My Climate Change News

Sixteen youth plaintiffs are suing the state of Montana for their right to access a clean and healthful environment in a case scheduled to go to trial next year.

Attorneys for the Oregon-based Our Children’s Trust, the Western Environmental Law Center and Kalispell-based McGarvey Law representing the kids announced the trial date this week. The group says in Held v. Montana, that the state’s support of fossil fuels have contributed to climate change.

According to University of Montana law professor Anthony Johnstone, broad climate change challenges like this one are rare, but they have become more common in recent years.

“Almost all of them have failed for one reason or the other, so this would be the first one in Montana, and possibly the first one in the nation, to get as far as a trial.”

According to Our Children's Trust, the trial will be the first youth climate trial in US history

Johnstone said the lawsuit is unlike similar lawsuits because ...

China will end subsidies for electric and hybrid cars at the end of the year, authorities have announced, saying the strength of sales in the sector meant state support was no longer needed. In a statement published Friday, the Ministry of Finance said purchase subsidies would be reduced by 30 percent from the beginning of 2022 before being scrapped completely by the end of the year.

"Given the growth of the industry for vehicles with new energy, the sales trends and the smooth transition of manufacturers, the subsidies... will end on December 31," the ministry said.

Sales of electric and hybrid cars have boomed in China, with increases of more than 100 percent year-on-year in recent months.

The cars are set to represent 18 percent of all vehicle sales in 2022, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) estimated last week. In 2019, they accounted for only five percent.

Of the 27.5 million vehicles set to be sold this year, according to ...

As more alternative protein companies make their way onto supermarket shelves and restaurant menus, their business models and impact promises face increasing criticism. Skeptics question how healthy plant-based burgers, sausages and milks are, what the startups' actual environmental footprint is and how they contribute to a more just and regenerative economy.

Let’s unpack these arguments, debunk some myths underpinning them and look at where food innovators have room to grow.

This argument started gaining traction after the New York Times published an article in November featuring critics who question the environmental footprint of plant-based meat companies. They argue that we shouldn’t take their sustainability claims at face value as even prominent players such as Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat haven’t publicly disclosed their emissions.

"It is really a black box," Ricardo San Martin, research director of the alternative meats program at the University ...

Environmental activists are stepping up efforts to dissuade banks and insurance companies from supporting the $5 billion East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) project, due to run 1,443 kilometres from the oil rigs near Lake Albert in Western Uganda to Tanga Port, Tanzania, on the Indian Ocean. At stake are Uganda's long-delayed plans to build an oil industry to serve the region and international buyers.

The pipeline is backed by France's TotalEnergies and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) and is expected to generate more than 33 million tonnes of carbon emissions a year.

Many European economies, seeking alternatives to Russian gas supplies, are suspending their plans to divest from fossil fuel projects. But it may still prove difficult to raise finance for the pipeline. Coordinated campaigns against fossil fuel projects are hitting harder despite the worsening international energy crisis.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and London's ...

Some residents of Belmont County in eastern Ohio have long suffered from headaches, fatigue, nausea and burning sensations in their throats and noses. They suspected these symptoms were the result of air pollution from fracking facilities that dominate the area, but regulators dismissed and downplayed their concerns. With the technical assistance of volunteer scientists at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, MIT and the American Geophysical Union's Thriving Earth Exchange, local advocacy groups set up their own network of low-cost sensors. They found that the region's three EPA sensors were not providing an accurate picture: The sensors revealed concerning levels of air pollution, and correlations between local spikes and health impacts.

The results are published today in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

Nestled in an Appalachian valley, Belmont has been booming with new infrastructure to extract and process natural gas. Fracking is ...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that global warming, caused by greenhouse gas emissions, is leading to more extreme weather events and African nations are among those that will face heightened food and water insecurity. At least 16 million people are already at risk across Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia, according to the United Nations, and the threat of famine is clearly evident.  

While Kenya typically gets most of its rainfall between March and June and some showers between October and December, weather patterns have begun to change. Many areas haven’t had sufficient water since late 2020, and there is no indication when the drought will break. 

Cereal production across northern Kenya and southern Somalia halved last year, and many cattle, goat and camel herds were decimated. Russia’s war on Ukraine has made a terrible situation even worse, pushing up grain and fuel prices, and raising aid costs for governments whose ...

Five major "nature recovery" projects across England will help tackle wildlife loss and climate change, the government said.

The schemes cover 99,200 hectares (245,000 acres) of land in Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Somerset, the West Midlands and the Peak District.

The aim is to manage land sustainably and improve access to nature for people in cities and deprived areas.

Environment Minister Rebecca Pow said the projects were "critically needed".

"They will significantly contribute to achieving our target to halt the decline in species abundance by 2030 and our commitment to protect 30% of our land by 2030, enabling us to leave the environment in a better state than we found it," she said.

All of the five projects will share an initial £2.4m from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), to create new habitats, manage land for nature and carbon storage and increase footpaths.

The five projects are:

Natural England ...

Households in England, Scotland and Wales are set to have hundreds of pounds knocked off energy bills as part of a package worth billions to help people cope with soaring prices.

The government is to scrap a plan to give people £200 off bills from October which would be repaid over five years.

Instead, the BBC understands that sum will be increased and possibly doubled, and will not need to be paid back.

Additional help for those on the lowest incomes is also expected.

The support, to be announced by Chancellor Rishi Sunak later, is expected to be largely funded by a windfall tax on oil and gas firms that could raise £7bn.

It comes a day after Sue Gray's critical report into lockdown parties in Downing Street and follows intense pressure on the government to do more to help people with the cost of living crisis.

Earlier this week the UK's energy regulator Ofgem said the typical household energy bill was set to rise by £800 in ...

More than 3 billion people depend on marine resources for their livelihoods. Image via Shutterstock/Dane Gillett

This article was originally published on World Resources Institute.

Sustainability and equity are two sides of the same coin. Equity is a prerequisite for a sustainable ocean economy, where humanity safeguards marine and coastal ecosystems, sustainably uses ocean resources, and ensures equitable distribution of benefits - especially for the more than 3 billion people who depend on marine resources for their livelihoods.

Questions on how to achieve this kind of sustainable and equitable "blue economy" have emerged across ocean industries. Here, we offer a deep dive on what equity looks like in the ocean sector.

Ocean equity addresses fairness in how people are treated in ocean industries and how policies regulating the use of the ocean are developed and implemented.

The first issue is the distribution of ocean benefits.

Access to ...

The U.S. Air Force is testing 40 of Pvilions integrated-solar military tent designs in a wide variety of geographies, including Alaska and New Mexico. Photo courtesy of Pvilion

One of my favorite summer-time gadgets is the bouquet of solar lights and lanterns scattered in my backyard, where I often retreat with my laptop to write on a summer’s evening. But one of my least favorite activities is replacing the rechargeable batteries they require. It’s not that I’m lazy, I cringe at the waste and carbon footprint of all those designed-to-be-disposable energy storage devices.

Multiply that by all the millions of sensors and thermostats and remote controls and electronic labels and other internet-of-things things, and the waste scenarios are mind-boggling.

That’s why I find the $31 million Series A funding disclosure earlier this month for Ambient Photonics, which is developing low-light solar cells that can harvest energy from both natural and artificial sources, ...

A cloudless sky on a sunny day looks featureless and inactive to our eyes. In reality, invisible to us a perfect frenzy of chemistry is happening in the daytime sky. For people interested in tracking the life history of a given compound in Earth's atmosphere there are many details to capture and account for.

In connection with climate change, we're of course interested in the effective residence time of the most important "greenhouse gases" or GHGs, which include not only CO2 but also methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N20).

Methane is not only a much more potent GHG than CO2 but is also (and unlike CO2) chemically very busy in the atmosphere, too active and too generous for its own good. CH4's trip into the air is essentially on a one-way ticket; all methane entering the atmosphere is also ultimately destroyed there. Destruction mostly happens in interactions with OH and Cl radicals hungry for electrons on offer by CH4.

Careful accounting for availability of ...

More than 300 solar projects in the U.S. have been canceled or delayed in 2022 due to lack of equipment. Image via Shutterstock/Bilanol

The current global energy crisis has generated a new surge of enthusiasm about the future of renewable energy. Advocates of solar and wind power are seizing this moment of rising prices and tight supplies for fossil fuels due to war in Ukraine - coupled with record-shattering heat waves around the world and warnings of power shortages to come this summer - to argue for accelerating the move to clean energy. The unprecedented blowup of traditional energy practices, they say, makes this the absolutely right time to shift the transition into a higher gear.

Indeed, the immediate future for renewable energy looks bright: 320 gigawatts of generating capacity, led by solar and wind, are projected to go on line this year, according to the latest report from the International Energy Agency.

But the race to turbocharge the shift to ...

This year, one of the last fugitives of the Earth Liberation Front pleaded guilty to arson - at a moment when climate activists are again flirting with radical ideas.

The Two Elk Lodge in Vail, Colo., ablaze, in October 1998.Credit...Mark Mobley/Vail Fire and Emergency Services

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Late one summer evening in 2018, an American citizen named Joseph Mahmoud Dibee was sitting in José Martí International Airport in Havana, Cuba - trying, unsuccessfully, to sleep - when he was approached by three men. Dibee, a civil engineer, was in Havana on a layover. After a long business trip in Ecuador, he was heading home to Russia, where he lived with his wife and stepson. The men demanded his passport, then led him out of the terminal and into a waiting sedan. Dibee asked where they were going, but got no response. Sandwiched between his captors, he was driven miles ...

US securities regulators unveiled Wednesday a proposed rule to tighten disclosure requirements on the rising number of investments that tout their commitment to environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals. Seeking to address the problem of "greenwashing," where financial investments may fall short of marketing statements, the Securities and Exchange Commission said the measure was meant to standardize disclosure and avoid cases where a fund "could exaggerate its actual consideration of ESG factors."

SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said the rule was needed as the scale of the so-called "US sustainable investment universe" has grown to $17.1 trillion, according to one estimate.

"When an investor reads current disclosures, though, it can be very difficult to understand what some funds mean when they say they're an ESG fund," Gensler said. "There also is a risk that funds and investment advisers mislead investors by overstating their ESG focus."

Funds that ...

The top ten per cent most valuable homes in the western United States are 70% more likely to be in high wildfire hazard areas than median-value properties, measured by county, according to a new study published today in Environmental Research Letters. Researchers at Resources for the Future, an independent research institution in Washington, DC, used granular spatial data to study residential properties in the western United States and their relative risk for wildfire exposure. The team studied properties' location, value, community characteristics, and proximity to previous wildfires.

The study shows that hazard and impact from recent wildfires are disproportionately borne by high-income, white, and elderly communities, and by owners of high-value properties. However, the research also reveals disproportionate exposure to wildfire hazard among the lowest-value homes in the western United States, and among Native American communities.

Exposure to wildfire hazard ...

Blistering spring temperatures have devastated crops of the country’s most beloved fruit. “The soul of a farmer shudders at seeing these fruitless trees,” one grower said.

MALIHABAD, India - No fruit in India is as universally loved and as eagerly anticipated as the mango, which, for one brief window each year, cools and sweetens the long days of summer.

Mangoes are added to kebabs, used to sour dishes and puréed with mint to make refreshing drinks. Connoisseurs argue fervently about which of India’s dozens of varieties - each with a distinct flavor, color and texture - are best, and disagree politely about the correct way to eat the fruit: by cutting it into slices, or by sucking the juice straight from the top.

But this year, this centuries-old ritual is imperiled. As blistering heat has struck northern India weeks earlier than usual, mango crops have been devastated, threatening a way of life for the thousands of small farmers who grow the fruit and the ...

In a paper recently published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution, researchers in the Conservation Forensics Lab at The University of Hong Kong have outlined a powerful new tool for monitoring trade of rare and endangered fish species in Hong Kong wet markets. Using environmental DNA (eDNA) present in the drain runoff water of fish markets, researchers were able to extract and sequence enough DNA to identify over 100 species of fish that had passed through the market. Various types of vulnerable or endangered species were detected by the eDNA method in the study, including Epinephelus fuscoguttatus, a type of brown marbled grouper which is listed as vulnerable and decreasing according to The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and three eel species including Anguilla japonica and Anguilla rostrata, which are listed as endangered by IUCN, as well as CITES(Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora)-listed European eel, ...

Scientists have recently confirmed that the world's lakes are rapidly losing oxygen. With a seven-year, whole-ecosystem study, a team of freshwater scientists at Virginia Tech has been one of the first to take the next step in asking: What does it mean for water quality that oxygen is declining globally? Sticky with sediment, the bottom waters of lakes are more than their deepest, darkest layer. They bury massive portions of the carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus found in runoff rolling in from the land. As one of nature's critical nutrient sinks, lakes earn their recognition as "sentinels" of their surroundings, said freshwater scientist Cayelan Carey.

"We think of lakes as sentinels because they truly integrate all of the changes that happen on land," said Carey, an associate professor of biological sciences in the Virginia Tech College of Science and an affiliated scientist with the Fralin Life Sciences Institute. "Lakes do this really great job of receiving and ...