Coming-out

Analysis of six extreme heatwaves found when temperature and humidity were accounted for, all were potentially deadly for older people

The ecological concept of human carrying capacity is necessarily complicated because human beings are the ‘ultimate ecosystem engineers’ who moderate the environment for their benefit. For at least the last few hundred years, human ingenuity, access to massive stocks of fossil fuels, and technological development have driven facilitation whereby increasing human abundance has promoted higher population growth rates. However, this positive relationship broke down during the 1950s, and by 1962, the global human population entered a phase where the growth rate consistently declined as population increased. The onset of this negative phase occurred 8 years before a global biocapacity deficit began in 1970. The onset of the negative phase also varies regionally, with the lowest-income and highest fertility regions entering this phase later than higher-income regions. A Ricker logistic model fitted to the negative phase predicts that the global population could reach 11.7–12.4 billion people between 2067 and 2076.

Industry’s spin and privileged access to the highest levels of the Commission, alongside the current EU hostility to new green rules and mania for deregulation, appear to have fatally undermined a key European Green Deal ambition.

La réforme du règlement européen sur la sécurité des produits chimiques (REACH) figure à l'agenda de la Commission européenne depuis 2020. Cependant, une forte opposition de l'industrie, y compris tout au long de l'année 2025 comme le révèle ce rapport, a occulté l'urgence sanitaire et environnementale de lutter contre les substances chimiques nocives. La manipulation de l'industrie et son accès privilégié aux plus hautes instances de la Commission, conjugués à l'hostilité actuelle de l'UE envers les nouvelles réglementations environnementales et à sa frénésie de déréglementation, semblent avoir irrémédiablement compromis un objectif clé du Pacte vert pour l'Europe.

Les assauts de lobbying de l’industrie mettent en péril la révision du règlement européen sur les produits chimiques et l’objectif de juguler la pollution, selon un rapport de l’organisation Corporate Europe Observatory.

A new international analysis published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences on 9 January finds that the Earth's ocean stored more heat in 2025 than in any year since modern measurements began. The finding is the result of a major international collaboration led by the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, involving more than 50 scientists from 31 research institutions worldwide. The 2025 heat increase was 23 Zetta Joules (23,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Joules of energy), which is equivalent to ~37 years of global primary energy consumption at the 2023 level (~620 Exa Joules per year). The assessment combines data from major international data centers and independent research groups, including three observational products (Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Copernicus Marine; and NOAA/NCEI) and an ocean reanalysis (CIGAR-RT) from three continents: Asia, Europe, and America. These groups confirm that the 2025 ocean heat content (OHC) reached the h

Les êtres humains et les écosystèmes sont exposés chaque jour à de nombreuses substances chimiques, dont les effets peuvent se combiner pour produire ce que l’on appelle un effet cocktail. Pourtant, la réglementation européenne continue d’évaluer ces substances individuellement, sans prendre en compte leurs effets combinés. Pour combler cette lacune, un facteur d’évaluation des mélanges appelé Mixture Assessment Factor (MAF) pourrait être introduit dans le règlement européen REACH (qui vise l’Enregistrement, Évaluation, Autorisation et la Restriction des substances Chimiques). Ce nouvel outil permettrait de mieux tenir compte de l’exposition simultanée à plusieurs substances.

Unless global heating is reduced to 1.2C ‘as fast as possible’, warm water coral reefs will not remain ‘at any meaningful scale’, a report by 160 scientists from 23 countries warns

Consumers ending up shouldering most of the costs of installing and operating CCS in the UK, a new report has found.

Ocean acidification has already crossed a crucial threshold for planetary health, scientists say in unexpected finding