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6 Mins Read By Mike Scott. The global pandemic continued to highlight society’s inequalities in 2021, while heat waves, wildfires and floods reminded us of the urgency of the climate crisis. It was a year when environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues took centre stage in business, government and all walks of life. Approximately 90% of countries are […]
4 Mins Read By Marco Springmann. The global food system is in disarray. Animal agriculture is a major driver of global heating, and as many as 12 million deaths from heart disease, stroke, cancers and diabetes are each year connected to eating the wrong things, like too much red and processed meat and too few fruits and vegetables. Unless the world can slash […]
5 Mins Read By Gale Sinatra, University of Southern California, Barbara K. Hofer, Middlebury Every disaster movie seems to open with a scientist being ignored. “Don’t Look Up” is no exception – in fact, people ignoring or flat out denying scientific evidence is the point. Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence play astronomers who make a literally Earth-shattering discovery and then try to persuade […]
6 Mins Read By: Jeremy Deaton The United States has done more to fuel climate migration than any other country on Earth, but it does not always welcome climate migrants. Climate change is fueling longer dry spells, bigger floods and more violent storms across the globe, but the effect is most pronounced in the tropics, where even a […]
9 Mins Read By Tara Lohan Speak up, identify the stakes, and use language that inspires action and combats right-wing messaging, says climate communications expert Genevieve Guenther. Do we generate energy from windmills or wind turbines? Your answer could say a lot about your views on climate change, explains Genevieve Guenther. Guenther used to be an English professor and literary critic, specializing […]
5 Mins Read By Elizabeth Claire Alberts. A new study found that moving conferences online can reduce the carbon footprint by 94% and energy use by 90%. It also found that hybrid events, in which some participants attend in person while others attend online, could reduce carbon footprint and energy by two-thirds by taking measures like carefully choosing […]
8 Mins Read By John R. Platt and Tara Lohan. Last year’s COP26 was hailed as a disappointment by many environmentalists. Now, in 2022, fighting for the planet is more important than ever. Staying aware of new developments and key figures will prove more critical than ever before. A new year brings with it new opportunities — and […]
4 Mins Read By Neal Robert Haddaway, Joe Duggan and Nicholas Badullovich. As the climate changes, negative environmental effects are being felt and seen around the world. The effect that climate change has on mental health is less immediately obvious or visible. Often termed climate anxiety or eco anxiety, this feeling can manifest as what the American Psychological […]
6 Mins Read By: Sara London In 2015, Botswana experienced its worst drought in history. Since then, families have had to move, taking their children out of schools; farmers have lost crops, leaving communities hungry and desperate. Natural disasters like this have a particularly devastating effect on young women in Botswana, according to a study from the University […]
4 Mins Read By Beth Parkin Farming animals for food is responsible for around 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. If left unchallenged, the influence of this industry alone would probably make it impossible for the world to meet its target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C. Reducing meat consumption is one area where small changes in everyone’s […]
7 Mins Read By: John R. Platt Doing something every day will help to change your attitude and create momentum for change. A recent poll found that people today, especially younger people, feel helpless when it comes to fighting climate change. Here’s the thing: That’s exactly how polluting corporations want you to feel. The more people believe their […]
4 Mins Read By Timothy Welch At the COP26 climate summit, world politicians patted themselves on their backs for coming to a last-minute agreement. Humanity now waits with bated breath to see if countries implement the commitments they made, and if those commitments help the planet. If the rest of our climate progress mirrors the policies around transportation, we’re […]
4 Mins Read By Simon Bullock, Alice Larkin and James Mason International shipping is a crucial part of the global economy – 90% of the world’s trade is transported by sea. But almost all ships use fossil fuels, and so the sector is also a major emitter of greenhouse gas pollution – with emissions roughly on a level with the […]
5 Mins Read By Richard Hoffman Many of us know that we should steer away from processed meats and eat more vegetables if we want to be healthier and lower our chances of developing certain types of cancers. While there are many reasons processed meats aren’t great for our health, one reason is because they contain chemicals called nitrates […]
14 Mins Read By Fredric Bauer and Tobias Dan Nielsen Visiting a modern petrochemical plant makes you feel incredibly small. Enormous compressors roar incessantly, distillation columns tower high above your head, large pipelines full of oil and gas criss-cross the site. Heat radiates from inspection hatches in the furnaces in which the hydrocarbons are heated to 850°C to […]
7 Mins Read By Anya Zoledziowski A family fell on such hard times after a cyclone that when a man offered their daughter, 17, a job, they agreed. They later learned she was forced into the sex trade. In May 2020, when the catastrophic Cyclone Amphan tore through her village in West Bengal, a state in eastern India, Seema […]
6 Mins Read By Francisca Rockey If you walk into your local library or bookshop and you’re looking for a book on nature or the climate crisis, you’re likely to find that most of the texts are written by white people; meaning most of our understanding of nature, the great outdoors and the climate crisis is from a […]
9 Mins Read By Tina Gerhardt The UN climate conference’s agreement acknowledges several key issues for the first time—but doesn’t do enough to address them. As COP26 drew to a close with the Glasgow Climate Pact, a 10-page document, the results were… mixed. In many ways, its results signal a tale of two globes. While delegates from the Global South […]
4 Mins Read By: Marco Springmann Many people are choosing to make the switch to plant-based diets for many reasons – including as a way of cutting their climate footprint or to be healthier. Yet there’s long been the notion that plant-based diets are inherently more expensive than following a more traditional omnivore diet – which is why some people […]
3 Mins Read By Cara Korte World leaders will turn their focus to gender Tuesday at the U.N. global climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. Globally, women are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change than men, as they make up a majority of the world’s poor and depend most on natural resources, according to the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. […]
5 Mins Read By Mary Annaïse Heglar and Amy Westervelt In a rapidly heating world, we don’t have time for etiquette. “No matter what he says today,” climate activist Lauren MacDonald said through tears in her opening lines at the TED Countdown panel in Edinburgh. “Remember, Shell has spent millions covering up the warnings from climate scientists, bribing politicians, and even paying […]