bike paths by then. Paris wants to reduce its pollution by half during the games, even as visitors from around the world will be in the city for the event. Organizers say all of the competition sites will be reachable by bike through a 60-kilometer network of bike paths.

The change to Paris, however, has not been easy. With more people using bikes, more people are making mistakes. Some of them are new to cycling and disobey traffic rules. But the environment may be improving. Cycling is good exercise and helps reduce pollution, which is still a problem for the large city. The French government blames atmospheric pollution for 48,000 early deaths in the country each year.

Hidalgo was re-elected in 2020 and plans to keep making what she calls a “Paris that breathes”. Her newest five-year bike plan includes over $250 million for more bike paths and bike parking. The new budget is an increase of over $100 million from her first five-year plan.

6 . Finding a California condor in the wild would be the most unusual treat. perhaps even more unusual than finding a wolf in Yellowstone National Park. In fact, the wolf was what opened my eyes to the fact that humans could bring an animal back to the place where it had disappeared.

In 1987, there were only 27 California condors left, none of which were in the wild, only in captive breeding programs, It was those breeding programs that contributed to their population rise, enough that by 1991 some of them could be freed into the wild.

Still, the hope of seeing a California condor, which remains an endangered species, is very low, let alone getting a photo of one. California condor population dropped mostly due to human factors, such as poaching and living areas destruction-these are challenges California condors still face today.

Although this is just a bird’s-eye view of the challenges California condors face and there are many others, it is part of why the opportunity to work with the US Fish and Wildlife Service team and their partners helping their recovery is so special to me as a photographer. I am not only able to photograph the birds in their wild living areas, but also understand and record how difficult the work is of those people on the front lines of the protection.

I am grateful for the work of the team, and my hope is that California condor population will continue to rise allowing future generations an opportunity I never had when I first got here-to look to the sky and see one flying around.

8 . When you think of a new place for growing food, you might think of Mars. But one Italian family believes one possible place is right here on the Earth: the ocean.

Nemo’s Garden is the world’s first underwater system of land plants. Located off the coast of Noli, Italy, it consists of several greenhouses called biospheres, each of which is attached to the seafloor. “The aim of it is to change agriculture, and add a possibility for growing produce in the ocean,” says co-founder Luca Gamberini.

His father Sergio Gamberini came up with the idea by combining his two passions — diving and gardening. In 2012, the project began with planting basil (罗勒) underwater. Now Nemo’s Garden is growing strong.

“Our limited number of resources can not promise sustainable (可持续的) development,” Luca says, “and we believe that underwater gives us some advantages over traditional agriculture.”

Floating six to ten meters underwater, plants in Nemo’s Garden are separated from any outside pathogens (病原体). Also, the temperature of the ocean water is an ideal environment for plant life. Besides, Nemo’s Garden uses a technique that uses water-based nutrients (养分) instead of soil. “Also, there is little interaction with the underwater environment and related ecosystems, which means no harm is caused to sea creatures,” adds Luca.

Everything is monitored on land through cameras and sensors, and settings can be adjusted. When it’s time to harvest, a diver will cut the vegetation, place it in bags and float them to the surface.

The team at Nemo’s Garden has plans for even bigger biospheres in the future, as well as other locations. Luca believes the future of Nemo’s Garden will be mostly along the coastlines where communities could benefit from the added space it offers.

9 . Driving and flying are huge contributors to carbon emissions (排放) and climate change. So Google is helping users make more wise decisions about how they travel. In addition to showing drivers the fastest way to get to their destination, Google Maps will now show the route that’s the most fuel-efficient.

To provide the new feature, Google used data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which estimates that eco-friendly routing has the potential to prevent more than one million tons of carbon emissions from entering the atmosphere per year. That’s equal to removing 200,000 cars from the road, Google claims.

On the Google Maps app, the most fuel-efficient route will be displayed with a small green leaf next to it. The route option will include information about how long the trip will take and how much fuel the driver could save.

It’s no secret that biking is a more eco-friendly travel option than driving, and the use of biking directions on Maps has increased by as much as 98% over the past year, according to Google. The tech company is focusing on attracting bike riders with a new feature called “lite navigation (导航)”. This feature is being introduced after Google heard from cyclists who were sick of following turn-by-turn directions on their phones. Cyclists don’t look at their phones for most of the ride, after all. With lite navigation, bike riders will be able to see details about their route without needing to keep their screen on or follow turn-by-turn navigation. Cyclists will also be able to track their trip progress and see their ETA (estimated time of arrival) updated in real time.

Moreover, Google Flights users will be able to see carbon emission estimates for nearly every flight in the search results. The estimates are “flight-specific” and “seat-specific”, Google said. “Newer aircraft are generally less polluting than older aircraft. Compared with economy-class seats, emissions increase for first-class seats because they take up more space and account for a larger share of total emissions,” Google added.

10 . The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has released the first global blueprint to save the world’s forests. The WWF is a global conservation charity. Its Forest Pathways Report details the state of the world’s forests and what governments can do to better protect them. The report focuses on the commitments that were made at COP26 ——a conference on the climate emergency held in the UK in 2021. At COP26, more than 140 countries, covering around 90% of the world’s forest, promised to end deforestation by 2030. However, the WWF says that this target is in danger of being missed.

In 2022, 66,000 square kilometres of forest around the world was lost. About two-thirds of this was from tropical forests. This is having an effect on wildlife, with the WWF’s blueprint noting a decline in the populations of species that depend on forests, such as gorillas, hornbills, orangutans and black-headed squirrel monkeys.

However, the report also highlights some conservation success stories. For instance, the Khata Conservation Area in Nepal has grown by a size amount to 3,000 football pitches, providing a home for tigers and other species. Meanwhile, in the UK, the Wild Ingleborough project, a partnership between the WWF and the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, is restoring 15square kilometres of land in the Yorkshire Dales back to its natural wild state, complete with woodlands. Mary Gagen, author of the Forest Pathways Report, says, “There are pockets of success where countries are approaching deforestation, and we know what needs to be done to grow those.”

The report includes a list of recommendations for world governments, providing a blueprint to save forests. This includes toughening up rules against deforestation as well as recognizing the rights of indigenous (当地的) peoples who live in the forests. They are the descendants (后代) of those who lived somewhere before another culture arrived and took over.There are also some specific suggestions for the UK Government, such as bringing in environmental standards for food that is bought and sold in the UK, so that none of it contributes to deforestation.