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Closed-door talks over the World Bank’s climate agenda have stalled, as the US pushes to scrap green targets and expand support for fossil fuels

The IMD AI Safety Clock is a tool designed to evaluate the risks of Uncontrolled Artificial General Intelligence (UAGI) – autonomous AI systems that operate without human oversight and could potentially cause significant harm. Our mission is to evaluate and communicate these risks to the public, policymakers, and business leaders, helping ensure the safe development and use of AI technologies.

Climatologists say a particularly powerful weather pattern could amplify wildfire risk, heatwaves and flooding worldwide as global temperatures continue to rise

Le philosophe de l'environnement Rupert Read dit à Ella Whelan la panéliste Moral Maze pourquoi nous ne pourrons peut-être plus profiter du même niveau de vie pour le bien de la planète et des générations futures.

New year, new acronym! The newly established Intergovernmental Science-Policy Panel on Chemicals, Waste and Pollution (ISP-CWP) will meet in its first Plenary session from February 2-6 in Geneva, Switzerland. The Panel is designed to provide scientific assessments on chemicals, waste, and pollution to inform policymakers at national, regional, and international levels.

The first session of the Plenary of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Panel on Chemicals, Waste and Pollution (ISP-CWP P1) will be hosted by the Government of Switzerland, from 2 to 6 February 2026 at the Geneva International Conference Centre (CICG). The session will be preceded by regional and stakeholder meetings on 1 February 2026, at the same venue. The tentative schedule for the first session is available here. Please note that this schedule is subject to change.

This paper analyses General Social Survey (United States) data and provides evidence that the advent of Facebook and other social media platforms has widened the gap in scepticism towards science between low-educated Americans and their more highly educated counterparts. The same trend holds true when considering distrust in medicine, the press and television. Overall, the results suggest that education may serve as a protective factor against the influence of fake news, disinformation and misinformation. Additionally, a heterogeneity analysis shows that the increase in distrust is particularly pronounced among young people. Further analyses reveal that political affiliation plays a role in shaping attitudes towards science and that the likelihood of voting for the Republican Party has increased among low-educated individuals. A comprehensive set of robustness and placebo tests supports the reliability of these findings.

A California outfit has used artificial intelligence to design viral genomes before they were then built and tested in a laboratory. Following this, bacteria was then successfully infected with a number of these AI-created viruses, proving that generative models can create functional genetics. "The first generative design of complete genomes." That's what researchers at Stanford University and the Arc Institute in Palo Alto called the results of these experiments. A biologist at NYU Langone Health, Jef Boeke, celebrated the experiment as a substantial step towards AI-designed lifeforms, according to MIT Technology Review. "They saw viruses with new genes, with truncated genes, and even different gene orders and arrangements," Boeke said.

Almost 100 countries reject draft treaty as ‘unambitious’ and ‘inadequate’

Economic assumptions about risks of the climate crisis are no longer relevant, says the communications expert Genevieve Guenther

When people reflect on how their actions shape the future, they are more likely to support solutions to present-day issues like poverty and inequality.

2023 set a number of alarming new records. The global mean temperature also rose to nearly 1.5 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial level, another record.A team led by the Alfred Wegener Institute puts forward a possible explanation for the rise in global mean temperature: our planet has become less reflective because certain types of clouds have declined. The work is published in the journal Science.

Emerging infectious diseases, biodiversity loss, and anthropogenic environmental change are interconnected crises with massive social and ecological costs. In this Review, we discuss how pathogens and parasites are responding to global change, and the implications for pandemic prevention and biodiversity conservation. Ecological and evolutionary principles help to explain why both pandemics and wildlife die-offs are becoming more common; why land-use change and biodiversity loss are often followed by an increase in zoonotic and vector-borne diseases; and why some species, such as bats, host so many emerging pathogens. To prevent the next pandemic, scientists should focus on monitoring and limiting the spread of a handful of high-risk viruses, especially at key interfaces such as farms and live-animal markets. But to address the much broader set of infectious disease risks associated with the Anthropocene, decision-makers will need to develop comprehensive strategies that include pathogen surveillance across s

As an average citizen of the United States, one with no particular power over our political trajectory beyond my ability to vote and encourage others to vote, I have very little say in how our descent into a hotter, resource-depleted world will play out. This contrasts with how much I worry about that impending descent, its impact on my children and grandchildren, and its deep implications for the future of humanity writ large.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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