références en Anglais

Watchdogs warn of rights violations as governments crack down on disruptive protests.

Misinformation by fossil fuel companies is slowing down the energy transition and global efforts to tackle climate change, warns the UN.

SAO PAULO, Aug 1 (Reuters) - The number of fires in Brazil's Amazon rainforest region surged to a record high for the month of July in almost two decades, government data showed on Thursday, amid a drought in the region fanned by climate change. The Amazon, the world's largest rainforest, plays a vital role in curbing global warming because of the vast amounts of greenhouse gas it absorbs.

Unprecedented wildfires in Canada and parts of Amazonia last year were at least three times more likely due to climate change and contributed to high levels of CO2 emissions from burning globally, according to the first edition of a new systematic annual review.

The temperatures of the Mediterranean Sea in recent days have reached heat records set last summer, the main Spanish maritime research center told AFP Tuesday, with marine heat waves in some places exceeding 30 degrees Celsius.

An extensive new multi-proxy database of paleo-temperature time series (Temperature 12k) enables a more robust analysis of global mean surface temperature (GMST) and associated uncertainties than was previously available. We applied five different statistical methods to reconstruct the GMST of the past 12,000 years (Holocene). Each method used different approaches to averaging the globally distributed time series and to characterizing various sources of uncertainty, including proxy temperature, chronology and methodological choices. The results were aggregated to generate a multi-method ensemble of plausible GMST and latitudinal-zone temperature reconstructions with a realistic range of uncertainties. The warmest 200-year-long interval took place around 6500 years ago when GMST was 0.7 °C (0.3, 1.8) warmer than the 19th Century (median, 5th, 95th percentiles). Following the Holocene global thermal maximum, GMST cooled at an average rate −0.08 °C per 1000 years (−0.24, −0.05). The multi-method ensembles and th

In Virginia, a small conservation group is leading the fight against the powerful and secretive data center industry.

UN says a global ‘backlash’ against climate action is being stoked by fossil fuel companies

The floods displaced more than 80,000 people, led to over 150,000 being injured and, on the 29th of May, to 169 fatalities with 44 people still missing (Governo do Estado de Rio Grande do Sul, 2024). Essential services were also disrupted, leaving 418,200 households without electricity and over a million consumer units without water. Dozens of municipalities lost telephone and internet services.

Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France and Morocco experienced extreme heat in July 2024, causing at least 23 fatalities, widespread wildfires and bringing public life to a hold.

Research shows climate change carries greater risks for unborn babies than previously thought. Some of the alarming effects of global warming may include worsening health and wellbeing in later life.

The world is currently seeing the fastest-spreading, largest-ever outbreak of H5N1, a highly contagious, deadly strain of avian influenza. Scientists say this virus now presents an existential threat to the world’s biodiversity, with the risk to humans rising as it continues to leap the species barrier, reaching new host species.

The story of Greenland keeps getting greener—and scarier. A new study provides the first direct evidence that the center—not just the edges—of Greenland's ice sheet melted away in the recent geological past and the now-ice-covered island was then home to a green, tundra landscape.

Under current emission trajectories, temporarily overshooting the Paris global warming limit of 1.5 °C is a distinct possibility. Permanently exceeding this limit would substantially increase the probability of triggering climate tipping elements. Here, we investigate the tipping risks associated with several policy-relevant future emission scenarios, using a stylised Earth system model of four interconnected climate tipping elements. We show that following current policies this century would commit to a 45% tipping risk by 2300 (median, 10–90% range: 23–71%), even if temperatures are brought back to below 1.5 °C. We find that tipping risk by 2300 increases with every additional 0.1 °C of overshoot above 1.5 °C and strongly accelerates for peak warming above 2.0 °C. Achieving and maintaining at least net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2100 is paramount to minimise tipping risk in the long term. Our results underscore that stringent emission reductions in the current decade are critical for planetary stabili

La destruction de l'Amazonie est un phénomène qui s’étend au-delà de la déforestation mais les neuf pays qui partagent cette ressource naturelle sont engagés à la protéger.

The EU Observatory on deforestation and forest degradation aims to monitor changes in the world’s forest cover and related drivers. Besides providing access to global forest maps and spatial forest and forestry-related information, this Observatory will facilitate access to scientific information on supply chains, linking deforestation, forest degradation and changes in the world’s forest cover to Union demand for commodities and products. Data and information provided on this Observatory play a supporting role but do not assure compliance or imply non-compliance with EU Regulations, other legal frameworks or commitments, or international agreements.

The Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) helps communities hold oil and gas corporations accountable for the massive costs of climate change.

From farmers to disaster survivors, new plaintiffs and progressing lawsuits are putting pressure on industry polluters.

The airline blamed difficulties securing more efficient aircraft and sustainable jet fuel.

There is increasing concern that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) may collapse this century with a disrupting societal impact on large parts of the world. Preliminary estimates of the probability of such an AMOC collapse have so far been based on conceptual models and statistical analyses of proxy data. Here, we provide observationally based estimates of such probabilities from reanalysis data. We first identify optimal observation regions of an AMOC collapse from a recent global climate model simulation. Salinity data near the southern boundary of the Atlantic turn out to be optimal to provide estimates of the time of the AMOC collapse in this model. Based on the reanalysis products, we next determine probability density functions of the AMOC collapse time. The collapse time is estimated between 2037-2064 (10-90% CI) with a mean of 2050 and the probability of an AMOC collapse before the year 2050 is estimated to be 59±17%.

In 2023, the CO2 growth rate was 3.37 ± 0.11 ppm at Mauna Loa, 86% above the previous year, and hitting a record high since observations began in 1958[1], while global fossil fuel CO2 emissions only increased by 0.6 ± 0.5%[2,3]....

The wildfire destruction to Jasper National Park has reverberated across all of Canada.

Temperatures reach 45C in parts of the country and 225 people seek treatment for heatstroke

Scientists now fear that there is little more than five years left to prevent irreversible climate damage and stark changes to the Earth’s weather patterns from global carbon emissions, Minister for Climate Eamon Ryan has warned.

A new study finds that the mining and processing of the metal critical to EV batteries and renewable energy storage projects depletes and contaminates surface water, often in already vulnerable communities.

Offsetting allows corporations to increase emissions, while getting credit for pseudo-reductions elsewhere

Sudden cut in pollution in 2020 meant less shade from sun and was ‘substantial’ factor in record surface temperatures in 2023, study finds

The contaminants have also recently been found in testes and semen amid concerns about falling male fertility

Scientists warn of ‘scary’ feedback loop in which fires create more heating, which causes more fires worldwide

Small increase in temperature of intruding water could lead to very big increase in loss of ice, scientists say

Melting of ice is slowing planet’s rotation and could disrupt internet traffic, financial transactions and GPS

Jakarta’s subsidence crisis illustrates the conflation of two threats: global climatic sea-level rise and the local environmental crisis. It also sheds light on the city’s longstanding issues of urban flooding and chronic piped water supply shortages.

As the climate crisis causes heavier and more frequent floods across the US, one in four small businesses are one disaster away from shutting down

Months of scorching temperatures sometimes over 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in parts of India this year left hundreds dead or ill. Official government records put the number of heat-related deaths this year as 110, but public health experts say that number is more likely in the thousands. Poor data collection methods and reporting are stopping the country from getting a more accurate picture of how deadly the heat is. Experts are concerned that it's hindering efforts to better prepare for future heat waves.

Blackened trees, dead animals and scorched earth – early wildfires have already devastated Brazil’s Pantanal and local people worry they may lose the battle to save them

Warning after intensification of storm aided by unusually hot ocean waters in much of Beryl’s path. Hurricane Beryl, which slammed into Texas on Monday after wreaking havoc in the Caribbean, was supercharged by “absolutely crazy” ocean temperatures that are likely to fuel further violent storms in the coming months, scientists have warned.

Breathless reporting on when the present global heat anomaly will begin to fall is understandable, given heat suffering around the world. However, fundamental issues are in question and a reflection on time scales is in order, for the sake of understanding ongoing climate change and actions that need to be taken.

A carbon bomb is any fossil fuel extraction project that will generate more than one gigatonne of carbon dioxide (1GtCO2) over its remaining life.

Numerous prominent petroleum geologists have been warning for years about the resources limitations of oil both in the U.S. and globally.  It’s now looking like the wolf is nearing the door.

Monthly global surface air temperature anomalies (°C) relative to 1850–1900 from January 1940 to June 2024, plotted as time series for all 12-month periods spanning July to June of the following year. The 12 months from July 2023 to June 2024 are shown with a thick red line, while all other 12-month periods are shown with thin lines shaded according to the decade, from blue (1940s) to brick red (2020s).

Simultaneous harvest failures across major crop-producing regions are a threat to global food security. Concurrent weather extremes driven by a strongly meandering jet stream could trigger such events, but so far this has not been quantified. Specifically, the ability of state-of-the art crop and climate models to adequately reproduce such high impact events is a crucial component for estimating risks to global food security. Here we find an increased likelihood of concurrent low yields during summers featuring meandering jets in observations and models. While climate models accurately simulate atmospheric patterns, associated surface weather anomalies and negative effects on crop responses are mostly underestimated in bias-adjusted simulations. Given the identified model biases, future assessments of regional and concurrent crop losses from meandering jet states remain highly uncertain. Our results suggest that model-blind spots for such high-impact but deeply-uncertain hazards have to be anticipated and acc

Overexploitation and habitat loss pose extinction threats for migratory fish, birds and others, worldwide

New research shows the company’s scientists were as “skillful” as independent experts in predicting how the burning of fossil fuels would warm the planet and bring about climate change.

Resilience here, then, is not the naïve faith in riding the storm and putting the world back together more or less as it was, issue by issue, but recognising the necessity to fundamentally reorganise and reorient human society in ways that can allow human flourishing and ecological sustainability in symbiotic and mutually supportive relations of reciprocity and regeneration - and in a multiplicity of ways.

Huge patches of forest in Tasmania have rapidly turned brown over recent months, with many trees dying after a dry summer. As climate change causes hotter and drier weather, can we expect more tree deaths in the future? 

Economic growth allows the few to grow ever-wealthier. Ending poverty and environmental catastrophe demands fresh thinking

Blog edited by Sam Carana, with news on climate change and warming in the Arctic due to snow and ice loss and methane releases from the seafloor.

Mainstream media are ignoring a scientist who is whistleblowing the climate profession. During the five years since new kinds of activism brought the climate issue into the headlines like never before, the topic has more clearly become one where people respond due to their preexisting worldviews. It’s not just believers and sceptics, but there are those who think technology can save us, those who think it’s too late; those who think the science is clear, others who think it is open; those who believe humans will muddle through and those predicting human extinction. Climate scientists themselves now range from those emphasizing ‘we can do this’ to those that express their grief and outrage by gluing themselves to buildings. Meanwhile, misleading narratives are amplified by a variety of vested interests, including fossil fuels, nuclear, and clean tech. Climatologist Dr Wolfgang Knorr is an unusual voice in this cacophony because he has been ‘blowing the whistle’ on the climate science itself and how it is being

We must tackle the environmental nightmare of 4x4s by taxing them off the road, says George Monbiot.

Carbon Brief provides an updated analysis of when the world will likely exceed the Paris 1.5C limit

Summary for Policymakers. A Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Historical responsibility for climate change is radically shifted when colonial rule is taken into account, Carbon Brief analysis reveals.

Since the Paris Agreement in 2016, the world’s 60 largest private banks financed fossil fuels with USD $6.9 trillion. Nearly half – $3.3 trillion – went towards fossil fuel expansion. In 2023, banks financed $705 billion in fossil fuel financing with $347 billion going to fossil fuel expansion alone.

Abstract. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments are the trusted source of scientific evidence for climate negotiations taking place under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Evidence-based decision-making needs to be informed by up-to-date and timely information on key indicators of the state of the climate system and of the human influence on the global climate system. However, successive IPCC reports are published at intervals of 5–10 years, creating potential for an information gap between report cycles. We follow methods as close as possible to those used in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) Working Group One (WGI) report. We compile monitoring datasets to produce estimates for key climate indicators related to forcing of the climate system: emissions of greenhouse gases and short-lived climate forcers, greenhouse gas concentrations, radiative forcing, the Earth's energy imbalance, surface temperature changes, warming attributed to human activit

Natural ecosystems store large amounts of carbon globally, as organisms absorb carbon from the atmosphere to build large, long-lasting, or slow-decaying structures such as tree bark or root systems. An ecosystem’s carbon sequestration potential is tightly linked to its biological diversity. Yet when considering future projections, many carbon sequestration models fail to account for the role biodiversity plays in carbon storage. Here, we assess the consequences of plant biodiversity loss for carbon storage under multiple climate and land-use change scenarios. We link a macroecological model projecting changes in vascular plant richness under different scenarios with empirical data on relationships between biodiversity and biomass. We find that biodiversity declines from climate and land use change could lead to a global loss of between 7.44-103.14 PgC (global sustainability scenario) and 10.87-145.95 PgC (fossil-fueled development scenario). This indicates a self-reinforcing feedback loop, where higher levels

With current policies the Earth is on track to a warming of around 3 °C above preindustrial temperatures, a level of heat our planet has not seen for millions of years. Ecosystems, human society and infrastructure are not adapted to these temperatures. Due to non-linear effects, the impacts will be much more severe than just three times as bad as after 1 °C of warming. Land areas will continue to warm much more than the global average, many regions twice as much or even more. Extreme heat will become far more frequent and a major cause of human mortality, making large parts of the tropical land area essentially too hot to live. In addition, extreme rainfall and flooding, droughts, wildfires and harvest failures will increase in frequency and severity. The destructive power of tropical cyclones will also increase. Sea-level rise will accelerate further, and the destabilization of ice sheets will commit our descendants to loss of coastal cities and island nations. The risk of crossing devastating and irreversib

If currently implemented policies are continued with no increase in ambition, there is a 90% chance that the Earth will warm between 2.3°C and 4.5°C, with a best estimate of 3.5°C.

Women and gender-diverse people bear the brunt of climate change’s negative affects. If Australia wants to be taken seriously on climate action, this needs addressing.

“Timeless, masterful. . .A stomach-clenching, multi-perspective, ticking-clock, geopolitical thriller. Jacobsen expertly delivers a madman’s portrait of Armageddon, one made all the more impactful by the thought that it could literally occur at any moment. Almost novel-like in its presentation, Nuclear War: A Scenario represents the equivalent of an existential gut punch, a sickening and necessary reminder of how fragile every 21st century convenience becomes in the face of a blinding flash of light and near-instantaneous shockwave. Exhaustively researched and featuring interviews with professionals who truly understand just how close we continue to creep toward thermonuclear annihilation Nuclear War: A Scenario should be required reading for everyone alive today, especially for the politicians and policymakers who literally hold the precarious fate of our species in their hands.” — Forbes

This year elections are taking place across the globe, covering almost half of the world’s population. It is also likely to be, yet again, the hottest year recorded as the climate crisis intensifies. The Guardian asked young climate activists around the world what they want from the elections and whether politics is working in the fight to halt global heating.

Climate scientist Kevin Anderson is one of the world's leading authorities on carbon budgets. He told DW keeping global warming below 2 degrees is a choice — but it's one we have to make it fast.

The new report evokes a mild sense of urgency, calling on governments to mobilise finance to accelerate the uptake of green technology. But its conclusions are far removed from a direct interpretation of the IPCC’s own carbon budgets (the total amount of CO₂ scientists estimate can be put into the atmosphere for a given temperature rise).

In recent months we have seen lifechanging technological advances in the capabilities and use of artificial intelligence. At the same time, we are witnessing new, life-threatening risks as a result of AI – from the propagation of disinformation, to mass surveillance, to the prospect of lethal autono

Le sepsis est une affection potentiellement mortelle qui survient lorsque le système immunitaire réagit de façon extrême à une infection, entraînant une dysfonction d’organe (4). Cette réaction immunitaire provoque des lésions tissulaires et organiques et peut entraîner un état de choc, une défaillance multiviscérale et parfois le décès, surtout si elle n’est pas détectée tôt et traitée rapidement. Le sepsis peut toucher n’importe qui, mais les personnes âgées, les jeunes, les femmes enceintes ou les personnes souffrant d’autres problèmes de santé sont exposées à un risque plus élevé.

Insight and inspiration in turbulent times. People have widely varying beliefs about climate change. A surprising number still think that it’s a hoax, or that it’s a trivial problem. At the other end of the opinion spectrum, some say it signals the end of the world and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. Between those extremes are lots of folks who believe climate change is a serious dilemma, but we can deal with it by installing solar panels, nuclear power, solar radiation management technologies, and/or machines to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, after which we will continue to live mostly the way we do today.

This essay takes up and extends an analysis of the ambitions of the energy transition presented during the conference entitled “L’erreur fondamentale de la transition”, held in Lausanne in December 2022, at the annual Switzerland ShiftersDay. The intervention questioned the conceptualization of energy transition, given possible inaccuracies, or errors in the categorization of reality. It is not certain that the energy contained in the wind, solar radiation, or atoms is equivalent to hydrocarbon energy for human societalneeds. Although all energies are theoretically convertible into one another, the assumption that any type of energy can always be replaced by another is likely to prove false. An energy transition based on the substitution of energies would then be inconceivable.

Climate Obstruction Across Europe, coordinated by the Climate Social Science Network (CSSN), is the first book to document the development and nature of climate obstruction activities across Europe, which are efforts to deliberately slow or block climate action. Climate obstruction strategies range from outright denial to more subtle forces of delay and the spread of disinformation

As the public conversation on climate change evolves, so too does the sophistication and range of arguments used to downplay or discount the need for action (McKie, Reference McKie2019; Norgaard, Reference Norgaard2011). A mainstay of this counter-movement has been outright denial of the reality or human causation of climate change (Farrell et al., Reference Farrell, McConnell and Brulle2019), supplemented by climate-impact scepticism (Harvey et al., Reference Harvey, Van Den Berg, Ellers, Kampen, Crowther, Roessingh and Mann2018) and ad hominem attacks on scientists and the scientific consensus (Oreskes & Conway, Reference Oreskes and Conway2011). A fourth strategy has received relatively little attention to date: policy-focused discourses that exploit contemporary discussions on what action should be taken, how fast, who bears responsibility and where costs and benefits should be allocated (Bohr, Reference Bohr2016; Jacques & Knox, Reference Jacques and Knox2016; McKie, Reference McKie2019). We call these ‘

Climate Obstruction Across Europe, coordinated by the Climate Social Science Network (CSSN) and published via Oxford University Press, reveals extensive networks impeding climate action within the region and surrounding states. In Italy and Germany, far-right networks spread misinformation by questioning climate science’s validity, while in Spain and the UK, blame-shifting and deflecting responsibility for climate action are common. European-based fossil fuel industries, like Shell, engage in greenwashing, by framing gas as a ‘bridging technology crucial for the energy transition’, delaying genuine progress.

China’s CO2 emissions fell by 3% in March 2024, ending a 14-month surge that began when the economy reopened after the nation’s “zero-Covid”

Human-caused climate crisis brought soaring temperatures across Asia, from Gaza to Delhi to Manila

Foundational innovation in cloud technology and artificial intelligence will require more energy than ever before—shattering any illusion that we will restrict supplies.

Cultured meat is an emerging biotechnology that aims to produce meat from animal cell culture, rather than from the raising and slaughtering of livestock, on environmental and animal welfare grounds. The detailed understanding and accurate manipulation of cell biology are critical to the design of cultured meat bioprocesses. Recent years have seen significant interest in this field, with numerous scientific and commercial breakthroughs. Nevertheless, these technologies remain at a nascent stage, and myriad challenges remain, spanning the entire bioprocess. From a cell biological perspective, these include the identification of suitable starting cell types, tuning of proliferation and differentiation conditions, and optimization of cell–biomaterial interactions to create nutritious, enticing foods. Here, we discuss the key advances and outstanding challenges in cultured meat, with a particular focus on cell biology, and argue that solving the remaining bottlenecks in a cost-effective, scalable fashion will req

Winter downpours also made 20% wetter and will occur every three years without urgent carbon cuts, experts warn

Sharp declines in critical mineral prices mask risks of future supply strains as energy transitions advance - News from the International Energy Agency

‘Catastrophic’ global decline due to dams, mining, diverting water and pollution threatens humans and ecosystems, study warns

Europe is no exception when it comes to the consequences of climate change. It is the fastest warming continent, with temperatures rising at around twice the global average rate.

The modern agricultural production system relies heavily on the use of synthetic pesticides, but over the course of recent decades various concerns have been raised on the associated negative externalities touching a variety of dimensions, such as human health and the environment. Yet, the magnitude of those effects is still unclear and data availability is scattered and heterogenous across dimensions, regions, and time. The public sector is called upon to develop and implement strategies to face those externalities and their associated social costs. This study aims to provide an assessment of social costs of pesticides in France in the prospect of an integration to the public budget spending, helping public authorities to identify financial flows of public funding with an impact perspective, within a methodological framework based on the social norms at the core of the public system. The results show that the social costs attributable to synthetic pesticide use in France amounted to 372 million euros, of whi

Global temperature (12-month mean) is still rising at 1.56°C relative to 1880-1920 in the GISS analysis through April (Fig. 1). [Robert Rohde reports that it is 1.65°C relative to 1850-1900 in the BerkeleyEarth analysis.[3]] Global temperature is likely to continue to rise a bit for at least a month, peak this summer, and then decline as the El Nino fades toward La Nina. Acceleration of global warming is now hard to deny. The GISS 12-month temperature is now 0.36°C above the 0.18°C/decade trend line, which is 3.6 times the standard deviation (0.1°C). Confidence in global warming acceleration thus exceeds 99%, but we need to see how far temperature falls with the next La Nina before evaluating the post-2010 global warming rate.

An intense heat wave gripping South and South-East Asia since late March comes as no surprise to leading meteorologists who have been warning of steadily rising temperatures in the Indian Ocean.

Outgoing special rapporteur David Boyd says ‘there’s something wrong with our brains that we can’t understand how grave this is’

Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC) 2024

Record-breaking temperatures were recorded across the globe in 2023. Without climate action, adverse climate-related health impacts are expected to worsen worldwide, affecting billions of people. Temperatures in Europe are warming at twice the rate of the global average, threatening the health of populations across the continent and leading to unnecessary loss of life. The Lancet Countdown in Europe was established in 2021, to assess the health profile of climate change aiming to stimulate European social and political will to implement rapid health-responsive climate mitigation and adaptation actions. In 2022, the collaboration published its indicator report, tracking progress on health and climate change via 33 indicators and across five domains.

Climate scientists have told the Guardian they expect catastrophic levels of global heating. Here’s what that would mean for the planet

Exclusive: Planet is headed for at least 2.5C of heating with disastrous results for humanity, poll of hundreds of scientists finds

Here, we show that the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) provides a stronger constraint on equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), the global warming from increasing greenhouse gases, after accounting for temperature patterns. Feedbacks governing ECS depend on spatial patterns of surface temperature (“pattern effects”); hence, using the LGM to constrain future warming requires quantifying how temperature patterns produce different feedbacks during LGM cooling versus modern-day warming. Combining data assimilation reconstructions with atmospheric models, we show that the climate is more sensitive to LGM forcing because ice sheets amplify extratropical cooling where feedbacks are destabilizing. Accounting for LGM pattern effects yields a median modern-day ECS of 2.4°C, 66% range 1.7° to 3.5°C (1.4° to 5.0°C, 5 to 95%), from LGM evidence alone. Combining the LGM with other lines of evidence, the best estimate becomes 2.9°C, 66% range 2.4° to 3.5°C (2.1° to 4.1°C, 5 to 95%), substantially narrowing uncertainty compared t

Exclusive: Survey of hundreds of experts reveals harrowing picture of future, but they warn climate fight must not be abandoned

Editorial: Top experts believe global temperatures will rise by at least 2.5C above pre-industrial levels by 2100. That frightening prediction must spur us to action

RealClimate: For various reasons I'm motivated to provide an update on my current thinking regarding the slowdown and tipping point of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). I attended a two-day AMOC session at the IUGG Conference the week before last, there's been interesting new papers, and in the light of that I have been changing

The Global Tipping Points Report was launched at COP28 on 6 December 2023. The report is an authoritative assessment of the risks and opportunities of both negative and positive tipping points in the Earth system and society. Global Tipping Points is led by Professor Tim Lenton from the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute with the support of more than 200 researchers from over 90 organisations in 26 countries.

Jumping into the future head first, blindfolded, handcuffed, and in darkness

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 climat

Unesco joint research dating back 15 years found violence and intimidation against about 750 reporters and 44 murders

Oil and gas equipment intended to cut methane emissions is preventing scientists from accurately detecting greenhouse gases and pollutants, a satellite image investigation has revealed. Energy companies operating in countries such as the US, UK, Germany and Norway appear to have installed technology that could stop researchers from identifying methane, carbon dioxide emissions and pollutants at industrial facilities involved in the disposal of unprofitable natural gas, known in the industry as flaring.

Fear appeals are a polarizing issue, with proponents confident in their efficacy and opponents confident that they backfire. We present the results of a comprehensive meta-analysis investigating fear appeals' effectiveness for influencing attitudes, intentions, and behaviors. We tested predictions f …

Knowing how to appeal to apocalyptic fear, political fear, and private fear will help a leader name reality in a credible manner and assess which fear to prioritize at a given time.

Over the past 50 years, humans have extracted the Earth’s groundwater stocks at a steep rate, largely to fuel global agro-economic development. Given society’s growing reliance on groundwater, we explore ‘peak water limits’ to investigate whether, when and where humanity might reach peak groundwater extraction. Using an integrated global model of the coupled human–Earth system, we simulate groundwater withdrawals across 235 water basins under 900 future scenarios of global change over the twenty-first century. Here we find that global non-renewable groundwater withdrawals exhibit a distinct peak-and-decline signature, comparable to historical observations of other depletable resources (for example, minerals), in nearly all (98%) scenarios, peaking on average at 625 km3 yr−1 around mid-century, followed by a decline through 2100. The peak and decline occur in about one-third (82) of basins, including 21 that may have already peaked, exposing about half (44%) of the global population to groundwater stress. Most

Plastics in the marine environment have become a major concern because of their persistence at sea, and adverse consequences to marine life and potentially human health. Implementing mitigation strategies requires an understanding and quantification of marine plastic sources, taking spatial and temporal variability into account. Here we present a global model of plastic inputs from rivers into oceans based on waste management, population density and hydrological information. Our model is calibrated against measurements available in the literature. We estimate that between 1.15 and 2.41 million tonnes of plastic waste currently enters the ocean every year from rivers, with over 74% of emissions occurring between May and October. The top 20 polluting rivers, mostly located in Asia, account for 67% of the global total. The findings of this study provide baseline data for ocean plastic mass balance exercises, and assist in prioritizing future plastic debris monitoring and mitigation strategies. Rivers provide a m

Decarbonization efforts and sustainability transformations represent highly contested socio-political projects. Yet, they often encounter various forms of depoliticization. This article illuminates how a grand socio-ecological challenge like the energy transition gets depoliticized by an unusual suspect, namely Germany's Green Party. Based on a qualitative content analysis of Green Party programs, party conventions, and additional documents published between 1980 and 2021, this article traces how the Green Party has depoliticized the energy transition over time, emphasizing a shift from radical societal change to ecological modernization. The changing stance of the German Greens on the country's energy transition reflects more profound changes of a future society the party collectively envisions through their energy and climate change agenda. These changes result from a struggle between moderates advocating incremental political reforms and radicals aiming for more fundamental and systemic societal change.

Cost of environmental damage will be six times higher than price of limiting global heating to 2C, study finds

Global projections of macroeconomic climate-change damages typically consider impacts from average annual and national temperatures over long time horizons1–6. Here we use recent empirical findings from more than 1,600 regions worldwide over the past 40 years to project sub-national damages from temperature and precipitation, including daily variability and extremes7,8. Using an empirical approach that provides a robust lower bound on the persistence of impacts on economic growth, we find that the world economy is committed to an income reduction of 19% within the next 26 years independent of future emission choices (relative to a baseline without climate impacts, likely range of 11–29% accounting for physical climate and empirical uncertainty). These damages already outweigh the mitigation costs required to limit global warming to 2 °C by sixfold over this near-term time frame and thereafter diverge strongly dependent on emission choices. Committed damages arise predominantly through changes in average tempe

Marcus Decker dared to protest the climate crisis and was punished. Now he could be deported, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

This report written by the World Economic Forum, in collaboration with Oliver Wyman, provides an in-depth economic analysis of how climate change will reshape health landscapes over the next two decades. It highlights increased risks from new pathogens, pollution and extreme weather events and shows how these will exacerbate current health inequities, disproportionately impacting the most vulnerable populations.

The law will come into force in national parks within two years and in all of the country’s marine protected areas by 2030

Oil in the North Sea is expected to be net-energy negative by 2031. This means that in 2031, it’ll cost more energy to extract the fossil fuels than we would gain by using them, rendering extraction unfeasibly expensive. Yet, rather than use our remaining years of access to these fuels to turbo-charge new energy infrastructure, fossil fuels are being extracted and burned for business as usual: quick cash. Around the world, the lights will go off in nations that don’t have back-up renewables. That’s most of them.

Over the past year, there has been a vigorous debate among scientists – and more broadly – about whether global warming is “accelerating”.

A long-term sea level dataset shows ocean surface heights continuing to rise at faster and faster rates over decades of observations. Global average sea level rose by about 0.3 inches (0.76 centimeters) from 2022 to 2023, a relatively large jump due mostly to a warming climate and the development of a strong El Niño. The total rise is equivalent to draining a quarter of Lake Superior into the ocean over the course of a year.

Weak government climate policies violate fundamental human rights, the European court of human rights has ruled

If the anomaly does not stabilise by August, ‘the world will be in uncharted territory’, says climate expert

Carbon Brief explores which countries are or have targets to be net-negative, and the moral and scientific arguments for such a milestone.

The rapid growth of clean energy technologies is driving a rising demand for critical minerals. In 2022 at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15), seven major economies formed an alliance to enhance the sustainability of mining these essential decarbonization minerals. However, there is a scarcity of studies assessing the threat of mining to global biodiversity. By integrating a global mining dataset with great ape density distribution, we estimated the number of African great apes that spatially coincided with industrial mining projects. We show that up to one-third of Africa’s great ape population faces mining-related risks. In West Africa in particular, numerous mining areas overlap with fragmented ape habitats, often in high-density ape regions. For 97% of mining areas, no ape survey data are available, underscoring the importance of increased accessibility to environmental data within the mining sector to facilitate research into the complex interactions betw

New research suggests 75% of the rainforest has become less resilient to stress since the early 2000s.

A recent paper suggested damaging climate tipping points could be closer than first thought.

Humanity at risk if we keep thinking everything is under control

We ran computer programs that simulate ecosystems 70,000 times and the results are very worrying.

Environmental pledges are being shredded to please agribusiness and appease extremists. It’s a terrible mistake, says environmental writer Arthur Neslen

World’s fossil-fuel producers on track to nearly quadruple output from newly approved projects by decade’s end, report finds

An international team of scientists has warned against relying on nature providing straightforward 'early warning' indicators of a climate disaster, as new mathematical modeling shows new fascinating aspects of the complexity of the dynamics of climate. It suggests that the climate system could be more unpredictable than previously thought.

Taking into account all known factors, the planet warmed 0.2 °C more last year than climate scientists expected. More and better data are urgently needed. Taking into account all known factors, the planet warmed 0.2 °C more last year than climate scientists expected. More and better data are urgently needed.

.Contribution to (a) effective radiative forcing (ERF) and (b) global surface temperature change from component emissions for1750–2019based on Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) models and (c) net aerosol ERF for 1750–2014 from different lines of evidence.

Dr Sarah Benn has long been concerned about the climate crisis, diligently recycling until she was “blue in the face”. But the rise of the climate activist group Extinction Rebellion in 2019 inspired her and her husband to go further. “We thought: well, if we don’t do it then who else is going to?”

Bengaluru has a huge chunk of the country's techies, who have flocked to the IT hub for the opportunities it offers. Now, they are looking at work-from-home options

Elizabeth Kolbert on a record-breaking rise in global sea-surface temperatures, which suggests that scientists may not understand how fast the climate is changing.

Evidence shows a continuing increase in the frequency and severity of global heatwaves1,2, raising concerns about the future impacts of climate change and the associated socioeconomic costs3,4. Here we develop a disaster footprint analytical framework by integrating climate, epidemiological and hybrid input–output and computable general equilibrium global trade models to estimate the midcentury socioeconomic impacts of heat stress. We consider health costs related to heat exposure, the value of heat-induced labour productivity loss and indirect losses due to economic disruptions cascading through supply chains. Here we show that the global annual incremental gross domestic product loss increases exponentially from 0.03 ± 0.01 (SSP 245)–0.05 ± 0.03 (SSP 585) percentage points during 2030–2040 to 0.05 ± 0.01–0.15 ± 0.04 percentage points during 2050–2060. By 2060, the expected global economic losses reach a total of 0.6–4.6% with losses attributed to health loss (37–45%), labour productivity loss (18–37%) and i

Global investment in the clean energy transition grew by 17% in 2023, showing resilience despite geopolitical tensions, high interest rates, and inflation. But was it enough to keep the world on track to hit net zero by 2050? To answer this question, we compare 2023 clean energy investment by sector with what’s annually needed to reach net zero by 2050, in partnership with the National Public Utilities Council.

Dangers of wildfires, extreme weather and other factors outgrowing preparedness, European Environment Agency says

Activist accuses Sweden of being ‘very good at greenwashing’ as group sits outside building’s main entrance. Greta Thunberg has accused Sweden of being “very good at greenwashing” as she staged a protest along with about 50 other activists outside her home country’s parliament.

European and US oil and gas majors have made profits of more than a quarter of a trillion dollars since Russia invaded Ukraine, according to a new analysis by Global Witness marking two years since the conflict began. After posting record gains in 2022 off the back of soaring energy prices, the big five fossil fuel companies paid shareholders an unprecedented $111 billion in 2023. In the hottest year ever recorded, this figure is some 158 times what was pledged to vulnerable nations at last year’s COP28 climate summit.

Microplastics and nanoplastics (MNPs) are emerging as a potential risk factor for cardiovascular disease in preclinical studies. Direct evidence that this risk extends to humans is lacking.

Scientists express concern over health impacts, with another study finding particles in arteries

A new study led by researchers at the University of Oxford has used the fossil record to better understand what factors make animals more vulnerable to extinction from climate change. The results, published today in the journal Science, could help to identify species most at risk today from human-driven climate change.

Scientists have been debating the start of the Anthropocene Epoch for 15 years. I was part of those discussions, and I agree with the vote rejecting it.

In a previous post, I defined this graph as “the most amazing graph of the 21st century.” It shows how the US oil production restarted growing in 2010, picking up speed and surpassing the historical record of the “Hubbert Peak,” which took place in 1970. It overcame the dip caused by the Covid pandemic and, two years after my first post on this subject, it keeps growing.

Current methods to calculate the so-called social cost of carbon largely leave out how many future people our emissions will kill. This study tries to correct that.

All local communities affected by mining projects should have the right to have a say on whether mining activities will start or continue in their backyard. This belief in community involvement in political, economic, and environmental decision-making is epitomised in a Right to Say No (RTSN), which is the inalienable and collective right of a community to say no (or yes) to extractive projects on the territories/lands they are living within. Currently, there is no real ‘Right’ to Say No outside of iterations of the indigenous right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) — it is a right we are asserting, not something we can yet claim. This toolbox will elaborate on the rights local communities already have and those rights that still need to be recognised and enforced, to establish a Right to Say No.

ELDORADO - The Struggle for Skouries is an urgent documentary chronicling the struggle against environmental destruction through high-risk gold mining at Europe's largest mining project located in Northern Greece. Chronicling the resistance against high-risk gold extraction and the criminalization of the anti-mining movement by the Greek government, it is an urgent document of neoliberal ideals and human rights abuses playing out in one of the most crisis-ridden countries of Europe. Find out more here: www.eldorado-documentary.com

Near-real time updates of key global climate variables from the the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S)

A UN meeting this week considered a motion on a suite of technologies known as ‘solar radiation modification’, but no consensus could be reached on the controversial topic.

We owe all children a planet Earth as wonderful as the one we have enjoyed!

You would think that we have more than sufficient troubles caused by global warming, pollution, resource depletion, biodiversity loss, ecosystem disruption and a few more. But there is a problem that’s not directly related to the natural world, but by a purely human construction: the financial market. Here is a discussion by Ian Schindler — maître de conference émérite (emeritus professor of mathematics) at the University of Toulouse 1, France, who proposes that we are close to a financial collapse.

Marine heat waves will become a regular occurrence in the Arctic in the near future and are a product of higher anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions, according to a study just released by Dr. Armineh Barkhordarian from Universität Hamburg's Cluster of Excellence for climate research CLICCS. Since 2007, conditions in the Arctic have shifted, as confirmed by data recently published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment. Between 2007 and 2021, the marginal zones of the Arctic Ocean experienced 11 marine heat waves, producing an average temperature rise of 2.2 degrees Celsius above seasonal norm and lasting an average of 37 days. Since 2015, there have been Arctic marine heat waves every year.

In Munich I heard both Ukrainians and Alexei Navalny’s widow tell us why Putin must be defeated, says Guardian columnist Timothy Garton Ash

Temperatures in Iran are hitting record highs, rivers and lakes are drying up, and prolonged droughts are becoming the norm, highlighting a water crisis that is turning much of the country’s territory to dust. The desertification of Iran is occurring at a staggering pace, with officials last month warning that more than 1 million hectares of the country’s territory -- roughly equivalent to the size of Qom Province or Lebanon -- is essentially becoming uninhabitable every year.

Collapse in system of currents that helps regulate global climate would be at such speed that adaptation would be impossible

Scientists now have a better understanding of the risks ahead and a new early warning signal to watch for.

The Amazon rainforest is facing a barrage of pressures that might tip it into large-scale ecosystem collapse as soon as 2050, according to new research Wednesday warning of dire consequences for the region and the world. The Amazon, which holds more than 10 percent of the world's biodiversity, helps stabilize the global climate by storing the equivalent of around two decades of emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide.

Christopher Lockyear, secretary general of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), called today on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to demand an immediate and sustained ceasefire in Gaza. Addressing the Council at its monthly meeting on Gaza, Lockyear also called for the unequivocal protection of medical facilities, staff, and patients. “Meeting after meeting, resolution after resolution, this body has failed to effectively address this conflict,” Lockyear said. “We have watched members of this Council deliberate and delay while civilians die. This death, destruction, and forced displacement are the result of military and political choices that blatantly disregard civilian lives. These choices could have been—and still can be—made very differently.” After more than four months of war, nearly 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza amid Israel’s constant bombing and attacks. Approximately 1.7 million people—nearly 75 percent of the population—are estimated to be forcibly displace

Since the eradication of smallpox, there have been increases in poxvirus infections and the emergence of several novel poxviruses that can infect humans and domestic animals. In 2015, a novel poxvirus was isolated from a resident of Alaska. Diagnostic testing and limited sequence analysis suggested …

In the UK and around the world, those who challenge rich corporations are being hounded and crushed with ever-more inventive penalties, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

The planetary boundaries concept presents a set of nine planetary boundaries within which humanity can continue to develop and thrive for generations to come

Annual Conference 2023 "THE FAILURE OF GREEN CAPITALISM: FINDINGS, OBJECTIONS, ALTERNATIVES"15 September 2023Chair: Sighard Neckel (Spokesperson DFG Humaniti...

A post for the anniversary of the execution of Sophie Scholl by the German Nazis in 1943

As space travel and lunar exploration becomes a near-future reality, we should consider the impact of human activities on the lunar environment.

The auto industry is making too many cars powered by fossil fuels.

Rapid ocean warming and unusually hot winter days recorded as human-made global heating combines with El Niño

Companies knew for decades recycling was not viable but promoted it regardless, Center for Climate Integrity study finds

Anthropogenic emissions drive global-scale warming yet the temperature increase relative to pre-industrial levels is uncertain. Using 300 years of ocean mixed-layer temperature records preserved in sclerosponge carbonate skeletons, we demonstrate that industrial-era warming began in the mid-1860s, more than 80 years earlier than instrumental sea surface temperature records. The Sr/Ca palaeothermometer was calibrated against ‘modern’ (post-1963) highly correlated (R2 = 0.91) instrumental records of global sea surface temperatures, with the pre-industrial defined by nearly constant (<±0.1 °C) temperatures from 1700 to the early 1860s. Increasing ocean and land-air temperatures overlap until the late twentieth century, when the land began warming at nearly twice the rate of the surface oceans. Hotter land temperatures, together with the earlier onset of industrial-era warming, indicate that global warming was already 1.7 ± 0.1 °C above pre-industrial levels by 2020. Our result is 0.5 °C higher than IPCC estim

Here are the real reasons we’re not building clean energy anywhere near fast enough.

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.

RealClimate: A new paper was published in Science Advances today. Its title says what it is about: "Physics-based early warning signal shows that AMOC is on tipping course." The study follows one by Danish colleagues which made headlines last July, likewise looking for early warning signals for approaching an AMOC tipping point (we discussed it here),

Exclusive: Meeting took place days after BP reported record profits while households were squeezed by high energy bills

Climate records tumbled "like dominoes" in 2023, with temperatures far above any recorded level.

The global economy urgently needs to bend its emissions curve downwards

Existing production destroys more value than it creates due to medical and environmental costs, researchers say

There was an interesting interview with Gavin Schmidt recently. He is one of the most senior climatologists in the world, heading up NASA’s department on climate science. Refreshingly, unlike the other senior climatologists, he didn’t sidestep how recent weather was not predicted by mainstream climatology. He told the American science celebrity Neil deGrasse Tyson that climatology significantly underpredicted current warming. He said there was “total failure” to predict what happened in 2023. See for yourself, for 3 minutes from 4 minutes in. Gavin is one of the more approachable of the senior climatologists. He provided specific written criticisms of my 2018 Deep Adaptation paper. That was in stark contrast to others who misrepresented it, and me, so as to discourage people from considering that the party is over for modern societies.

EUCityCalc has officially launched its free, open source online platform that allows local councils and other stakeholders to visualise and simulate low-carbon scenarios for their towns and cities, as well as to assess the trade-offs related to available choices.

The European Commission has received an open letter signed by 110 academics, businesses, civil society organisations and research institutions urging the EU to separate emissions reductions, land-based sequestration and permanent carbon removals in the EU’s post-2030 climate framework. This separation should be at the heart of both the setting and the implementation of the 2040 target and associated plans.

At a time when we need to shift our collective climate action up a gear, the influence of the fossil fuels lobby is succeeding in slowing down ambition both at COP27 and in the EU.

Overall losses from natural disasters in 2023: US$ 250bn; more than 74,000 fatalities Insured global losses of US$ 95bn close to five-year average (US$ 105bn) and above the ten-year average (US$ 90bn) Earthquake in Turkey and Syria was the year’s most devastating humanitarian disaster Thunderstorms in North America and Europe more destructive than ever before: overall losses of US$ 76bn; insured losses US$ 58bn 2023 was the hottest year ever, with a large number of regional records broken

The Goddess is said to be benevolent and merciful, but she may get angry and become cruel and ruthless. We are used to discussing major events that may destroy civilization, or even the whole humankind. Most are related to global warming: tipping points, “hothouse Earth,” famines, tsunamis, and all the rest. Then, there are other human-made disasters, including the nuclear holocaust and homemade exterminations that can be carried out with simple tools such as machetes. Recently, it became fashionable to cite artificial intelligence as a threat to human beings.

DataBank is an analysis and visualisation tool that contains collections of time series data on a variety of topics. You can create your own queries; generate tables, charts, and maps; and easily save, embed, and share them. Enjoy using DataBank and let us know what you think!

The new version of the “Seneca Effect” blog on Substack is doing reasonably well, so I thought it was time to prepare a page that explains what the Seneca Effect is and what it can teach us. (image by Dall-E) During the 1st Century AD, the Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca observed the start of the disintegration of the Roman Empire. It was a process that would take a few more centuries to complete, but that was already evident to those who were willing to look beyond the surface of the still powerful Empire.

Small modular reactors (SMRs) have been the subject of endless hype in recent years but in fact, no SMRs have ever been built, none are being built now and in all likelihood none will ever be built because of the prohibitive costs. SMRs are defined as reactors with a capacity of 300 megawatts (MW) or less with serial factory production of reactor components (or ‘modules’). No SMRs have been built, but dozens of small (<300 MW) power reactors have been built in numerous countries, without factory production of reactor components.

Total is 20% higher than thought and may have implications for collapse of globally important north Atlantic ocean currents The Greenland ice cap is losing an average of 30m tonnes of ice an hour due to the climate crisis, a study has revealed, which is 20% more than was previously thought. Some scientists are concerned that this additional source of freshwater pouring into the north Atlantic might mean a collapse of the ocean currents called the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc) is closer to being triggered, with severe consequences for humanity.

To truly evaluate your impact on the environment, you have to go way beyond recycle bins and energy bills...

New paper claims unless demand for resources is reduced, many other innovations are just a sticking plaster Record heat, record emissions, record fossil fuel consumption. One month out from Cop28, the world is further than ever from reaching its collective climate goals. At the root of all these problems, according to recent research, is the human “behavioural crisis”, a term coined by an interdisciplinary team of scientists.

Exclusive: First months of conflict produced more planet-warming gases than 20 climate-vulnerable nations do in a year, study shows

Jacqueline “Jackie” Gerson knows very well how “artisanal gold mining” sounds to people who haven’t heard the phrase before.

Biotech firms are using climate goals opportunistically in an attempt to force through the deregulation of genetically modified crops.

A focus on economic stability in the near-term makes the climate crisis worse in the long-term.

James Hansen says limit will be passed ‘for all practical purposes’ by May though other experts predict that will happen in 2030s

Last year I was fortunate enough to be joined by four remarkable women in the British environmental movement. We were speaking at a Deep Adaptation conference in Glastonbury. The way the discussion…

An easy way to start a long, heated debate is to mention global population. Thomas Malthus famously ignited furious arguments in the eighteenth century when

Population likely to peak sooner and lower than expected with beneficial results – but environment is priority

This year's heat and drought in the Amazon intensify worries that it is approaching a tipping point.

A new paper published in the journal Science has warned that melting areas in the Arctic have become 'frontlines for resource extraction', describing it as a 'modern day gold rush'.

In recent years, droughts have had substantial impacts on nearly all regions of the EU, affecting several critical systems such as agriculture, water supply, energy, river transport, and ecosystems. These impacts are projected to further increase due to climate change. While some of the drivers of drought risk are well known for some systems and regions, drought risks and impacts remain hard to assess and quantify. The European Drought Risk Atlas is a step towards impact-based drought assessment and can support the development and implementation of drought management and adaptation policies and actions. It characterises how drought hazard, exposure and vulnerability interact and affect different but interconnected systems: agriculture, public water supply, energy, riverine transport, freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems. The Atlas presents both a conceptual and quantitative approach to drought risk for these systems. The conceptual drought risk models (impact chains) are the result of a review of the literat

The State of the Cryosphere 2023 – Two Degrees is Too High report shows that all of the Earth’s frozen parts will experience irreversible damage at 2°C of global warming, with disastrous consequences for millions of people, societies, and nature. Confirming that just 2°C of global warming will trigger irreversible loss to Earth’s ice sheets, mountain glaciers and snow, sea ice, permafrost, and polar oceans, it updates the latest science and highlights the global impacts from cryosphere loss.

the starkest warning yet that human activity is pushing Earth into a climate crisis that could threaten the lives of up to 6 billion people this century, stating candidly: “We are afraid of the uncharted territory that we have now entered.” Writing in the journal Biosciences, the coalition of 12 researchers, spanning North America, Europe and Asia, state in unusually stark language: “As scientists, we are increasingly being asked to tell the public the truth about the crises we face in simple and direct terms. The truth is that we are shocked by the ferocity of the extreme weather events in 2023.”

Global warming is accelerating because the drive for warming, Earth’s energy imbalance, has doubled in the past decade. Measurement of the acceleration is hampered by unforced tropical (El Nino/La Nina) variability, but a good measuring stick is provided by warming between successive large El Ninos. Strengthening of the current (2023-24) El Nino has raised it to a level similar to the 1997-98 and 2015-16 El Ninos. The first six months of the current El Nino are 0.39°C warmer than the same six months of the 2015-16 El Nino, a global warming rate of 0.49°C/decade, consistent with expectation of a large acceleration of global warming. We expect the 12-month mean temperature by May 2024 to eliminate any doubt about global warming acceleration. Subsequent decline of the 12-month temperature below 1.5°C will likely be limited, confirming that the 1.5°C limit has already been passed.

Alberta owns a new record. The province is home to an abandoned and unplugged gas well that leaks methane, an explosive greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere at the highest rate ever recorded in North America.

New path to transition away from fossil fuels marred by lack of finance and loopholes COP28 in Dubai sends an important signal on the end of fossil fuels but leaves more questions than answers on how to ensure a fair and funded transition that is based on science and equity

The critical annual update revealing the latest trends in global carbon emissions

Oil cartel warns ‘pressure may reach a tipping point’ and that ‘politically motivated campaigns put our prosperity’ at risk

Humanity faces ‘devastating domino effects’ including mass displacement and financial ruin as planet warms

Without a phase out of fossil fuels, by 2100, 1 in 12 hospitals worldwide will be at high risk of total or partial shutdown from extreme weather events — a total of 16,245 hospitals. Without a phase out of fossil fuels, all of these 16,245 hospitals will require adaptation, where suitable. Even with this enormous investment, for many, relocation will be the only option.

The effect of increasing the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) on global average surface air temperature might be expected to be constant, but this is not the case. A study published in the journal Science shows that carbon dioxide becomes a more potent greenhouse gas as more is released into the atmosphere.

We owe all children a planet Earth as wonderful as the one we have enjoyed!

After yet another summer of increased extreme weather events caused by the burning of fossil fuels, some of the world’s richest oil and gas companies are investing in artificial intelligence (AI) to speed up their extraction of new oil and gas. 

Referring to the Paris Agreement’s target of keeping Earth from warming no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius since the Industrial Revolution, the number has become a rallying cry for climate advocates and scientists, who say the goal is humanity’s best bet on avoiding the most catastrophic outcomes of climate change by the end of the century. Venturing even 0.5 degrees past that threshold could drastically increase the frequency and severity of extreme weather, biodiversity loss, famine and water scarcity, as well as make it more likely that tipping points accelerate warming further, climate scientists say.

With the help of the contingency concept, the article explores the reasons behind these surprises by introducing a new category of threats that complements the ones in the existing literature on surprise. It adds the concept of ‘known—corporally unknown’ threats to the list of known-unknowns, unknown-unknowns as a way to emsphasize the difference between abstract knowledge of ‘facts and figures’ (of e.g., global warming) and the acquiring of knowledge through personal, bodily experience (tangere) (of flooding and draughts). T

Exclusive: UAE’s Sultan Al Jaber says phase-out of coal, oil and gas would take world ‘back into caves’

After all, Western economies – and their economic growth – depend utterly on labour and resources from the South...

Plastic waste in aquatic environments may be severely disrupting the reproductive behavior of marine animals. 

Societies and political structures, like the humans they serve, appear to become more fragile as they age, according to an analysis of hundreds of pre-modern societies.

World Meteorological Organization says 2023 will be hottest year on record, leaving ‘trail of devastation and despair’

UN Climate Change News, 14 November 2023 – A new report from UN Climate Change finds national climate action plans remain insufficient to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. Even with increased efforts by some countries, the report shows much more action is needed now to bend the world’s emissions trajectory further downward and avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

In 1987, the Montreal Protocol established a ban on substances responsible for destroying the ozone layer, which is essential for protection against the sun’s rays.

It’s obscene that the super-rich can criminalise protest, while they burn the world’s resources and remain untouched by the law, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

Saudi Arabia is driving a huge global investment plan to create demand for its oil and gas in developing countries, an undercover investigation has revealed. Critics said the plan was designed to get countries “hooked on its harmful products”. Little was known about the oil demand sustainability programme (ODSP) but the investigation obtained detailed information on plans to drive up the use of fossil fuel-powered cars, buses and planes in Africa and elsewhere, as rich countries increasingly switch to clean energy.

Daily atmospheric carbon dioxide data from Hawaiian volcano more than double last decade’s annual average

Some research suggests that while fear can prompt us to spring into action, hope actually gives us something to do.

Link to climate activism is seven times stronger for anger than it is for hope, say Norwegian researchers

Global fall averaged 4.2% between 2010 and 2022 but would have been far more if vehicle sizes stayed same

Policy-makers seeking to limit the impact of coal electricity-generating units (EGUs, also known as power plants) on air quality and climate justify regulations by quantifying the health burden attributable to exposure from these sources. We defined “coal PM2.5” as fine particulate matter associated with coal EGU sulfur dioxide emissions and estimated annual exposure to coal PM2.5 from 480 EGUs in the US. We estimated the number of deaths attributable to coal PM2.5 from 1999 to 2020 using individual-level Medicare death records representing 650 million person-years. Exposure to coal PM2.5 was associated with 2.1 times greater mortality risk than exposure to PM2.5 from all sources. A total of 460,000 deaths were attributable to coal PM2.5, representing 25% of all PM2.5-related Medicare deaths before 2009 and 7% after 2012. Here, we quantify and visualize the contribution of individual EGUs to mortality.

World Meteorological Organization sees ‘no end in sight to the rising trend’, largely driven by fossil fuel burning

The fate, effects, and treatment of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), an anthropogenic class of chemicals used in industrial and commercial production, are topics of great interest in recent research and news cycles. This interest stems from the ubiquity of PFAS in the global environment as well as their significant toxicological effects in humans and wildlife. Research on toxicity, sequestration, removal, and degradation of PFAS has grown rapidly, leading to a flood of valuable knowledge that can get swamped out in the perpetual rise in the number of publications. Selected papers from the Journal of Hazardous Materials between January 2018 and May 2022 on the toxicity, sequestration, and degradation of PFAS are reviewed in this article and made available as open-access publications for one year, in order to facilitate the distribution of critical knowledge surrounding PFAS. This review discusses routes of toxicity as observed in mammalian and cellular models, and the observed human health effects i

Mapped: Carbon Dioxide Emissions Around the World According to Our World in Data, the global population emits about 34 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) each year. Where does all this CO₂ come from? This graphic by Adam Symington maps out carbon emissions around the world, using 2018 data from the European Commission that tracks tonnes of CO₂ per 0.1 degree grid (roughly 11 square kilometers). This type of visualization allows us to clearly see not just population centers, but flight paths, shipping lanes, and high production areas. Let’s take a closer look at some of these concentrated (and brightly lit) regions on the map.

Exclusive: UK climate campaign group Possible calls for ‘polluter pays’ tax based on vehicle size

One Health is an integrated, unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimize the health of people, animals and ecosystems.It recognizes that the health of humans, domestic and wild animals, plants, and the wider environment (including ecosystems) are closely linked and interdependent.

Dear COP 28 President-Designate Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber, This year, world leaders gathering in the UAE to take stock of their climate commitments will for the first time engage in official programming focused on health. We, the signatories of this letter, support your leadership in bringing health front and center at COP28.

When Rishi Sunak granted 27 new North Sea licences this week, he wasn’t thinking about the survival of the living world, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

CarbonBombs.org is a tool to follow the evolution of carbon bombs in the world.

Earth just had the hottest September on record – and by a record-breaking margin, according to leading international datasets which are used by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) for its State of the Global Climate monitoring reports.

Joint action is essential for planetary and human health Over 200 health journals call on the United Nations, political leaders, and health professionals to recognise that climate change and biodiversity loss are one indivisible crisis and must be tackled together to preserve health and avoid catastrophe. This overall environmental crisis is now so severe as to be a global health emergency. The world is currently responding to the climate crisis and the nature crisis as if they were separate challenges. This is a dangerous mistake. The 28th UN Conference of the Parties (COP) on climate change is about to be held in Dubai while the 16th COP on biodiversity is due to be held in Turkey in 2024. The research communities that provide the evidence for the two COPs are unfortunately largely separate, but they were brought together for a workshop in 2020 when they concluded: “Only by considering climate and biodiversity as parts of the same complex problem … can solutions be developed that avoid maladaptation and max

Ocean-driven melting of floating ice-shelves in the Amundsen Sea is currently the main process controlling Antarctica’s contribution to sea-level rise. Using a regional ocean model, we present a comprehensive suite of future projections of ice-shelf melting in the Amundsen Sea. We find that rapid ocean warming, at approximately triple the historical rate, is likely committed over the twenty-first century, with widespread increases in ice-shelf melting, including in regions crucial for ice-sheet stability. When internal climate variability is considered, there is no significant difference between mid-range emissions scenarios and the most ambitious targets of the Paris Agreement. These results suggest that mitigation of greenhouse gases now has limited power to prevent ocean warming that could lead to the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The authors use a regional ocean model to project ocean-driven ice-shelf melt in the Amundsen Sea. Already committed rapid ocean warming drives increased melt, regard

Global carbon dioxide emissions from energy use and industry could peak as soon as this year, according to Carbon Brief analysis of figures from the IEA.

Scientists warn of unlivable heat and food shortages after analyzing 35 planetary vital signs.

This volume addresses political action in Anthropocene and tension between the Promethean project of modernity and post-Promethean approach.

UK has led the way, with countries across the continent making mass arrests, passing draconian new laws and labelling activists as eco-terrorists

September 2023 smashed the prior global temperature record. Hand-wringing about the magnitude of the temperature jump in September is not inappropriate, but it is more important to investigate the role of aerosol climate forcing – which we chose to leave unmeasured – in global climate change. Global temperature during the current El Nino provides a potential indirect assessment of change of the aerosol forcing. Global temperature in the current El Nino, to date, implies a strong acceleration of global warming for which the most likely explanation is a decrease of human-made aerosols as a result of reductions in China and from ship emissions. The current El Nino will probably be weaker than the 1997-98 and 2015-16 El Ninos, making current warming even more significant. The current near-maximum solar irradiance adds a small amount to the major “forcing” mechanisms (GHGs, aerosols, and El Nino), but with no long-term effect. More important, the long dormant Southern Hemisphere polar amplification is probably com

By putting in place climate change adaptation measures, NATO has an opportunity to both strengthen operational resilience and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Dr. Michael E. Mann is Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, with a secondary appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication. He is director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media (PCSSM). Dr. Mann received his undergraduate degrees in Physics and Applied Math from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.S. degree in Physics from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in Geology & Geophysics from Yale University. His research interests include the study of Earth's climate system and the science, impacts and policy implications of human-caused climate change.

In this sweeping work of science and history, the renowned climate scientist and author of The New Climate War shows us the conditions on Earth that allowed humans not only to exist but thrive, and how they are imperiled if we veer off course.

This Handbook explains the complexity of the concept of the Anthropocene, scientific and a political concept and also an ideological concept.

The renowned US scientist’s new book examines 4bn years of climate history to conclude we are in a ‘fragile moment’ but there is still time to act

But the decline in oil, gas and coal will not be steep enough to limit global warming to 1.5C

Le Premier ministre Alexander De Croo s'est adressé à l'Assemblée générale des Nations unies à New York.

Read Prime Minister Alexander De Croo's full speech at the climate conference in Sharm El Sheikh here. In his speech, the Prime Minister made the case for inclusivity and cooperation to tackle the climate crisis. Young, old, private, public sector, north, south, we must all go all-in to tackle today's challenges

To prevent catastrophe, these countries must stop new extraction projects n: Just 20 countries, led overwhelmingly by the United States, Canada and Russia, are responsible for nearly 90 percent of new greenhouse gas emissions threatened by new oil and gas fields and fracking wells planned between now and 2050. If these extraction projects are allowed to proceed, they will lock in climate chaos and an unlivable future.

In the past two years Les Soulèvements de la Terre, a network of ecological activists and groups, has used direct confrontations with polluters and developers to threaten industrial agriculture’s monopoly on the French countryside.

Waves of severe thunderstorms in the U.S. during the first half of this year led to $34 billion in insured losses, an unprecedented level of financial damage in such a short time as climate change contributes to the frequency and severity of violent meteorological events. The reinsurer Swiss Re Group said Wednesday that damages from convective storms in the U.S., which can come with hail, lightning, heavy rain and high winds, accounted for nearly 70% of the $50 billion in global catastrophic damages so far this year. The storms in the U.S. were so severe, there were 10 that resulted in damages of $1 billion or more, almost double the average over the last decade.

Ahead of the UN’s SDG Summit (18-19 September), ground-breaking analyses shows how by enacting five ‘extraordinary turnarounds’ SDGs implementation can be accelerated.

BP, Shell, and TotalEnergies found to be leading a multi-pronged influencing campaign that could lock in fossil gas across both continents, with push back coming from more renewables-focused European energy players.

An independent think tank producing data-driven analysis on how business and finance are impacting the climate crisis

The world’s first study of the increase in pollution from landscape fires across the globe over the past two decades reveals that over 2 billion people are exposed to at least one day of potentially health-impacting environmental hazard annually – a figure that has increased by 6.8 per cent in the last ten years.

Guardian investigation finds 98% of Europeans breathing highly damaging polluted air linked to 400,000 deaths a year

ibrio are bacteria that cause an estimated 80,000 illnesses each year in the United States. About a dozen species of Vibrio are pathogenic to humans. V. parahaemolyticus causes the most infections in the United States, accounting for about 40% of reported cases of vibriosis, followed by V. alginolyticus, which accounts for about 20%. Most people with Vibrio infection have diarrhea. Some people might also have stomach cramping, nausea, vomiting, fever, and chills. One species, V. vulnificus, is known to cause life-threatening infections. About 150–200 V. vulnificus infections are reported to CDC each year and about one in five people with this infection die—sometimes within 1–2 days of becoming ill.

Human activities are threatening to push the Earth system beyond its planetary boundaries, risking catastrophic and irreversible global environmental change. Action is urgently needed, yet well-intentioned policies designed to reduce pressure on a single boundary can lead, through economic linkages, to aggravation of other pressures. In particular, the potential policy spillovers from an increase in the global carbon price onto other critical Earth system processes has received little attention to date. To this end, we explore the global environmental effects of pricing carbon, beyond its effect on carbon emissions. We find that the case for carbon pricing globally becomes even stronger in a multi-boundary world, since it can ameliorate many other planetary pressures. It does however exacerbate certain planetary pressures, largely by stimulating additional biofuel production. When carbon pricing is allied with a biofuel policy, however, it can alleviate all planetary pressures. In the light of nine Earth Syst

Take part in the new scientific discussion about looming abrupt changes in the Earth system. This new webinar series invites scientists interested in tipping elements and the broader public to attend.

California has sued five of the largest oil and gas companies in the world, alleging that they engaged in a 'decades-long campaign of deception' about climate change and the risks posed by fossil fuels.

Mass extinctions during the past 500 million y rapidly removed branches from the phylogenetic tree of life and required millions of years for evolution to generate functional replacements for the extinct (EX) organisms. Here we show, by examining 5,400 vertebrate genera (excluding fishes) comprising 34,600 species, that 73 genera became EX since 1500 AD. Beyond any doubt, the human-driven sixth mass extinction is more severe than previously assessed and is rapidly accelerating. The current generic extinction rates are 35 times higher than expected background rates prevailing in the last million years under the absence of human impacts. The genera lost in the last five centuries would have taken some 18,000 y to vanish in the absence of human beings. Current generic extinction rates will likely greatly accelerate in the next few decades due to drivers accompanying the growth and consumption of the human enterprise such as habitat destruction, illegal trade, and climate disruption. If all now-endangered genera

Human activity has caused species groups to go extinct 35 times faster than they have over the past 500 years

We are developing a first-of-a-kind methodology for transforming industrial sabotage and other forms of direct action into carbon offsets. Browse our repository of case studies or propose a new one for analysis.

Extreme weather is ‘smacking us in the face’ with worse to come, but a ‘tiny window’ of hope remains, say leading climate scientists

Planetary Boundaries - summary and implications for policymakers 05.12.2022 Respecting planetary boundaries is essential to preserve the stability of ecosystems and human societies, including in Switzerland. Incorporating this principle into our legal system is consistent with the pursuit of our ...

During the past decades, the idea of acting to counteract the damage done to the ecosystem by humankind's activities has moved along at least two planning stages.

First complete ‘scientific health check’ shows most global systems beyond stable range in which modern civilisation emerged

Whilst fossil fuel companies' history of climate denial is common knowledge, there are still a worrying number of revolving door cases between fossil fuel companies and our EU politicians, Martha Myers writes.

Scientists have raised concerns about whether high-income countries, with their high per-capita CO2 emissions, can decarbonise fast enough to meet their obligations under the Paris Agreement if they continue to pursue aggregate economic growth. Over the past decade, some countries have reduced their CO2 emissions while increasing their gross domestic product (absolute decoupling). Politicians and media have hailed this as green growth. In this empirical study, we aimed to assess whether these achievements are consistent with the Paris Agreement, and whether Paris-compliant decoupling is within reach.

Techniques such as solar radiation management may have unintended consequences, scientists say

If you've ever seen the movie Soylent Green, you know it's not about cannibalism. It's about the banality of social collapse. It's not quick. It's a slow burn. Nobody shows any sense of urgency about anything. Everyone still watches talk shows, even if they have to pedal a bike to generate electricity for their television. Nobody under 50 remembers anything better. Here's the plot twist: It's not that corporations are using people as the main ingredient in everyone's favorite new food. It's

For the first time, an international team of scientists is able to provide a detailed outline of planetary resilience by mapping out all nine boundary processes that define a safe operating space for humanity.

This planetary boundaries framework update finds that six of the nine boundaries are transgressed, suggesting that Earth is now well outside of the safe operating space for humanity. Ocean acidification is close to being breached, while aerosol loading regionally exceeds the boundary. Stratospheric ozone levels have slightly recovered. The transgression level has increased for all boundaries earlier identified as overstepped. As primary production drives Earth system biosphere functions, human appropriation of net primary production is proposed as a control variable for functional biosphere integrity. This boundary is also transgressed. Earth system modeling of different levels of the transgression of the climate and land system change boundaries illustrates that these anthropogenic impacts on Earth system must be considered in a systemic context.

Capitalism's endless growth paradigm can't be squared with sustainability. But no one – from politicians to the protest movement – is willing to admit the truth

Ice-free summers inevitable even with sharp emissions cuts and likely to result in more extreme heatwaves and floods

State Farm will almost entirely stop issuing new policies in California – with climate-exacerbated wildfires and bad public policy a large reason why

Colombia was the deadliest country and a fifth of the 177 recorded killings took place in the Amazon rainforest, says Global Witness

Study highlights conflict between Washington’s claims of climate leadership and its fossil fuel growth plans

Forecast downturn still ‘nowhere near steep enough’ to limit temperature rise to 1.5C, says watchdog

Daily Sea Surface Temperature

[Infographie] Daily Sea Ice Extent

I'm an independent healthcare analyst with more than 24 years of experience analyzing healthcare and pharmaceuticals. Specifically, I analyze the value (costs and benefits) of biologics and pharmaceuticals, patient access to prescription drugs, the regulatory framework for drug development and reimbursement, and ethics with respect to the distribution of healthcare resources. I have approximately 110 publications in peer-reviewed journals, in addition to hundreds of articles in newspapers and periodicals. I have also presented my work at numerous trade, industry, and academic conferences. From 1999 to 2017 I was a research associate professor at the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development. Prior to my Tufts appointment, I was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, and I completed my PhD in economics at the University of Amsterdam. Before pursuing my PhD I was a management consultant at Accenture in The Hague, Netherlands. Currently, and for the past 6 years, I work on a freelance ba

Access to robust and current information is essential for ensuring evidence-based policy and practice and identifying research gaps. For these purposes, more than 90 authors from about 30 national public authorities and institutions contributed to a comprehensive synthesis of the current evidence in Germany, published as 14 articles in the Journal of Health Monitoring.

Lancet study finds 'green growth' policies fall far short of what's needed to prevent dangerous change…

Background Scientists have raised concerns about whether high-income countries, with their high per-capita CO2 emissions, can decarbonise fast enough to meet their obligations under the Paris Agreement if they continue to pursue aggregate economic growth. Over the past decade, some countries have reduced their CO2 emissions while increasing their gross domestic product (absolute decoupling). Politicians and media have hailed this as green growth. In this empirical study, we aimed to assess whether these achievements are consistent with the Paris Agreement, and whether Paris-compliant decoupling is within reach.

Bonn and Geneva, 6 September 2023 (ECMWF and WMO) - Earth just had its hottest three months on record, according to the European Union-funded Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) implemented by ECMWF. Global sea surface temperatures are at unprecedented highs for the third consecutive month and Antarctic sea ice extent remains at a record low for the time of year.

This innovative and comprehensive collection of essays explores the biggest threats facing humanity in the 21st century; threats that cannot be contained or controlled and that have the potential to bring about human extinction and civilization collapse. Bringing together experts from many disciplines, it provides an accessible survey of what we know about these threats, how we can understand them better, and most importantly what can be done to manage them effectively.

The celebrated science broadcaster and environmental activist says we have to stop elevating the economy and politics over the state of our world

More than 1 billion cows around the world will experience heat stress by the end of the century if carbon emissions are high and environmental protection is low, according to new research published in Environmental Research Letters. This would mean cattle farming would face potentially lethal heat stress in much of the world, including Central America, tropical South America, Equatorial Africa, and South and Southeast Asia.

A major New York Times investigation reveals how the United States’ aquifers are becoming severely depleted due to overuse in part from huge industrial farms and sprawling cities. The Times reports that Kansas corn yields are plummeting due to a lack of water, there is not enough water to support the construction of new homes in parts of Phoenix, Arizona, and rivers across the country are drying up as aquifers are being drained far faster than they are refilling.

A coalition of British Columbians are organizing their municipalities to take oil and gas companies to court over the costs of the climate crisis

Population ecologist William Rees, with the University of British Columbia's School of Community and Regional Planning, is reminding denizens of Earth that the planet can only support so many people. In his paper published in the journal World, he points out that many models have been developed over the years that show that only a certain number of animals (such as rats) can live in a given environment—they all show that at some point, a population correction occurs.

f global warming reaches or exceeds two degrees Celsius by 2100, University of Western Ontario's Joshua Pearce says it is likely that mainly richer humans will be responsible for the death of roughly one billion mainly poorer humans over the next century. The oil and gas industry, which includes many of the most profitable and powerful businesses in the world, is directly and indirectly responsible for more than 40% of carbon emissions—impacting the lives of billions of people, many living in the world's most remote and low-resourced communities. A new study proposes aggressive energy policies that would enable immediate and substantive decreases to carbon emissions and recommends a heightened level of government, corporate and citizen action to accelerate the decarbonization of the global economy, aiming to minimize the number of projected human deaths.

When attempting to quantify future harms caused by carbon emissions and to set appropriate energy policies, it has been argued that the most important metric is the number of human deaths caused by climate change. Several studies have attempted to overcome the uncertainties associated with such forecasting. In this article, approaches to estimating future human death tolls from climate change relevant at any scale or location are compared and synthesized, and implications for energy policy are considered. Several studies are consistent with the “1000-ton rule,” according to which a future person is killed every time 1000 tons of fossil carbon are burned (order-of-magnitude estimate). If warming reaches or exceeds 2 °C this century, mainly richer humans will be responsible for killing roughly 1 billion mainly poorer humans through anthropogenic global warming, which is comparable with involuntary or negligent manslaughter. On this basis, relatively aggressive energy policies are summarized that would enable im

Just Stop Oil is a coalition of groups working together to ensure the Government commits to halting new fossil fuel licensing and production.

Energy return on investment (EROI) is a biophysical and ecological economics concept that is useful to think about how organisms, ecosystems and societies must obtain enough surplus energy returned from energy gathering activities to live, reproduce, and thrive. EROI can help us overcome the false dualism between nature and society. EROI is a useful metric for economics because it is based on immutable physical laws rather than sometimes arbitrary human preferences. It is essential for assessing useful power, energy trade-offs, efficiencies (and inefficiencies), resource depletion trends, resource quality, and surplus potentials of different fuels and technologies that power, or might power, our socio-economic systems. Apparent inconsistencies in the literature can generally be reduced or eliminated by paying careful attention and explicitly stating boundaries and definitions. We argue that proper use of EROI is critical to understand the interconnections among the environment, energy, and socio-economic deve

A novel methodology is developed to dynamically assess the energy and material investments required over time to achieve the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources in the electricity sector. The obtained results indicate that a fast transition achieving a 100% renewable electric system globally by 2060 consistent with the Green Growth narrative could decrease the EROI of the energy system from current ~12:1 to ~3:1 by the mid-century, stabilizing thereafter at ~5:1. These EROI levels are well below the thresholds identified in the literature required to sustain industrial complex societies. Moreover, this transition could drive a substantial re-materialization of the economy, exacerbating risk availability in the future for some minerals. Hence, the results obtained put into question the consistence and viability of the Green Growth narrative.

In March and April 2023, some Earth scientists began to point out that average sea surface temperatures had surpassed the highest levels seen in a key data record maintained by NOAA. Months later, they remain at record levels, with global sea surface temperatures 0.99°C (1.78°F) above average in July. That was the fourth consecutive month they were at record levels.

Le laboratoire travaille sur le projet "Mission 100 jours", un objectif extrêmement ambitieux qui consiste à mettre au point un vaccin contre une nouvelle menace en 100 jours.

The UN Secretary-General’s Early Warnings for All Initiative (EW4All) is rapidly gaining ground. Action plans are being rolled out around the world to ensure that people know when dangerous weather is headed their way. Tajikistan has held a two-day national consultation, co-chaired by the Deputy Prime Minister and the UN Resident Coordinator in Tajikistan, and bringing together key stakeholders from state and international organizations, media and civil society. Ethiopia also held an inception workshop.

There is a growing body of evidence for serious health consequences of exposure to ambient air pollution. The general question of who is susceptible is one of the most important gaps in current knowledge regarding particulate matter (PM)-related health effects. Who is susceptible depends on the specific health endpoint being evaluated and the level and length of exposure. Here, we restrict the review on the impact of fine particle exposure on children's health to the following outcomes: infant death, lung function, respiratory symptoms and reproductive outcomes.

Gestational exposure to ambient fine particles (PM2.5) increases the risk of stillbirth, but the related disease burden is unknown, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). We combine state-of-the-art estimates on stillbirths, and multiple exposure–response functions obtained from previous meta-analyses or derived by a self-matched case-control study in 54 LMICs. 13,870 stillbirths and 32,449 livebirths are extracted from 113 geocoded surveys from the Demographic and Health Surveys. Each stillbirth is compared to livebirth(s) of the same mother using a conditional logit regression. We find that 10-µg/m3 increase of PM2.5 is associated with an 11.0% (95% confidence interval [CI] 6.4, 15.7) increase in the risk of stillbirth, and the association is significantly enhanced by maternal age. Based on age-specific nonlinear PM2.5–stillbirth curves, we evaluate the PM2.5-related stillbirths in 137 countries. In 2015, of 2.09 (95% CI: 1.98, 2.20) million stillbirths, 0.83 (0.54, 1.08) million or 39.7%

Heatwaves, wildfires and floods are just the ‘tip of the iceberg’, leading climate scientists say

As we mark 100 days until the COP28 UN climate summit, the urgency of addressing the climate crisis has never been more palpable. Global failures to mitigate emissions and adapt to the impacts continue to wreak havoc on the planet, and we’re seeing this in a range of ways. Unprecedented extreme weather events have occurred with frightening regularity in 2023. In March, over 500 people lost their lives when Cyclone Freddy struck Malawi. Last month, flooding in the Philippines caused by Typhoons Doksuri and Khanun displaced more than 300,000 people, and the recent wildfires that ravaged Hawaii – in part exacerbated by climate change – continue to make for distressing headlines. This list is likely to become even longer by the end of the year, when COP28 gets underway in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The Youth Climate Justice Fund supports with core flexible funding to emerging youth climate justice collectives. Groups can apply for a grant of up to USD 10,000, which can be used for a period of 12 months.

A new paper suggests that variations in warming of the Pacific Ocean were actually triggered by changing aerosol emissions from human activity.

New data on WRI's Aqueduct platform ranks the world's most water-stressed countries. One-quarter of the global population regularly use up their entire water supply.

Cooperation is not only in the best interests of all countries, but is absolutely necessary for the survival of the planet

Poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and global climate change have attracted worldwide attention. PFAS have been found all across the planet, from the polar regions to the global ocean. Global oceans have emerged as a substantial sink for the carbon in the environment due to their remarkable capacity to absorb atmospheric carbon. Oceans absorb around 24% of the world’s CO2 emissions. Thus, the ocean plays a prominent role in the earth’s carbon cycle. However, the widespread application of PFAS in a wide range of products and the inefficient management of PFAS-containing wastes made them ubiquitous pollutants, which are increasingly getting as a pollutant of emerging concern. Marine PFAS pollutants can produce harmful effects on gas exchange and the ocean’s carbon cycle. Thus, it leads to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions, which eventually adversely affects global warming and climate change. Consequently, threats of marine PFAS to oceans carbon sequestration are discussed in this paper. Marine PFA

Global coal consumption climbed to a new all-time high in 2022 and will stay near that record level this year as strong growth in Asia for both power generation and industrial applications outpaces declines in the United States and Europe, according to the IEA’s latest market update.

News of fusion has the effect of temporarily permitting people to shed the anxiety and embrace the dream all the more strongly.

Bernie Sanders represents Vermont in the U.S. Senate.

Human-caused climate disruption and El Niño push temperature in mountains to 37C

Beware of these three false solutions to climate change: carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS), hydrogen and offsets.

Antarctica’s sea ice levels are plummeting as extreme weather events happen faster than scientists predicted

Winter temperatures have neared 40 degrees Celsius in parts of South America, which is up to 20C higher than normal for this time of year and the equivalent of Sydney hitting 35C in the first week of August.

The role of health professionals In January 2023, the science and security board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of the doomsday clock forward to 90 seconds before midnight, reflecting the growing risk of nuclear war.1 In August 2022, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, warned that the world is now in “a time of nuclear danger not seen since the height of the Cold War.”2 The danger has been underlined by growing tensions between many nuclear armed states.13 As editors of health and medical journals worldwide, we call on health professionals to alert the public and our leaders to this major danger to public health and the essential life support systems of the planet—and urge action to prevent it. Current nuclear arms control and non-proliferation efforts are inadequate to protect the world’s population against the threat of nuclear war by design, error, or miscalculation. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) commits each of the 190 participating nations

The CEO of one of Infosys' other major clients, Shell, also joined Rishi Sunak's new business council two weeks ago.

There has been a strong push to promote increased investments in new nuclear power as a strategy to decarbonize economies, especially in the European Union (EU) and the United States (US). The evidence base for these initiatives is poor. Investments in new nuclear power plants are bad for the climate due to high costs and long construction times. Given the urgency of climate change mitigation, which requires reducing emissions from the EU electricity grid to almost zero in the 2030s (Pietzcker et al.1), preference should be given to the cheapest technology that can be deployed fastest. On both costs and speed, renewable energy sources beat nuclear. Every euro invested in new nuclear plants thus delays decarbonization compared to investments in renewable power. In a decarbonizing world, delays increase CO2 emissions. Our thoughts focus on new nuclear power plants (not phasing out existing plants) in the US and Europe. In Europe, new nuclear power plants are planned or seriously discussed in France, Czechia, Hu

More than a century of research shows that burning fossil fuels warms the climate – that’s exactly why granting new North Sea oil and gas licenses is a bad idea.

It’s the middle of winter in South America, but that hasn’t kept the heat away in Chile, Argentina and surrounding locations. Multiple spells of oddly hot weather have roasted the region in recent weeks. The latest spell early this week has become the most intense, pushing the mercury above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, while setting an August record for Chile.

The baby boomer dream of tanning on the beach is fading as temperatures rise. We are going to have to reinvent July and August.

Exclusive: Long list of ‘sensitive’ topics for petrostate include oil and gas production, emissions and Yemen war crimes

A collapse would bring catastrophic climate impacts but scientists disagree over the new analysis

According to ERA5 data from the EU-funded Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), the first three weeks of July have been the warmest three-week period on record and the month is on track to be the hottest July and the hottest month on record. These temperatures have been related to heatwaves in large parts of North America, Asia and Europe, which along with wildfires in countries including Canada and Greece, have had major impacts on people’s health, the environment and economies.

The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is a major tipping element in the climate system and a future collapse would have severe impacts on the climate in the North Atlantic region. In recent years weakening in circulation has been reported, but assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), based on the Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) model simulations suggest that a full collapse is unlikely within the 21st century. Tipping to an undesired state in the climate is, however, a growing concern with increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. Predictions based on observations rely on detecting early-warning signals, primarily an increase in variance (loss of resilience) and increased autocorrelation (critical slowing down), which have recently been reported for the AMOC. Here we provide statistical significance and data-driven estimators for the time of tipping. We estimate a collapse of the AMOC to occur around mid-century under the current scenario of future emi

Climate Reanalyzer

As the northern hemisphere burns, experts feel deep sadness – and resentment – while dreading what lies ahead this Australian summer

Following a record hot June, large areas of the US and Mexico, Southern Europe and China experienced extreme heat in July 2023, breaking many local high temperature records.

The method used to conduct an attribution study consists of eight steps, described here. The first step is the selection of an extreme event to study. After selecting an extreme weather event to study, the first step is to define the event, which provides a framework for the study. Researchers determine the geographical boundaries of the most impacted area, the best index to quantify the meteorological extreme (eg. maximum temperature, average rainfall, etc), and the duration of the event.

After hottest day ever, researchers say global heating may mean future of crop failures on land and ‘silent dying’ in the oceans

Our work complements and enhances the work of others in the fields of science, health, business, industry, culture, finance, academia, politics and civil society. Established in 2012, the GSCC is a collaborative network of people working across a number of different organisations operating across six continents and covering themes such as climate science and impacts, food and nature, finance and economics, energy, transport, industry, and multilateral climate processes.

James Hansen, who testified to Congress on global heating in 1988, says world is approaching a ‘new climate frontier’

According to the latest update to the NBB’s Climate Dashboard, it appears unlikely that the world will be able to limit global warming to 1.5 °C.

Three brush fires burning in rural areas across Riverside county, where 1,000 homes are under evacuation orders

Energy firms have made record profits by increasing production of oil and gas, far from their promises of rolling back emissions

Climate breakdown and crop losses threaten our survival, but the ultra-rich find ever more creative ways to maintain the status quo, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

Plastic debris is thought to be widespread in freshwater ecosystems globally1. However, a lack of comprehensive and comparable data makes rigorous assessment of its distribution challenging2,3. Here we present a standardized cross-national survey that assesses the abundance and type of plastic debris (>250 μm) in freshwater ecosystems. We sample surface waters of 38 lakes and reservoirs, distributed across gradients of geographical position and limnological attributes, with the aim to identify factors associated with an increased observation of plastics. We find plastic debris in all studied lakes and reservoirs, suggesting that these ecosystems play a key role in the plastic-pollution cycle. Our results indicate that two types of lakes are particularly vulnerable to plastic contamination: lakes and reservoirs in densely populated and urbanized areas and large lakes and reservoirs with elevated deposition areas, long water-retention times and high levels of anthropogenic influence. Plastic concentrations vary

A novel tool for flexible spatial and temporal analyses of much of the observed and projected climate change information underpinning the Working Group I contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report, including regional synthesis for Climatic Impact-Drivers (CIDs).

Plutonium spike in Canadian lake sediments marks dawn of new epoch in which humanity dominates planet

Presently, there is a scientific debate about which epoch we are in. The discussion centers around the Holocene vs Anthropocene question.

The Anthropocene defines Earth's most recent geologic time period as being human-influenced, or anthropogenic, based on overwhelming global evidence that atmospheric, geologic, hydrologic, biospheric and other earth system processes are now altered by humans. The word combines the root "anthropo", meaning "human" with the root "-cene", the standard suffix for "epoch" in geologic time. The Anthropocene is distinguished as a new period either after or within the Holocene, the current epoch, which began approximately 10,000 years ago (about 8000 BC) with the end of the last glacial period.

Groundbreaking assessment of all life on Earth reveals humanity’s surprisingly tiny part in it as well as our disproportionate impact

Sweden formally renounces EU net zero roadmap championed by the likes of Germany.

Just Collapse is an activist platform dedicated to socio-ecological justice in face of inevitable and irreversible global collapse. Just Collapse advocates for a Just Collapse and a Planned Collapse to avert the worst outcomes that will follow an otherwise unplanned, reactive collapse. Just Collapse recognises that there will be no justice in an unplanned collapse.

Climate change is not a uniquely modern threat. From the Ancestral Puebloans to the Mayans, many ancient civilizations crumbled due to climate change.

In a speech about climate change from April 4th of this year, UN General Secretary António Guterres lambasted “the empty pledges that put us on track to an unlivable world” and warned that “we are on a fast track to climate disaster” (1). Although stark, Guterres’ statements were not novel. Guterres has made similar remarks on previous occasions, as have other public figures, including Sir David Attenborough, who warned in 2018 that inaction on climate change could lead to “the collapse of our civilizations” (2). In their article, “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency 2021”—which now has more than 14,700 signatories from 158 countries—William J. Ripple and colleagues state that climate change could “cause significant disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies, potentially making large areas of Earth uninhabitable”

Scientists disagree on the timeline of collapse and whether it's imminent. But can we afford to be wrong? And what comes after?

Letter: Scientists and academics including Prof Gesa Weyhenmeyer and Prof Will Steffen argue that we must discuss the threat of societal disruption in order to prepare for it

This week, the world broke the daily temperature record. This is yet another demonstration that climate change is out of control and one reason more for increased #ClimateAction ambition and justice. Emissions continue to grow while leaders persist in delaying the key measures needed to change this. This is the moment when we all need to assume our responsibilities. #climatechange

Permafrost and glaciers in the high Arctic form an impermeable ‘cryospheric cap’ that traps a large reservoir of subsurface methane, preventing it from reaching the atmosphere. Cryospheric vulnerability to climate warming is making releases of this methane possible. On Svalbard, where air temperatures are rising more than two times faster than the average for the Arctic, glaciers are retreating and leaving behind exposed forefields that enable rapid methane escape. Here we document how methane-rich groundwater springs have formed in recently revealed forefields of 78 land-terminating glaciers across central Svalbard, bringing deep-seated methane gas to the surface. Waters collected from these springs during February–May of 2021 and 2022 are supersaturated with methane up to 600,000 times greater than atmospheric equilibration. Spatial sampling reveals a geological dependency on the extent of methane supersaturation, with isotopic evidence of a thermogenic source. We estimate annual methane emissions from prog

As the Arctic warms, shrinking glaciers are exposing bubbling groundwater springs which could provide an underestimated source of the potent greenhouse gas methane, finds new research published in Nature Geoscience. The study, led by researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University Center in Svalbard, Norway, identified large stocks of methane gas leaking from groundwater springs unveiled by melting glaciers.

Applications to mine the seabed in our ocean commons can be made from 9 July, says Guy Standing, author of The Blue Commons

Many of those who drowned near Greece last month were escaping environmental crises in Pakistan, says author Fatima Bhutto

Europe at the forefront of the climate challenge The European Union is a global leader in the transition to a net-zero greenhouse gas emissions economy. Playing a crucial role in international political efforts to tackle the climate challenge, Europe is one of the main players moving with urgency toward the Paris Agreement objectives. Now, with a European Green Deal and a commitment to reduce CO2 emissions by 55% by 2030, Europe has a clear, tangible roadmap to deliver such ambition. A wave of mass mobilisation, from climate marches to school strikes, is pressuring politicians to go further and faster. As a free-market democracy and the world’s largest single market, Europe is a key laboratory for innovative business and progressive social reform. It promises to bring groundbreaking change to globalised industries, from shipping to finance to aviation. Europe also has the power to demonstrate to the world that tackling climate change can go hand in hand with economic growth, social justice and a better qualit

Rishi Sunak has confirmed that a fossil fuel-funded think tank helped to draft his government’s laws targeting climate protests.

Hopes of the UK government meeting its domestic and international climate targets have “worsened” over the past year, according to the CCC.

Almost every country in the world has signed up to the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping warming well-below 2C and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5C.

Although humans have long been predators with enduring nutritive and cultural relationships with their prey, seldom have conservation ecologists considered the divergent predatory behavior of contemporary, industrialized humans. Recognizing that the number, strength and diversity of predator-prey relationships can profoundly influence biodiversity, here we analyze humanity’s modern day predatory interactions with vertebrates and estimate their ecological consequences. Analysing IUCN ‘use and trade’ data for ~47,000 species, we show that fishers, hunters and other animal collectors prey on more than a third (~15,000 species) of Earth’s vertebrates. Assessed over equivalent ranges, humans exploit up to 300 times more species than comparable non-human predators. Exploitation for the pet trade, medicine, and other uses now affects almost as many species as those targeted for food consumption, and almost 40% of exploited species are threatened by human use. Trait space analyses show that birds and mammals threaten

Mexico and the Caribbean are experiencing the most intense heatwave in their recorded history. The Mexican Plateau is being seared by harsh dry heat, while the Caribbean contends with deadly humid temperatures. On June 12, 2023, the mercury soared above 45 °C (113 °F) in several areas, including regions of high altitude. The city of Torreón, sitting at 1 123 m (3 684 feet) above sea level, saw temperatures rise to 43.3 °C (109.94 °F) on June 12, while Durango Airport, located at 1 872 m (6 142 feet) altitude, experienced 40.4 °C (104.72 °F) heat. La Bufa, perched even higher at 2 612 m (8 570 feet) above sea level, broke all-time records with a temperature of 33.4 °C (92.12 °F).

This Research Plan was prepared in response to a requirement in the joint explanatory statement accompanying Division B of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022, directing the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), with support from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), to provide a research plan for “solar and other rapid climate interventions.”

Flash drought, characterized by unusually rapid drying, can have substantial impact on many socioeconomic sectors, particularly agriculture. However, potential changes to flash drought risk in a warming climate remain unknown. In this study, projected changes in flash drought frequency and cropland risk from flash drought are quantified using global climate model simulations. We find that flash drought occurrence is expected to increase globally among all scenarios, with the sharpest increases seen in scenarios with higher radiative forcing and greater fossil fuel usage. Flash drought risk over cropland is expected to increase globally, with the largest increases projected across North America (change in annual risk from 32% in 2015 to 49% in 2100) and Europe (32% to 53%) in the most extreme emissions scenario. Following low-end and medium scenarios compared to high-end scenarios indicates a notable reduction in annual flash drought risk over cropland. Flash droughts are projected to become more frequent unde

If Nature were to draw a map of the world, what would it look like? One Earth presents a novel biogeographical framework called Bioregions 2023, which delineates 185 discrete bioregions organized within the world's major biogeographical realms.

Rivers are a major source of plastic waste in the oceans. We estimate that 1000 rivers, are accountable for nearly 80% of global annual riverine plastic emissions, which range between 0.8 – 2.7 million metric tons per year, with small urban rivers amongst the most polluting.

Top oil and gas companies have made little progress in turning away from hydrocarbons and towards the goals of the 2015 Paris climate deal, multinational nonprofit platform CDP said on Thursday.

World Bank says subsidies costing as much as $23m a minute must be repurposed to fight climate crisis...

With the Montreal Protocol, life on Earth dodged a bullet we didn’t even know was headed our way.

Updated, more accurate data gives a new look at the effects of sea level rise.

Popularity of sport utility vehicles driving higher oil demand and climate crisis, say experts

Around the world, rainforests are becoming savanna or farmland, savanna is drying out and turning into desert, and icy tundra is thawing. Indeed, scientific studies have now recorded "regime shifts" like these in more than 20 different types of ecosystem where tipping points have been passed. Around the world, more than 20% of ecosystems are in danger of shifting or collapsing into something different.

The Energy Institute is, as of 2023, the home of the Statistical Review of World Energy, published previously for more than 70 years by bp. The Statistical Review analyses data on world energy markets from the prior year. It has been providing timely, comprehensive and objective data to the energy community since 1952.

Abstract. The summer of 2022 was memorable and record-breaking, ranking as the second hottest summer in France since 1900, with a seasonal surface air temperature average of 22.7 ∘C. In particular, France experienced multiple record-breaking heatwaves during the meteorological summer. As the main heat reservoir of the Earth system, the oceans are at the forefront of events of this magnitude which enhance oceanic disturbances such as marine heatwaves (MHWs). In this study, we investigate the sea surface temperature (SST) of French maritime basins using remotely sensed measurements to track the response of surface waters to the atmospheric heatwaves and determine the intensity of such feedback. Beyond the direct relationship between SSTs and surface air temperatures, we explore the leading atmospheric parameters affecting the upper-layer ocean heat budget. Despite some gaps in data availability, the SSTs measured during the meteorological summer of 2022 were record-breaking, the mean SST was between 1.3 and 2.6

A new climate case was filed this week. Multnomah County, the Oregon county that includes Portland, filed suit against several oil majors for their role in exacerbating the climate change that led to the county's "heat dome" in June 2021, which killed 69 people. But the case doesn't just place

Major fossil fuel entities and trade associations including Koch Industries, the American Petroleum Institute, and the Western States Petroleum Association, as well as consulting behemoth McKinsey & Company, were slapped with the latest climate liability lawsuit today with the filing of a complaint in the Oregon Circuit Court in Multnomah County, Oregon.

During the last days of June 2021, Pacific northwest areas of the U.S. and Canada experienced temperatures never previously observed, with records broken in many places by several degrees Celsius.

Countries in debt distress thrown financial lifeline but critics say measures fall short of what is needed

Emmanuel Macron’s government is at least doing the bare minimum to avert the planetary crisis – and putting the UK to shame, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

Electrical blackouts like the ones in California are becoming more common. So are heat waves. A new study published in the journal of the National Institute of Health attempts to predict what will happen when both occur at the same time.

Read the latest news headlines and analysis about politics, sports, business, lifestyle and entertainment from award winning Irish and British journalists.

It’s not that our models can’t simulate small-scale weather – they’re basically the same models we use for weather forecasting – it’s just very computationally expensive to have them zoom in and run in “weather mode” to get a highly detailed simulation.

Research allays fears that rapid scaling back of production would hit people’s savings and pensions hard

A major concern for the world’s ecosystems is the possibility of collapse, where landscapes and the societies they support change abruptly. Accelerating stress levels, increasing frequencies of extreme events and strengthening intersystem connections suggest that conventional modelling approaches based on incremental changes in a single stress may provide poor estimates of the impact of climate and human activities on ecosystems. We conduct xperiments on four models that simulate abrupt changes in the Chilika lagoon fshery, the Easter Island community, forest dieback and lake water quality—representing ecosystems with a range of anthropogenic interactions. Collapses occur sooner under increasing levels of primary stress but additional stresses and/or the inclusion of noise in all four models bring the collapses substantially closer to today by ~38–81%. We discuss the implications for further research and the need for humanity to be vigilant for signs that ecosystems are degrading even more rapidly than previo

Amazon rainforest and other ecosystems could collapse ‘very soon’, researchers warn

WMO's annual State of the Climate in Europe report explores changes in climate indicators, extreme events and climate policy.

Taxing world’s wealthiest people could help poorer countries shift economies to low-carbon and recover from climate damage

Potential external cost savings associated with the reduction of animal-sourced foods remain poorly understood. Here we combine life cycle assessment principles and monetarization factors to estimate the monetary worth of damage to human health and ecosystems caused by the environmental impacts of food production. We find that, globally, approximately US$2 of production-related external costs were embedded in every dollar of food expenditure in 2018—corresponding to US$14.0 trillion of externalities. A dietary shift away from animal-sourced foods could greatly reduce these ‘hidden’ costs, saving up to US$7.3 trillion worth of production-related health burden and ecosystem degradation while curbing carbon emissions. By comparing the health effects of dietary change from the consumption versus the production of food, we also show that omitting the latter means underestimating the benefits of more plant-based diets. Our analysis reveals the substantial potential of dietary change, particularly in high and upper-

Heat and cold are now established health risk factors, with several studies reporting important mortality effects in populations around the world.1, 2, 3 The associated health burden is expected to increase with climate change, especially under the most extreme scenarios of global warming.4, 5 However, robust estimates of excess mortality in the current and future periods are still challenging to obtain due to the numerous factors influencing vulnerability to heat and cold, including climatic, environmental, and socioeconomic conditions.6 These factors represent the main drivers of variation in mortality risks, which have been shown to differ geographically and across age groups.

Fearful that the Able Archer 83 exercise was a cover for a NATO nuclear strike, the U.S.S.R. readied its own weapons for launch

Land-based nuclear weapons are world-ending accident waiting to happen, and completely superfluous to a reliable deterrent.

Arctic Sea Ice : Forum*Read All About Arctic on ASI Blog – Watch all Graphs on ASI Graphs

If the system can’t contact military leaders, it checks for signs of a nuclear strike. Should its computers determine that an attack occurred, it would automatically launch all remaining Soviet weapons at targets across the northern hemisphere. As in the film, the Soviet Union long kept Dead Hand completely secret, eliminating any strategic benefit, and rendering it a pointless menace to humanity. You might think the United States would have a more sensible nuclear launch policy. You’d be wrong.

Vanuatu is asking two questions to the ICJ: what are the legal obligations of states in regard to climate justice, and what are the legal consequences for states that do not meet these obligations.

Only if there is a fundamental change in the way we manage land we can reach the targets of climate-change mitigation, avert the dramatic loss of biodiversity and make the global food system sustainable.

We can’t call these supercharged seasonal infernos our ‘new normal.’ There’s nothing natural about how we changed the Earth’s climate

As climate policy is weakened, extreme weather intensifies and more refugees are driven from their homes – and the cycle of hatred continues, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

Hundreds of students and graduates vow not to work for ‘climate wreckers that insure those responsible for the climate crisis’

Greer’s assumption of slow collapse is built on shaky ground because industrial civilization differs from all past civilizations in four crucial ways. 

Examination of trees alive at the time shows three years of severe drought that may have caused crop failures and famine

Climate Whistleblowers (CW) seeks to defend whistleblowers, as well as strategically litigate and advocate on their behalf where their disclosures speak to climate-related issues.

Since the late 1990s, I’ve covered energy, beginning with the rise and fall of Enron — first as a magazine writer before becoming a columnist and editor. For more than 11 years, I’ve been a columnist for Forbes. My focus has shifted from the ‘old energy economy’ to the ‘green energy economy.’ My stories, which cover the globe, have appeared in, and have been cited by, dozens of publications and broadcasts. I’m also the editor-at-large for Environment+Energy Leader and the Coalition for Rainforest Nations, which represents 53 rainforest countries worldwide. My job is to research and write about these countries, helping them get to net zero to fulfill their Paris pledges. My features and my columns have won several national awards. Twitter: @Ken_Silverstein. Email: ken@silversteineditorial.com

Without more legally binding and well-planned net-zero policies, the world is highly likely to miss key climate targets.

Current climate policies will leave more than a fifth of humanity exposed to dangerously hot temperatures by 2100, new research suggests. The paper, published in the journal Nature Sustainability, is entitled "Quantifying the Human Cost of Global Warming."

Climate change refers to long-term variation in Earth's climate effected by heating imbalances from natural (e.g., solar, volcanic, and internal dynamics) and human sources (e.g., greenhouse gas emissions and land use). Following the onset of the Industrial Revolution, and particularly since the 1960s, global climate has warmed primarily as a consequence of rising greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere related to industrial activity. This page provides a selection of template maps and timeseries depicting changes in temperature, precipitation, and other aspects of climate over the past century, and how they are projected to change in the future.

Recycled and reused food contact plastics are “vectors for spreading chemicals of concern” because they accumulate and release hundreds of dangerous toxins like styrene, benzene, bisphenol, heavy metals, formaldehyde and phthalates, new research finds.

Climate change and human activities increasingly threaten lakes that store 87% of Earth’s liquid surface fresh water. Yet, recent trends and drivers of lake volume change remain largely unknown globally. Here, we analyze the 1972 largest global lakes using three decades of satellite observations, climate data, and hydrologic models, finding statistically significant storage declines for 53% of these water bodies over the period 1992–2020. The net volume loss in natural lakes is largely attributable to climate warming, increasing evaporative demand, and human water consumption, whereas sedimentation dominates storage losses in reservoirs. We estimate that roughly one-quarter of the world’s population resides in a basin of a drying lake, underscoring the necessity of incorporating climate change and sedimentation impacts into sustainable water resources management.

The sixth assessment report of the IPCC assessed that the Arctic is projected to be on average practically ice-free in September near mid-century under intermediate and high greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, though not under low emissions scenarios, based on simulations from the latest generation Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) models. Here we show, using an attribution analysis approach, that a dominant influence of greenhouse gas increases on Arctic sea ice area is detectable in three observational datasets in all months of the year, but is on average underestimated by CMIP6 models. By scaling models’ sea ice response to greenhouse gases to best match the observed trend in an approach validated in an imperfect model test, we project an ice-free Arctic in September under all scenarios considered. These results emphasize the profound impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the Arctic, and demonstrate the importance of planning for and adapting to a seasonally ice-free Arctic in the near

The UN Climate Change secretariat’s 2022 Annual Report highlights achievements and milestones by the secretariat and the intergovernmental Process in addressing the climate emergency, and towards achieving the long-term objectives of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. The 2022 edition covers the historic decision taken at COP27 to establish a dedicated fund and funding arrangements for addressing loss and damage, stepping up adaptation and transparency support, and the logistical operations that went into organizing COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh – among the largest climate change conferences to date. Special features chart the thirty-year journey of the UNFCCC Process and preparatory work towards the first global stocktake, while opening words by the UN Secretary-General António Guterres and UN Climate Change Simon Stiell provide context to the secretariat’s work in the wider, global push to tackle climate change and its impacts. The report also look

Abstract. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments are the trusted source of scientific evidence for climate negotiations taking place under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), including the first global stocktake under the Paris Agreement that will conclude at COP28 in December 2023. Evidence-based decision-making needs to be informed by up-to-date and timely information on key indicators of the state of the climate system and of the human influence on the global climate system. However, successive IPCC reports are published at intervals of 5–10 years, creating potential for an information gap between report cycles. We follow methods as close as possible to those used in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) Working Group One (WGI) report. We compile monitoring datasets to produce estimates for key climate indicators related to forcing of the climate system: emissions of greenhouse gases and short-lived climate forcers, greenhouse gas concentrations, radia

The UK’s advertising watchdog has banned a group of big oil and gas company advertisements for being misleading as part of crackdown on “greenwashing”, or making something appear more sustainable than it really is.

Unearthly skies and unhealthy air resulting from Canadian wildfires may persist for days.

..on a higher-resolution illustration of World3’s ‘runaway global warming’ scenario (∼8–12 °C+). Our simulation indicates rapid decline in food production and unequal distribution of ∼6 billion deaths due to starvation by 2100. ..

The stability and resilience of the Earth system and human well-being are inseparably linked1–3, yet their interdependencies are generally under-recognized; consequently, they are often treated independently4,5. Here, we use modelling and literature assessment to quantify safe and just Earth system boundaries (ESBs) for climate, the biosphere, water and nutrient cycles, and aerosols at global and subglobal scales. We propose ESBs for maintaining the resilience and stability of the Earth system (safe ESBs) and minimizing exposure to significant harm to humans from Earth system change (a necessary but not sufficient condition for justice)4. The stricter of the safe or just boundaries sets the integrated safe and just ESB. Our findings show that justice considerations constrain the integrated ESBs more than safety considerations for climate and atmospheric aerosol loading. Seven of eight globally quantified safe and just ESBs and at least two regional safe and just ESBs in over half of global land area are alrea

Terrestrial ecosystems have taken up about 32% of the total anthropogenic CO2 emissions in the past six decades1. Large uncertainties in terrestrial carbon–climate feedbacks, however, make it difficult to predict how the land carbon sink will respond to future climate change2. Interannual variations in the atmospheric CO2 growth rate (CGR) are dominated by land–atmosphere carbon fluxes in the tropics, providing an opportunity to explore land carbon–climate interactions3–6. It is thought that variations in CGR are largely controlled by temperature7–10 but there is also evidence for a tight coupling between water availability and CGR11. Here, we use a record of global atmospheric CO2, terrestrial water storage and precipitation data to investigate changes in the interannual relationship between tropical land climate conditions and CGR under a changing climate. We find that the interannual relationship between tropical water availability and CGR became increasingly negative during 1989–2018 compared to 1960–1989

A major reason for the growth in the use of renewable energy is the fact that if a person looks at them narrowly enough--such as by using a model--wind and solar look to be useful. They don't burn fossil fuels, so it appears that they might be helpful to the environment. Energy modeling misses important points. I believe that profitability signals are much more important.

Improved knowledge of glacial-to-interglacial global temperature change implies that fastfeedback equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) is 1.2 ± 0.3°C (2σ) per W/m2 . Consistent analysis of temperature over the full Cenozoic era – including “slow” feedbacks by ice sheets and trace gases – supports this ECS and implies that CO2 was about 300 ppm in the Pliocene and 400 ppm at transition to a nearly ice-free planet, thus exposing unrealistic lethargy of ice sheet models. Equilibrium global warming including slow feedbacks for today’s human-made greenhouse gas (GHG) climate forcing (4.1 W/m2) is 10°C, reduced to 8°C by today’s aerosols. Decline of aerosol emissions since 2010 should increase the 1970-2010 global warming rate of 0.18°C per decade to a post-2010 rate of at least 0.27°C per decade. Under the current geopolitical approach to GHG emissions, global warming will likely pierce the 1.5°C ceiling in the 2020s and 2°C before 2050. Impacts on people and nature will accelerate as global warming pumps up hydr

The UN-backed ‘Carbon Removal Pioneers’ stoke the development dreams of African countries but crash against the reality of climate science.

Going beyond climate disruption, the report by the Earth Commission group of scientists presents disturbing evidence that our planet faces growing crises of water availability, nutrient loading, ecosystem maintenance and aerosol pollution. These pose threats to the stability of life-support systems and worsen social equality.

While this is not holiday cheer, I thought everyone should know about the following recent climate change research. James Hansen and 14 co-authors recently released a preprint (not yet peer reviewed) paper titled “Global Warming in the...

A pathway to bridge the climate neutrality, energy security and sustainability gap through energy sufficiency, efficiency and renewables

A United Nations-convened climate alliance for insurers suffered at least three more departures on Thursday including the group's chair, as insurance companies take fright in the face of opposition from U.S. Republican politicians.

Solastalgia: the Origins As environmental philosopher at The University of Newcastle I had a reputation within my region as an activist and advocate for environmental conservation and I had published a number of academic and media articles on the environmental history and sustainability of the Hunter Region.2 Residents within the region would often ring me at work and talk to me about their concerns about particular environmental issues and I would advise and help as best I could. However, I began to notice the increasing number of people who were concerned about the sheer scale of the environmental impacts in the Upper Hunter Region of NSW. In their attempts to halt the expansion of open cut coal mining and to control the impact of power station pollution, individuals would ring me at work pleading for help with their cause. Their distress about the threats to their identity and well-being, even over the phone, was palpable.

Conceptual frameworks in the realm of climate-related policy, attitudes and behavior frequently argue that moral emotions play a crucial role in mobilizing pro-environmental action. Yet, little is known about the direct impact of moral emotions on environmental attitudes and behavior. Drawing on emotion research in the context of intergroup relations, the current paper investigates the role of guilty conscience (guilt and shame) as well as other emotions (anger, sadness, pride, and emotional coldness) in motivating pro-environmental behavior intentions and actual behavior as a specific form of reparative action. When confronted with human-caused (vs. seemingly natural) environmental damages, participants (N=114) reported significantly more guilty conscience. Importantly, participants in the humancaused condition were significantly more likely to spontaneously display actual proenvironmental behavior (sign a petition addressing environmental issues). Highlighting its psychological significance in motivating pr

In 1973, Ernest Becker, a cultural anthropologist cross-trained in philosophy, sociology, and psychiatry, invoked consciousness of self and the inevitability of death as the primary sources of human anxiety and repression. He proposed that the psychological basis of cooperation, competition, and emotional and mental health is a tendency to hold tightly to anxiety-buffering cultural world views or “immortality projects” that serve as the basis for self-esteem and meaning. Although he focused mainly on social and political outcomes like war, torture, and genocide, he was increasingly aware that materialism, denial of nature, and immortality-striving efforts to control, rather than sanctify, the natural world were problems whose severity was increasing. In this paper I review Becker’s ideas and suggest ways in which they illuminate human response to global climate change. Because immortality projects range from belief in technology and materialism to reverence for nature or belief in a celestial god, they act bo

Kristina Searle Kathryn Gow, (2010),"Do concerns about climate change lead to distress?", International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management, Vol. 2 Iss 4 pp. 362 - 379

In early May, a groundbreaking study from the University of California, San Francisco of 171 pregnant women found more than 9 in 10 had measurable amounts of 19 different chemicals and pesticides in their bodies. Researchers said many of those substances pass through the placenta and into developing fetuses, adding evidence to a National Institutes of Health report that warned babies are born "pre-polluted" with chemicals.

World is on track for 2.7C and ‘phenomenal’ human suffering, scientists warn. Up to 1 billion people could choose to migrate to cooler places, the scientists said, although those areas remaining within the climate niche would still experience more frequent heatwaves and droughts. However, urgent action to lower carbon emissions and keep global temperature rise to 1.5C would cut the number of people pushed outside the climate niche by 80%, to 400 million.

Net-zero targets imply that continuing residual emissions will be balanced by carbon dioxide removal. However, residual emissions are typically not well defined, conceptually or quantitatively. We analysed governments’ long-term strategies submitted to the UNFCCC to explore projections of residual emissions, including amounts and sectors. We found substantial levels of residual emissions at net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, on average 18% of current emissions for Annex I countries. The majority of strategies were imprecise about which sectors residual emissions would originate from, and few offered specific projections of how residual emissions could be balanced by carbon removal. Our findings indicate the need for a consistent definition of residual emissions, as well as processes that standardize and compare expectations about residual emissions across countries. This is necessary for two reasons: to avoid projections of excessive residuals and correspondent unsustainable or unfeasible carbon-removal level

Humanity is not on track to avoid the deadliest effects of climate change, according to University at Buffalo researcher Holly Jean Buck. "Our plans are not adequate to meet the goal of limiting the Earth's temperature increase to no more than 1.5℃ by 2050," said Buck, Ph.D., assistant professor of environment and sustainability....

Record sea surface temperatures suggest the Earth is headed for ‘uncharted territory’ in terms of sea level rise, coastal flooding and extreme weather

This report examines the economic and business models needed to address the impacts of the plastics economy.

We’re sharing the open letter published to accompany the start of the “Beyond Growth” conference at the European Parliament, and signed by members of the Zagreb Degrowth Conference team.

Report calls for better safeguards to prevent bioterrorists from weaponizing new technology

Higher rates slow the renewable energy transition and shield oil and gas producers from competition by low-carbon producers

Captation LIMIT - 30''

Chemicals yield profit of about $4bn a year for the world’s biggest PFAS manufacturers, Sweden-based NGO found

Abusive, often violent tweets denying the climate emergency have become a barrage since Elon Musk acquired the platform, say UK experts

Global CO2 emissions for 2022 increased by 1.5% relative to 2021 (+7.9% and +2.0% relative to 2020 and 2019, respectively), reaching 36.1 GtCO2. These 2022 emissions consumed 13%–36% of the remaining carbon budget to limit warming to 1.5 °C, suggesting permissible emissions could be depleted within 2–7 years (67% likelihood).

CRED became a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre in 1980 and has expanded its support of the WHO Global Programme for Emergency Preparedness and Response. Since then, it has increased its international network substantially. It has collaborative status with the United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-DHA), and also works in collaboration with the European Union Humanitarian Office (ECHO), the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA-USAID) as well as with non-governmental agencies such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Croissant (ICRCRC, Switzerland). During the 1990's, the Centre actively promoted the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR).

Fourth year in a row in which number of people facing food crises increased substantially

An open-access academic journal on degrowth

Climate change has important implications for the health and futures of children and young people, yet they have little power to limit its harm, making them vulnerable to climate anxiety. This is the first large-scale investigation of climate anxiety in children and young people globally and its relationship with perceived government response.

This paper catalogues current efforts to address climate change within multilateral economic and financial institutions and related organizations. It also proposes a minimum set of policy measures that need to be prioritized by such institutions to support climate change mitigation and adaptation. The proposals include expanding public climate finance via multilateral development banks, doing more to mobilize private investment, mainstreaming climate considerations across institutional operations, making climate disclosures mandatory, and addressing sovereign debt distress to unlock private climate finance.

SACRAMENTO -- Data from the California Energy Commission (CEC) shows that 59 percent of the state’s electricity came from renewable and zero-carbon sources in 2020. The CEC estimates that in 2020, 34.5 percent of the state’s retail electricity sales were served by Renewables Portfolio Standard (RPS)-eligible sources such as solar and wind. When sources of zero-carbon energy such as large hydroelectric generation and nuclear are included, 59 percent of the state’s retail electricity sales came from non-fossil fuel sources in 2020. In 2019, over 60 percent of the state’s electricity came from renewable and zero-carbon sources. The decrease in 2020 is due to decline in hydroelectric generation caused by severe drought, as well as pandemic-related delays to new renewable energy projects.

Energy and extractive industry giants are targeting environmentalists with racketeering charges.

The WFPHA proposes to lead a discussion about global aid and Global Health Initiatives (GHIs), beginning in these Federation Pages. In this issue (JPHP 31.1), we have invited authors from the Department of Public Health from the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp, Belgium, and from the Federal Ministry of Health, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to discuss the ‘New dichotomy in health systems’ strengthening and the role of global health initiatives’. Next, the WFPHA will take a very active part in the upcoming Geneva Forum, 19–21 April 2010, entitled Globalization, Crisis & Health Systems: Confronting Regional Perspectives (http://www.ghf10.org/). The problems of GHIs will be the topic of a special session. In it, the organisers will integrate views of researchers, such as the contributors here, along with those of GHIs professionals, and participants from recipient countries.

In recent years, governments of several low-income countries have taken decisive action by removing fully or partially user fees in the health sector. In this study, we review recent reforms in six sub-Saharan African countries: Burkina Faso, Burundi, Ghana, Liberia, Senegal and Uganda. The review d …

In the last few years, one of the solutions envisaged for improving access to healthcare – seen by some as a step toward universal access – is to remove part of the financial barrier to healthcare ...

Several climate court cases have been stuck in legal limbo for years. Now they're about to get a lot more interesting.

The 21-year-old Iraqi, who lived by a smoke-choked oilfield, died of cancer. His message must be heard, says journalist Jess Kelly

Recent leaks from oil sands tailings ponds have contaminated water, sowing mistrust among local First Nations people

Eco-fascism, for the uninitiated, is best known as the ideology embraced by the mass shooter who killed 10 people in a Buffalo supermarket last year. The shooter, as E&E News reported at the time, was motivated by “the racist conspiracy theory that the ruling class is using immigration to politically and culturally ‘replace’ white people.” The Buffalo shooter called on others “to view immigration as ‘environmental warfare,’” and to “reclaim environmentalism in the name of white nationalism.” His calls echoed those of the mass shooter who killed 23 people in an El Paso, Texas Walmart in 2019, who was also a self-proclaimed eco-fascist.

The problem with American electric vehicles is the same problem as with our gas-powered models: They’re too dang big. The Ford F-150 has been the top-selling automobile in the country for many years, and the electric version — while admittedly quite nifty — weighs 3.25 tons. The new electric Hummer is even more ridiculous, coming in at 9,000 pounds, with a 212-kilowatt-hour battery that weighs more than a Mazda Miata.

Andreas Malm says he has no hope in ‘dominant classes’, and urges more radical approach to climate activism.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline makes a case for sabotage, but hope remains that we can build rather than destroy, says campaigner Natasha Walter

The politics of this new, extreme individualism will make collective responses to social crises impossible, writes Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortty

- For economist Timothée Parrique, our survival depends on our ability to change our economic model to degrowth towards a post-growth economy.A researcher in...

Several nations plan to build new coal power plants, with China alone approving nearly 100 gigawatts. Each gigawatt is the equivalent of installing more than 3 million solar panels.

Climate disorder won’t be remedied through an orderly march of green energy. The world must also rein in consumption.

The Anthropocene Working Group is voting on a so-called Golden Spike, a sedimentary layer somewhere on Earth that best exemplifies the global impact of humans on planet Earth. It's the last, big task in formally defining the Anthropocene, which is being proposed as a new age in geologic time.

Those with higher levels of PFAS in their blood had 40% lower chance of conceiving within a year of trying

Pools and well-watered gardens at least as damaging as climate emergency or population growth

The collapse of modern societies has already begun. That is the conclusion of two years of research by the interdisciplinary team behind Breaking Together. How did it come to this? Because monetary systems caused us to harm each other and nature to such an extent it broke the foundations of our societies. So what can we do? This book describes people allowing the full pain of our predicament to liberate them into living more courageously and creatively.

the biophysical limits of food production are being reached. Second, current food production systems are actively destroying the very resource base upon which they rely. Third, the majority of food production and all its storage and distribution is critically dependent upon fossil fuels, not only making the food supply vulnerable to price and supply instability, but also presenting an impossible choice between food security and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Fourth, climate change is already negatively impacting the food supply and will do so with increasing intensity as the Earth continues to warm and weather destabilises. Fifth, the trajectory of increasing food demand that cannot easily be reversed. Sixth, the prioritisation of economic efficiency and profit in world trade has undermined food sovereignty and the resilience of food production at multiple scales, making both production and distribution highly vulnerable to disruptive shocks. Considered individually, each one of the hard trends presents a

The total concentration of greenhouse gases and other forcing agents, including cooling aerosols, reached 465 parts per million CO2 equivalents in 2020. This is around the peak level that the International Panel on Climate Change states 'should not be exceeded if — with a 67% likelihood and not allowing a temperature overshoot — the global temperature increase is to be limited to 1.5oC above pre-industrial levels'. When allowing for a temperature overshoot, the peak level could be exceeded in 2024. The peak concentrations corresponding to a temperature increase of 2oC by 2100 could be exceeded between 2027 and 2030.

From October 28-31, 2021, public hearings has been held in the 'Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes' (CICC) against various transnational corporations ...

Although interest in colonisation has grown throughout the West in recent years, it is mostly limited to historical colonialism. Little attention is paid to the ways in which we colonise the future. However, this is done with the same ruthlessness and short-sightedness with which regions around the world were invaded in earlier times. During the 50th edition of the Huizinga Lecture, David Van Reybrouck focuses on the way in which humanity is currently plundering and enslaving future generations. And further, the violence is not limited to human but affects all life on earth.

Wind and solar reached a record 12% of global electricity in 2022, and power sector emissions may have peaked.

Professor Joseph Tainter is an American anthropologist and historian studied anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Northwestern University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1975. As of 2012 he holds a professorship in the Department of Environment and Society at Utah State University. In this interview Professor Tainter discusses the thesis of his widely acclaimed work “The Collapse of Complex Societies”, 25 years after its publication in 1988. His book is among great classics of the study of collapse. In my view a work whose quality and relevance is comparable to Limits to Growth.

Seafloor landforms reveal that ice sheets can collapse at 600 metres per day.

“As we speak, oil is spilling in my community every day, people are dying. “If you don’t have money, you can’t drink water. It’s like we are living in a desert, while we are living on the water.”