Category: Climate

Why fashion education needs to care about climate change

Read the full story at Nonprofit Quarterly.

The fashion industry, currently worth $2.5 trillion, is one of the drivers of global economies but it comes with a steep cost, especially to our environment. Clothing production contributes to rampant pollution, from microplastics clogging water systems to carbon emissions and toxic chemicals used in textile processing.

These environmental challenges make it clear that addressing sustainability in fashion is essential. Why have fashion education programs been slow to adapt? Many students today are deeply concerned with issues like climate justice, yet they are graduating without the tools to address these challenges effectively.

World on course to trigger multiple climate ‘tipping points’ unless action accelerates

Read the full story from the University of Exeter.

Multiple climate ‘tipping points’ are likely to be triggered if global policies stay on their current course, new research shows.

Scientific path to recouping the costs of climate change

Read the full story from Dartmouth College.

A new study lays out a scientific framework for holding individual fossil fuel companies liable for the costs of climate change by tracing specific damages back to their emissions. The researchers use the tool to provide the first causal estimate of economic losses due to extreme heat driven by emissions. They report that carbon dioxide and methane output from just 111 companies cost the world economy $28 trillion from 1991 to 2020, with the five top-emitting firms linked to $9 trillion of those losses.

Trump cuts to NOAA, NASA ‘blinding’ farmers to risks, scientists warn

Read the full story at The Hill. See also the news release from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

The Trump administration’s cuts to climate research and federal weather forecasting agencies are “blinding” the U.S. to oncoming threats to its food supply — and kneecapping efforts to protect it.

As Congress debates its own research and forecasting cuts, a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature suggests that fossil fuel-driven climate change poses an existential threat to key parts of the American food supply.

Heat waves and drought driven by fossil fuel burning could mean a collapse of Midwestern corn and soy yields later this century, said study co-author Andrew Hultgren of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Scientists warn that greenhouse gas accumulation is accelerating and more extreme weather will come

Read the full story from the Associated Press.

Humans are on track to release so much greenhouse gas in less than three years that a key threshold for limiting global warming will be nearly unavoidable, according to a study to be released Thursday.

The report predicts that society will have emitted enough carbon dioxide by early 2028 that crossing an important long-term temperature boundary will be more likely than not. The scientists calculate that by that point there will be enough of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere to create a 50-50 chance or greater that the world will be locked in to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of long-term warming since preindustrial times. That level of gas accumulation, which comes from the burning of fuels like gasoline, oil and coal, is sooner than the same group of 60 international scientists calculated in a study last year.

Climate crisis threatens the banana, the world’s most popular fruit, research shows

Read the full story in The Guardian.

The climate crisis is threatening the future of the world’s most popular fruit, as almost two-thirds of banana-growing areas in Latin America and the Caribbean may no longer be suitable for growing the fruit by 2080, new research has found.

Rising temperatures, extreme weather and climate-related pests are pummeling banana-growing countries such as Guatemala, Costa Rica and Colombia, reducing yields and devastating rural communities across the region, according to Christian Aid’s new report, Going Bananas: How Climate Change Threatens the World’s Favourite Fruit.

Large tornado outbreaks are becoming more common. But it’s unclear why

Read the full story from NPR.

There have been a lot of tornadoes so far this year. Recent tornadoes killed dozens of people in Kentucky, Missouri and Virginia. Earlier this spring, deadly tornadoes tore across eight midwestern states.

An above-average number of tornadoes in the Midwest have occurred so far this year, according to data collected by the National Weather Service. Usually, by this time in May, a little over 600 tornadoes have been reported in the U.S. This year, it’s more than 850 tornadoes.

But that isn’t evidence of a long-term trend. “There’s not really an increase or a decrease in the overall number of tornadoes that we see,” says Melissa Widhalm, the associate director of the Midwestern Regional Climate Center at Purdue University. “That number’s been pretty stable,” going back to the 1950s or so.

However, tornado patterns in the U.S. are changing in other ways. Big outbreaks of tornadoes, like the ones in Kentucky and Missouri over the weekend when lots of storms move across a large area in a short period of time, are getting more common.

Climate grief resources from the Climate Mental Health Network

Research shows that grief is one of the most common climate emotions. Our society tends to suppress grief and its expressions. But properly honoring and integrating grief helps us connect with others, with the earth as a whole, and to more fully experience a healthy range of emotions, including joy. These resources from the Climate Mental Health Network are informed by the research of Panu Pihkala.

Major US steel company backs away from plan to make green steel

Read the full story at Canary Media.

It was supposed to be the United States’ grand entry to the global race to make green steel — a symbol of a return to American innovation and of revival in the nation’s rusting industrial heartland.

Instead, Cleveland-Cliffs’ plan to replace coal-based blast furnaces with cleaner, hydrogen-ready technology at its Middletown Works facility in Ohio — the same mill that Vice President JD Vance described as his grandparents’ ​“economic savior” in his ​“Hillbilly Elegy” memoir — now risks being swept away in the undercurrent of Washington’s shifting partisan tides.

Neither the Cleveland-based steelmaker nor the Department of Energy, which put up $500 million to back the project, has formally pulled the plug on the plan to build a direct reduced iron plant capable of using hydrogen and two electric melting furnaces. But updates from the company in recent weeks suggest the ambitious carbon-free version of the project is all but dead.

How the world’s most powerful corporations have fought accountability for climate change

Read the full story at Inside Climate News.

A new report draws on internal company documents and other public records to comprehensively outline the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long campaign to mislead the public and avoid paying for their products’ harms.

In Indiana, putting up solar panels is doing God’s work

Read the full story from the New York Times (gift article). Part of their 50 states, 50 fixes series.

A cluster of evangelical groups in the state is pushing for environmental action. Leaders say they’re following the biblical mandate to care for creation.

Swamp coolers’ ability to beat the heat is evaporating in record southwestern temperatures

Read the full story at Inside Climate News.

The evaporative coolers are a popular and climate-friendly cooling option in arid regions, but temperatures in New Mexico are rising beyond what the home appliances can manage.

Transition to telemedicine has come with considerable reductions in carbon emissions: Study

Read the full story at The Hill.

The use of telemedicine reduced carbon dioxide emissions by the equivalent of up to 130,000 gas-fueled cars per month in 2023, a new study has determined.

These findings suggest telemedicine could have a modest but tangible contribution to curbing the effects of climate change, according to the study, published Tuesday in the American Journal of Managed Care.

These mayors say climate is a kitchen-table issue

Read the full story at Governing.

Climate change policies are often cast as conflicting with kitchen-table economic concerns. A working group of mayors from around the country hopes to highlight policies that can address both of these issues. Shifting federal positions have created an opportunity for local leaders to set the course forward.

Policy experts fear laxer climate rules could leave U.S. markets open to greater volatility

Read the full story at Inside Climate News.

The Basel Committee’s decision to take a voluntary approach to climate rules and focus only on extreme weather will weaken a key task force, advocates believe.