Circling the city of Paris is an old abandoned railway. It was built in the 19th century,

and for decades it shuttled people in goods around the perimeter of the city. These days,

the defunct rails are used as walking paths. And in the fall of 2023, one of its tunnels was used as a makeshift classroom.

We went down and there were little desks set up in the tunnel and they were ready to have

the kids have school down there.

That is Eleanor Beardsley and Pierre's longtime correspondent in Paris.

It was a drill, but not for, you know, terrorist attack or something like that.

It was for a heat wave.

A heat wave.

Europe is warming twice as fast as the global average. And in recent years,

Paris has consistently been hit by so-called heat domes. The phenomenon where sweltering heat

stays in place for days. Not just in the middle of the summer.

You can have a heat dome on May, on June, on September. That's the odd to odd, who helped organize the heat wave drill that Eleanor visited in

2023.

So we have to think about the future and to be sure that any student can go to school

for two or three days, even if it's in a tunnel or in a parking.

Consider this. Paris has increasingly found itself on the front line of the climate crisis.

And covering the city and the rest of France now means regularly reporting on deadly climate events.

From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow.

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