by Sonam Lama Hyolmo in Mongabay…The report identifies three underlying causes of the biodiversity crisis: the disconnection from nature, inequitable power and wealth distribution, and the prioritization of short-term gains. Karen O’Brien, co-chair of the assessment and a sociology professor at the University of Oslo, said these issues have led to destructive views and behaviors that exacerbate biodiversity loss, including the risk of irreversible tipping points that threaten ecological systems.
The AMOC Might Be WAY More Unstable Than We Thought…Here’s Why
from PBS Terra…There is a mysterious cold blob in the North Atlantic that could be a warning sign that the largest heat transfer system on the planet, the AMOC, is on the brink of collapse.
Climate change forged a new reality in 2024: ‘This is life now’
by Diana Baptista in Context…In 2024, billions of people endured heatwaves, storms and floods; 2025 is set to be worse as man-made climate change wreaks havoc.
Derailment risk: A systems analysis that identifies risks which could derail the sustainability transition
by Laurie Laybourn in Earth Systems Dynamics…How will the effects of climate change, nature loss, and other environmental change impact our ability to tackle the causes of these problems? There is already a high demand on resources to respond to worsening climate shocks, knock-on impacts for areas such as food production and health, and the many other growing consequences of changes to the Earth system.
Dancing with a permanent emergency
by Jonathan Rowson in The Joyous Struggle…In the real world, there is scope to change the opponent (whether that is fossil fuel companies, politicians, or ourselves), the goal(we can do so much better than GDP), and the rules of the game (climate litigation) and some of those transformative possibilities are where my work is now focussed.
Three-quarters of the Earth has gotten permanently drier
by Jeffrey Kluger in Time…By century’s end, up to 20% of all Earth’s land could experience abrupt ecosystem transformation, such as forests becoming grasslands, with attendant extinction and collapse of ecosystems. Farming could suffer too.
More in this category
Climate crisis → drought → food deficit → migration
by Mohan Mainali in Nepali Times….Half-century of eastern Nepal’s rainfall data points to a link between chronic drought and depopulation
Tenth consecutive monthly heat record alarms and confounds climate scientists
by Johathan Watts in The Guardian…If the anomaly does not stabilise by August, ‘the world will be in uncharted territory’, says climate expert
The Eco-Civilization Framework
As the planet burns, authoritarian populists dominate politics, oil executives direct the COP process, and the wealthy elite pull further away from everyone else, it is difficult not to draw the conclusion that the movement for a beneficial future is failing. We...
Global energy-related CO2 emissions hit record high in 2023 – IEA
by Reuters in Climate Home News…Global emissions from energy rose by 410 million tonnes, or 1.1%, in 2023 to 37.4 billion tonnes, hitting a record hight
Forget the partisan hype, Aust farmers are preparing for the extremes of climate change
by Jamie Seidel in Cosmos Magazine…Farmers consider the animal breeds and crop types they produce to be flexible choices. Others are prepared to relocate operations to chase the conditions their particular produce needs.
Pivotal moment for humanity as disasters threaten to converge
by David Nield in Science Alert…The researchers warn of a catastrophic loss of crop-growing capacity with up to half the global area for growing wheat and maize potentially lost, putting the “stability of our societies” under threat. These processes are already well underway, with more than 27 million children driven into hunger by extreme weather in 2022 alone.
What a major solar storm could do to our planet
by Kathryn Schulz in The New Yorker…Scientists can’t predict what will happen in space. All they can do is try to identify a threat quickly enough to minimize its impact on everything that it might damage or destroy.
Rebecca Solnit: Slow Change Can Be Radical Change
by Rebecca Solnit…..We are impatient creatures, impatient for the future to arrive and prone to forgetting the past in our urgency to have it all now.
Critical Atlantic Ocean current system is showing early signs of collapse, prompting warning from scientists
by Laura Paddison on CNN….For decades, scientists have been sounding the alarm on the circulation’s stability as climate change warms the ocean and melts ice, disrupting the balance of heat and salt that determines the currents’ strength.
The perverse policies that fuel wildfires
by Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker…Strategies intended to safeguard forests and homes have instead increased the likelihood that they’ll burn.
Hurricanes becoming so strong that new category needed, study says
by Oliver Milman in The Guardian…Scientists propose new category 6 rating to classify ‘mega-hurricanes’, becoming more likely due to climate crisis
Western US seeing extreme weather ‘unprecedented’ in 500 years
by Robyn White in Newsweek…These hot temperatures have increased the soil moisture, which in turn has contributed to the severity and frequency of drought. The researchers have linked the notable increase in drought to human activities.
The 100-Year extinction panic is back, right on schedule
by Tyler Austin Harper in The New York Times…Climate anxiety, of the sort expressed by that student, is driving new fields in psychology, experimental therapies and debates about what a recent New Yorker article called “the morality of having kids in a burning, drowning world.” Our public health infrastructure groans under the weight of a lingering pandemic while we are told to expect worse contagions to come. The near coup at OpenAI, which resulted at least in part from a dispute about whether artificial intelligence could soon threaten humanity with extinction, is only the latest example of our ballooning angst about technology overtaking us.
Ecological ‘doom loops’ edging closer
from University of Sheffield….Extreme weather events such as wildfires and droughts will accelerate change in stressed systems leading to quicker tipping points of ecological decline, according to a new study.
How Octavia Butler told the future
by Tiya Miles in The Atlantic…We need her conception of “histofuturism” now more than ever.