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Opinion: Beyond the Doom and Gloom, Here’s How to Stimulate Climate Action
Scientific American
Another year of record fossil fuel burning leading torecord high global temperatures. Time is running out to solve the climate crisis, and catastrophe looms… But can you turn the doom-induced hopelessness into meaningful change? Our recent global study says yes—but these messages must be used wisely. […]
To help figure out the precise impact of climate doomerism, we recently completedone of the largest experiments ever conducted on climate change behavior. […]
Our paper was recently published at the journal Science Advances, where our findings revealed that doom and gloom messaging was highly effective for stimulating climate change information sharing, like posting on the Internet or social media, where negativity reigns. […]
But … we found that this strategy had no effect on policy support or climate beliefs; for these outcomes, writing a letter to a future generation member explaining one’s climate actions today, or thinking about the consequences of climate change in one’s region, were the most effective interventions. Doom and gloom even backfired when it came to more effortful behavior. Hearing these messages actually decreased people’s pro-environmental behavior… When faced with the enormous stakes of the climate crisis, individual-level actions might seem futile.
So doom and gloom messaging can do both things: induce helplessness, discouraging individual-level action; but also motivate people to spread the word. […]
We did not find any silver bullet for spurring climate action…
Globally representative evidence on the actual and perceived support for climate action
Nature Climate Change
UN chief warns climate chaos and food crises threaten global peace: ‘Empty bellies fuel unrest’Abstract: Mitigating climate change necessitates global cooperation, yet global data on individuals’ willingness to act remain scarce. In this study, we conducted a representative survey across 125 countries, interviewing nearly 130,000 individuals. Our findings reveal widespread support for climate action. Notably, 69% of the global population expresses a willingness to contribute 1% of their personal income, 86% endorse pro-climate social norms and 89% demand intensified political action. Countries facing heightened vulnerability to climate change show a particularly high willingness to contribute. Despite these encouraging statistics, we document that the world is in a state of pluralistic ignorance, wherein individuals around the globe systematically underestimate the willingness of their fellow citizens to act. This perception gap, combined with individuals showing conditionally cooperative behaviour, poses challenges to further climate action. Therefore, raising awareness about the broad global support for climate action becomes critically important in promoting a unified response to climate change. […]
Discussion: Climate scientists have stressed that immediate, concerted and determined action against climate change is necessary. Against this backdrop, our study sheds light on people’s willingness to contribute to climate action around the world. What sets our study apart from existing cross-cultural studies on climate change perceptions and policy views is its globally representative coverage and its behavioural science perspective.
The results are encouraging. About two-thirds of the global population report being willing to incur a personal cost to fight climate change, and the overwhelming majority demands political action and supports pro-climate norms. This indicates that the world is united in its normative judgement about climate change and the need to act.
AP News
The United Nations chief warned Tuesday that climate chaos and food crises are increasing threats to global peace, telling a high-level U.N. meeting that climate disasters imperil food production and “empty bellies fuel unrest.”
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the U.N. Security Council to address the impact of food shortages and rising temperatures on international peace and security — a view echoed by many countries but not Russia.
“Climate and conflict are two leading drivers of (our) global food crisis,” the secretary-general said. “ Where wars rage, hunger reigns – whether due to displacement of people, destruction of agriculture, damage to infrastructure, or deliberate policies of denial.”
CNN
A crucial system of ocean currents may already be on course to collapse, according to a new report, with alarming implications for sea level rise and global weather — leading temperatures to plunge dramatically in some regions and rise in others.
Using exceptionally complex and expensive computing systems, scientists found a new way to detect an early warning signal for the collapse of these currents, according to the study published Friday in the journal Science Advances. And as the planet warms, there are already indications it is heading in this direction.
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (the AMOC) — of which the Gulf Stream is part — works like a giant global conveyor belt, taking warm water from the tropics toward the farNorth Atlantic, where the water cools, becomes saltier and sinks deep into the ocean, before spreading southward.
Amazon River may be altered forever by climate change
Science
Jochen Schöngart darts back and forth along an escarpment just above the Amazon River, a short water taxi ride from downtown Manaus, Brazil. It’s still early this October morning in 2023, but it’s already hot and his face is beaded with sweat. “Look, there’s a piece of ceramic!” he says, nodding to a worn shard lodged between boulders, likely a relic of an earlier civilization. It’s not the only one.
Schöngart, a forest scientist at the National Institute of Amazon Research (INPA), stoops and stares at the bedrock at his feet. Well below the river’s normal level for this time of year, the rock bears a gallery of life-size faces, perhaps carved during a megadrought 1000 years ago. Now, they have been exposed again by a new drought, the worst in the region’s modern history.
In the previous 4 months, only a few millimeters of rain have fallen in this city of 2 million at the confluence of the Negro and Amazon rivers. Normally it gets close to a half a meter during the same period. The Amazon sank steadily beginning in June, as it does most years during the dry season. But by mid-October, the port’s river gauge reached the lowest level observed since the record began in 1902. Freighters coming up from the Atlantic Ocean—the city’s primary supply line—were blocked by shoals. Factories furloughed workers.
A Collapse of the Amazon Could Be Coming ‘Faster Than We Thought’
The New York Times
Up to half of the Amazon rainforest could transform into grasslands or weakened ecosystems in the coming decades, a new study found, as climate change, deforestation and severe droughts like the one the region is currently experiencing damage huge areas beyond their ability to recover.
Those stresses in the most vulnerable parts of the rainforest could eventually drive the entire forest ecosystem, home to a tenth of the planet’s land species, into acute water stress and past a tipping point that would trigger a forest-wide collapse, researchers said.
While earlier studies have assessed the individual effects of climate change and deforestation on the rainforest, this peer-reviewed study, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, is the first major research to focus on the cumulative effects of a range of threats.
“This study adds it all up to show how this tipping point is closer than other studies estimated,” said Carlos Nobre, an author of the study.
Amazon rainforest could reach ‘tipping point’ by 2050, scientists warn
The Guardian
Up to half of the Amazon rainforest could hit a tipping point by 2050 as a result of water stress, land clearance and climate disruption, a study has shown.
The paper, which is the most comprehensive to date in its analysis of the compounding impacts of local human activity and the global climate crisis, warned that the forest had already passed a safe boundary and urged remedial action to restore degraded areas and improve the resilience of the ecosystem.
Bernardo Flores of the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil, the lead author of the study, said he was surprised by the results, which projected a potential shift from slow to rapid forest decline earlier than he had expected.
‘We are in an era of megafires’: new tactics demanded as wildfires intensify across South America
The Guardian
As South America endures unprecedented high temperatures, after the hottest January on record globally, it is still coming to terms with the devastating wildfires that have torn across the continent. […]
According to the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, 2023 was a year of intense wildfire activity in South America. Wildfire carbon emissions in Chile and parts of Argentina in the first two months were the second highest in 20 years. […]
Fires have become an increasing problem in recent years. Scientists cite a combination of El Niño, a weather pattern that causes sea temperatures to rise in the Pacific, affecting weather worldwide, and the climate crisis for creating the conditions in which fires can spread uncontrolled.
Wildfire Smoke Will Worsen, New Study Shows, and Protections Are Few
The New York Times
More than 125 million Americans will be exposed to unhealthy levels of air pollution by the middle of the century, largely because of increased smoke from wildfires, according to estimates released on Monday. […]
“With wildfire smoke in particular, we are not going to adapt our way out of the problem,” said Brian G. Henning, director of the Institute for Climate, Water and the Environment at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash. “It’s really hard to address.” […]
Inhaling the tiny particles in wildfire smoke is associated with strokes, heart disease, respiratory disease, lung cancer and early death, according to Susan Anenberg, director of the Climate and Health Institute at George Washington University. “The higher the pollution level and the longer the duration of exposure,” she said, “the more risk there is.”
Hawaii Is Bailing Out Its Wildfire-Causing Energy Company
Jacobin
Last August, a deadly wildfire tore through Hawaii, erasing the town of Lahaina and killing over one hundred people. The state’s publicly traded utility corporation was found responsible; it is now facing a deluge of claims from residents seeking compensation for damages, as well as lawsuits from the insurance companies that have been paying out disaster claims.
Hawaii’s electricity is provided by a for-profit utility supplier that is granted monopoly power over energy distribution. In addition to its dominance of Hawaii’s power grid, Hawaiian Electric Industries, Inc., (HEI) enjoys almost complete autonomy in the physical management of its power lines on the islands of Oahu, Hawaii, Maui, Lanai, and Molokai. Only residents of the island of Kauaʻi maintain some semblance of control over their electricity, through a resident-owned energy cooperative. […]
On January 23, state legislators introduced measures drafted by HEI to safeguard the company from bankruptcy by allowing it to raise costs to residents and issue a new bond covering the costly bill for starting the wildfire. Essentially, the state plans on issuing a low-APR, no-limit credit card that HEI can use to pay its bills, with minimal risk to the long-term financial health of the corporation. The monopoly’s survival is crucial to the state of Hawaii, which would lose 95 percent of its electrical coverage should HEI go bankrupt and cease operations. It is also crucial to the company’s boardroom.
Recycling was a lie — a big lie — to sell more plastic, industry experts say
CBC News
Although our landfills and oceans are full of it, we are as dependent as ever on plastic. And since COVID-19, it's gotten worse. […]
Although activists sounded the alarm about plastic waste in the 1970s, … from 1990 to 2010, plastic production more than doubled. We've been sorting our trash for decades, believing it would be recycled. But the truth is the vast majority of the plastic we use won't be. Over the last seven decades, less than 10 per cent of plastic waste has been recycled. […]
In the '80s, the industry was at the centre of an environmental backlash. Fearing an outright ban on plastics, manufacturers looked for ways to get ahead of the problem. They looked at recycling as a way to improve the image of their product and started labeling plastics with the now ubiquitous chasing-arrows symbol with a number inside. […]
"If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they're not going to be as concerned about the environment," says Larry Thomas, another top industry official interviewed in Plastic Wars.
A Battle Over Plastic Recycling Claims Heats Up in California Over ‘Truth in Labeling’ Law
Inside Climate News
Two environmental organizations are challenging a draft state report on California’s “Truth in Labeling” recycling law, saying the preliminary data it contains could allow companies to make broader plastics recycling claims than the 2021 law allows and reveals potentially illegal exports of plastics waste to Mexico.
The report is based on data obtained from a survey of facilities that collect, sort and bale a variety of waste for potential recycling, including paper, metals and plastic.
Until 2021, California did not set specific standards for when a recycling logo could be used on products. Then lawmakers passed SB343, which prohibits use of the “chasing arrows” symbol or any other indicator of recyclability on products and packaging unless certain criteria are met.
Revealed: the 1,200 big methane leaks from waste dumps trashing the planet
The Guardian
There have been more than 1,000 huge leaks of the potent greenhouse gas methane from landfill waste dumps since 2019, the Guardian can reveal.
Analysis of global satellite data from around the world shows the populous nations of south Asia are a hotspot for these super-emitter events, as well as Argentina and Spain, developed countries where proper waste management should prevent leaks.
Landfills emit methane when organic waste such as food scraps, wood, card, paper and garden waste decompose in the absence of oxygen. Methane, also called natural gas, traps 86 times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over 20 years, making it a critical target for climate action. Scientists have said emissions from unmanaged landfills could double by 2050 as urban populations grow, blowing the chance of avoiding climate catastrophe.
U.S. Gas Producers Are Racing to Sell to Asia. And Mexico Is Key.
The New York Times
As soon as next year, the United States’ fossil fuel industry will gain its first foothold on a valuable shortcut to sell natural gas to Asia. The shortcut goes straight through Mexico.
The new route could cut travel times to energy-hungry Asian nations roughly in half by piping the gas to a shipping terminal on Mexico’s Pacific Coast, bypassing the traffic- and drought-choked Panama Canal. […]
Soaring production in the United States, particularly in the Permian Basin of West Texas, combined with the world’s growing appetite, has raised concerns that gas use could delay the world’s transition to cleaner energy sources, like solar or wind, that don’t produce the greenhouse gases causing climate change. Last month the Biden administration paused the approval process for new export-terminal projects in the U.S. while it considers the effects of gas on global warming.
What’s at Stake if the U.S. OK’s Building This Gas Pipeline to Mexico
DeSmog
The Saguaro Connector Pipeline threatens tribal sacred sites and could fuel the LNG boom, opponents say. […]
Last month, the Biden administration announced a pause in the permitting of 17 proposed LNG export facilities… All together, the 17 proposed LNG export facilities that have been paused, and five that are under construction and not affected by the pause, could emit as much greenhouse gas as 675 coal-fired power plants.
Yet, the potential emissions from the LNG export boom fueled by the Saguaro Connector Pipeline are unknown, and it’s unclear if Biden’s pause on LNG export approvals could affect the pipeline. Mexico Pacific, which would own the section of pipeline in Mexico, has Department of Energy (DOE) authorization to export U.S. natural gas to Mexico under a previous application.
Scientists warn of looming ‘ecosystem collapse’ in Louisiana’s wetlands
The Washington Post
Rapidly rising seas are wreaking havoc on Louisiana’s coastal wetlands, and could devastate three-quarters of thestate’s natural buffer against hurricanes in the coming decades, scientists found in a study published Thursday.
The new research documents how a sudden burst of sea level rise over the past 13 years — the type of surge once not expected until later this century — has left the overwhelming majority of the state’s coastal wetland sites in a state of current or expected “drowning,” where the seas are rising faster than wetlands can grow.
“We [can] treat the past decade or so like a really large-scale natural experiment, trying to evaluate how the natural system responds to such a high rate of sea level rise,” said Guandong Li, the lead author of a group of scientists at Tulane University who published the study Thursday in the journal Nature Communications.
When a climate denier becomes Louisiana’s governor: Jeff Landry’s first month in office
Floodlight via Grist
In his first four weeks in office, Louisiana Republican Governor Jeff Landry has filled the ranks of state environmental posts with fossil fuel executives.
Landry has taken aim at the state’s climate task force for possible elimination as part of a sweeping reorganization of Louisiana’s environmental bureaucracy. The goal, according to Landry’s executive order, is to “create a better prospective business climate.” […]
Landry, who has labeled climate change “a hoax,” wants to grow the oil and gas industry… Environmentalists blame the industry for the pollution that has harmed vulnerable communities in the state and for the climate change tied to increased flooding, land loss, drought, and heat waves in the Gulf Coast state.
Greenland is turning green again for the first time since medieval times
USA Today
We may need to rethink that old expression "Greenland is ice, Iceland is green."
New research published Tuesday says that because of global warming, Greenland’s ice sheet is melting fast – and being replaced by vegetation.
Parts of Greenland are becoming green again for the first time since the Vikings visited nearly 1,000 years ago, according to study co-author Jonathan Carrivick, an Earth scientist at the University of Leeds in the U.K.
And where there was once snow and ice just a few decades ago, there are now areas of shrub, along with barren rock and wetlands, the study reports.
Opinion: The Climate Crisis is Starving Polar Bears. Humans Should Take Note.
Bloomberg
A lone polar bear on an iceberg. This year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year People’s Choice Award winner is, in many ways, a photo we’ve seen before. It’s a peaceful scene, with the slumbering bear reminiscent of a contented house cat. Yet it’s a reminder that all life depends on ecosystems that are growing increasingly fragile as the planet heats with our greenhouse-gas emissions.
A new study underscores the same message of fragility through images of polar bears in a landscape we rarely envisage —terrain completely devoid of snow or ice. Researchers tracked 20 bears in Manitoba, Canada, equipping them with video collars to monitor activity levels and food intake. There’s a lesson for us all in the surprising and sobering results.
UN Warns Human Activity Pushes Over 1 in 5 Migratory Species Toward Extinction
Common Dreams via truthout
As world governments gathered in Uzbekistan Monday for the United Nations conference on migratory species, they centered the theme “Nature Knows No Borders” — an idea that a new landmark report said must take hold across the globe to push policymakers in all countries and regions to protect the billions of animals that travel each year to reproduce and find food.
The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) marked the opening of the 14th Conference of the Parties (CMS COP14) to the United Nations biodiversity treaty by releasing the first-ever State of the World’s Migratory Species report, showing that nearly half of migrating species are declining in population.
The crisis is especially dire for more than 1 in 5 species that are threatened with extinction, and 70 species listed under the CMS which have become more endangered, including the steppe eagle, the Egyptian vulture, and the wild camel.
As Use of A.I. Soars, So Does the Energy and Water It Requires
Yale Environment 360
[…] Time will sort hype from reality, but one consequence of the explosion of artificial intelligence is clear: this technology’s environmental footprint is large and growing.
A.I. use is directly responsible for carbon emissions from non-renewable electricity and for the consumption of millions of gallons of fresh water, and it indirectly boosts impacts from building and maintaining the power-hungry equipment on which A.I. runs. As tech companies seek to embed high-intensity A.I. into everything from resume-writing to kidney transplant medicine and from choosing dog food to climate modeling, they cite many ways A.I. could help reduce humanity’s environmental footprint. But legislators, regulators, activists, and international organizations now want to make sure the benefits aren’t outweighed by A.I.’s mounting hazards.
“The development of the next generation of A.I. tools cannot come at the expense of the health of our planet,” Massachusetts Senator Edward Markey (D) said last week in Washington, after he and other senators and representatives introduced a bill that would require the federal government to assess A.I.’s current environmental footprint and develop a standardized system for reporting future impacts.
Biden Faces More Pressure From Environmentalists to Block Steel Merger
The New York Times
President Biden is facing new pressure to block Nippon Steel’s acquisition of the iconic manufacturer U.S. Steel, this time from environmental groups that say the tie-up would set back America’s efforts to curb climate change.
In interviews, environmental activists working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions say the merger would bring together two steel giants that are laggards on transitioning away from fossil fuels.
Researchers at Industrious Labs, a nonprofit pushing to decarbonize steel and other heavy industries, drew on both companies’ public disclosures to calculate that Nippon and U.S. Steel are relatively high emitters of heat-trapping gases from steel production. Both companies rely heavily on coal-powered blast furnaces and are on a slower path to transition to cleaner fuels than some international competitors. Three U.S. Steel facilities — in Pennsylvania, Indiana and Illinois — combine to emit more greenhouse gases in a year than a comparable number of coal-fired power plants, the researchers estimate.
Will America ever stop building more highways?
The Washington Post
For decades, the United States has built and expanded a 220,000-mile network of state and interstate highways, easing cross-country travel while dividing cities and boosting suburban sprawl.
But asthe planet warms, some activists are fighting back — citing the future emissions of adding lanes and the devastation faced by communities razed to make way for them. Their push against giant multilane highways represents an emerging frontier for the environmental movement, which has historically been more focused on fossil fuel projectsthan seven-lane roads.
“We don’t often think of it in those terms, but expanding highways is essentially like building new oil pipelines,” said Ben Crowther, the policy director for America Walks. “It increases emissions in the same way.”
JPMorgan and State Street quit climate group as BlackRock scales back
Financial Times
Two of the world’s biggest asset managers are quitting an investor group set up to prod companies over global warming and a third is scaling back its participation, in a major setback to the ambitions of Climate Action 100+.
JPMorgan Asset Management and State Street Global Advisors both confirmed they were leaving Climate Action 100+. BlackRock, the world’s largest money manager, is pulling out as a corporate member and transferring its participation to its smaller international arm.
The departures weaken the climate group’s plan to use shareholder influence to step up pressure on polluting companies to decarbonise, because they mean that none of the world’s five largest asset managers are fully behind the effort. […]
BlackRock said in a note that it was dropping its corporate membership because it believes the phase 2 strategy, which takes effect in June, conflicted with US laws requiring money managers to act solely in clients’ long-term economic interest.
The Midwest is experiencing a ‘lost winter.’ Here’s what that means.
The Washington Post
From the northern Plains to the Great Lakes, February is typically a time for winter revelry, set against a landscape of deep snow and iced over waterways. But this year, snow is absent, ice is dangerously thin and many cities are experiencing their warmest winter on record.
Across most of Minnesota and Wisconsin, average temperatures are 10 degrees or more above average for the season. Ice cover over the Great Lakes is at record lows.
Winter still has a month or two left, but the forecast offers little promise for sustained cold. The exceptionally warm winter fits into a long-term trend toward milder weather, driven by human-caused climate change.