The working paper provides an analysis of the most impactful choices individuals can make to curb GHG emissions. It bridges for the first time two previously disconnected research domains: studies estimating the theoretical emissions reductions possible through behavior change and studies evaluating the effectiveness of individual-level behavior change interventions.
Merging these two literatures, the working paper quantifies the actual emissions reductions that can realistically be achieved through individual-level behavior change interventions. Combining data on projected emissions reductions with evidence on the effectiveness of real-world interventions (representing over 1.3 million individuals), it provides an evidence-based assessment of which behavior shifts offer the greatest emissions-reduction potential when accounting for both theoretical potential and real-world feasibility.
Specifically focusing on behavior shifts in the energy, transportation and food sectors, the paper identifies four key “Priority Shifts” for policymakers, industry and individuals to prioritize.
It also analyzes the effectiveness of various behavior change intervention tools (such as defaults, social norms and providing information), categorizing them and ranking their proven impact.
Category: Climate
As US ramps up fossil fuels, communities will have to adapt to the consequences − yet climate adaptation funding is on the chopping block
by Bethany Bradley, UMass Amherst; Jia Hu, University of Arizona, and Meade Krosby, University of Washington
It’s no secret that warming temperatures, wildfires and flash floods are increasingly affecting lives across the United States. With the U.S. government now planning to ramp up fossil fuel use, the risks of these events are likely to become even more pronounced.
That leaves a big question: Is the nation prepared to adapt to the consequences?
For many years, federally funded scientists have been developing solutions to help reduce the harm climate change is causing in people’s lives and livelihoods. Yet, as with many other science programs, the White House is proposing to eliminate funding for climate adaptation science in the next federal budget, and reports suggest that the firing of federal climate adaptation scientists may be imminent.
As researchers and directors of regional Climate Adaptation Science Centers, funded by the U.S. Geological Survey since 2011, we have seen firsthand the work these programs do to protect the nation’s natural resources and their successes in helping states and tribes build resilience to climate risks.
Here are a few examples of the ways federally funded climate adaptation science conducted by university and federal researchers helps the nation weather the effects of climate change.
Protecting communities against wildfire risk
Wildfires have increasingly threatened communities and ecosystems across the U.S., exacerbated by worsening heat waves and drought.
In the Southwest, researchers with the Climate Adaptation Science Centers are developing forecasting models to identify locations at greatest risk of wildfire at different times of year.
Knowing where and when fire risks are highest allows communities to take steps to protect themselves, whether by carrying out controlled burns to remove dry vegetation, creating fire breaks to protect homes, managing invasive species that can leave forests more prone to devastating fires, or other measures.
The solutions are created with forest and wildland managers to ensure projects are viable, effective and tailored to each area. The research is then integrated into best practices for managing wildfires. The researchers also help city planners find the most effective methods to reduce fire risks in wildlands near homes.
In Hawaii and the other Pacific islands, adaptation researchers have similarly worked to identify how drought, invasive species and land-use changes contribute to fire risk there. They use these results to create maps of high-risk fire zones to help communities take steps to reduce dry and dead undergrowth that could fuel fires and also plan for recovery after fires.
Protecting shorelines and fisheries
In the Northeast, salt marshes line large parts of the coast, providing natural buffers against storms by damping powerful ocean waves that would otherwise erode the shoreline. Their shallow, grassy waters also serve as important breeding grounds for valuable fish.
However, these marshes are at risk of drowning as sea level rises faster than the sediment can build up.
As greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and from other human activities accumulate in the atmosphere, they trap extra heat near Earth’s surface and in the oceans, raising temperatures. The rising temperatures melt glaciers and also cause thermal expansion of the oceans. Together, those processes are raising global sea level by about 1.3 inches per decade.
Adaptation researchers with the Climate Adaptation Science Centers have been developing local flood projections for the regions’ unique oceanographic and geophysical conditions to help protect them. Those projections are essential to help natural resource managers and municipalities plan effectively for the future.
Researchers are also collaborating with local and regional organizations on salt marsh restoration, including assessing how sediment builds up each marsh and creating procedures for restoring and monitoring the marshes.
Saving salmon in Alaska and the Northwest
In the Northwest and Alaska, salmon are struggling as temperatures rise in the streams they return to for spawning each year. Warm water can make them sluggish, putting them at greater risk from predators. When temperatures get too high, they can’t survive. Even in large rivers such as the Columbia, salmon are becoming heat stressed more often.
Adaptation researchers in both regions have been evaluating the effectiveness of fish rescues – temporarily moving salmon into captivity as seasonal streams overheat or dry up due to drought.
In Alaska, adaptation scientists have built broad partnerships with tribes, nonprofit organizations and government agencies to improve temperature measurements of remote streams, creating an early warning system for fisheries so managers can take steps to help salmon survive.
Managing invasive species
Rising temperatures can also expand the range of invasive species, which cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars each year in crop and forest losses and threaten native plants and animals.
Researchers in the Northeast and Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Centers have been working to identify and prioritize the risks from invasive species that are expanding their ranges. That helps state managers eradicate these emerging threats before they become a problem. These regional invasive species networks have become the go-to source of climate-related scientific information for thousands of invasive species managers.
The Northeast is a hot spot for invasive species, particularly for plants that can outcompete native wetland and grassland species and host pathogens that can harm native species.
Without proactive assessments, invasive species management becomes more difficult. Once the damage has begun, managing invasive species becomes more expensive and less effective.
Losing the nation’s ability to adapt wisely
A key part of these projects is the strong working relationships built between scientists and the natural resource managers in state, community, tribal and government agencies who can put this knowledge into practice.
With climate extremes likely to increase in the coming years, losing adaptation science will leave the United States even more vulnerable to future climate hazards.
Bethany Bradley, Professor of Biogeography and Spatial Ecology, UMass Amherst; Jia Hu, Associate Professor of Natural Resources, University of Arizona, and Meade Krosby, Senior Scientist for the Climate Impacts Group, University of Washington
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Worsening allergies aren’t your imagination − windy days create the perfect pollen storm
by Christine Cairns Fortuin, Mississippi State University
Evolution has fostered many reproductive strategies across the spectrum of life. From dandelions to giraffes, nature finds a way.
One of those ways creates quite a bit of suffering for humans: pollen, the infamous male gametophyte of the plant kingdom.
In the Southeastern U.S., where I live, you know it’s spring when your car has turned yellow and pollen blankets your patio furniture and anything else left outside. Suddenly there are long lines at every car wash in town.
Even people who aren’t allergic to pollen – clearly an advantage for a pollination ecologist like me – can experience sneezing and watery eyes during the release of tree pollen each spring. Enough particulate matter in the air will irritate just about anyone, even if your immune system does not launch an all-out attack.
So, why is there so much pollen? And why does it seem to be getting worse?
2 ways trees spread their pollen
Trees don’t have an easy time in the reproductive game. As a tree, you have two options to disperse your pollen.
Option 1: Employ an agent, such as a butterfly or bee, that can carry your pollen to another plant of the same species.
The downside of this option is that you must invest in a showy flower display and a sweet scent to advertise yourself, and sugary nectar to pay your agent for its services.
Option 2, the budget option, is much less precise: Get a free ride on the wind.
Wind was the original pollinator, evolving long before animal-mediated pollination. Wind doesn’t require a showy flower nor a nectar reward. What it does require for pollination to succeed is ample amounts of lightweight, small-diameter pollen.
Why wind-blown pollen makes allergies worse
Wind is not an efficient pollinator, however. The probability of one pollen grain landing in the right location – the stigma or ovule of another plant of the same species – is infinitesimally small.
Therefore, wind-pollinated trees must compensate for this inefficiency by producing copious amounts of pollen, and it must be light enough to be carried.
For allergy sufferers, that can mean air filled with microscopic pollen grains that can get into your eyes, throat and lungs, sneak in through window screens and convince your immune system that you’ve inhaled a dangerous intruder.
Plants relying on animal-mediated pollination, by contrast, can produce heavier and stickier pollen to adhere to the body of an insect. So don’t blame the bees for your allergies – it’s really the wind.
Climate change has a role here, too
Plants initiate pollen release based on a few factors, including temperature and light cues. Many of our temperate tree species respond to cues that signal the beginning of spring, including warmer temperatures.
Studies have found that pollen seasons have intensified in the past three decades as the climate has warmed. One study that examined 60 location across North America found pollen seasons expanded by an average of 20 days from 1990 to 2018 and pollen concentrations increased by 21%.
That’s not all. Increasing carbon dioxide levels may also be driving increases in the quantity of tree pollen produced.
Why the Southeast gets socked
What could make this pollen boost even worse?
For the Southeastern U.S. in particular, strong windstorms are becoming more common and more intense − and not just hurricanes.
Anyone who has lived in the Southeast for the past couple of decades has likely noticed this. The region has more tornado warnings, more severe thunderstorms, more power outages. This is especially true in the mid-South, from Mississippi to Alabama.
Since wind is the vector of airborne pollen, windier conditions can also make allergies worse. Pollen remains airborne for longer on windy days, and it travels farther.
To make matters worse, increasing storm activity may be doing more than just transporting pollen. Storms can also break apart pollen grains, creating smaller particles that can penetrate deeper into the lungs.
Many allergy sufferers may notice worsening allergies during storms.
The peak of spring wind and storm season tends to correspond to the timing of the release of tree pollen that blankets our world in yellow. The effects of climate change, including longer pollen seasons and more pollen released, and corresponding shifts in windy days and storm severity are helping to create the perfect pollen storm.
Christine Cairns Fortuin, Assistant Professor of Forestry, Mississippi State University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Webinar: Practical Strategies to Safeguard Business Health From Climate Risks
Jun 5, 2025, 9 am CT
Register at Trellis.
Extreme weather events have a significant impact on a company’s bottom line. Even at a time when mandatory climate risk disclosures are being reduced, companies need to remain vigilant about climate-related threats.
This webinar will cover the unique obstacles companies face in evaluating climate risks, offer practical solutions to enhance risk quantification and highlight the importance of building a strategic framework that integrates climate considerations into overall risk management. Attendees will gain actionable guidance to drive informed decision-making.
- Steps to quantify climate risk
- How to anticipate and mitigate supply chain disruptions
- How to integrate climate risk into existing market, financial and operational risk strategies
Moderator
- Grant Harrison, VP, Sustainable Finance & ESG, Trellis Group
Speakers
- Frank Manahan, Principal, Risk Modeling Services, Sustainability, PwC US
- Tom Sabbatelli-Goodyer, VP, Climate Risk, Solutions Management, FIS Global
If you can’t tune in live, register to get the on-demand recording after the webinar. Trouble registering? Try switching your browser and double check that cookies are enabled. If you are still having issues, please contact support@trellis.net.
From Greenland to Ghana, Indigenous youth work for climate justice
Read the full story at Grist.
For the last week, Indigenous leaders from around the world have converged in New York for the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, or UNPFII. It’s the largest global gathering of Indigenous peoples, and the forum provides space for participants to bring their issues to international authorities, often when their own governments have refused to take action. This year’s forum focuses on how U.N. member states’ have, or have not, protected the rights of Indigenous peoples, and conversations range from the environmental effects of extractive industries to climate change and violence against women.
The Forum is an intergenerational space. Young people in attendance often work alongside elders and leaders to come up with solutions and address ongoing challenges. Grist interviewed seven Indigenous youth attending UNPFII this year hailing from Africa, the Pacific, North and South America, Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Arctic.
Thousands of satellites are due to burn up in the atmosphere every year – damaging the ozone layer and changing the climate
by Minkwan Kim, University of Southampton and Ian Williams, University of Southampton
The world’s first artificial satellite, the Soviet Union’s Sputnik 1, was launched in October 1957. Just three months later, it fell out of orbit. As Sputnik hit the upper atmosphere at incredible speed, the friction would have caused it to heat up and almost entirely burn off. Some small remnants of the satellite would have remained in the upper atmosphere, like smoke and ash after a fire: humankind’s first space debris.
Seven decades on, scientists like us are only just beginning to piece together how this space debris might be damaging the ozone layer, the climate and even human health. We still don’t know how much of this debris the atmosphere can sustain before it causes significant environmental harm.
Today, the number of objects in orbit has surged to over 28,000. More than 11,000 of these are active satellites, with most belonging to commercial “mega-constellations”: groups of satellites that work together to deliver internet access. Examples include Starlink, operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Amazon’s Kuiper or China’s Guowang.
Operators follow a 25-year rule: at this point, a satellite’s mission is deemed to have ended and it is lowered into the atmosphere where gravity and friction kicks in. While this helps clear space, it results in thousands of satellites burning up in the atmosphere each year.
A new problem
Until recently, the high-altitude destruction of satellites was not a concern. The amount of spacecraft debris was relatively small compared to debris from naturally occurring meteorites.
But by 2030, the global satellite population is expected to exceed 60,000, and thousands of spacecraft will be re-entering the atmosphere and burning up each year. With each satellite weighing as much as a small car, it all adds up. We are conducting research on the problem, and our early estimates are that around 3,500 tonnes of aerosols will be added to the atmosphere each year by 2033.
Aerosols are tiny particles suspended in the air. They can play an important role in Earth’s climate, either cooling or warming it depending on their type and colour. Light-coloured particles generally reflect incoming sunlight and cause cooling, while darker particles, usually containing soot, absorb sunlight and make the atmosphere warmer.
Some of these aerosols are particularly worrying. In 2023, US scientists discovered particles containing various metals, including aluminium and lithium, in the stratosphere. These particles originated from spacecraft and debris such as the disposable rocket boosters attached to them. When spacecraft burn up during re-entry, they release chemicals such as metal oxides and nitrogen oxides.
The full composition of these emissions remains unclear. But key pollutants found in satellite debris are known to affect the atmosphere’s thermal balance, potentially driving global climate change.
Aluminium oxide, for instance, could actually help cool the Earth by reflecting away sunlight. In fact, some geoengineering scientists have proposed injecting tiny particles of it into the stratosphere to keep global warming in check.
It’s way too early to say exactly how much cooling this will cause. And we don’t know how messing with Earth’s energy balance like this might trigger unintended consequences including extreme weather.
But we do know how the process works. And we know the amount of aluminium oxides from satellite re-entries is now approaching levels produced by meteorites – and will soon far exceed it. At a bare minimum, this is something we must track closely.
Reopening the ozone hole?
Aluminium oxide and other pollutants also act as catalysts in the breakdown of the ozone layer, a section of the stratosphere that shields the Earth from the Sun’s radiation.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the ozone layer was devastated by a group of chemicals known as CFCs that were widely used in fridges, spray cans and cleaning products. The 1987 Montreal protocol phased out CFCs and other ozone-depleting substances, and led to significant progress in reversing the damage.
According to the World Economic Forum, the economic benefits of protecting the ozone layer add up to around US$2.2 trillion (£1.7 trillion) in total. To take one example, a thinner ozone layer increases exposure to harmful ultra-violet (UV) radiation, leading to a higher incidence of skin cancer and cataracts.
The re-entry of satellites and space debris therefore may not only affect the Earth’s atmosphere but also pose serious risks to global climate and public health. More critically, unlike ground-based pollutants, pollutants from old spacecraft can persist in the upper atmosphere for decades or centuries, remaining undetected until their effects on ozone concentrations become evident.
New solutions required
History provides us with valuable lessons, allowing us to learn from past mistakes. Despite the success of the Montreal protocol, the ozone layer is not expected to fully recover until 2066, meaning it will take an 80-year effort to restore what was harmed in just a few decades.
The disaster of 21st-century climate change was set in motion when humankind began burning fossil fuels on a global scale in the mid-19th century. We are still working to resolve this problem by reducing carbon emissions. We must not add further environmental damage through satellite debris accumulating at the edge of Earth’s atmosphere.
There’s no simple solution, however. If we want the benefits of worldwide networks of satellites then we really do have to let them burn off in the atmosphere. It’s the only cost-effective disposal method at present.
For now, the space industry’s contribution to ozone depletion and climate change is relatively small. But, as space activity continues to grow exponentially, we cannot afford to overlook the consequences of satellite debris.
Minkwan Kim, Associate Professor of Astronautics, University of Southampton and Ian Williams, Professor of Applied Environmental Science, University of Southampton
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Scientists just found a way to break through climate apathy
Read the full story at Grist.
For much of the 20th century, winter brought an annual ritual to Princeton, New Jersey. Lake Carnegie froze solid, and skaters flocked to its glossy surface. These days, the ice is rarely thick enough to support anybody wearing skates, since Princeton’s winters have warmed about 4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1970. It’s a lost tradition that Grace Liu linked to the warming climate as an undergrad at Princeton University in 2020, interviewing longtime residents and digging through newspaper archives to create a record of the lake’s ice conditions.
“People definitely noticed that they were able to get out onto the lake less,” said Liu, who’s now a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University. “However, they didn’t necessarily connect this trend to climate change.”
When the university’s alumni magazine featured her research in the winter of 2021, the comment section was filled with wistful memories of skating under the moonlight, pushing past the crowds to play hockey, and drinking hot chocolate by the frozen lakeside. Liu began to wonder: Could this kind of direct, visceral loss make climate change feel more vivid to people?
That question sparked her study, recently published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, that came to a striking conclusion: Boiling down data into a binary — a stark this or that — can help break through apathy about climate change.
Liu worked with professors at Princeton to test how people responded to two different graphs. One showed winter temperatures of a fictional town gradually rising over time, while the other presented the same warming trend in a black-or-white manner: The lake either froze in any given year, or it didn’t. People who saw the second chart perceived climate change as causing more abrupt changes.
Both charts represent the same amount of winter warming, just presented differently. “We are not hoodwinking people,” said Rachit Dubey, a co-author of the study who’s now a professor of communications at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We are literally showing them the same trend, just in different formats…”
The findings suggest that if scientists want to increase public urgency around climate change, they should highlight clear, concrete shifts instead of slow-moving trends. That could include the loss of white Christmases or outdoor summer activities canceled because of wildfire smoke.
Earth’s lungs are choking on plastic and smoke – scientists hope to unblock them
by Jack Marley, The Conversation
A graph I saw in high school appeared to show the Earth breathing.
It was a graph that plotted carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over the course of the 20th century and into the 21st. CO₂ had risen steadily, and then more rapidly, but it hadn’t gone up in a straight line. Each year it had fallen sharply before rising to a new peak, increasing over time in an upwards zig-zag.
What explained this annual, temporary fall in CO₂, the gas that is overwhelmingly responsible for climate change? The answer was photosynthesis, my physics teacher explained – the miracle by which plants turn light and CO₂ into food.
This is how our planet has regulated atmospheric carbon for longer than our species has existed. Fossil fuels are disrupting this equilibrium in several ways.
Spring is dawning in the northern hemisphere, where most of the planet’s green land is situated. Trees are unfurling leaves that will soak up carbon in the air and turn it into new bark, roots and branches. On a global scale, it’s like a gigantic inhalation of carbon. In autumn, when trees shed their leaves, Earth will exhale again.
The air we all breathe is increasingly polluted by fossil fuels. That includes products of fossil fuels, like plastic, which is now so ubiquitous that research suggests simply breathing can introduce microscopic fragments into your brain.
Something similar is happening in plants – and it could have global consequences.
Plants are losing their appetite
“Microplastics are hindering photosynthesis, the process by which plants convert energy from the sun into the fruit and vegetables we eat,” says Denis J. Murphy, an emeritus professor of biotechnology at the University of South Wales.
“This threatens massive losses in crop and seafood production over the coming decades that could mean food shortages for hundreds of millions of people.”
These are the conclusions of a recent study by researchers in China, Germany and the US. Murphy wasn’t involved, but his own research with plant cells – which the tiniest microplastics can infiltrate, and damage the organs involved in photosynthesis – has him worried.
“Given the potential (albeit speculative) risk to global food production, more priority should be given to rigorous scientific research of microplastics and their effects on both crops and the marine life that supports fish and seafood stocks,” he says.
Not so long ago, people wondered if our fossil fuel habit might actually benefit plant photosynthesis. After all, plants eat CO₂. Flooding the atmosphere with more of it each year could only whet their appetites, right?
“The amount of CO₂ used by photosynthesis and stored in vegetation and soils has grown over the past 50 years, and now absorbs at least a quarter of human emissions in an average year,” say ecologists Amanda Cavanagh (University of Essex) and Caitlin Moore (University of Western Australia).
Most of this extra carbon absorption has come from crops and young trees, the pair say, less from mature forests where a lot of the world’s carbon is stored. Cavanagh and Moore say this carbon pump is slowing down, as the other necessary ingredients for photosynthesis – soil nutrients and water – have fallen or stayed the same.
Microplastics could slow the rate at which plants remove carbon further. And then there are the effects of climate change, like drought, fires and floods, which will intensify as long as we continue burning fossil fuels.
After monitoring forests and shrublands in Australia for 20 years, Moore and a team of six colleagues concluded that these ecosystems are at risk of losing their ability to bounce back, and continue absorbing carbon, after successive climate disasters.
Hacking photosynthesis
We may have done plenty to reduce global photosynthesis, but a team of scientists at the University of Oxford and the Fraunhofer Society in Germany is trying to turn things around. How? By hacking plants to help them get more out of the process.
“You would be forgiven for thinking nature has perfected the art of turning sunlight into sugar,” say Jonathan Menary, Sebastian Fuller and Stefan Schillberg.
“But that isn’t exactly true. If you struggle with life goals, it might reassure you to know even plants haven’t yet reached their full potential.”
The team say that plants tend to convert less than 5% of sunlight into new tissue – often as little as 1%. That’s because of a mistake plants regularly make, in which an enzyme involved in photosynthesis latches on to oxygen instead of CO₂.
“If we could prevent this mistake, it would leave plants more energy for photosynthesis,” they say.
Cyanobacteria are Earth’s most ancient photosynthesisers. Menary, Fuller and Schillberg say these microscopic organisms could possess useful genes for better sunlight management that might benefit crops like rice and potato plants. Another technique involves helping plants recover from high light exposure quicker.
More efficient photosynthesis, with the help of gene editing and other tools, is not “a silver bullet”, the team stress. Certainly not while fossil fuels continue to drown our green planet in carbon it cannot metabolise.
However, this work is likely to prove useful as farmers seek to grow more in an increasingly volatile environment, while sparing enough land for nature.
“This research is about making sure we can grow enough food to feed ourselves,” the team say.
Jack Marley, Environment + Energy Editor, The Conversation
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Trump administration decommissions sea ice data that sounded an alarm on Arctic climate change
Read the full story at Inside Climate News.
Key datasets used to monitor the impacts of climate change in the Arctic have emerged as the latest victim of cost-cutting by the Trump administration at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), based at the University of Colorado Boulder, announced Tuesday that NOAA was ending its support for data products that document the extent and thickness of sea ice, the accumulation of snow and the retreat of melting glaciers. “As a result, the level of services for affected products below will be reduced to Basic—meaning they will remain accessible but may not be actively maintained, updated, or fully supported,” the center noted.
This blindsided scientists who use the NSIDC’s data. “That’s incredible. Let us walk blindfolded and not gather any information about our surroundings,” said Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at the University of California, Irvine, when informed of the decision by Inside Climate News.
Inflation Reduction Act: Opportunities Exist to Help Ensure GSA Programs Achieve Intended Results
What GAO Found
The General Services Administration (GSA) selected 362 projects in federal buildings across the U.S. to receive Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funding, as of January 31, 2025. The funding was targeted to support low-embodied carbon materials, emerging and sustainable technologies, and high-performance green building features. Selected applications included low-emissions concrete, electric heat pumps, and building-level energy meters. GSA’s estimated costs for these projects accounted for 99 percent of its total available IRA funding. As of January 31, 2025, GSA reported obligating 49 percent of its available IRA funding and had expended 5 percent (see table). As of February 2025, GSA officials stated that the IRA program is under review and priorities and goals could change.
Dollars in millions
Inflation Reduction Act program Available Obligated (%) Expended (%) Low embodied carbon materials $2,150 $767 (36%) $102 (5%) Emerging and sustainable technologies $975 $683 (70%) $49 (5%) High-performance green buildings $250 $204 (82%) $25 (10%) Total $3,375 $1,654 (49%) $176 (5%) General Services Administration (GSA) Recorded Total Obligations and Expenditures Under the Inflation Reduction Act, as of January 31, 2025. Sources: GAO (analysis); GSA (data). | GAO-25-107349 GSA followed leading practices in capital decision-making when selecting projects for two of its three IRA programs. Specifically, GSA developed a framework for evaluating and selecting projects for the low embodied carbon and emerging and sustainable technology programs. In contrast, GSA had not established a selection framework for evaluating and selecting projects for the high-performance green building program. GSA officials explained that they focused on developing selection frameworks for the two IRA programs with earlier statutory deadlines of 2026 for obligating funds (the deadline for the high-performance green building program is 2031). Nevertheless, establishing a selection framework with criteria for selecting high-performance green building projects would help ensure that GSA makes sound capital investment decisions for this program, including any adjustments to existing selections that it may choose to make.
GSA established 11 performance goals to track progress across its IRA programs as of December 31, 2024. Each goal had one or more quantitative targets with associated time frames. The time frames were typically upon completion of the final IRA project, which was at least several years in the future. However, GSA had not established interim targets for any of the 11 performance goals, which is a practice that could help the agency assess whether it is achieving its goals over time. In addition, no one public document contained all the goals, and the public descriptions of three of the goals did not mention the goals’ targets. GSA officials noted that the IRA does not require it to publish performance goals. They said that GSA often chooses not to publish goals beyond those required, instead using them internally to help ensure effectiveness. However, without readily accessible and more complete performance information, Congress and the public will have only limited insight into whether GSA’s $3.375 billion in IRA project investments are achieving their intended goals.
Why GAO Did This Study
GSA maintains more than 1,500 federally owned buildings. The Council on Environmental Quality has identified these buildings as a major source of the federal government’s greenhouse gas emissions and energy and water use. The IRA provided GSA with a combined $3.375 billion for sustainability improvements.
GAO was asked to review GSA’s IRA activities. The IRA also includes a provision for GAO to support oversight of the use of IRA funds. This report examines, as of December 31, 2024, (1) how GSA planned to use its IRA funds, (2) the extent to which it followed leading practices when selecting projects to fund, and (3) the extent to which it established IRA performance goals, among other issues.
GAO analyzed GSA’s IRA spending plan, including updates as of January 31, 2025, its IRA risk management plan, and other agency documents. GAO interviewed officials who manage GSA’s IRA programs and visited three IRA project sites, representing a range of building types and IRA funding programs to observe progress. GAO assessed GSA’s efforts for project selection against two leading practices for capital decision-making.
Recommendations
GAO is making three recommendations, including that GSA develop a framework with criteria for selecting high-performance green building projects, add interim targets to each of its IRA performance goals, and publicly communicate its IRA goals. GSA agreed with the recommendations and stated that it plans to take actions to address them.
People with neoliberal views are less likely to support climate-friendly policies – new research
Felix Schulz, Lund University and Christian Bretter, The University of Queensland
Donald Trump won the US election on a campaign that included rolling back environmental laws. In the UK, Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch has called the national net zero target “impossible”. And former prime minister Tony Blair has said the current approach of phasing out fossil fuels is “doomed to fail”.
Meanwhile in Germany, the parties in the most likely incoming coalition government hardly engaged with climate policy during the recent election campaign – and the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which openly denies human-made climate change, received 20% of the vote.
With political leaders around the world moving away from progressive climate policy, it’s worth asking: is this what the public wants?
When it comes to the climate, what people think is influenced by where they live and what else they believe in. In recently published research, we sought to find out just how much people’s ideologies affected their views on climate policy.
We surveyed representative samples of the public in six countries about their attitudes towards different types of climate policy. We asked about support for regulation (for example, building and vehicle standards or product bans), taxes (like carbon taxes), subsidies (to promote low-carbon alternatives), and information-based policies (such as emission disclosure requirements). Our survey covered policies in transport, housing, energy and industry.
We also asked respondents about their ideologies: cultural worldviews, personal values, free market beliefs and political trust. Our findings reveal how people’s ideologies shape their support for climate policies.
We included three high-income countries of the global north (the US, UK and Germany) and three upper-middle income countries from the global south (Brazil, South Africa and China). Together, these six countries are responsible for half of global CO₂ emissions.
Our definition of global south, which includes countries such as China, is based on work by UN Trade and Development and the UN G-77 countries. It includes Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, most of Asia (excluding Israel, Japan and South Korea) and Oceania (excluding Australia and New Zealand). These countries generally have lower per capita income and are considered “developing” compared to global north countries.
This comparison is important because, as we will explain, political and economic ideologies that originated in the global north can influence how people view climate policies.
Across all policy types, we found more support for climate policies in the global south countries. In the global north countries, we found only minority support for regulatory policies and climate-related taxes. In Germany, support for regulatory policies and taxes was as little as 18%.
Subsidies for the four sectors – for example, to support renewable energy projects or the production of green steel – received 35% support in Germany and 48% in the US. In contrast, the majority of the public in the three countries of the global south supported subsidies and regulatory climate policies.
As with subsidies, we found strong majority support for information-based policies in the three countries of the global south (74-79%), against only minority support in Germany (36%) and the US (49%). In the UK, 53% supported information-based climate policies.
Personal values play a role in support for the policies. Our findings show people with stronger biospheric values – the importance people place on the environment and the relationship between humans and nature – are more supportive of climate policies. This is true irrespective of the country they live in. People who are more trusting of political institutions and politicians also support these policies more.
But demographics such as age, gender, education or income have a negligible effect on attitudes towards these policies, when accounting for other factors in our analysis.
Neoliberalism and the climate
We observed a strong link between a neoliberal worldview and lack of support for the climate policies in our study. As a political economic project, neoliberalism originated in the global north. But it continues to take root in the global south, particularly in Latin America.
The belief that individuals need to take care of themselves and are responsible for their own fortune and problems was associated with less support for climate policies. And in every country we studied, we found a strong relationship between support for the free market and lack of support for climate policies.
People who believe the free market is best at allocating outcomes efficiently and meeting human needs without government interference, and that it is more important than some local environmental concerns, show less support for the climate policies.
These two sets of beliefs – individualistic worldviews and support for the free market – are the core principles of neoliberal thought.
The superiority of the market over governments as an efficient and fair allocation machine has been the mantra of neoliberal politicians, thinktanks and institutions for more than half a century.
Neoliberalism opposes government regulation and spending, and supports the free market. It also fosters an individualistic worldview. Instead of seeing themselves as workers, citizens or members of a collective, people are persuaded to internalise market logic – to see themselves as individuals who are out to maximise their personal profit.
The cultural shift from more communitarian and egalitarian ideals towards an ideology based on the self-driven individual and the free market has been quite successful. Empirical evidence from 41 countries shows that individualist practices and values around the world have surged significantly over the past 50 years.
We know from research that what the public thinks (or votes for) does influence what governments do. This is true even when accounting for the influence of powerful interest groups.
So, those creating and campaigning for urgently needed climate policies need to take this into account. Support for climate policies isn’t just about whether someone believes in human-made climate change or cares about the planet – there are deeply-rooted ideological factors at play too.
Felix Schulz, Research Fellow, Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies, Lund University and Christian Bretter, Senior Research Fellow in Environmental Psychology, The University of Queensland
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Old growth forests in eastern Canada show that the climate started changing almost 100 years ago
by Alexandre Pace, Concordia University
The effects of climate change are complex, especially on the water cycle. As we seek to better understand human-driven climate changes, long-term baselines for environmental data are essential.
However, records of past environmental conditions are too short to give us a robust understanding of how these systems have changed over time. One solution is to look at natural archives.
There are many natural processes that leave behind records of past environmental conditions, including tree rings.
Trees form a ring of wood every year, and the width of that ring can have a significant relationship with climate. We can then create a model based on the time period for which there is both recorded climate data and tree-ring widths. That model can be applied to the rings that formed before climate records began to reconstruct past conditions.
The challenge is to find forests with both strong climate-growth relationships and trees over a century old — substantially older than the length of climate data. This is especially difficult in southeastern Canada, where the vast majority of forests have been clear-cut.
Sensitive old growth forests
In the Appalachian Mountains of the Gaspé Peninsula, Québec, we studied a rare old-growth cedar grove tucked into the valley between the base of Mont-Albert and the Sainte-Anne River, known for its Atlantic salmon fisheries.
The average hiker passing this eastern white cedar grove would probably not guess that some of these relatively small diameter cedars are more than 500 years old, an age that is still relatively young for the oldest species in eastern Canada.
The strong competition for light in this closed-canopy forest causes trees here to grow very slowly. We found they grow especially slow during years where the winter snow remained on the ground late into the spring. This late snow pack effectively shortens the trees’ growing season and leads to a thinner tree ring that same year.
We went on to sample hundreds of trees in the valley and on the slopes at sites that had never been logged. We repeatedly found a strong relationship with snow pack and a related relationship with spring river flow. With these two closely related connections, we were able to reconstruct 195 years of climate history in the region.
Modern climate change records
Our recent study reconstructed spring and early summer river flow from 1822 for the Sainte-Anne River, a major river in Gaspésie National Park, the second-largest provincial park in southern Québec.
Analysis of this tree ring/snow pack/river relationship — which was previously undocumented in eastern North America — suggests that the region was affected quite early by modern climate change. A significant shift occurred in 1937, after which individual years of extremely high river flows and high snow packs declined. Newspaper reports of floods in the greater region matched the years of high flow in our reconstruction as far back as the year 1872, further validating the results.
The reconstruction also reveals that the short river flow records for the Gaspésie mountains under-represent the region’s susceptibility to prolonged periods of drought-like conditions. Local river flow records kept since 1968 show that the region experienced an equal amount of decade-long dry springs and wet springs. However, our reconstruction suggests that during the 1822-1968 period, long bouts of dry spring climate were substantially more frequent and prolonged than wet ones.
Conservation impacts
The insights from this reconstruction could have implications for wildlife and hydropower. First, low water levels contribute to the decline of threatened Atlantic salmon populations.
Second, alpine snow pack serves as a refuge for the threatened woodland caribou populations, which used to be spread across Atlantic Canada and northern New England. Today, the caribou are in sharp decline, with less than 40 remaining south of the St. Lawrence River, all within the Gaspé Peninsula.
The primary threat to these caribou is the extensive clear-cutting of old-growth forest habitat. Younger forests provide less food for caribou and lead to an increased abundance of moose and deer, along with their predators — mainly coyotes and black bears — which also prey on caribou.
Changing mountain snow-pack conditions add to their peril as snow pack has important effects on the health of caribou and the ability of their calves to avoid predators.
Given this, a better understanding of the implications of reduced snow pack on caribou urgently requires further study.
Lastly, Québec’s billion-dollar hydroelectric industry might also benefit from a better understanding of past moisture in the region, with a dam complex located a few hundred kilometres northeast of our study site.
Documented histories
Our study improves our understanding of past moisture patterns across the east coast of North America. It fills a large gap in climate research based on tree rings between New York and northern Québec.
When comparing the past 200 years of these East Coast reconstructions, important climate connections arise. The comparison suggests that the complex Atlantic climate system can synchronize, leading large portions of the coast to collectively lock into periods of very wet or very dry conditions.
This is important for water resource managers, who often rely on help from other managers in neighbouring basins, which may not be available given this common synchrony.
The insights from the tree rings of these forests are another reminder of the value of old growth and the many services they provide. As we try to better understand the context of human-induced environmental change, our search continues for old forests with a story to tell.
Our ongoing research includes analyzing dead cedars preserved for almost 800 years at the bottom of lakes. The resulting tree ring chronology will extend our work with trees in the region so far, helping us further examine the environmental history of our rapidly changing planet.
Alexandre Pace, PhD Candidate in Geography, Urban and Environmental Studies, Concordia University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Farmers face one of the highest rates of suicide. This social worker believes the solution is buried in their land
Read the full story in The Guardian.
After seeing the farmer mental health crisis up close, Kaila Anderson developed new treatment techniques based on growers’ deep connection to the land.
After the wildfires, Beverly Hills shut out students whose school burned
Read the full story at Grist.
The dispute between two Los Angeles-area districts raises a broader question of what a school district owes its neighbors after a major disaster.
Beavers can help us adapt to climate change – here’s how
by Jack Marley, The Conversation
Beavers, those iron-toothed rodents with a talent for hydraulic engineering, can legally return to English river catchments after an absence of 500 years.
Castor fiber has been on the way back for the last two decades thanks to unauthorised reintroductions. But until a few weeks ago, an enclosure was the only home these semi-aquatic mammals could legally find in the UK.
Successive governments have hesitated to issue release licenses for beavers, given their ability to transform the environment in unpredictable ways. When it comes to mitigating and adapting to climate change, however, that’s their biggest asset.
When the reign of Tyrannosaurus rex abruptly ended 66 million years ago, a “prehistoric beaver” was on the ascendancy according to Stephen Brusatte, a palaeontologist at the University of Edinburgh.
“It wasn’t a good time to be alive,” he says. An asteroid had smashed into Earth with the equivalent fury of several million nuclear bombs. But Kimbetopsalis simmonsae, with its buck-toothed incisors and appetite for leaves and branches, survived.
Within a few hundred thousand years, lush forests had returned. Filling the vacant niches left by vanished dinosaurs were mammals like Kimbetopsalis.
“This burst of evolution led to primates, which eventually led to us,” Brusatte says.
Beaver-like ancestors braved a mass extinction event to help mammals rise from the ashes. What could modern beavers do during another era of planetary crisis?
Dam the carbon
Legal protections and synthetic materials that reduced demand for warm fur have allowed beavers to regain their former haunts in Europe and North America.
The famously industrious rodents have wasted no time in picking up where they left off: damming streams to create ponds in which they build their dome-like lodges, safe from predators that might prowl the banks opposite.
This behaviour has a stunning effect on the surrounding environment – perhaps even the climate. That’s because beaver dams trap vast quantities of sediment rich in carbon that might otherwise heat the atmosphere, says Christine E. Hatch, a professor of geosciences at UMass Amherst.
You should take this good news with a pinch of silt, however. CO₂ emissions from human activity were probably well over 40 billion tonnes last year – another annual high. Expecting beavers to offset our emissions is unrealistic, not to mention unreasonable.
Beavers may be skilled at stowing carbon in the wetlands they create, but this advantage is being undone by feedback mechanisms kickstarted by climate change. For example, the warming Arctic is inviting beavers to expand northwards. Here, their antics threaten to speed up the thawing of permafrost that has kept world-warming methane locked up says Helen Wheeler, a lecturer in wildlife ecology at Anglia Ruskin University.
Shelter from the storm
Where beavers really shine is in their knack for soothing damaged landscapes.
“Renowned engineers, beavers seem able to dam any stream, building structures with logs and mud that can flood large areas,” Hatch says.
“As climate change causes extreme storms in some areas and intense drought in others, scientists are finding that beavers’ small-scale natural interventions are valuable.”
The changes beavers make can help land hold onto water and release it slowly, which eases flooding and stalls drought. Compare this with human design innovations like tarmac, which radiates heat and allows storm water to slough off in torrents.
While the concrete dams that people construct bar the way for migratory freshwater fish, some of Earth’s most threatened animals, beaver dams present no such obstacle.
“One reason may be that the fish can rest in slow pools and cool pond complexes after navigating the tallest parts of the dams,” Hatch says.
Beaver wetlands do excel in blocking one thing, however: wildfires.
“Recent studies in the western US have found that vegetation in beaver-dammed river corridors is more fire-resistant than in areas without beavers because it is well watered and lush, so it doesn’t burn as easily,” Hatch says. https://www.youtube.com/embed/IAM94B73bzE?wmode=transparent&start=0
All of these qualities make beaver wetlands a fantastic refuge for a range of wildlife, particularly as ecosystems nearby are wracked and warped by rising temperatures and extreme weather. Even our towns and cities could be made more liveable with their help, as water evaporating from these ponds cools the air during heatwaves and absorbs flood water during a deluge.
Geographers Joshua Larsen (University of Birmingham), Annegret Larsen (Wageningen University) and Matthew Dennis (University of Manchester) are slightly more cautious.
“Unless the water bodies are very large, or high in number, this [effect] tends to diminish rapidly with distance from the water. This would make it difficult to rely upon beaver ponds for cooling benefits for human settlements,” they say.
Nonetheless, allowing beavers to recover a fraction of their former abundance will make the effects of global heating less severe.
“Beavers are showing that their impacts can offer added levels of ecosystem resilience to a changing climate that we would be wise to embrace,” they add.
Jack Marley, Environment + Energy Editor, The Conversation
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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