https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/01/31/with-rapidly-increasing-heat-and-drought-can-plants-adapt/ By Robert Sanders , UC Berkeley News.  Excerpt: At a time when climate change is making many areas of the planet hotter and drier, it’s sobering to think that deserts are relatively new biomes that have grown considerably over the past 30 million years. Widespread arid regions, like the deserts that today cover much of western North America, began to emerge only within the past 5 to 7 million years. Understanding how plants that invaded these harsh deserts biomes were able to survive could help predict how ecosystems will fare in a drier future. An intensive study of a group of plants that first invaded emerging deserts millions of years ago concludes that these pioneers — rock daisies — did not come unequipped to deal with heat, scorching sun and lack of water. They had developed adaptations to such stresses while living on dry, exposed rock outcroppings within older, more moist areas and e

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/31/emissions-divide-now-greater-within-countries-than-between-them-study By Fiona Harvey , The Guardian.  Excerpt: The difference between the carbon emissions of the rich and the poor within a country is now greater than the differences in emissions between countries, data shows. The finding is further evidence of the  growing divide between the “polluting elite” of rich people  around the world, and the relatively low responsibility for emissions among the rest of the population. It also shows there is plenty of room for the poorest in the world to increase their greenhouse gas emissions if needed to reach prosperity, if rich people globally – including some in developing countries – reduce theirs, the analysis has found. ... a growing body of work suggests that a “polluting elite” of those on the highest incomes globally  are vastly outweighing the emissions of the poor. ... rich people in developing countries have much bigger carbon f

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/world/europe/italy-birthrate.html By  Jason Horowitz , The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...Italy’s population is aging and shrinking at the fastest rate in the West, forcing the country to adapt to a booming population of elderly that puts it at the forefront of a global demographic trend that experts call the “silver tsunami.” But it faces a demographic double whammy, with a drastically sinking birthrate that is among the lowest in Europe. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has said Italy is “destined to disappear” unless it changes.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/opinion/china-world-population-decline.html By  Wang Feng , New York Times opinion piece.  Excerpt: China, the most populous country on the planet for centuries, this month  reported  its first population decline in six decades, .... By the end of the century China may have  only around half  of the 1.41 billion people it has now, according to U.N. projections, and may already have been overtaken by  India . The news has been met with gloom and doom, often framed as the start of China’s  inexorable decline  and, more broadly, the harbinger of a demographic and economic  “time bomb”  that will strain the world’s capacity to support aging populations. ...China is only the latest and largest major country to  join a club  that already includes  Japan, South Korea,   Russia ,  Italy  and others. ...But the alarmist warnings are often simplistic and premature. ...Shrinking populations are usually part of a natural, inevitable process, and rather than focus

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/26/human-activity-and-drought-degrading-more-than-a-third-of-amazon-rainforest By Jonathan Watts , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Human activity and drought may have degraded more than a third of the  Amazon rainforest , double the previous estimate, according to a study that heightens concerns that the globally important ecosystem is slipping towards a point of no return. Fires, land conversion, logging and water shortages, have weakened the resilience of up to 2.5m sq km of the forest, .... This area is now drier, more flammable and more vulnerable than before, prompting the authors to warn of “megafires” in the future. Between 5.5% and 38% of what is left of the world’s biggest tropical forest is also less able to regulate the climate, generate rainfall, store carbon, provide a habitat to other species, offer a livelihood to local people, and sustain itself as a viable ecosystem, the paper observes. ...The findings, published  in Science  on

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/24/us-electric-vehicles-lithium-consequences-research By Nina Lakhani , The Guardian.  Excerpt: By 2050 electric vehicles could require huge amounts of lithium for their batteries, causing damaging expansions of mining....The global demand for lithium, also known as white gold, is predicted to  rise over 40 times by 2040,  driven predominantly by the shift to electric vehicles. ...by 2050 the US alone would need triple the amount of lithium currently produced for the entire global market, which would have dire consequences for water and food supplies, biodiversity, and Indigenous rights. ...In the best-case scenario – comparing the status quo in which EV battery size grows and US car dependency remains stable – with ambitious public transit, city density and recycling policies, the lithium demand would be 92% lower....

https://www.science.org/content/article/despite-opposition-japan-may-soon-dump-fukushima-wastewater-pacific By Dennis Normile, Science.  Excerpt: Government says the release poses no risk to marine or human life, but some scientists disagree. The Japanese government is pushing ahead with its plan to release 1.3 million tons of radioactive water from the defunct Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean. ...The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which owns the power station, says it is running out of space to store the water on land. Radioactivity levels in the discharged water will be too low to pose a risk to marine life or humans, TEPCO says, and its plan has the blessing of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). ...But critics say the risks haven’t been studied in enough detail. TEPCO’s assurances are “not supported by the quantity and quality of the data,” says oceanographer Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. ...says Robert Rich

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/23/lab-grown-meat-animals-climate By Oliver Milman , The Guardian.  Excerpt: The meat ... came from a named pig, an affable-looking swine called Dawn. ...a clump of her cells were grown in a lab to create what’s known as “cultivated meat”, a product touted as far better for the climate – as well as the mortal concerns of pigs and cows – and is set for takeoff in the US. ...“A harmless sample from one pig can produce many millions of tons of product without requiring us to raise and slaughter an animal each time,” said Eitan Fischer, founder of Mission Barns, a maker of cultivated meat that invited the Guardian to a taste test in an upscale Manhattan hotel. ...Mission Barns is one of about 80 startup companies based around San Francisco’s Bay Area now jostling for position after one of their number, Upside Foods, became the first in the country to be  granted approval  by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in November, a key step in a

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/23/no-miracles-needed-prof-mark-jacobson-on-how-wind-sun-and-water-can-power-the-world By Damian Carrington, The Guardian.  Excerpt: Wind, water and solar can provide plentiful and cheap power, he argues, ending the carbon emissions driving the climate crisis, slashing deadly air pollution and ensuring energy security.  Carbon capture and storage , biofuels, new nuclear and other technologies are expensive wastes of time, he argues. ...We have wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, electric cars. We have batteries, heat pumps, energy efficiency. We have 95% of the technologies right now that we need to solve the problem.” The missing 5% is for long-distance aircraft and ships, he says, for which hydrogen-powered fuel cells can be developed....

https://eos.org/articles/selectively-logged-forests-are-not-broken By Erin Martin-Jones , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: ...selectively logged forests—where timber is not clear-cut, but instead selectively harvested—now make up about  a third of rain forests worldwide . ...“The ecological value of logged forests has been underestimated; they are not as broken as they look,” said  Yadvinder Malhi , an ecosystem ecologist from the University of Oxford who was involved in a large-scale biodiversity survey of forests and agricultural land in the state of Sabah, Malaysia, on the island of Borneo. The results, which were published in December in the journal  Nature , showed that logged forests can be buzzing with life and ecological functions and therefore have an important role to play in conservation....

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/22/style/hand-me-downs.html By  Anna Grace Lee , The New York Times.  Excerpt: In a San Antonio garage, two millennial mothers ...Kara Livingston, 36, and Nicole Boynton, 35, ...founders of  Hand Me Up , a small business aimed at helping parents shop more responsibly to cut down on children’s clothing waste. ...There is little data available about how much children’s clothing is discarded, said Amanda Forster, a materials research engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and an author of a  2022 report  that looked at how to extend the life of textiles. The report said that a circular approach focused on reuse and repair is key, and Dr. Forster said that the principle applies to children’s wear as well. ...“You want to try and keep things circulating back through the economy in their original form as much as possible,” Dr. Forster said. ...More  children’s wear brands  have embraced responsible fashion in recent years, said Sandra C

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/20/super-tipping-points-climate-electric-cars-meat-emissions By Damian Carrington , The Guardian.  Excerpt: ...Three “super-tipping points” for climate action could trigger a cascade of decarbonisation across the global economy, according to a report. Relatively small policy interventions on electric cars, plant-based alternatives to meat and green fertilisers would lead to unstoppable growth in those sectors, the experts said. But the boost this would give to battery and hydrogen production would mean crucial knock-on benefits for other sectors including energy storage and aviation. ...The tipping points occur when a zero-carbon solution becomes more competitive than the existing high-carbon option. More sales lead to cheaper products, creating feedback loops that drive exponential growth and a rapid takeover.  The report , launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said the three super-tipping points would cut emission

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/20/business/economy/economic-statistics-climate-nature.html By  Lydia DePillis , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Forests that keep hillsides from eroding and clean the air. Wetlands that protect coastal real estate from storm surges. Rivers and deep snows that attract tourists and create jobs in rural areas. All of those are natural assets of perhaps obvious value — but none are accounted for by traditional measurements of economic activity. On Thursday, the Biden administration  unveiled  an effort to change that by creating a system for assessing the worth of healthy ecosystems to humanity. The results could inform governmental decisions like which industries to support, which natural resources to preserve and which regulations to pass.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/19/travel/airlines-climate-change-fuel.html By  Paige McClanahan , The New York Times.  Excerpt: By the middle of this century, most cars and buses should be powered by renewable energy, while bikes, electric trains and your own two feet will continue to have little impact on the climate. And if global aviation achieves the goal it  adopted  last year, then your 2050 flight from New York to Hong Kong will result in “net zero” carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. ...new technologies are in the works, including hydrogen-powered aircraft, fully electric planes and synthetic jet fuel made from carbon extracted from the atmosphere.... 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/18/revealed-forest-carbon-offsets-biggest-provider-worthless-verra-aoe By Patrick Greenfield , The Guardian.  Excerpt: The forest carbon offsets approved by the world’s leading provider and used by Disney, Shell,  Gucci  and other big corporations are largely worthless and could make global heating worse, according to a new investigation. The research into Verra, the world’s  leading carbon standard  for the rapidly growing  $2bn (£1.6bn) voluntary offsets  market, has found that, based on analysis of a significant percentage of the projects, more than 90% of their rainforest offset credits – among the most commonly used by companies – are likely to be “phantom credits” and do not represent genuine carbon reductions....

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/17/banks-still-investing-heavily-in-fossil-fuels-despite-net-zero-pledges-study By Fiona Harvey , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Banks and finance institutions that have signed up to net zero pledges are still investing heavily in fossil fuels, research has shown, .... The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) initiative was launched by  the former Bank of England governor Mark Carney , as one of the main UK achievements in hosting the  Cop26 UN climate summit at Glasgow in 2021 . The UK boasted at Cop26 that 450 organisations in 45 countries with assets of more than $130tn  had signed up to GFANZ , to align their investments with the goal of limiting global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. But its members have poured hundreds of billions into fossil fuels since then, according to  data compiled by the pressure group Reclaim Finance ....

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/16/business/china-birth-rate.html By Alexandra Stevenson  and  Zixu Wang , The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...The world’s most populous country has reached a pivotal moment: China’s population has begun to shrink, after a steady, yearslong decline in its birthrate that experts say is irreversible. The government said on Tuesday that 9.56 million people were born in China last year, while 10.41 million people died. It was the first time deaths had outnumbered births in China since the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong’s failed economic experiment that led to  widespread famine  and death in the 1960s. Chinese officials have tried for years to slow down the arrival of this moment, loosening a one-child policy and offering incentives to encourage families to have children. None of those policies worked. ...Government handouts like cash for babies and tax cuts, have failed to change the underlying fact that many young Chinese people simply do not want children...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/16/us/arizona-water-rio-verde-scottsdale.html By  Jack Healy , The New York Times.  Excerpt: RIO VERDE, Ariz. — Joe McCue thought he had found a desert paradise when he bought one of the new stucco houses sprouting in the granite foothills of Rio Verde, Ariz. There were good schools, mountain views and cactus-spangled hiking trails out the back door. Then the water got cut off. Earlier this month, the community’s longtime water supplier, the neighboring city of Scottsdale, turned off the tap for Rio Verde Foothills, blaming a grinding drought that is threatening the future of the West. Scottsdale said it had to focus on conserving water for its own residents, and  could no longer sell water  to roughly 500 to 700 homes — or around 1,000 people. ...Almost overnight, the Rio Verde Foothills turned into a worst-case scenario of a hotter, drier climate, showing what happens when unregulated growth collides with shrinking water supplies.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/15/world/europe/switzerland-skiiing-alpine-villages-no-snow.html By Erika Solomon , The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...As the planet warms, Europe has faced a bruising year of climate crises. In the summer, many regions suffered  severe drought  and  record heat . Already this year, some areas have seen the  highest-recorded  winter temperatures — so warm that many ski resorts could not even make snow. For Switzerland, whose glaciers and snowpack form a crucial storehouse for European water supplies, the effect has been especially alarming. The country is warming at more than  double the rate  of the global mean and its glaciers lost 6 percent of their volume in the last year alone, according to Swiss federal authorities and  a glacier monitoring group . The changes pose a risk to some parts of a Swiss ski industry that  by some estimates  generates around $5.5 billion a year. But in a country where nearly everyone skis, the loss of snow is more than an ec

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/14/climate/ecuador-drilling-oil-amazon.html By Catrin Einhorn  and  Manuela Andreoni , The New york Times.  Excerpt: YASUNÍ NATIONAL PARK, Ecuador — In a swath of lush Amazon rainforest here, near some of the last Indigenous people on Earth living in isolation, workers recently finished building a new oil platform carved out of the wilderness. Teams are drilling in one of the most environmentally important ecosystems on the planet, one that stores vast amounts of planet-warming carbon. ...some of the country’s largest oil reserves are found here, too. Ecuador is cash-strapped and struggling with debt. The government sees drilling as its best way out. The story of this place, Yasuní National Park, offers a case study on how global financial forces continue to trap developing countries into depleting some of the most biodiverse places on the planet....

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/14/opinion/climate-change-south-africa.html By  The Editorial Board , The New york Times.  Excerpt: South Africa generates 80 percent of its electricity by burning coal, more than any other industrialized nation. Some  200,000  people are directly employed by the coal mines, coal transports and coal-fired power plants that dot the flatlands east of Johannesburg, but the prosperity of the rest of the nation also rests on a foundation of black rock. Now, the South African government, with the help of the United States and European nations, is embarking on an audacious plan to quit coal without undermining economic growth. If it works, the proposed transition to solar and wind power could fuel faster growth and create a template for coal-dependent nations to confront climate change. This is a significant opportunity, and it deserves support and attention. The United States has committed more than $1 billion as part of an $8.5 billion international aid packa

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/13/business/sweden-rare-earth-minerals.html By  Stanley Reed , The New York Times.  Excerpt: A Swedish mining company said this week that it had found Europe’s largest known deposit of coveted rare earth metals, critical to many green technologies including electric vehicles, in a far northern part of the country within the Arctic Circle. The world’s production of rare earths is dominated by China. The discovery by LKAB, a state-owned company, creates the prospect that Europe could over time develop a domestic source of these minerals. “This is good news, not only for LKAB, the region and the Swedish people, but also for Europe and the climate,” Jan Mostrom, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement.... 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/13/private-jet-emissions-quadrupled-davos-2022 By Helena Horton , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Private jet emissions quadrupled as 1,040 planes flew in and out of airports serving  Davos  during the 2022 World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting. Climate campaigners accused the rich and powerful of hypocrisy in flying in on private jets to a conference discussing climate breakdown....

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aca4e8 By Stuart Jenkins, et al, Environmental Research Letters.  Excerpt: ...an opportunity: to open a conversation about applying the principle of extended producer responsibility (EPR) to fossil fuels. ...Implementing EPR through a combination of geological CO 2  storage and nature-based solutions can deliver net zero at comparable or lower costs than conventional scenarios driven with a global carbon price and subject to constraints on CO 2  storage deployment. It would also mean that the principal beneficiary of high fossil fuel prices, the fossil fuel industry itself, plays its part in addressing the climate challenge while reducing the risk of asset stranding. ...Under EPR as implemented in France, for example, a 'producer', meaning 'any natural or legal person who develops, manufactures, handles, treats, sells or imports waste-generating products', 'may be required [...] to provide or contribute to the pre

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/12/climate/exxon-mobil-global-warming-climate-change.html By Hiroko Tabuchi , The New York Times.  Excerpt: In the late 1970s, scientists at Exxon fitted one of the company’s supertankers with state-of-the-art equipment to measure carbon dioxide in the ocean and in the air, an early example of substantial research the oil giant conducted into the science of climate change. A  new study  published Thursday in the journal Science found that over the next decades, Exxon’s scientists made remarkably accurate projections of just how much burning fossil fuels would warm the planet. Their projections were as accurate, and sometimes even more so, as those of independent academic and government models. ...Yet for years, the oil giant publicly cast doubt on climate science, and cautioned against any drastic move away from burning fossil fuels, the main driver of climate change. Exxon also ran a public relations program — including  ads that ran in The New York Tim

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/11/us/california-storms-homeless.html By Shawn Hubler ,  Livia Albeck-Ripka  and  Corina Knoll , The New York Times.  Excerpt: From rural Sonoma County to the celebrity enclave of Montecito, a brutal parade of atmospheric rivers has tested California’s infrastructure and endurance. Streets have flooded, levees have failed, mudslides have closed highways and wind gusts have knocked out electricity for days. At least 17 people have died since late December. But few have faced as stark a challenge as the  more than 170,000 people who are homeless  in California. The state not only has the nation’s largest population of homeless residents, but unlike in colder locales, nearly 70 percent of them sleep in tents, vehicles or public open spaces. ...The extreme weather driven by climate change has  intensified the need for efforts  to protect homeless people across the country, where  about 230,000 people are living unsheltered , according to an annual estimate c

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/11/oceans-were-the-hottest-ever-recorded-in-2022-analysis-shows By Damian Carrington , The Guardian.  Excerpt: The world’s oceans were the hottest ever recorded in 2022, demonstrating the profound and pervasive changes that human-caused emissions have made to the planet’s climate. More than 90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions is absorbed in the oceans. The records, starting in 1958, show an inexorable rise in ocean temperature, with an acceleration in warming after 1990. Sea surface temperatures are a major influence on the world’s weather. Hotter oceans help supercharge extreme weather, leading to more intense hurricanes and typhoons and more moisture in the air, which brings more intense rains and flooding. Warmer water also expands, pushing up sea levels and endangering coastal cities.... See also New York Times article  The Last 8 Years Were the Hottest on Record .