This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Ariana Tibon was in college at the University of Hawaii in 2017 when she saw the photo online: a black-and-white picture of a man holding a baby. The caption said: “Nelson Anjain getting his baby monitored on March 2, 1954, by […]
Read MoreTo achieve real climate solutions, changing behavior and developing technology is not enough, says Michal Nachmany, founder and CEO of the environmental nonprofit Climate Policy Radar. “A lot of this is policy,” she says. We need better laws, policies, and regulations, as well as needing to hold policymakers and corporates to account, because they’re not […]
Read MoreYour city is a scab on the landscape: sidewalks, roads, parking lots, rooftops—the built environment repels water into sewers and then into the environment. Urban planners have been doing it for centuries, treating stormwater as a nuisance to be diverted away as quickly as possible to avoid flooding. Not only is that a waste of […]
Read MoreHumanity’s superpower is sweating—but rising heat could be our kryptonite, and an average temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels could bring regular, fatal heat waves to large parts of the planet, says Tom Matthews, a senior lecturer in environmental geography at King’s College London. “We have evolved to cope with the most […]
Read MoreA combination of AI, a wild 1970s plan to build underwater cities, and a designer creating furniture on the seabed around the Bahamas might be the solution to the widespread destruction of coral reefs. It could even save the world from coastal erosion. Industrial designer Tom Dixon and technologist Suhair Khan, founder of AI incubator […]
Read MoreA combination of AI, a wild 1970s plan to build underwater cities, and a designer creating furniture on the seabed around the Bahamas might be the solution to the widespread destruction of coral reefs. It could even save the world from coastal erosion. Industrial designer Tom Dixon and technologist Suhair Khan, founder of AI incubator […]
Read MoreThis story originally appeared on Inside Climate News and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Picture the minute hand at about 8 past the hour. That’s the slope of Viet’s backyard in southern Los Angeles County. It’s a bit too aggressive for a slip-and-slide. In fact, Viet doesn’t even let his 7-year-old daughter play […]
Read More“The answer ended up being, yes, in all US states, on average heat pumps will reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” says Eric Wilson, a senior research engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the lead author of the new paper. “Even if it’s a relatively low-efficiency heat pump that relies on electric resistance heating during […]
Read MoreWe can reverse climate change if we redefine what carbon neutral looks like, said Gabrielle Walker, cofounder of carbon removal startup CUR8, at WIRED Impact in London in November 2023. Scientists define net zero not just as the reduction of carbon emissions, but the removal of carbon from the atmosphere too—a complete negation of the […]
Read MoreCleaner, greener transport is on its way—from delivery to air travel—but government action on incentives and infrastructure is needed to make it work fast and at scale. “It’s a bit frustrating sometimes in the UK, with the government delaying targets and support,” says Murvah Iqbal, co-CEO and founder at all-electric delivery network Hived. Hived counts […]
Read MoreEarlier this month, the future fell on Los Angeles. A long band of moisture in the sky, known as an atmospheric river, dumped 9 inches of rain on the city over three days—over half of what the city typically gets in a year. It’s the kind of extreme rainfall that’ll get ever more extreme as […]
Read MoreWe are in a climate crisis, and technology can be either a part of the problem or a force for good, says Greenpeace CTO Priscilla Chomba-Kinywa. According to the International Panel on Climate Change, she explains, we have “less than seven years before Earth becomes really difficult to live on.” Last year alone, the world […]
Read MoreThis story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Last week, a long, narrow section of the Earth’s atmosphere funneled trillions of gallons of water eastward from the Pacific tropics and unleashed it on California. This weather event, known as an atmospheric river, broke rainfall records, dumped more than a […]
Read MoreSo what’s going on here? For one, the oceans have been steadily warming over the decades, absorbing something like 90 percent of the extra heat that humans have added to the atmosphere. “The oceans are our saviors, in a way,” says biological oceanographer Francisco Chavez of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California. “Things […]
Read MoreImitation caviar invented in the 1930s could provide the solution to plastic pollution, claims Pierre Paslier, CEO of London-based packaging company Notpla. He discovered the cheap food alternative, invented by Unilever and made using seaweed, after quitting his job as a packaging engineer at L’Oréal. With cofounder and co-CEO Rodrigo García González, Paslier and Notpla have […]
Read MoreWhile everyone’s been focused on accelerating the adoption of electric vehicles to cut carbon emissions, a technological hero has been rapidly ascending under the radar: the heat pump. Instead of burning natural gas or coal to produce heat, this fully electric device extracts warmth from outdoor air—even when it’s freezing outside—and pumps it inside to […]
Read MoreIn late February, farmers from across the US will gather in Houston, Texas, to witness the crowning of their champions: the winners of the National Corn Yield Contest. Every year, thousands of participants brush up on the contest’s 17-page rule book and then attempt to plough, plant, and fertilize their way into the record books. […]
Read MoreWe need to understand the value of nature if we want to protect it—and that should include paying ecosystems for keeping us alive, argues Ian Redmond, head of conservation for not-for-profit streaming platform Ecoflix and cofounder of Rebalance Earth, a company that aims to build a sustainable, resilient, and equitable economy. He’s trying to change […]
Read MoreTo achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2030, we have to increase the amount of capital invested in climate tech by 590 percent, says Daria Saharova, managing partner at VC World Fund, a European venture capital firm specializing in climate tech. While European funds, including the UK’s, have €19.6 trillion ($21.1 trillion) under management—and invested €19.6 […]
Read MoreEpic Cleantec’s soil amendment Photograph: Matt Simon Researchers are experimenting with using the same technique for wastewater solids, basically turning sludge into a solid product. “If you do pyrolysis—because it’s thermochemical, it’s a heated process—you kill these bacteria, kill these pathogens, kill these viruses. It’s much cleaner,” says engineer Fengqi You, who studies wastewater at […]
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