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Bumblebee nests are overheating to fatal levels, study finds

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Saturday, May 4, 2024

Bumblebee nests may be overheating, killing off broods and placing one of the Earth’s critical pollinators in decline as temperatures rise, new research has found.Around the world, many species of Bombus, or bumblebee, have suffered population declines due to global heating, the research said. Bumblebee colonies are known for their ability to thermoregulate: in hot conditions, worker bees gather to beat their wings and fan the hive, cooling it down. But as the climate crisis pushes average temperatures up and generates heatwaves, bumblebees will struggle to keep their homes habitable.Most bumblebee broods would not survive at temperatures above 36C, the paper, published in Frontiers in Bee Science, concluded. The research team reviewed 180 years of literature, and found that for all bumblebee species studied the optimum temperature range for incubating nests was between 28C and 32C.Peter Kevan, the lead author of the study, told the Guardian: “If [bumblebees] can’t keep temperatures below what is probably a lethal limit of about 35C, when the brood may die, that could explain why we are losing so many bumblebees around the world, especially in North America and Europe.”Bumblebees have suffered population declines around the world due to global heating. Photograph: Rebecca Cole/AlamyKevan, who is a professor emeritus at the University of Guelph’s School of Environmental Sciences in Canada, added that the research examined the often-overlooked role of the nest as a “superorganism”.“Researchers have been looking at foraging behaviour and fanning to keep the brood cool, but there are very few studies that look at the whole nest,” he said. The study argued that nests should be seen as a whole: while some individual bees may be able to cope with heat, if the nest becomes too hot to raise healthy larvae the whole colony will decline.Dave Goulson, a professor of biology at the University of Sussex, who was not involved in the research, said: “We have known for a long time that bumblebees are cool-climate specialists. Most insects are more abundant in the tropics, but bumblebees are weird in that they are at their most abundant in places like the Alps and Britain.”They are big and furry as an adaptation to living in cooler places, he said. “There are even some that live in the Arctic, the Bombus polaris. That means an obvious problem with climate change – they are vulnerable to warming.”When nests overheat, he added, bumblebees work to cool them by flapping their wings, “but if the air outside is too hot, that’s not going to help”.Goulson said there is already evidence that bumblebees have started to disappear from the warmer edges of their range. “There have been publications showing mountain bumblebees are moving higher as a way to combat warming, but obviously there is a limit to that.”The paper’s findings, said Goulson, who has spent 30 years studying bumblebees, are “really depressing”. “It is kind of heartbreaking to think that many may disappear.”Other studies, he said, suggest that the UK “might lose about half our bumblebee species in coming years, depending on the pace of climate change”. Their populations had been declining due to habitat loss, Goulson said. “Now, [with rising temperatures] we have a double whammy.”Bumblebees are important pollinators of wildflowers and crops. Photograph: Rebecca Cole/AlamyRichard Comont, the science manager at Britain’s Bumblebee Conservation Trust, also not part of the study, said he was glad to see the new research. “It’s something that there has been speculation about for a while,” he said.Bumblebees are important pollinators of wild flowers and crops including tomatoes, runner beans, apples, blueberries, blackcurrants and raspberries. For other pollinators, Goulson said, the outlook under a hotter climate is less clear. Some bee species can cope with warmer temperatures, and some species that now live farther south may move north as temperatures rise, making a new home in the UK. With other pollinators, he said, such as flies, wasps, butterflies, birds and bats, “it’s hard to generalise”.To stem declines, increasing habitats and decreasing pesticide use could help, Goulson said – but really, “we need to knuckle down” and make sure global temperatures “do not go past 2C” of heating.Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on X for all the latest news and features

More frequent heatwaves mean bees are unable to thermoregulate their hives – further endangering a species already in declineBumblebee nests may be overheating, killing off broods and placing one of the Earth’s critical pollinators in decline as temperatures rise, new research has found.Around the world, many species of Bombus, or bumblebee, have suffered population declines due to global heating, the research said. Bumblebee colonies are known for their ability to thermoregulate: in hot conditions, worker bees gather to beat their wings and fan the hive, cooling it down. But as the climate crisis pushes average temperatures up and generates heatwaves, bumblebees will struggle to keep their homes habitable. Continue reading...

Bumblebee nests may be overheating, killing off broods and placing one of the Earth’s critical pollinators in decline as temperatures rise, new research has found.

Around the world, many species of Bombus, or bumblebee, have suffered population declines due to global heating, the research said. Bumblebee colonies are known for their ability to thermoregulate: in hot conditions, worker bees gather to beat their wings and fan the hive, cooling it down. But as the climate crisis pushes average temperatures up and generates heatwaves, bumblebees will struggle to keep their homes habitable.

Most bumblebee broods would not survive at temperatures above 36C, the paper, published in Frontiers in Bee Science, concluded. The research team reviewed 180 years of literature, and found that for all bumblebee species studied the optimum temperature range for incubating nests was between 28C and 32C.

Peter Kevan, the lead author of the study, told the Guardian: “If [bumblebees] can’t keep temperatures below what is probably a lethal limit of about 35C, when the brood may die, that could explain why we are losing so many bumblebees around the world, especially in North America and Europe.”

Bumblebees have suffered population declines around the world due to global heating. Photograph: Rebecca Cole/Alamy

Kevan, who is a professor emeritus at the University of Guelph’s School of Environmental Sciences in Canada, added that the research examined the often-overlooked role of the nest as a “superorganism”.

“Researchers have been looking at foraging behaviour and fanning to keep the brood cool, but there are very few studies that look at the whole nest,” he said. The study argued that nests should be seen as a whole: while some individual bees may be able to cope with heat, if the nest becomes too hot to raise healthy larvae the whole colony will decline.

Dave Goulson, a professor of biology at the University of Sussex, who was not involved in the research, said: “We have known for a long time that bumblebees are cool-climate specialists. Most insects are more abundant in the tropics, but bumblebees are weird in that they are at their most abundant in places like the Alps and Britain.”

They are big and furry as an adaptation to living in cooler places, he said. “There are even some that live in the Arctic, the Bombus polaris. That means an obvious problem with climate change – they are vulnerable to warming.”

When nests overheat, he added, bumblebees work to cool them by flapping their wings, “but if the air outside is too hot, that’s not going to help”.

Goulson said there is already evidence that bumblebees have started to disappear from the warmer edges of their range. “There have been publications showing mountain bumblebees are moving higher as a way to combat warming, but obviously there is a limit to that.”

The paper’s findings, said Goulson, who has spent 30 years studying bumblebees, are “really depressing”. “It is kind of heartbreaking to think that many may disappear.”

Other studies, he said, suggest that the UK “might lose about half our bumblebee species in coming years, depending on the pace of climate change”. Their populations had been declining due to habitat loss, Goulson said. “Now, [with rising temperatures] we have a double whammy.”

Bumblebees are important pollinators of wildflowers and crops. Photograph: Rebecca Cole/Alamy

Richard Comont, the science manager at Britain’s Bumblebee Conservation Trust, also not part of the study, said he was glad to see the new research. “It’s something that there has been speculation about for a while,” he said.

Bumblebees are important pollinators of wild flowers and crops including tomatoes, runner beans, apples, blueberries, blackcurrants and raspberries. For other pollinators, Goulson said, the outlook under a hotter climate is less clear. Some bee species can cope with warmer temperatures, and some species that now live farther south may move north as temperatures rise, making a new home in the UK. With other pollinators, he said, such as flies, wasps, butterflies, birds and bats, “it’s hard to generalise”.

To stem declines, increasing habitats and decreasing pesticide use could help, Goulson said – but really, “we need to knuckle down” and make sure global temperatures “do not go past 2C” of heating.

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on X for all the latest news and features

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This Pig’s Bacon Was Delicious—and She’s Alive and Well

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. I’m eating Dawn the Yorkshire pig and she’s quite tasty. But don’t worry. She’s doing perfectly fine, traipsing around a sanctuary in upstate New York. Word is that she appreciates belly rubs and sunshine. I’m in San Francisco, at an Italian […]

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. I’m eating Dawn the Yorkshire pig and she’s quite tasty. But don’t worry. She’s doing perfectly fine, traipsing around a sanctuary in upstate New York. Word is that she appreciates belly rubs and sunshine. I’m in San Francisco, at an Italian joint just south of Golden Gate Park, enjoying meatballs and bacon not made of meat in the traditional sense but of plants mixed with “cultivated” pork fat. Dawn, you see, donated a small sample of fat, which a company called Mission Barns got to proliferate in devices called bioreactors by providing nutrients like carbohydrates, amino acids, and vitamins—essentially replicating the conditions in her body. Because so much of the flavor of pork and other meats comes from the animal’s fat, Mission Barns can create products like sausages and salami with plants but make them taste darn near like sausages and salami.  I’ve been struggling to describe the experience, because cultivated meat short-circuits my brain—my mouth thinks I’m eating a real pork meatball, but my brain knows that it’s fundamentally different and that Dawn (pictured above) didn’t have to die for it. This is the best I’ve come up with: It’s Diet Meat. Just as Diet Coke is an approximation of the real thing, so too are cultivated meatballs. They simply taste a bit less meaty, at least to my tongue. Which is understandable, as the only animal product in this food is the bioreactor-grown fat. Cultivated pork is the newest entrant in the effort to rethink meat. For years, plant-based offerings have been mimicking burgers, chicken, and fish with ever-more convincing blends of proteins and fats. Mission Barns is one of a handful of startups taking the next step: growing real animal fat outside the animal, then marrying it with plants to create hybrids that look, cook, and taste more like what consumers have always eaten, easing the environmental and ethical costs of industrial livestock. The company says it’s starting with pork because it’s a large market and products like bacon are fat-rich, but its technology is “cell-agnostic,” meaning it could create beef and chicken, too. Lab-grown meat ballsMatt Simon Honestly, Mission Barns’ creations taste great, in part because they’re “unstructured,” in the parlance of the industry. A pork loin is a complicated tangle of fat, muscle cells, and connective tissues that is very difficult and expensive to replicate, but a meatball, salami, or sausage incorporates other ingredients. That allows Mission Barns to experiment with what plant to use as a base, and then add spices to accentuate the flavors. It’s a technology that they can iterate, basically, crafting ever-better meats by toying with ingredients in different ratios.  So the bacon I ate, for instance, had a nice applewood smoke to it. The meatballs had the springiness you’d expect. During a later visit to Mission Barns’ headquarters across town, I got to try two prototypes of its salami as well—both were spiced like you’d expect but less elastic, so they chewed a bit more easily than what you’d find on a charcuterie board. (The sensation of food in the mouth is known in the industry as “mouthfeel,” and nailing it is essential to the success of alt meats.) The salami slices even left grease stains on the paper they were served on—Dawn’s own little mark on the world. I was one of the first people to purchase a cultivated pork product. While Mission Barns has so far only sold its products at that Italian restaurant and, for a limited time, at a grocery store in Berkeley—$13.99 for a pack of eight meatballs, similar to higher-end products from organic and regenerative farms—it is fixing to scale up production and sell the technology to other companies to produce more cultivated foods. (It is assessing how big the bioreactors will have to be to reach price parity with traditional meat products.) The idea is to provide an alternative to animal agriculture, which uses a whole lot of land, water, and energy to raise creatures and ship their flesh around the world. Livestock are responsible for between 10 and 20 percent of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions—depending on who’s estimating it—and that’s to say nothing of the cruelty involved in keeping pigs and chickens and cows in unsavory, occasionally inhumane, conditions. “I also love the idea of taking their pork fat and putting it in a beef burger.” Getting animal cells to grow outside of an animal, though, ain’t easy. For one, if cells don’t have anything to attach to, they die. So Mission Barns’ cultivator uses a spongelike structure, full of nooks and crannies that provides lots of surface area for the cells to grow. “We have our media, which is just the nutrient solution that we give to these cells,” said Saam Shahrokhi, chief technology officer at Mission Barns. “We’re essentially recapitulating all of the environmental cues that make cells inside the body grow fat, [but] outside the body.” While Dawn’s fat is that of a Yorkshire pig, Shahrokhi said they could easily produce fat from other breeds like the Mangalitsa, known as the Kobe beef of pork. (In June, the company won approval from the US Department of Agriculture to bring its cultivated fat to market.) Fat in hand, Mission Barns can mix it with plant proteins. If you’re familiar with Impossible Foods, it uses soy to replicate the feel and look of ground beef and adds soy leghemoglobin, which is similar to the heme that gives meat its meaty flavor. Depending on the flavor and texture it’s trying to copy, Mission Bay uses pea protein for the meatballs and sausages, wheat for the bacon, and fava beans for the salami. “The plant-based meat industry has done pretty well with texture,” said Bianca Le, head of special projects at Mission Barns. “I think what they’re really missing is flavor and juiciness, which obviously is where the fat comes in.” But the fat is just the beginning. Mission Barns’ offerings not only have to taste good, but also can’t have an off-putting smell when they’re coming out of the package and when they’re cooking. The designers have to dial in the pH, which could degrade the proteins if not balanced. How the products behave on the stove or in the oven has to be familiar, too. “If someone has to relearn how to cook a piece of bacon or a meatball, then it’s never going to work,” said Zach Tyndall, the product development and culinary manager at Mission Barns. Lab-grown salamiMatt Simon When I pick up that piece of salami, it has to feel like the real thing, in more ways than one. Indeed, it’s greasy in the hand and has that tang of cured meat. It’s even been through a dry-aging process to reduce its moisture. “We treat this like we would a conventional piece of salami,” Tyndall said.  Cultivated meat companies may also go more unconventional. “I also love the idea of taking their pork fat and putting it in a beef burger—what would happen if you did that?” said Barb Stuckey, chief new product strategy officer at Mattson, a food developer that has worked with many cultivated meat companies. “Mixing species, it’s not something we typically do. But with this technology, we can.”  Of course, in this new frontier of food, the big question is: Who exactly is this for? Would a vegetarian or vegan eat cultured pork fat if it’s divorced from the cruelty of factory farming? Would meat-eaters be willing to give up the real thing for a facsimile? Mission Barns’ market research, Le said, found that its early adopters are actually flexitarians—people who eat mostly plant-based but partake in the occasional animal product. But Le adds that their first limited sale to the public in Berkeley included some people who called themselves vegetarians and vegans.  There’s also the matter of quantifying how much of an environmental improvement cultivated fat might offer over industrial pork production. If scaled up, one benefit of cultivated food might be that companies can produce the stuff in more places—that is, instead of sprawling pig farms and slaughterhouses being relegated to rural areas, bioreactors could be run in cities, cutting down on the costs and emissions associated with shipping. Still, those factories would need energy to grow fat cells, though they could be run on renewable electricity. “We modeled our process at the large commercial scale, and then compared it to U.S. bacon production,” Le said. (The company would not offer specific details, saying it is in the process of patenting its technique.) “And we found that with renewable energy, we do significantly better in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.” Whether or not consumers bite, though, remains to be seen. The market for meat alternatives in the US has majorly softened of late: Beyond Meat, which makes plant-based products like burgers and sausages, has seen revenues drop significantly, in part because of consumers’ turn away from processed foods. But by licensing its technology elsewhere, Mission Barns’ strategy is to break into new markets beyond the United States. The challenges of cultivated meat go beyond the engineering once you get to the messaging and branding—telegraphing to consumers that they’re buying something that may in fact be partially meat. “When you buy chicken, you get 100 percent chicken,” Stuckey said. “I think a lot of people go into cultivated meat thinking what’s going to come onto the market is 100 percent cultivated chicken, and it’s not going to be that. It’s going to be something else.”  Regardless of the trajectory of cultivated fat products, Dawn will continue mingling with llamas, soaking up the sunshine, and getting belly rubs in upstate New York—even as she makes plants taste more like pork. 

Climate
Agriculture
Culture

Why is climate action stalling, not ramping up as Earth gets hotter?

As the impact of global warming becomes more obvious, you might expect countries to step up climate action and preparation, but we’re seeing the opposite happen

Climate campaigners march on the sidelines of the COP30 summit in Belém, BrazilPABLO PORCIUNCULA/AFP via Getty Images Ten years on from the Paris Agreement, we should be seeing a massive ratcheting up of climate action. Instead, the past four years have seen almost no progress – including at the latest COP summit, which failed to take any meaningful steps towards phasing out fossil fuels or ending deforestation. What’s going on? I don’t know the answer. But I’m starting to fear that rather than responding more rationally as the world heats up and the impacts get ever more serious, our responses are becoming more irrational. If that is the case, climate impacts are going to be much worse than they would otherwise be, and the prospect of a decline in our global civilisation seems more plausible than I have long thought. Let’s start by going back to the Paris Agreement of 2015. The whole idea of an international climate agreement under which every country sets its own targets for limiting greenhouse emissions seemed ludicrous to me. As did the idea of setting an “aspirational” target of 1.5°C that was wildly disconnected from what countries were planning to do. Supporters claimed this would be solved by a “ratchet mechanism”, under which countries would progressively increase their targets. I wasn’t convinced. I came away from Paris regarding it as a gigantic greenwashing exercise. My expectation was that it would have little immediate impact, but as the effects of warming became more obvious, action would start to ramp up. In other words, reason would eventually prevail. So far, the opposite has happened. In the lead-up to Paris, in October 2015, the Climate Action Tracker project estimated that the world was heading for warming of around 3.6°C by 2100, based on current policies and action. By 2021, that estimate had been revised down to around 2.6°C. That’s a massive improvement − it seemed Paris was working. But the latest Climate Action Tracker report ahead of the COP30 summit makes for grim reading. For the fourth year in a row there has been “little to no measurable progress”. “Global progress is stalling,” the report says. “While a handful of countries are making genuine progress, their efforts are counterbalanced by others delaying, or rolling back climate policies.” In fact, an astonishing 95 per cent of countries missed this year’s deadline for updating their targets under that ratchet mechanism. Yes, renewable energy generation is growing much faster than predicted. But this is being counterbalanced by the huge sums being poured into fossil fuels. Cheap solar alone isn’t going to save us. For one thing, negative feedback effects kick in: the more solar there is, the less profitable it is to install more. For another, generating green electricity is the easy part – we’re not making nearly enough progress on the hard things, such as farming, flying and steel-making. What’s more, the problem isn’t just the failure to slash emissions. We’re not preparing to cope with what’s coming, either. We’re still building cities on sinking land next to rising seas. “Adaptation progress is either too slow, has stalled, or is heading in the wrong direction,” said an April report by the UK’s Climate Change Committee – and the picture is similar elsewhere. The big question is why climate action is stalling instead of ramping up further. In some countries, it’s obviously due to the election of politicians who don’t see climate change as a priority or unashamedly deny it, as reflected by the US withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. Even governments that say climate is a priority are doing less, however, seemingly on the basis that there are more urgent issues to deal with such as the cost of living crisis. Yet the cost of living crisis is in part a climate crisis, with extreme weather helping drive up food prices. As warming continues, the impact on food and the wider economy is only going to become more serious. Are we going to get to the point where governments say they can’t act on climate change because of the costs of dealing with major cities being inundated by rising seas? Are people’s fears about the state of the world going to make them keep voting for climate deniers despite pollsters telling us that most people worldwide want more climate action? The idea that that growing evidence will persuade leaders to come to their senses is looking ever more naive. We are, after all, in a strange multiverse where the US Centers for Disease Control is promoting antivax nonsense even as the country is about to lose its measles-free status, and where some politicians promote the idea that hurricanes were due to weather manipulation. After year after year of record-smashing heat, it’s never been more obvious that climate change is real and really bad. But perhaps that’s the problem. The philosopher Martha Nussbaum has argued that fear is a tremendously negative force that makes people abandon rationality and focus on their immediate welfare rather than the long-term good. And there is some evidence that environmental stresses make people behave irrationally. People tend to leap straight from “things are bad” to “we’re all doomed”. No, we aren’t doomed. But the longer it takes for reason to prevail, the worse the outcome will be. Maybe what we’re seeing is just a blip related to the pandemic fallout and Russia’s war on Ukraine − or maybe there’s something more worrying happening.

Climate
Crisis
Food

How to make data centers less thirsty

There’s a way to reduce both the climate and water harms of data centers: build them in places with lots of wind and solar energy.

Data centers are notoriously thirsty. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have found that, in 2023, the facilities consumed roughly 17 billion gallons of water for their operations in the U.S. alone. But that’s only a small part of the picture: A much, much larger share of data center water-intensity is indirect, a byproduct of the facilities’ enormous appetites for energy. That’s because most power plants themselves require huge amounts of water to operate. This off-site, indirect water consumption amounted to a whopping 211 billion gallons in the Berkeley lab’s 2023 tally — well over 10 times the direct on-site usage. As Silicon Valley continues to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into artificial intelligence and demand for data centers grows, these water needs are only going to grow in tandem.  However, new research from Cornell University shows that there’s a way to mitigate both the climate and water footprints of these facilities: build them in places with lots of wind and solar energy. “Location really matters,” said Fengqi You, an energy systems engineering professor at Cornell and co-author of the new study. Where companies choose to locate their data centers could alter their combined environmental footprints by a factor of up to 100. In the course of their operations, data centers use water as a coolant. Energy-hungry servers generate substantial heat, and water circulates through cooling systems to prevent the equipment from overheating and breaking down. But substantial amounts of water are also used indirectly through the generation of electricity to run the facilities. Thermoelectric power plants, regardless of whether they use coal, gas, or nuclear material, use that fuel to generate heat that converts water into steam, which is then used to spin a turbine and generate electricity. And since hydroelectric plants typically store large volumes of water in reservoirs behind dams, there is water loss there as well, as water continually evaporates from the surface of reservoirs. All told, water use during power generation can be responsible for more than 70 percent of a data center’s total water consumption, according to the new Cornell research. “That’s why the electricity power grid mix is very critical,” said You.  You and his co-authors examined the energy and water use of data centers across the country to project where future investments should be made to reduce environmental impacts. The study assumes that the data center boom, which is being fueled by staggering levels of investment in artificial intelligence, is unlikely to slow down anytime soon. Against that backdrop, the question the study then poses is: Where in the country is the most environmentally sustainable place to build a data center? The researchers considered both the direct and indirect uses of energy and water as a result of building a data center in a specific location. The most promising region they identified might turn heads: bone-dry West Texas. But because the region is sparsely populated, has groundwater that can be drawn on for use as a coolant, and produces ample wind energy, it scored highest on both energy and water stress metrics. In fact, the grid-related water footprint in West Texas is among the lowest in the country, thanks to the large amount of wind energy produced, according to the study. “From an energy and water efficiency perspective, the states that have enough dry renewables will be the best choice,” said You, adding that Montana, Nebraska, and South Dakota all appear to be prime locations for future AI servers, alongside the Lone Star State. Conversely, most parts of the Pacific Northwest didn’t score as well because of the region’s reliance on hydropower. Although the cost of electricity is low in the area, the associated loss of water through power generation means that building more data centers is likely to have a substantially larger water footprint than it would in other parts of the country. Another recent study from researchers at Purdue University came to a similar conclusion. They looked at the availability of water across the country and mapped out how that might change over time, particularly as climate change makes some regions hotter and drier. The researchers also examined the water impact of existing Google data centers and found that the majority were located in areas with low water stress. “Companies absolutely take the environment into consideration in their decisions — not just the economic factor,” said Yi Ding, one of the authors of the paper and an electrical and computer engineering professor at Purdue. “We infer that Google already somewhat considered water stress because they put most of the data centers in low-stress regions.” Texas already has more than 400 data centers located in the state, second only to Virginia. The state’s grid infrastructure, potential for renewables, and availability of cheap land has made it an attractive proposition for tech companies. But the other states identified by the Cornell study as having a small environmental footprint — Nebraska, South Dakota, and Montana — have just 70 or so data centers combined, out of more than at least 4,200 nationally. That’s because a number of other factors, such as the policy environment and infrastructure considerations, are deterring companies from building new facilities there. But if those states geared their policymaking toward attracting data centers, it could make a difference, You said. This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How to make data centers less thirsty on Nov 24, 2025.

Climate
Energy
Water

Long-awaited environment laws might get Australia sued. Here’s why

Labor has pledged to pass long-awaited environment laws this week. But the current reforms leave Australia open to legal challenge.

Australia is rewriting its national environment laws, and Environment Minister Murray Watt has vowed the legislation will pass the parliament this week, despite not yet reaching agreement with either the Coalition or the Greens. But the current draft bill leaves the country exposed to significant legal, environmental and political risk. This is because the proposed changes to Australia’s environment legislation, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, do not require the government to assess the climate impacts of new fossil-fuel projects. Minister Watt has already ruled out changing this. Yet international and domestic courts are increasingly clear: governments have a legal duty to consider the greenhouse gas emissions released by the projects they approve. Will the federal government create new laws that expose it to more domestic and international court action? Landmark legal advice In July 2025, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the world’s highest court, delivered a landmark legal opinion. It found countries must act with “due diligence” to prevent significant harm to the climate system. This includes considering the climate harm caused by fossil-fuel production. They must also consider emissions released when fossil fuels are exported and combusted (known as downstream or Scope 3 emissions). While advisory opinions are not binding judgements, they clarify what obligations countries have under international law. For Australia, this means climate impacts are no longer optional considerations as a matter of international law. They are legally relevant factors that must be assessed before approving high-emitting projects. If Australia ignores its obligations, other nations may sue it in courts like the ICJ. The international law ruling may also be referenced by litigants in domestic disputes. The government’s law reform package is a set of seven bills totalling nearly 600 pages. Yet it contains no means of ensuring climate impacts are part of decision-making. The reforms require partial disclosure of emissions, but this information plays no role in approval decisions. And considering downstream emissions is not required at all, despite representing the majority of pollution from coal and gas projects. Domestic courts recognise climate link Australia’s own courts have already begun applying far stricter scrutiny to project approvals. In a court ruling in August, referred to as the Denman decision, the New South Wales Court of Appeal quashed a coal-mine expansion approval. A community environment group successfully argued the planning commission failed to consider the impact of all of the mine’s greenhouse gas emissions. This decision set a legal precedent. Next, mining giant Glencore’s application to extend its Ulan Coal Mine near Mudgee was declared invalid in mid November. A local environment group successfully argued the mine’s climate impacts had been insufficiently considered during assessment. The implications of these two decisions go far beyond New South Wales. The reasoning applies to how all Australian states and territories assess major fossil fuel projects. And they inform the federal govenrment’s legal obligations under Australia’s environment laws. Yet despite this, Minister Watt’s draft reforms do not clarify how climate impacts should be addressed under federal law. Safeguard mechanism won’t fill the gap Government ministers have argued climate impacts are better addressed under the so-called “safeguard mechanism”. This is a policy that requires large industrial polluters to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions each year. However, this is not an assessment or approval system. It applies only after a project begins operating and relies heavily on offsets of variable quality. It does not consider downstream emissions. Most importantly, it does not answer the core environmental law question. Namely, is this project compatible with Australia’s climate goals and international obligations? Australia out of step There is an emerging global legal consensus that climate impacts must be assessed as part of project-level approvals. Three decisions last year point to the change. The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea ruled assessments of new projects must evaluate emissions affecting the marine environment. The European Court of Human Rights ruled assessments of new petroleum projects must quantify downstream emissions. And the UK Supreme Court held that downstream emissions must be included in environmental impact assessments. These decisions reinforce the principle that states must assess the full climate impact of projects before approving them – a point also reiterated by the ICJ. Failing to include these requirements in reformed environment laws could leave Australia exposed to domestic judicial review, High Court challenges and international claims relating to climate harm. Political contradictions Media reports indicate the Albanese government may negotiate with the Coalition to secure passage of environment law reforms. This comes as the Coalition has removed its commitment to net zero, while saying it would conditionally support new environment laws. This raises a contradiction. Policymakers and industry groups increasingly endorse “science-based” emissions targets while simultaneously supporting law reforms which would allow high-emitting projects to be approved without assessing their climate harm. This inconsistency boosts the risk of lawsuits and undermines international credibility, especially as Australia takes on the role of “President of the Negotiations” at next year’s COP31 summit. It also leaves key decisions to ministerial discretion. This means they are vulnerable to political, economic and lobbying pressures. A better path Reforming Australia’s environmental laws offers a rare chance to reflect scientific evidence and legal obligations. The law should be written to prevent harm, not to enable it. The law should be written to prevent harm, not to enable it. Jacqueline Peel receives funding from the Australian Research Council for her Kathleen Fitzpatrick Laureate Fellowship on Global Corporate Climate Accountability. Julia Dehm receives funding from the Australian Research Council for a Discovery Early Career Research Award and from the Victorian Legal Service Board + Commission grants program for a project on mainstreaming climate change in legal education.Nicole Rogers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Climate
Conservation
Education

Climate Realism Is a Delusion

By shooting for 3 degrees Celsius of warming, the world could slide toward a more cataclysmic 4 degrees.

This year’s Conference of the Parties, the annual United Nations meeting meant to avert catastrophic climate change, was subject to a ham-fisted metaphor. On Thursday, the Brazilian venue hosting the conference burst into flames from what was likely an electrical fire. In its 30 years, COP has frequently been a ritual in frustration and futility, ending with a set of pledges and promises that have rarely gone as far as scientists say they need to, followed by weeks of postmortem finger-pointing and self-flagellation. And yesterday, once again delegates landed on a heavily compromised text that does little to materially steer the planet off fossil fuels.Many of the fingers pointed toward an empty chair and the absence of the largest oil-and-gas producer on planet Earth (the United States). Meanwhile, delegates from drowning, subsistence-farming volcanic archipelagos in the South Pacific humbly pleaded with countries such as Saudi Arabia and Russia to pledge to someday stop pumping their oceans of oil, the most profitable commodity in the world. It didn’t work.“We know some of you had greater ambitions for some of the issues at hand,” COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago sheepishly told the assembly.Every year, environmental NGOs, climate scientists, concerned citizens, and government ministers alike register confusion and despair over the fact that after so many cycles of these meetings, industrial civilization erupts more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than ever before. This year, it reached a staggering new peak with 38.1 gigatons of the stuff—two orders of magnitude more than is put out by all of the volcanoes on Earth combined each year, and a pace that is virtually unprecedented in all of geological history.Even if all other emissions from fossil fuels halted tomorrow, CO2 emissions from the global food system alone could eventually push us past 2 degrees Celsius in warming, half a degree higher than the always-aspirational 1.5 degrees Celsius goal set forth in the 2016 Paris Agreement. At this point, reaching that goal would require an impossible slashing of global emissions by a quarter every year for the next four years until they reach zero. As things stand, the UN projects that current policies will result in almost 3 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100. Unfortunately, that 1.5-degree benchmark wasn’t selected at random. As one landmark paper puts it, the “Earth may have left a safe climate state beyond 1°C global warming,” and even 1.5 degrees would possibly invite inexorable ice-sheet collapse, coral-reef die-off, and permafrost thaw.  All of this grim news has given way to a new kind of cynical resignation to this future, and a vision in which the world scales back its climate ambitions and accepts an all but permanent and prominent role for fossil fuels in the global economy. This forfeit, recently championed by Bill Gates, flies under the banner of “climate realism” or, more sunnily, “climate pragmatism.” In this view, the trade-offs between minimizing global warming and pursuing other goals for humanity are too steep, and the consequences of somewhat-checked warming will be manageable. If climate negotiators were naive about the political economy of the energy transition when COP started 30 years ago, though, then the purveyors of this kind of “pragmatism” are downright oblivious to the implications of a 3 degrees–warmer world that they’ve made conceptual peace with.If warming the planet beyond 1 degree Celsius isn’t safe, then 3 degrees is madness. Forget coral reefs: This collapse would cascade into the broader ocean as the sea succumbs to merciless heat waves, oxygen loss, and acidification, and entire ecosystems—seagrass beds, kelp forests, mangroves—fall away. On land, this vanishing act might extend to the Amazon rainforest, which—already relentlessly pared back by deforestation—could submit to a runaway drying. In the human world, migration could be measured in billions of people, as familiar rains that water staple crops depart for distant latitudes and unprecedented heat waves in eastern China and the Indus River Valley surpass the limits of human physiology. Even the U.S. Midwest would begin to see deadly hot and humid conditions, today experienced only in extraordinarily rare heatwaves in places such as the Persian Gulf and inland Pakistan.“In the United States, just 3 degrees Celsius of warming conditions in simulations tend to be hotter—when humidity is factored in—than heat waves in North Africa today,” the Purdue climate scientist Matthew Huber wrote in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. “These heat waves of the future could devastate US livestock yields, if they don’t kill the animals outright.” Humans, being animals, would also be killed by the heat. One recent study showed that in a 3 degree–warmer world, deaths resulting from a week-long exceptional heat wave, like the one that struck Europe in 2003, would rival peak-COVID mortality rates, killing 32,000 people in Europe.This would be only one in a cascade of problems facing humanity. By 2030, the global demand for fresh water is expected to outstrip supplies by 40 percent, and the shortage would be made more dire in the following decades when mountain glaciers that supply drinking water to more than 2 billion people begin to vanish at the same time that underground aquifers fail to recharge. (The recurrent droughts would push farmers to draw those aquifers down faster.) Meanwhile, as flooding and hurricanes ravage the coasts, and wildfires, flooding, and severe storms strike inland, insurance markets may all but collapse—even in supposed climate refuges such as Minnesota. Erratic weather and volatile yields will drive food prices persistently higher, and communities—whether at the municipality scale or entire countries—may go bankrupt while trying to patch up battered and strained infrastructure amid higher borrowing costs and closed lines of credit. The entire financial system, including government bonds and mortgages, is premised on the idea that tomorrow will look something like today. In a world that’s 3 degrees warmer, it assuredly will not.That is, if 3 degrees warmer is indeed where we’re headed. Although many climate stories quote temperature estimates for the year 2100 down to the tenth of a degree, this betrays an unrealistic level of precision in climate forecasts. Not only is there uncertainty in our predictions about just what level of carbon emissions a specific policy might ultimately lead to, there are also uncertainties in our estimates of the climate’s sensitivity to greenhouse gases—and potentially even more worrying uncertainties about how the Earth’s carbon cycle will respond to higher CO2 and warming.  The carbon cycle involves the exceedingly complex and restless planetary give-and-take of carbon as it moves among the crust, oceans, and atmosphere, and through life itself. It could be that carbon-loaded reservoirs, such as soils and permafrost, will exhale more carbon dioxide and methane back into the atmosphere than we expect in response to warming. The uncertainty around this potentially menacing feedback only becomes greater, and more worrying, the harder we push on the Earth system. The carbon sinks that have been mopping up our mess may not comply with our continued gavage of CO2, either, as forests burst into flames and the upper ocean has its fill.All of this means that, by shooting for a limit of 3 degrees Celsius, we very well may end up warming the planet by 4 degrees instead. Indeed, the same widely quoted recent UN estimate that predicts warming of 2.8 degrees Celsius under current policies also has an uncertainty range up to a perhaps unlikely but truly unthinkable 4.6 degrees Celsius. There is “no certainty that adaptation to a 4°C world is possible,” as even the starchy World Bank has warned. “The projected 4°C warming simply must not be allowed to occur.” Humanity might not roll snake eyes with the climate in this way—2.8 degrees in theory could end up meaning 2.8 degrees in practice. Still, this is an actuarial risk you wouldn’t take with a new house, much less with the only known habitable planet in the universe.COP itself has become an annual punching bag and synecdoche for climate inaction more broadly. But, obviously, we need an international body to convene and coordinate around such a dire planetary challenge. The problem is that far more powerful forces are driving global industrial civilization than can be meaningfully countervailed by a yearly meeting of bureaucrats at the UN. Today, as was the case 30 years ago, more than 80 percent of industrial civilization is powered by fossil fuels. As a species, we now have to switch treadmills going 100 mph, to a new global industrial metabolism based on sunlight, wind, water, the heat of the Earth, and the atom itself.Slowing this metabolic planetary transformation are the provincial, self-interested, and mutually incompatible demands from society, in a world carved up by economic inequality, varying vulnerabilities to future climate change, and the uneven accidents of geologic endowment. At COP30, the titans of fossil-fuel production and consumption that did bother to show up—China, India, Saudi Arabia, and Russia—still opposed a roadmap to get off fossil fuels, which was struck from the final text. And, unless compensated by the developed world, economically poor but oil-rich countries are unlikely to forgo selling the most profitable commodity in the world. Replacing fossil energy with renewables will require a level of mining that might be somewhat smaller than the footprint for fossil fuels but that many in the climate world are frankly in denial about. Tasks such as updating the U.S. grid at the scale needed for decarbonization would likely cost more than building the entire interstate highway system did, even when adjusted for inflation.At this point, it’s a clichéd refrain among more pessimistic climate commentators that humanity has never managed an energy transition before, only energy additions. (To wit, people still burn about as much wood as they ever have.) China, the world’s biggest emitter, has embarked on a mindboggling project of decarbonization, producing three-quarters of the world’s solar panels and wind turbines—but it still evaporates 1,500 Great Pyramids of Giza’s worth of coal into the atmosphere each year, four times more than the United States did at its peak.Everything you’ve read above, the relentlessly dour litany of climate threats and the meditation on the intransigence of climate politics, has also been spun—by commentators availed of the same set of facts—as a success story. China’s emissions may soon peak, or perhaps already have. And it is true that our estimates of future warming have come down, even in the past decade, from truly apocalyptic forecasts to merely disastrous levels of warming, but still outside the range experienced in the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens. For that we owe meetings such as COP no small debt of gratitude.The Earth, of course, is indifferent to what’s politically possible, and where it’s headed is still dangerous for humanity. The planet has seen entire living worlds wiped away by warming many times before, and there’s no reason to think it’s sentimental about organized industrial society. Getting emissions to near zero will be incredibly, maddeningly difficult. It will be ugly. There will be losers. Ultimately, though, there will be many more winners. Until that day, it remains the case that we are embarking on—in fact, accelerating—the biggest chemistry experiment on the planet in 66 million years, and one of the fastest derangements of the carbon cycle in the age of animal life.

Climate
Animals
Energy

Suggested Viewing

Saving Jaguars and Ourselves

This feature film has already won 3 top awards: Best Environment and Climate Feature, Semi-Finalist, and Quarter-Finalist. Are you ready for an adventure out on the rivers of the Pantanal Wetland, south of the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil? Here we spot wild jaguars like Medrosa and her cubs, giant river otters, and giant storks, while hearing harrowing memories from locals Elizeu, Eduarda, and zoologist Abbie about the climate change fires they have been fighting for 4 years due to severe climate droughts that threaten to destroy this exquisitely beautiful area and the Earth we live on. The Amazon Rainforest is struggling to survive. It affects the global climate. The Pantanal cannot survive without the Amazon and neither can we. We discover that saving jaguars is also saving ourselves and in the process, we discover real solutions and actions that will help save us all. The cinematography and wildlife in this film is described by professionals as stunning, amazing. The Pantanal is the only place in the world where wild jaguars live peacefully with people through ecotourism. These jaguars are known individually by name thanks to the work of Abbie Martin of the Jaguar Identification Project and citizen science efforts of the local community. They are identified by their individual rosette spot patterns. This film includes examples of human--jaguar interaction and communities safely living in close proximity with jaguars. The Pantanal has 5,000 species of wildlife, and is the world's largest wetland, bigger than Florida. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres describes the extreme urgency of addressing climate change. Al Gore explains that we have everything we need to solve climate change. What is lacking is political will. This film is includes many practical solutions that everyday people can do to address climate change!

Solutions
Animals
Climate

The Day She Stole The Sun

In 2019, after years of severe drought, Australia endured an unprecedented bushfire crisis. The fires spanned almost the entire length of the country… and one small village on the New South Wales South Coast was hit by the full force of its destruction. The village became a national symbol for resilience and unbreakable Australian spirit. Told by the people who were there, this is not a story about tragedy, it’s a story about community. This is the story of Cobargo.

Forests
Climate
Crisis

Silent Skies - The First Electric Plane Flyover

Silent Skies follows the groundbreaking journey of three Pennsylvania college students who orchestrated and piloted the first ever fully electric airplane stadium flyover. Stunning fans with a whisper-quiet show, this event signaled the dawn of America's transition to electric aviation. The students completed a record breaking trip flying the airplane from its base in Hartford, CT to the stadium in Easton, PA, recharging at enroute airports directly from a fleet of electric F-150 trucks. The air travel industry faces an unprecedented challenge: decarbonization. Historically, new aviation technologies are met with consumer skepticism. Demonstrating electric aircraft today, ahead of widespread adoption, is key for building consumer trust, political support, and sustained investment. The flyover was witnessed by 10,000+ attendees, thousands more on ESPN+ and created a precedent for the FAA to approve manned electric aircraft demonstrations over populated areas. Textron eAviation and Ford amplified the event through their social media channels and the film premiered at San Francisco Climate Week.

Technology
Transportation
Climate

Evangelicals for Climate Action

This film introduces Evangelical Christians working for action on climate change and the environment. They explain how they became passionate about the environment, their fears about the future of our planet, and how their passion is based on their deep faith and love for creation. They call on all other Evangelicals to join them.

Climate
Culture

THE SPRAYER

In the land occupied with the sprayers army, no one has the right to grow any kind of plants either in public or private. So many of the people and soldiers do not even know how a plant grows or looks like, until one day one of the soldiers finds a seed buried deep down in the dust and his curiosity is just the beginning of something extraordinary, something big, something revolutionary.

Plants
CO2
Animation

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