In recent years, climate change has thrown a wrench into the intensely personal decision of whether or when to have children.  A 2020 survey found that 78% of Gen Zers in the US weren’t planning to have children because of climate change. Some fear bringing kids into a world that will see increasingly severe effects from global warming, others fret at the carbon footprint of a new human—by one estimate the equivalent of over five thousand trans-Atlantic flights. “Basically, there’s a scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult,” said Representative Ale ..read more

Each liquid pint of beer we drink produces almost as much solid waste: in fact, the brewing of beer generates 36.4 million tons of leftover grain each year, most of which is heaped onto landfills, where all it does is rot and release copious amounts of methane into the atmosphere.  Now, researchers say that they’ve chanced on a solution to this enormous and needless waste—and oddly enough, their approach uses microwave energy to extract over 80% of the protein that remains in nutrient-rich barley byproducts, for reuse in our diets. Writing in a recent study, the team of scientists from N ..read more

THE CLIMATE PARABLES  | FICTION A Hidden Savior Finds The Lyme Light It’s 2070, and Super Lyme Disease is spreading across North America. When a mother loses her child to the disease, she goes on a crusade to fight it—with help from a cold-blooded hero. By Zoe Young   The Climate Parables series engages the powerful imaginative forces of science fiction to explore what it’s like to live in a future in which humans have discovered creative ways to mitigate climate change—and live well. Learn more here > What happens to a narcissist when their child dies? They ..read more

Finding ways to power the world while emitting minimal planet-warming carbon dioxide is a Holy Grail for researchers. Now, scientists in Australia have made a device that goes the other way: it consumes carbon dioxide to generate electricity. The carbon-negative power generator, reported in the journal Nature Communications, is only a small proof-of-concept laboratory-scale device right now. But it could pave the way towards a new industrial-scale carbon capture method, its developers say. As the world hurtles towards a future where climate change could cause unlivable conditions for millions ..read more

Adapting to climate change and preparing for the green transition entails significant costs for businesses—but is likely to be a good investment, according to a new study. The analysis, one of the first to quantify how climate risk is priced in financial markets, suggests that companies that fail to respond in a proactive way to climate threats lose market value. In the past there has been relatively little research on climate finance topics. Researchers have lacked good methods to measure climate risk exposure, at least for equity assets (as opposed to real estate where projections of flood r ..read more

Microbial foods require a fraction of the land area, water, and growth inputs—and yet they could feed millions, possibly billions. In a new perspective research paper, a team of engineers hone in on the technologies that could make this alien-sounding fare a feasible part of a climate-resilient future. The range of microbial foods is already wide and varied, and in research circles there’s much said about the promise they hold in an uncertain agricultural future. But there have been limited efforts to catalog these foods all in one place, and consider how viable it would be to produce them on ..read more

The pelicans that brought peace to a troubled corner of Europe Environmental peacebuilding shows that restoring nature can also heal conflicts By Fred Pearce Water is a rogue force in politics. It arrives suddenly as a deluge. It disappears for years as a drought. Lakes, rivers and storms are no respecters of borders, where neighbors can squabble over every drop. We have been warned for years that water wars are coming, in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.  But what if they’re not? What if water can also be a way out of conflict? A dedicated group of bird-lovers in a war ..read more

Heat-related deaths around the world are climbing up as more frequent, longer-lasting extreme heatwaves become a harsh reality due to climate change. Heat deaths are projected to increase by 370 percent if global warming continues at its current rate. This heating effect is more pronounced in dense cities because of the urban heat island effect. But reflecting sunlight back into the sky using the technology found in reflective road signs and bike reflectors could help cool cities down, according to Princeton University engineers. The technology, called retroreflectors, use a combination of pri ..read more

In the category of monumental natural events, the annual migration of wildebeests across eastern Africa ranks high. The image of vast waves of gray and black animals pouring across oceans of grass, to the sonorous tones of David Attenborough’s narration, is unforgettable. But this breathtaking annual ritual involving some 1.3 million wildebeests, the world’s largest migratory movement of grazing animals, isn’t a sure thing. Human blockades in the form of fences and roads have already taken a toll. Now there is new evidence that such migratory disruptions can undermine the basic genetic wellbei ..read more

Climate change is already increasing food prices and overall inflation, and these effects are likely to accelerate in the future, according to a new study. The findings add heft to a growing collection of research on the effects of climate change on the economy. In this area, climate-related inflation has been relatively under-studied—a key oversight “because rising or unstable prices threaten economic and human welfare as well as political stability,” researchers from the European Central Bank and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research write in the journal Communications Earth & ..read more