Flux continu

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 ‘

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

“100% plantaardig!”, “CO2-neutraal geproduceerd”, “Gecertificeerd voor duurzaamheid”… Klinkt goed, toch? Maar let op: wat bedrijven op hun verpakkingen en in hun marketinguitingen claimen, is niet altijd wat het lijkt. Greenwashing, oftewel het misleidend presenteren van producten of diensten als duurzaam, is helaas een wijdverspreid probleem.

Nous croyons en un monde où les entreprises doivent répondre aux défis du 21ᵉ siècle et contribuent à une société prospère, juste et inclusive à l’intérieur des limites planétaires.

Op woensdag 15 november om 15 uur verstoorden activisten van het GrowthKills-collectief [1] het "re-use v. recycle"-panel op de jaarlijkse Sustainability Future Week van Politico in Brussel, een evenement waar verslaggevers en redacteuren belangrijke politici, wetenschappers, campagnevoerders en bedrijfsleiders interviewen over het energie- en klimaatbeleid van de EU [2].

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

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.

Freshwater availability is changing worldwide. Here we quantify 34 trends in terrestrial water storage observed by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites during 2002–2016 and categorize their drivers as natural interannual variability, unsustainable groundwater consumption, climate change or combinations thereof. Several of these trends had been lacking thorough investigation and attribution, including massive changes in northwestern China and the Okavango Delta. Others are consistent with climate model predictions. This observation-based assessment of how the world’s water landscape is responding to human impacts and climate variations provides a blueprint for evaluating and predicting emerging threats to water and food security. Analysis of 2002–2016 GRACE satellite observations of terrestrial water storage reveals substantial changes in freshwater resources globally, which are driven by natural and anthropogenic climate variability and human activities.

Human activity is putting the Earth on a trajectory towards environmental collapse. The SDGs were adopted in2015 to reconcile human activity with planetary boundaries. So far, the SDGs have not lived up to their promise in European Union member states. Most EU countries have seen socioeconomic development alongside environmental degradation. Progress towards environmental sustainability only occurs in countries with slow or negative socioeconomic trends.

Les Sustainability-linked bonds (SLB) ont un format innovant permettant de lier le taux d’intérêt d’une dette à l’atteinte d‘objectifs environnementaux, sociaux ou de gouvernance. Beaucoup de SLB comportent aujourd’hui des objectifs de réduction des émissions de gaz à effet de serre. Ce mécanisme doit néanmoins contraindre davantage les émetteurs pour devenir un véritable outil de décarbonation.