CBS News
President Joe Biden made addressing climate change a key issue in his 2020 campaign. Three years into his presidency, what do those who care about the issue most think about what he's done? How much do they know?
Few Americans say they've heard a lot about what the administration has done on climate change. That extends to those in the president's own party and to those who rate the issue of climate change as very important. Half of them have heard little or nothing at all about what the administration has done. […]
But they do like the Biden administration's policies when they hear about them.
'We were in disbelief': Antarctica is behaving in a way we've never seen before. Can it recover?
Live Science
[…] Until recently, Antarctic sea ice fluctuated between relatively stable summer minimums and winter maximums. But after a record minimum in 2016, things began to shift. Two record lows soon followed, including the smallest minimum ever in February 2023 at just 737,000 square miles (1.91 million square kilometers).
As winter began in March of that year, scientists hoped the ice cover would rebound. But what happened instead astonished them: Antarctic ice experienced six months of record lows. At winter's peak in July, the continent was missing a chunk of ice bigger than Western Europe.
"We all thought that the minimum was as bad as it was going to get; it was 2023, not 2070," Ariaan Purich, an Antarctic climate researcher at Monash University in Australia, told Live Science. "So when winter came, we were in disbelief."
Now, in 2024, the sea ice extent has reached another near-record low: just 766,400 square miles (1.985 million square km) on Feb. 20.
Opinion Don’t waste your time recycling plastic
The Washington Post
[…] We’ve been told for decades that the answer to the plastic-waste crisis is more, better recycling: If only we sorted better! If only we had better access to recycling technologies! If only we washed and dried our plastics more adequately! This is all a smokescreen, designed to distract us from the truth that plastic recycling — if by “recycling” we mean converting a used material into a new material of similar value and function — is a myth.
Unlike paper, glass and metal, plastic is not easily, efficiently turned into new products. What passes for “recycling” plastic is costly, energy-intensive and toxic. On top of all that, the process requires the addition of a shocking amount of new virgin plastic — around 70 percent — to hold the newly formed plastic item together. As a result, only about 5 percent of plastic gets “recycled” (or, more accurately, “downcycled” into a product of inferior quality). Compare that with a 68 percent recycling rate for paper and cardboard. […]
Even if we were to get better at recycling plastic, we shouldn’t want to. When you grind up, melt and re-form a bunch of plastic (with the addition of lots of new virgin plastic to bind it together), all those thousands of toxic plastic chemicals combine to make a Frankenstein material that has what scientists call “non-intentionally added substances” in it. Which is to say that chemicals that are not supposed to be there start showing up.
Survey finds that 60 firms are responsible for half of world’s plastic pollution
The Guardian
Fewer than 60 multinationals are responsible for more than half of the world’s plastic pollution, with six responsible for a quarter of that, based on the findings of a piece of research published on Wednesday.
The researchers concluded that for every percentage increase in plastic produced, there was an equivalent increase in plastic pollution in the environment. […]
The branded half of the plastic was the responsibility of just 56 fast-moving consumer goods multinational companies, and a quarter of that was from just six companies.
The two tobacco companies Altria and Philip Morris International combined made up 2% of the branded plastic litter found, both Danone and Nestlé each produced 3% of it, PepsiCo was responsible for 5% of the discarded packaging, and 11% of branded plastic waste could be traced to the Coca-Cola company.
New rules will slash air, water and climate pollution from U.S. power plants
The Washington Post
The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday finalized an ambitious set of rules aimed at slashing air pollution, water pollution and planet-warming emissions spewing from the nation’s power plants.
If fully implemented, the rules will have enormous consequences for U.S. climate goals, the air Americans breathe and the ways they get their electricity. The power sector ranks as the nation’s second-largest contributor to climate change, and it is a major source of toxic air pollutants tied to various health problems.
Before the restrictions take effect, however, they will have to survive near-certain legal challenges from Republican attorneys general, who have been emboldened by the Supreme Court’s skepticism of expansive environmental regulations. […]
Jody Freeman, who directs the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School, said she thinks the rule is on solid legal ground, because EPA lawyers crafted it to comply with the 2022 decision and the Clean Air Act. But it is difficult to predict what the conservative justices will decide, she said.
“The Supreme Court will do what it wants, and it’s shown a particular hostility to EPA rules,” Freeman said.
Voluntary corporate emissions targets not enough to create real climate action
Imperial College London
Companies’ emissions reduction targets should not be the sole measure of corporate climate ambition, according to a new perspective paper. Relying on emissions can favour more established companies and hinder innovation, say the authors, who suggest updating regulations to improve corporate climate action.
The paper, published today in Science, is by an international team led by Utrecht University, which includes Imperial College London researchers.
Lead author of the study Dr Yann Robiou Du Pont, from the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University, said: "Assessing the climate ambition of companies based only on their emissions reductions may not be meaningful for emerging companies working on green innovation.”
Column: Here are the 32 coal plants still powering the American West
Los Angeles Times
Over the last two decades, 21 coal-fired power plants have shut down across the Western U.S. Twenty-one down, 32 to go. […]
In 2022, coal supplied just over 15% of electricity on the Western Interconnection, the power grid spanning most of the American West and parts of western Canada and northern Mexico. And even though there’s just one coal plant left in a West Coast state — Washington’s Centralia plant, which is slated to close in 2025 — several coastal population centers still buy power from faraway coal generators. Those metros include Los Angeles, Portland and the Puget Sound region, as I reported this month. […]
But the Western grid is a sprawling, interconnected maze of generators and wires. Electrons follow the path of least resistance, and utilities inevitably rely on one another to ensure the power stays on. If the winds suddenly die down on a hot day in California — reducing wind turbine output right when we need lots of energy to keep our air conditioners humming — you can bet that if there’s a coal plant in Wyoming with spare capacity, it’s going to help power the West Coast, whether we know it or not.
That’s why it’s so important for Californians — and Oregonians and Washingtonians, and everyone who cares about the climate crisis — to think beyond the ambitious goals that their state lawmakers may have set, important as those goals are. Even if your state or power company claims to be moving 100% clean energy, some of your electricity may still come from lumps of coal.
Worst U.S. cities for air pollution ranked in new American Lung Association report
CBS News
Almost four out of every 10 people in the United States live in a place where air pollution is considered bad enough to put their health at risk, the American Lung Association warned in its latest "State of the Air" report released on Wednesday. That proportion of people — about 39% of the population — had risen sharply since earlier rounds of pollutant data were analyzed for the annual report last year, and the trends were especially pronounced in certain parts of the country.
This year's air quality report was based on pollution data collected in 2020, 2021 and 2022 by the Environmental Protection Agency. The American Lung Association, a charity organization focused on improving lung health and addressing lung disease,has released "State of the Air" reports annually since 2000. […]
At the top of the list of worst U.S. cities for daily and year-round particle pollution was Bakersfield, California, which received the same ranking in last year's "State of the Air" report. […]
Cities affected by drought and wildfires were most prevalent on both lists of daily and year-round particle pollution, with eight in California, and two each in Nevada, Oregon and Washington.
We might be closer to changing course on climate change than we realized
Vox
[…] The world may be closer than ever to turning a corner in the effort to corral climate change.
Last year, more solar panels were installed in China — the world’s largest carbon emitter — than the US has installed in its entire history. More electric vehicles were sold worldwide than ever. Energy efficiency is improving. Dozens of countries are widening the gap between their economic growth and their greenhouse gas emissions. And governments stepped up their ambitions to curb their impact on the climate, particularly when it comes to potent greenhouse gases like methane. If these trends continue, global emissions may actually start to decline.
Climate Analytics, a think tank, published a report last November that raised the intriguing possibility that the worst of our impact on the climate might be behind us.
“We find there is a 70% chance that emissions start falling in 2024 if current clean technology growth trends continue and some progress is made to cut non-CO2 emissions,” authors wrote. “This would make 2023 the year of peak emissions.”
Indigenous advocates at the UN say the green transition is neither clean nor just
Grist
[…] Maureen Penjueli, who is Indigenous iTaukei from Fiji, … is skeptical when she hears “clean energy” touted as a solution to the climate crisis. She thinks of the clear blue waters surrounding Fiji and how companies are eager to scrape the seafloor for potato-shaped nodules rich with minerals that could be used to build electric cars in wealthy countries, and she worries her iTaukei people will face consequences from any deep-sea mining pollution.
“It’s super critical that people understand that the transition is anything but just, and anything but equitable,” said Penjueli.
That’s why this month, Penjueli flew from Suva, Fiji, to New York City to meet with fellow Indigenous activists ahead of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues… Officially, this year’s forum is focused on self-determination for Indigenous youth, but climate change looms large: On opening day, the outgoing UNPFII chair shared a new report on the green transition, raising another alarm about the risks Indigenous peoples and their lands face not only from climate change, but also the projects intended to counteract global warming.
Biggest climate revolt rocks Woodside as investors turn up heat on emissions
The Sydney Morning Herald
Australian oil and gas giant Woodside has been rocked by the biggest investor uprising ever seen against a major emitter’s approach to climate change as 58 per cent of its shareholders rejected the company’s decarbonisation plans as inadequate.
The country’s top producer of the fossil fuels and its high-profile chairman, Richard Goyder, faced extensive criticism at Woodside’s annual shareholder meeting in Perth on Wednesday for refusing to do more to align the business with hastening international efforts to restrain rising global temperatures.
The Woodside investor revolt is significant because it is the first time a majority of shareholders at a publicly traded company have defied the board in a so-called “Say on Climate” vote over the credibility of its plans to continue operating in a carbon-constrained world.
While the vote is not binding…
IKEA blamed for Romanian forest destruction
Mongabay
IKEA is under scrutiny over its wood sourcing practices after two reports linked the furniture giant to destructive logging in some of Europe’s last ancient forests.
The recent investigations, conducted separately by Greenpeace and fellow environmental groups Agent Green and the Bruno Manser Fonds (BMF), focus on IKEA’s procurement of wood from ecologically sensitive areas in Romania’s Carpathian Mountains. Both reports argue that IKEA’s actions contradict its public commitments to sustainability. […]
Using official documents and visits to logging sites, the researchers recorded over 50 suspected violations of forestry laws and poor management practices. These included biodiverse woodlands razed to the ground, intensive felling carried out without environmental assessments, and soil degradation from tractor roads used by loggers.
The rise of eco-anxiety: scientists wake up to the mental-health toll of climate change
Nature
[…] Climate change is exacerbating mental disorders, which already affect almost one billion people and are among the world’s biggest causes of ill health. A global survey in 2021 found that more than half of people aged 16–25 felt sad, anxious or powerless, or had other negative emotions about climate change1. Altogether, hundreds of millions of people might be experiencing some type of negative psychological response to the climate crisis.
Scientists say the topic has been sorely neglected, but is leaping up the research agenda. “I’ve seen an explosion of research in the last five years for sure. That’s been very exciting,” says Alison Hwong, a psychiatrist and mental-health researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. The growing severity of heat, hurricanes and other impacts mean “it’s impossible to ignore”, she says.
Researchers want to unpick the many pathways by which climate change affects mental health, from trauma caused by hurricanes, floods, droughts and fires to ‘eco-anxiety ’— a chronic fear of environmental doom. Studies on methods that can help people prevent or manage these problems are also needed, although some work suggests that climate action and activism might help.
It’s not too late to save the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, study shows
GNS Science
New research has found a ‘missing piece in the puzzle’ of West Antarctic Ice Sheet melt, revealing the collapse of the ice sheet in the Ross Sea region can be prevented – if we keep to a low-emissions pathway.
More than five metres of potential global sea-level rise is locked within the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, so understanding whether the regions of the ice sheet that appear ‘stable’ today might melt in the future is critical for forecasting how much and how fast our seas will rise around the world.
One such region that is currently stable is West Antarctica’s Siple Coast, where rivers of ice flow over the continent and drain into the Ross Sea. […]
But this region of the ice sheet has not always been stable. Radiocarbon dating of sediments from beneath the ice sheet show that it retreated (melted) by hundreds of kilometres around 7000 years ago, and then readvanced (grew) to its present position within the last 2000 years.
Searing heat shuts schools for 33 million children
BBC News
Searing heat has forced 33 million children out of schools in Bangladesh, as temperatures in parts of the country soared past 42C (108F).
Schools and colleges will be shut for at least until 27 April. This is the second year in a row that authorities made such a move due to extreme weather. It follows school closures in the Philippines and India as a persistent heatwave sweeps across Asia.
“Children in Bangladesh are among the poorest in the world, and heat-related school closures should ring alarm bells for us all," said Shumon Sengupta, Save the Children's Bangladesh director.
Mosquito-borne diseases spreading in Europe due to climate crisis, says expert
The Guardian
Mosquito-borne diseases are spreading across the globe, and particularly in Europe, due to climate breakdown, an expert has said.
The insects spread illnesses such as malaria and dengue fever, the prevalences of which have hugely increased over the past 80 years as global heating has given them the warmer, more humid conditions they thrive in.
Prof Rachel Lowe who leads the global health resilience group at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center in Spain, has warned that mosquito-borne disease outbreaks are set to spread across currently unaffected parts of northern Europe, Asia, North America and Australia over the next few decades.
First-of-its-kind study definitively shows that conservation actions are effective at halting and reversing biodiversity loss
re:wild
A new study published online today, April 25, in the scientific journal Science provides the strongest evidence to date that not only is nature conservation successful, but that scaling conservation interventions up would be transformational for halting and reversing biodiversity loss—a crisis that can lead to ecosystem collapses and a planet less able to support life—and reducing the effects of climate change.
The findings of this first-ever comprehensive meta-analysis of the impact of conservation action are crucial as more than 44,000 species are documented as being at risk of extinction, with tremendous consequences for the ecosystems that stabilize the climate and that provide billions of people around the world with clean water, livelihoods, homes, and cultural preservation, among other ecosystem services. Governments recently adopted new global targets to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, making it even more critical to understand whether conservation interventions are working.
As the climate changes, cities scramble to find trees that will survive
Grist
[…] Climate change is scrambling the seasons, wreaking havoc on trees. Some temperate and high-altitude regions will grow more humid, which can lead to lethal rot. In other temperate zones, drier springs and hotter summers are disrupting annual cycles of growth, damaging root systems, and rendering any survivors more vulnerable to pests. […]
The world is warming too quickly for arboreal adaptation, said Manuel Esperon-Rodriguez, an ecologist at Western Sydney University who researches the impact of climate change on trees. That’s especially true of native trees. “They are the first ones to suffer,” he said. […]
“Everybody is looking for the magic tree,” said Mac Martin, who leads the urban and community forestry program at Texas A&M’s Forest Service. He went on to say that one kind of tree isn’t enough. We need “a high number of diverse trees that can survive.”