AFP UK

Rescuers on Monday combed through the “catastrophic” damage Hurricane Ida did to Louisiana, a day after the fierce storm killed at least two people, stranded others in rising floodwaters and sheared the roofs off homes.

The city of New Orleans was still mostly without power over 24 hours after Ida slammed into the Louisiana coast as a Category 4 storm, exactly 16 years to the day that Hurricane Katrina made landfall, wreaking deadly havoc.

“The biggest concern is we’re still doing search and rescue and we have individuals all across southeast Louisiana… who are in a bad place,” Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards told NBC’s “Today”.

Two deaths have been confirmed as crews began fanning out in boats and off-road vehicles to search communities cut off by the hurricane.

Images of people being plucked from flooded cars and pictures of destroyed homes surfaced on social media, while the damage in New Orleans itself remained limited.

Ida — which was downgraded to a tropical depression on Monday — knocked out power for all of New Orleans, with more than a million properties across Louisiana without power, according to outage tracker PowerOutage.US.

“I was there 16 years ago. The wind seems worse this time but the damage seems less bad,” said French Quarter resident Dereck Terry, surveying his neighborhood in flip flops and a t-shirt, umbrella in hand.

“I have a broken window. Some tiles from the roof are on the streets and water came inside,” the 53-year-old retired pharmacist added.

According to Edwards the levee system in the affected parishes had “really held up very well, otherwise we would be facing much more problems today.”

– ‘Total devastation’ –

In the town of Jean Lafitte, just south of New Orleans, mayor Tim Kerner said the rapidly rising waters had overtopped the 7.5-foot-high (2.3-meter) levees.

“Total devastation, catastrophic, our town levees have been overtopped,” Kerner told ABC-affiliate WGNO.

“We have anywhere between 75 to 200 people stranded in Barataria,” after a barge took out a bridge to the island.

Cynthia Lee Sheng, president of Jefferson Parish covering part of the Greater New Orleans area, said people sheltered in their attics.

Several residents of LaPlace, just upstream from New Orleans, posted appeals for help on social media, saying they were trapped by rising flood waters.

“The damage is really catastrophic,” Edwards told Today, adding that Ida had “delivered the surge that was forecasted. The wind that was forecasted and the rain.”

President Joe Biden declared a major disaster for Louisiana and Mississippi, which gives the states access to federal aid.

One person was killed by a falling tree in Prairieville, 60 miles northwest of New Orleans, the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office said.

A second victim died while trying to drive through floodwaters in New Orleans, the Louisiana Department of Health tweeted.

Edwards reported on Twitter that Louisiana had deployed more than 1,600 personnel to conduct search and rescue across the state.

US Army Major General Hank Taylor told journalists at a Pentagon briefing that military, federal emergency management officials and the National Guard had activated more than 5,200 personnel in Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and Alabama.

– ‘Way less debris’ –

Most residents had heeded warnings of catastrophic damage and authorities’ instructions to flee.

“I stayed for Katrina and from what I’ve seen so far there is way less debris in the streets than after Katrina,” Mike, who has lived in the French Quarter, told AFP Monday, declining to give his last name.

The memory of Katrina, which made landfall on August 29, 2005, is still fresh in the state, where it caused some 1,800 deaths and billions of dollars in damage.

The National Hurricane Center issued warnings of storm surges and flash floods over portions of southeastern Louisiana, southern Mississippi and southern Alabama as Ida travels northeast.

As of 2100 GMT Monday, Ida was located about 20 miles northwest of Jackson, Mississippi, with maximum sustained winds of 20 miles per hour.

The storm system is expected to track across the United States all the way to the mid-Atlantic through Wednesday, creating the potential for flash flooding along the way.

Scientists have warned of a rise in cyclone activity as the ocean surface warms due to climate change, posing an increasing threat to the world’s coastal communities.

From endangered freshwater dolphins drowned by discarded fishing nets to elephants scavenging through rubbish, migratory species are among the most vulnerable to plastic pollution, a UN report on the Asia-Pacific region said Tuesday, calling for greater action to cut waste. 

Plastic particles have infiltrated even the most remote and seemingly-pristine regions of the planet, with tiny fragments discovered inside fish in the deepest recesses of the ocean and peppering Arctic sea ice.

The paper by the UN’s Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) focused on the impacts of plastic on freshwater species in rivers and on land animals and birds, which researchers said were often overlooked victims of humanity’s expanding trash crisis. 

It said that because these creatures encounter different environments — including industrialised and polluted areas — they are likely at risk of higher exposure to plastics and associated contaminants.

Researchers cited estimates that 80 percent of the plastic that ends up in the oceans originates on land — with rivers thought to play a key role in carrying debris out to sea. 

The report comes just days ahead of a major summit of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which will include a motion calling for an end to marine plastic pollution by 2030.

“Actions to address this global issue have fallen far short of what is needed,” said CMS Executive Secretary Amy Fraenkel.

“The focus has thus far been on clean up in our oceans, but that is already too late in the process. We need to focus on solutions and prevention of plastic pollution upstream.” 

– ‘Additional stress’ –

The UN report highlights two regions — the Ganges and Mekong river basins — which together contribute an estimated 200,000 tons of plastic pollution to the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean every year.

Discarded fishing gear were found to be major threats.

Dolphins can become entangled and trapped under water by old nets, with endangered Irrawaddy Dolphins and Ganges River Dolphins at particular risk. 

The report also said migratory seabirds, such as Black-footed Albatrosses and Laysan Albatrosses, may not be able to tell plastic from prey when flying over the ocean and can accidentally eat floating debris. 

This means the plastic could build up in their guts or be passed on to their chicks when they regurgitate food for them, it said. 

On land, Asian Elephants had also been observed scavenging on rubbish dumps in Sri Lanka and eating plastic in Thailand, the report noted.

The report stressed that species in Asia-Pacific face a multitude of threats, including habitat loss, overfishing, industrial pollution and climate change.  

“Even if plastic pollution is not the most significant of these stressors, it can add an additional stress to already vulnerable populations,” it said.  

It called for strategies to prevent plastic being dumped in the environment, reducing waste through better design and recycling, as well as greater efforts to understand the effects of this pollution on migratory species.

Thousands of people were ordered to evacuate Monday as a huge wildfire loomed over a major US tourist spot, filling the air with choking smoke.

The Caldor Fire has already torn through more than 270 square miles (700 square kilometers), razing hundreds of buildings.

On Monday it was roaring towards South Lake Tahoe, the main resort town in the popular holiday area that straddles the California and Nevada border.

“The firefighting conditions, the fuels, are historic,” said Cal Fire Incident Commander Jeff Veik, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “We will put this fire out. (But) it’s not going to be today.”

The western United States is burning at an alarming rate, with over 2,700 square miles blackened by late August in California alone — more than double the area consumed by this time in an average year.

The fires are being driven by a historic drought that has left swathes of the region parched, as man-made climate change takes a visible — and painful — toll, and people living in the area are forced to flee.

“I got a knock at 10 pm last night with a warning to be ready,” South Lake Tahoe resident Corinne Kobel told the Sacramento Bee newspaper.

“At 10 am this morning, it was the sheriffs kicking us out. I am freaking out.”

Kobel was among the 22,000 people ordered out of their homes on Monday morning, joining tens of thousands of others trying to escape the fire’s relentless march.

– Traffic jam –

An AFP journalist witnessed streams of traffic leaving the city, with cars and RVs clogging the main roads.

Among those stuck on the road was Mel Smothers, 74, who was whiling away the time spent in a traffic jam by playing his violin.

Smothers, who has lived in Tahoe since the 1970s, said this was the first time wildfires had chased him out. But it wouldn’t be the last.

“This is paradise, but you know with the recent fires, Lake Tahoe changed,” he told AFP.

“This is the way it’s going to be from now on. Every year now we have these fires.

“August is beautiful but probably it’s going to be smokey from now on.”

On Sunday as the fire tore through the Twin Bridges area, there were incongruous scenes as flames raged around ski lifts.

Snow cannon — usually used to help keep the pistes covered in winter — were turned on to try to keep the area wet.

Cal Fire director Thom Porter, said the fire had grown by more than 30 square miles overnight after the air above it cleared.

“When air clears, it’s taking the lid off your pot of boiling water; all of a sudden there’s that plume of heat and steam that comes out,” he said, according to the Sacramento Bee.

“Same thing happens on a fire. Also sucks in oxygen from all directions, puts fire and spot fires in all directions.”

– Winter sports spot –

The Caldor Fire began on August 14, and quickly spread through the Eldorado National Forest.

Smoke from the blaze has been threatening tourist spots around Lake Tahoe for a week, filling the air with a choking haze.

The alpine lake is known for its clear waters, and the areas surrounding it boasts spectacular scenery, including some of the most popular winter sports resorts in the western United States.

The blaze is one of scores across the region that are stretching the resources of local firefighters.

Further north, the huge Dixie Fire has ripped through more than 1,100 square miles in the six weeks since it erupted.

Thousands of firefighters and other emergency personnel are involved in battling the fires, which are fanned by gusting winds and fed by tinder-dry fuel.

Thousands of people were ordered to evacuate Monday as a huge wildfire loomed over a major US tourist spot, filling the air with choking smoke.

The Caldor Fire has already torn through more than 270 square miles (700 square kilometers), razing hundreds of buildings.

On Monday it was roaring towards South Lake Tahoe, the main resort town in the popular holiday area that straddles the California and Nevada border.

“The firefighting conditions, the fuels, are historic,” said Cal Fire Incident Commander Jeff Veik, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “We will put this fire out. (But) it’s not going to be today.”

The western United States is burning at an alarming rate, with over 2,700 square miles blackened by late August in California alone — more than double the area consumed by this time in an average year.

The fires are being driven by a historic drought that has left swathes of the region parched, as man-made climate change takes a visible — and painful — toll, and people living in the area are forced to flee.

“I got a knock at 10 pm last night with a warning to be ready,” South Lake Tahoe resident Corinne Kobel told the Sacramento Bee newspaper.

“At 10 am this morning, it was the sheriffs kicking us out. I am freaking out.”

Kobel was among the 22,000 people ordered out of their homes on Monday morning, joining tens of thousands of others trying to escape the fire’s relentless march.

– Traffic jam –

An AFP journalist witnessed streams of traffic leaving the city, with cars and RVs clogging the main roads.

Among those stuck on the road was Mel Smothers, 74, who was whiling away the time spent in a traffic jam by playing his violin.

Smothers, who has lived in Tahoe since the 1970s, said this was the first time wildfires had chased him out. But it wouldn’t be the last.

“This is paradise, but you know with the recent fires, Lake Tahoe changed,” he told AFP.

“This is the way it’s going to be from now on. Every year now we have these fires.

“August is beautiful but probably it’s going to be smokey from now on.”

On Sunday as the fire tore through the Twin Bridges area, there were incongruous scenes as flames raged around ski lifts.

Snow cannon — usually used to help keep the pistes covered in winter — were turned on to try to keep the area wet.

Cal Fire director Thom Porter, said the fire had grown by more than 30 square miles overnight after the air above it cleared.

“When air clears, it’s taking the lid off your pot of boiling water; all of a sudden there’s that plume of heat and steam that comes out,” he said, according to the Sacramento Bee.

“Same thing happens on a fire. Also sucks in oxygen from all directions, puts fire and spot fires in all directions.”

– Winter sports spot –

The Caldor Fire began on August 14, and quickly spread through the Eldorado National Forest.

Smoke from the blaze has been threatening tourist spots around Lake Tahoe for a week, filling the air with a choking haze.

The alpine lake is known for its clear waters, and the areas surrounding it boasts spectacular scenery, including some of the most popular winter sports resorts in the western United States.

The blaze is one of scores across the region that are stretching the resources of local firefighters.

Further north, the huge Dixie Fire has ripped through more than 1,100 square miles in the six weeks since it erupted.

Thousands of firefighters and other emergency personnel are involved in battling the fires, which are fanned by gusting winds and fed by tinder-dry fuel.

From endangered freshwater dolphins drowned by discarded fishing nets to elephants scavenging through rubbish, migratory species are among the most vulnerable to plastic pollution, a UN report on the Asia-Pacific region said Tuesday, calling for greater action to cut waste. 

Plastic particles have infiltrated even the most remote and seemingly-pristine regions of the planet, with tiny fragments discovered inside fish in the deepest recesses of the ocean and peppering Arctic sea ice.

The paper by the UN’s Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) focused on the impacts of plastic on freshwater species in rivers and on land animals and birds, which researchers said were often overlooked victims of humanity’s expanding trash crisis. 

It said that because these creatures encounter different environments — including industrialised and polluted areas — they are likely at risk of higher exposure to plastics and associated contaminants.

Researchers cited estimates that 80 percent of the plastic that ends up in the oceans originates on land — with rivers thought to play a key role in carrying debris out to sea. 

The report comes just days ahead of a major summit of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which will include a motion calling for an end to marine plastic pollution by 2030.

“Actions to address this global issue have fallen far short of what is needed,” said CMS Executive Secretary Amy Fraenkel.

“The focus has thus far been on clean up in our oceans, but that is already too late in the process. We need to focus on solutions and prevention of plastic pollution upstream.” 

– ‘Additional stress’ –

The UN report highlights two regions — the Ganges and Mekong river basins — which together contribute an estimated 200,000 tons of plastic pollution to the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean every year.

Discarded fishing gear were found to be major threats.

Dolphins can become entangled and trapped under water by old nets, with endangered Irrawaddy Dolphins and Ganges River Dolphins at particular risk. 

The report also said migratory seabirds, such as Black-footed Albatrosses and Laysan Albatrosses, may not be able to tell plastic from prey when flying over the ocean and can accidentally eat floating debris. 

This means the plastic could build up in their guts or be passed on to their chicks when they regurgitate food for them, it said. 

On land, Asian Elephants had also been observed scavenging on rubbish dumps in Sri Lanka and eating plastic in Thailand, the report noted.

The report stressed that species in Asia-Pacific face a multitude of threats, including habitat loss, overfishing, industrial pollution and climate change.  

“Even if plastic pollution is not the most significant of these stressors, it can add an additional stress to already vulnerable populations,” it said.  

It called for strategies to prevent plastic being dumped in the environment, reducing waste through better design and recycling, as well as greater efforts to understand the effects of this pollution on migratory species.

Thousands of people were ordered to evacuate Monday as a huge wildfire loomed down on a major US tourist spot, filling the air with choking smoke.

The Caldor Fire has already torn through more than 270 square miles (700 square kilometers), razing hundreds of buildings.

On Monday it was roaring towards South Lake Tahoe, the main resort town in the popular holiday area that straddles the California and Nevada border.

“The firefighting conditions, the fuels, are historic,” said Cal Fire Incident Commander Jeff Veik, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “We will put this fire out. It’s not going to be today.”

The western United States is burning at an alarming rate, with over 2,700 square miles blackened by late August — more than double the area consumed by this time in an average year.

The fires are being driven by a historic drought that has left swathes of the region parched, as man-made climate change takes a visible — and painful — toll, and people living in the area are forced to flee.

“I got a knock at 10 pm last night with a warning to be ready,” South Lake Tahoe resident Corinne Kobel told the Sacramento Bee newspaper.

“At 10 am this morning, it was the sheriffs kicking us out. I am freaking out.”

Kobel was among the 22,000 people ordered out of their homes on Monday morning, joining tens of thousands of others who have been forced to flee by the fire’s relentless march.

An AFP journalist witnessed streams of traffic leaving the city, with cars and RVs clogging the main roads.

On Sunday as the fire tore through the Twin Bridges area, there were incongruous scenes as flames raged around ski lifts.

The Caldor Fire began on August 14, and quickly spread through the Eldorado National Forest.

Smoke from the blaze has been threatening tourist spots around Lake Tahoe for a week, filling the air with a choking haze.

The alpine lake is known for its clear waters, and the areas surrounding it boasts spectacular scenery, including some of the most popular winter sports resorts in the western United States.

The blaze is one of scores across the region that are stretching the resources of local firefighters.

Further north, the huge Dixie Fire has ripped through more than 1,100 square miles in the six weeks since it erupted.

Thousands of firefighters and other emergency personnel are involved in battling the fires, which are fanned by gusting winds and fed by tinder-dry fuel.

The death toll from Hurricane Ida was expected to climb “considerably,” Louisiana’s governor warned Monday, as rescuers combed through the “catastrophic” damage wreaked as it tore through the southern United States as a Category 4 storm.

The city of New Orleans was still without power almost 24 hours after Ida slammed into the Louisiana coast, exactly 16 years to the day Hurricane Katrina made landfall, wreaking deadly havoc.

“The biggest concern is we’re still doing search and rescue and we have individuals all across southeast Louisiana… who are in a bad place,” Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards told the Today show Monday morning.

One death has been confirmed so far but Edwards said he expected the toll “to go up considerably.”

Images of people being plucked from flooded cars and pictures of destroyed homes surfaced on social media, while the damage in New Orleans itself remained limited.

Branches, broken glass and other debris littered New Orleans’s downtown, while in the touristy French Quarter, a number of trees were uprooted.

Ida — which was downgraded to a tropical storm early Monday — knocked out power for all of New Orleans, with more than a million properties across Louisiana without power, according to outage tracker PowerOutage.US.

“I was there 16 years ago. The wind seems worse this time but the damage seems less bad,” said French Quarter resident Dereck Terry, surveying his neighborhood in flip flops and a t-shirt, umbrella in hand.

“I have a broken window. Some tiles from the roof are on the streets and water came inside,” the 53-year-old retired pharmacist added.

According to Edwards the levee system in the affected parishes had “really held up very well, otherwise we would be facing much more problems today.”

Electricity provider Entergy reported that it was providing back-up power to New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board, which operates the pumping stations used to control flooding.

– ‘Total devastation’ –

In the town of Jean Lafitte, just south of New Orleans, mayor Tim Kerner said the rapidly rising waters had overtopped the 7.5-foot-high (2.3-meter) levees.

“Total devastation, catastrophic, our town levees have been overtopped,” Kerner told ABC-affiliate WGNO.

“We have anywhere between 75 to 200 people stranded in Barataria,” after a barge took out the swing bridge to the island.

Cynthia Lee Sheng, president of Jefferson Parish covering part of the Greater New Orleans area, said people were sheltering in their attics.

Several residents of LaPlace, just upstream from New Orleans, posted appeals for help on social media, saying they were trapped by rising flood waters.

“The damage is really catastrophic,” Edwards told Today, adding that Ida had “delivered the surge that was forecasted. The wind that was forecasted and the rain.”

President Joe Biden declared a major disaster for Louisiana and Mississippi, which gives the states access to federal aid.

One person was killed by a falling tree in Prairieville, 60 miles northwest of New Orleans, the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office said.

Edwards reported on Twitter that Louisiana had deployed more than 1,600 personnel to conduct search and rescue across the state.

“We’re going to be responding to this hurricane for quite a while and then we’re going to be recovering from it for many months,” Edwards said.

US Army Major General Hank Taylor told journalists at Pentagon briefing the military, federal emergency management officials and the National Guard had activated more than 5,200 personnel in Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and Alabama.

“They bring a variety of assets including high water vehicles, rotary lift and other transportation capability to support recovery efforts,” he said.

– ‘Way less debris’ –

Most residents had heeded warnings of catastrophic damage and authorities’ instructions to flee.

“I stayed for Katrina and from what I’ve seen so far there is way less debris in the streets than after Katrina,” Mike, who has lived in the French Quarter, told AFP Monday, declining to give his last name.

The memory of Katrina, which made landfall on August 29, 2005, is still fresh in the state, where it caused some 1,800 deaths and billions of dollars in damage.

The National Hurricane Center issued warnings of storm surges and flash floods over portions of southeastern Louisiana, southern Mississippi and southern Alabama as Ida travels northeast.

As of 1500 GMT Monday, Ida was located about 65 miles (105 kilometers) southwest of Jackson, Mississippi, packing maximum sustained winds of 40 miles per hour.

The storm system will move further inland and is expected to be located over western and central Mississippi by Monday afternoon, before tracking across the United States all the way to the mid-Atlantic through Wednesday, creating the potential for flash flooding along the way.

Scientists have warned of a rise in cyclone activity as the ocean surface warms due to climate change, posing an increasing threat to the world’s coastal communities.

The death toll from Hurricane Ida was expected to climb “considerably,” Louisiana’s governor warned Monday, as rescuers combed through the “catastrophic” damage wreaked as it tore through the southern United States as a Category 4 stormsoar.

The city of New Orleans was still without power almost 24 hours after Ida slammed into the Louisiana coast, exactly 16 years to the day Hurricane Katrina made landfall, wreaking deadly havoc.

“The biggest concern is we’re still doing search and rescue and we have individuals all across southeast Louisiana… who are in a bad place,” Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards told the Today show Monday morning.

One death has been confirmed so far but Edwards said he expected the toll “to go up considerably.”

Images of people being plucked from flooded cars and pictures of destroyed homes surfaced on social media, while the damage in New Orleans itself remained limited.

Branches, broken glass and other debris littered New Orleans’s downtown, while in the touristy French Quarter, a number of trees were uprooted.

Ida — which was downgraded to a tropical storm early Monday — knocked out power for all of New Orleans, with more than a million properties across Louisiana without power, according to outage tracker PowerOutage.US.

“I was there 16 years ago. The wind seems worse this time but the damage seems less bad,” said French Quarter resident Dereck Terry, surveying his neighborhood in flip flops and a t-shirt, umbrella in hand.

“I have a broken window. Some tiles from the roof are on the streets and water came inside,” the 53-year-old retired pharmacist added.

According to Edwards the levee system in the affected parishes had “really held up very well, otherwise we would be facing much more problems today.”

Electricity provider Entergy reported that it was providing back-up power to New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board, which operates the pumping stations used to control flooding.

– ‘Total devastation’ –

In the town of Jean Lafitte, just south of New Orleans, mayor Tim Kerner said the rapidly rising waters had overtopped the 7.5-foot-high (2.3-meter) levees.

“Total devastation, catastrophic, our town levees have been overtopped,” Kerner told ABC-affiliate WGNO.

“We have anywhere between 75 to 200 people stranded in Barataria,” after a barge took out the swing bridge to the island.

Cynthia Lee Sheng, president of Jefferson Parish covering part of the Greater New Orleans area, said people were sheltering in their attics.

Several residents of LaPlace, just upstream from New Orleans, posted appeals for help on social media, saying they were trapped by rising flood waters.

“The damage is really catastrophic,” Edwards told Today, adding that Ida had “delivered the surge that was forecasted. The wind that was forecasted and the rain.”

President Joe Biden declared a major disaster for Louisiana and Mississippi, which gives the states access to federal aid.

One person was killed by a falling tree in Prairieville, 60 miles northwest of New Orleans, the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office said.

Edwards reported on Twitter that Louisiana had deployed more than 1,600 personnel to conduct search and rescue across the state.

“We’re going to be responding to this hurricane for quite a while and then we’re going to be recovering from it for many months,” Edwards said.

US Army Major General Hank Taylor told journalists at Pentagon briefing the military, federal emergency management officials and the National Guard had activated more than 5,200 personnel in Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and Alabama.

“They bring a variety of assets including high water vehicles, rotary lift and other transportation capability to support recovery efforts,” he said.

– ‘Way less debris’ –

Most residents had heeded warnings of catastrophic damage and authorities’ instructions to flee.

“I stayed for Katrina and from what I’ve seen so far there is way less debris in the streets than after Katrina,” Mike, who has lived in the French Quarter, told AFP Monday, declining to give his last name.

The memory of Katrina, which made landfall on August 29, 2005, is still fresh in the state, where it caused some 1,800 deaths and billions of dollars in damage.

The National Hurricane Center issued warnings of storm surges and flash floods over portions of southeastern Louisiana, southern Mississippi and southern Alabama as Ida travels northeast.

As of 1500 GMT Monday, Ida was located about 65 miles (105 kilometers) southwest of Jackson, Mississippi, packing maximum sustained winds of 40 miles per hour.

The storm system will move further inland and is expected to be located over western and central Mississippi by Monday afternoon, before tracking across the United States all the way to the mid-Atlantic through Wednesday, creating the potential for flash flooding along the way.

Scientists have warned of a rise in cyclone activity as the ocean surface warms due to climate change, posing an increasing threat to the world’s coastal communities.

Drivers in Paris faced longer trips Monday as a lower speed limit of 30 kilometres per hour came into effect for most of the capital’s streets, part of Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s pledge to reduce traffic and pollution.

While the measure has been praised by environmental groups and many residents, critics accuse the leftwing Hidalgo, who is weighing a bid for the presidency, of penalising millions of people who drive into the French capital each day for work.

Nearly two-thirds of Paris’s roads were already limited to 30 kph (19 miles per hour), mostly along narrow streets or those near schools, in line with the maximum imposed in other large cities such as Lille or Nantes.

Now only a handful of major thoroughfares, including the iconic Champs-Elysees boulevard, will let people cruise at 50 kph.

The Paris ring road or “Peripherique,” one of Europe’s most heavily used with some 1.1 million users each day, will also remain at 70 kph, though Hidalgo has said she wants to reduce lane numbers to make more room for bikes and pedestrians.

Taxis and delivery drivers in particular have assailed the lower speeds as impractical and unnecessary.

“It’s not easy to stay at just 30 kph in a bus lane,” Smail Chekimi, who has driven his cab for 28 years, told AFP.

“This morning I was a bit stressed, a client was pretty angry because a trip took five to ten minutes longer than normal,” Chekimi said.

“Some taxi drivers might decide to quit because of it.”

– ‘More complicated’ –

For Fabrice Bosc, a glass fitter who relies on his delivery van, the new limits will only create bigger traffic jams in the capital.

“We already have enough trouble working with the 50 kph limit, at 30 kph things are just going to get more complicated,” said Bosc, 55.

The move comes as Hidalgo also pushes ahead with the removal of 60,000 of the city’s roughly 140,000 street-level parking spaces.

City officials say they are responding to tougher pollution rules and a broad public consensus on the need to encourage public transport and other alternatives such as bikes or electric scooters.

An opinion poll commissioned by City Hall late last year found that 59 percent of Parisians approved the lower speed limits — though it was supported by just 36 percent of people living in the suburbs.

“It’s true that there’s too much noise — sometimes you can’t even hear people when they’re talking,” said Marie Hiz, who manages the Carrefour (The Crossroad) cafe on a corner of the busy Miromesnil street.

“At 30 kph, things are going to change. We’ll have fewer cars and people will pay more attention,” Hiz said.

But she sympathised with deliverers and others who drive for a living.

“Imagine a driver who has to go all over Paris, all day, at just 30 kph. Even at 60 kph he still never arrives on time,” she said.

– Will it work? –

So far, however, few drivers appeared to be respecting the lower limits during the Monday morning rush hour.

“You can’t see any difference yet,” said Pierre Morizot, a 32-year-old cyclist who was on the Boulevard Haussmann, where 30 kph is now the norm.

“There are more and more bikes and there are lanes are everywhere, but we’re still very close to cars, so slowing them down will make things safer,” he said.

But many drivers said the lower limits would be nearly impossible to enforce and might have only a minimal impact on actual driving speeds.

“All the cities that have gone to 30 kph put forward the same arguments — pollution, noise, accidents,” Pierre Chasseray, head of the 40 Million Motorists association, told AFP.

“Except that when you look at it closely, you see that the introduction of 30 kph has not led to a reduction in speed. So in the end, there is no reduction in sound, there is no reduction in pollution,” he said.

The use of leaded petrol has been eradicated from the globe, a milestone that will prevent more than 1.2 million premature deaths and save world economies over $2.4 trillion annually, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said Monday.

Nearly a century after doctors first issued warnings about the toxic effects of leaded petrol, Algeria — the last country to use the fuel — exhausted its supplies last month, UNEP said, calling the news a landmark win in the fight for cleaner air.

“The successful enforcement of the ban on leaded petrol is a huge milestone for global health and our environment,” said Inger Andersen, executive director of UNEP, which is headquartered in Nairobi. 

Even as recently as two decades ago, more than 100 countries around the world were still using leaded petrol, despite studies linking it to premature deaths, poor health and soil and air pollution.

Concerns were raised as early as 1924, when dozens of workers were hospitalised and five declared dead after suffering convulsions at a refinery run by US giant Standard Oil, nicknamed the “looney gas building” by staff. 

Nevertheless, until the 1970s almost all the gasoline sold across the globe contained lead.

When UNEP launched its campaign in 2002, many major economic powers had already stopped using the fuel, including the United States, China and India. But the situation in lower-income nations remained dire.

– ‘End of a toxic era’ –

By 2016, after North Korea, Myanmar and Afghanistan stopped selling leaded petrol, only a handful of countries were still operating service stations providing the fuel, with Algeria finally following Iraq and Yemen in ending its reliance on the pollutant.

UNEP said in a statement that the eradication of leaded petrol would “prevent more than 1.2 million premature deaths per year, increase IQ points among children, save $2.44 trillion (2.07 trillion euros) for the global economy, and decrease crime rates.”

The agency said the dollar figure came from a 2010 study led by scientists at California State University at Northridge.

Its chief factors were the benefits of better health for the overall economy; lower medical costs; and a dip in criminal activity — higher crime rates have previously been linked to exposure to leaded fuel.

UNEP warned that fossil fuel use in general must still be drastically reduced to stave off the frightening effects of climate change.

Greenpeace hailed the news as “a celebration of the end of one toxic era.”

“It clearly shows that if we can phase out one of the most dangerous polluting fuels in the 20th century, we can absolutely phase out all fossil fuels,” said Thandile Chinyavanhu, climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace Africa.

“Africa’s governments must give no more excuses for the fossil fuel industry,” she added.

Globally, vehicle sales are set to climb exponentially, particularly in emerging markets.

“The transport sector is responsible for nearly a quarter of energy-related global greenhouse gas emissions and is set to grow to one third by 2050,” UNEP said, adding that 1.2 billion new vehicles would hit the streets in the coming decades.

“This includes millions of poor-quality used vehicles exported from Europe, the United States and Japan, to mid- and low-income countries. 

“This contributes to planet warming and air polluting traffic and (is) bound to cause accidents,” the global body said.

Earlier this month, a bombshell report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that Earth’s average temperature would be 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer around 2030 compared to pre-industrial times.

A decade earlier than projected, the rise has raised alarm bells about the use of fossil fuels.