English references

Doomscrolling, an addictive habit, can be destructive if not managed – the way an alcoholic, say, manages drinking herself to death. It must be done with care, with binges considered for the long haul. “Overindulging…may be detrimental to your mental health,” warns the doomscrolling subreddit r/Collapse. “Anxiety and depression are common reactions when studying collapse…If you are considering suicide….” (If you are considering suicide: this may end up one of the mantras of the era of modern civilizational crack-up.)

Around 56 million years ago, Earth suddenly got much hotter. Over about 5,000 years, the amount of carbon in the atmosphere drastically increased and global temperatures shot up by some 6°C.

A UN commission has found Israel’s war in Gaza ranks among history’s greatest crimes. The UK government must stop hiding behind legal fictions and recognise the reality

Forever chemicals have polluted the water supply of 60,000 people, threatening human health, wildlife and the wider ecosystem. But activists say this is just the tip of the Pfas iceberg

Antarctica's remote and mysterious current has a profound influence on the climate, food systems and Antarctic ecosystems. Can we stop it weakening by 2050?

Natural sinks of forests and peat were key to Finland’s ambitious target to be carbon neutral by 2035. But now, the land has started emitting more greenhouse gases than it stores

Campaigners receive longest ever sentences for non-violent protest after being convicted of conspiracy to cause public nuisance

As human fragility is stretched towards breaking point, should we be preparing for societal collapse? This is the existential question behind ‘deep adaptation’, a theory that is rapidly gaining adherents. Richard Swift assesses how far, if anywhere, it will take us and what better paths we could go down.

Global warming has already caused the Arctic to release more climate-warming methane—but exactly how much will depend closely on the actions we take to halt climate change.

We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis. For many years, scientists, including a group of more than 15,000, have sounded the alarm about the impending dangers of climate change driven by increasing greenhouse gas emissions and ecosystem change (Ripple et al. 2020).

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

Pie-in-the-sky fantasies of carbon capture and geoengineering are a way for decision-makers to delay taking real action

Blistering heatwaves are just the start. We must accept how bad things are before can we head off global catastrophe, according to a leading UK scientist.

He has weaponised food, energy and refugees, spreading economic and political pain across the continent. Sanctions don’t work, a land for peace deal would be a disaster. Only the military route remains