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How Minecraft and other video games are teaching kids about climate change

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Monday, April 29, 2024

Earlier in April, more than 60 million people were presented with a mission: Track down and vanquish a golden, fire-breathing dragon terrorizing a vulnerable village.That is, a digital village in the metaverse of Minecraft, a videogame that allows its many users to explore and build their own worlds. In this new Minecraft minigame, “Heat Wave Survival,” players are facing up against the Heat Dragon, a villain developers created to represent the deadly threat of extreme heat as global temperatures rise.This is just one of the many ways that climate change is infiltrating game night. Around the world, developers and designers are intentionally weaving climate change characters like the Heat Dragon, as well as potential solutions, into board games and video games to help engage users in the fight to slow global warming.Today, we are exploring how the climate movement is growing within the gaming universe—and what that could mean for the real world.Climate Gamers: The main goal of Minecraft’s “Heat Wave Survival” is to slay the mighty heat dragon, but throughout the mission, players get tips on how to recognize the symptoms of heat-related illnesses and the best ways to respond such as hydrating or finding a cool space, reports Fast Company.The team, led by the nonprofit Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, is also developing a second game in its series in which players are in charge of building their own city supplied by renewable energy, with the option to install heat-resilient infrastructure such as shade structures. The games are primarily aimed at young students.But this isn’t the first initiative of its kind. In 2019, the United Nations launched its Playing for the Planet Alliance, with the goal of helping the video game industry shrink its environmental footprint and engage its players in climate action.Each year, the Alliance—which has dozens of members such as Sony and Google—hosts a “Green Game Jam,” where companies are encouraged to integrate more eco-friendly themes into their games. In 2023, developers added nature conservation elements into 41 games, Bloomberg reports. For example, the company Rovio Entertainment added a temporary new challenge to the popular game Angry Birds, in which users were tasked with saving virtual endangered animals in the Amazon.However, the video game industry itself has its own emissions issues to reckon with. Along with the energy required to play a game, engineers use large amounts of energy to power computers during development, and manufacturing of game accessories and devices uses vast quantities of plastic and batteries, which can contribute to the growing problem of electronic waste after they are disposed of, Claire Asher writes for Mongabay.In December, a CNET report found that “only a portion of gaming companies release climate impact data,” but that a growing number of developers are making efforts to reduce emissions through the use of renewable energy in their supply chains.Clean Energy Simulations: Outside the virtual world, a new energy-oriented version of the classic board game “Settlers of Catan” is being released this summer. The original iteration was created in 1995 and tasked players with creating their own nation from scratch on an undeveloped island. The new game, dubbed “Catan: New Energies,” will introduce more of the modern-day struggles that come along with rapid industrial growth, and the emissions associated with them.In the game, players must choose between investing in expensive clean energy options or low-cost but high-polluting fossil fuels (sound familiar?). Though “Catan: New Energies” does not outright mention the term climate change, if pollutant levels get too high, “the game ends in catastrophe” and the player with the most renewable energy tokens wins, according to Catan’s website.Benjamin Teuber, co-developer of the new game, told NPR that during the development phase, the testing team would “always manage to over pollute.”However, games offer unlimited chances to explore how to wrangle in runaway emissions: “We had heavy discussions afterwards,” Teuber said. “We all felt kind of bad, we learned a thing or two, and the next game we played differently.”But what about the real world, where research shows that there won’t be unlimited opportunities to slow emissions before climate change irrevocably alters ecosystems and cities? Board games and simulations can “inspire players to learn about the climate crisis and motivate them to act,” Sam Illingworth, a game developer and science communications expert at Edinburgh Napier University in the United Kingdom, wrote in the Conversation.“As we face the urgent challenges ahead, I believe that such games can play a crucial role in fostering understanding, dialogue and action.”This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here.

Forget slaying dragons, the newest gaming trend is saving the virtual world (and maybe ours too).

Earlier in April, more than 60 million people were presented with a mission: Track down and vanquish a golden, fire-breathing dragon terrorizing a vulnerable village.

That is, a digital village in the metaverse of Minecraft, a videogame that allows its many users to explore and build their own worlds. In this new Minecraft minigame, “Heat Wave Survival,” players are facing up against the Heat Dragon, a villain developers created to represent the deadly threat of extreme heat as global temperatures rise.

This is just one of the many ways that climate change is infiltrating game night. Around the world, developers and designers are intentionally weaving climate change characters like the Heat Dragon, as well as potential solutions, into board games and video games to help engage users in the fight to slow global warming.

Today, we are exploring how the climate movement is growing within the gaming universe—and what that could mean for the real world.

Climate Gamers: The main goal of Minecraft’s “Heat Wave Survival” is to slay the mighty heat dragon, but throughout the mission, players get tips on how to recognize the symptoms of heat-related illnesses and the best ways to respond such as hydrating or finding a cool space, reports Fast Company.

The team, led by the nonprofit Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, is also developing a second game in its series in which players are in charge of building their own city supplied by renewable energy, with the option to install heat-resilient infrastructure such as shade structures. The games are primarily aimed at young students.

But this isn’t the first initiative of its kind. In 2019, the United Nations launched its Playing for the Planet Alliance, with the goal of helping the video game industry shrink its environmental footprint and engage its players in climate action.

Each year, the Alliance—which has dozens of members such as Sony and Google—hosts a “Green Game Jam,” where companies are encouraged to integrate more eco-friendly themes into their games. In 2023, developers added nature conservation elements into 41 games, Bloomberg reports. For example, the company Rovio Entertainment added a temporary new challenge to the popular game Angry Birds, in which users were tasked with saving virtual endangered animals in the Amazon.

However, the video game industry itself has its own emissions issues to reckon with. Along with the energy required to play a game, engineers use large amounts of energy to power computers during development, and manufacturing of game accessories and devices uses vast quantities of plastic and batteries, which can contribute to the growing problem of electronic waste after they are disposed of, Claire Asher writes for Mongabay.

In December, a CNET report found that “only a portion of gaming companies release climate impact data,” but that a growing number of developers are making efforts to reduce emissions through the use of renewable energy in their supply chains.

Clean Energy Simulations: Outside the virtual world, a new energy-oriented version of the classic board game “Settlers of Catan” is being released this summer. The original iteration was created in 1995 and tasked players with creating their own nation from scratch on an undeveloped island. The new game, dubbed “Catan: New Energies,” will introduce more of the modern-day struggles that come along with rapid industrial growth, and the emissions associated with them.

In the game, players must choose between investing in expensive clean energy options or low-cost but high-polluting fossil fuels (sound familiar?). Though “Catan: New Energies” does not outright mention the term climate change, if pollutant levels get too high, “the game ends in catastrophe” and the player with the most renewable energy tokens wins, according to Catan’s website.

Benjamin Teuber, co-developer of the new game, told NPR that during the development phase, the testing team would “always manage to over pollute.”

However, games offer unlimited chances to explore how to wrangle in runaway emissions: “We had heavy discussions afterwards,” Teuber said. “We all felt kind of bad, we learned a thing or two, and the next game we played differently.”

But what about the real world, where research shows that there won’t be unlimited opportunities to slow emissions before climate change irrevocably alters ecosystems and cities? Board games and simulations can “inspire players to learn about the climate crisis and motivate them to act,” Sam Illingworth, a game developer and science communications expert at Edinburgh Napier University in the United Kingdom, wrote in the Conversation.

“As we face the urgent challenges ahead, I believe that such games can play a crucial role in fostering understanding, dialogue and action.”

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here.

Read the full story here.
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Study Shows the World Is Far More Ablaze Now With Damaging Fires Than in the 1980s

A new study shows that the world's most damaging wildfires are happening four times more often now compared to the 1980s

WASHINGTON (AP) — Earth’s nastiest and costliest wildfires are blazing four times more often now than they did in the 1980s because of human-caused climate change and people moving closer to wildlands, a new study found.A study in the journal Science looks at global wildfires, not by acres burned which is the most common measuring stick, but by the harder to calculate economic and human damage they cause. The study concluded there has been a “climate-linked escalation of societally disastrous wildfires.”A team of Australian, American and German fire scientists calculated the 200 most damaging fires since 1980 based on the percentage of damage to the country's Gross Domestic Product at the time, taking inflation into account. The frequency of these events has increased about 4.4 times from 1980 to 2023, said study lead author Calum Cunningham, a pyrogeographer at the Fire Centre at the University of Tasmania in Australia. “It shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that we do have a major wildfire crisis on our hands,” Cunningham said.About 43% of the 200 most damaging fires occurred in the last 10 years of the study. In the 1980s, the globe averaged two of these catastrophic fires a year and a few times hit four a year. From 2014 to 2023, the world averaged nearly nine a year, including 13 in 2021. It noted that the count of these devastating infernos sharply increased in 2015, which “coincided with increasingly extreme climatic conditions.” Though the study date ended in 2023, the last two years have been even more extreme, Cunningham said.Cunningham said often researchers look at how many acres a fire burns as a measuring stick, but he called that flawed because it really doesn't show the effect on people, with area not mattering as much as economics and lives. Hawaii's Lahaina fire wasn't big, but it burned a lot of buildings and killed a lot of people so it was more meaningful than one in sparsely populated regions, he said.“We need to be targeting the fires that matter. And those are the fires that cause major ecological destruction because they’re burning too intensely,” Cunningham said. But economic data is difficult to get with many countries keeping that information private, preventing global trends and totals from being calculated. So Cunningham and colleagues were able to get more than 40 years of global economic date from insurance giant Munich Re and then combine it with the public database from International Disaster Database, which isn't as complete but is collected by the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.The study looked at “fire weather” which is hot, dry and windy conditions that make extreme fires more likely and more dangerous and found that those conditions are increasing, creating a connection to the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.“We’ve firstly got that connection that all the disasters by and large occurred during extreme weather. We’ve also got a strong trend of those conditions becoming more common as a result of climate change. That’s indisputable,” Cunningham said. “So that’s a line of evidence there to say that climate change is having a significant effect on at least creating the conditions that are suitable for a major fire disaster.”If there was no human-caused climate change, the world would still have devastating fires, but not as many, he said: “We’re loading the dice in a sense by increasing temperatures.”There are other factors. People are moving closer to fire-prone areas, called the wildland-urban interface, Cunningham said. And society is not getting a handle on dead foliage that becomes fuel, he said. But those factors are harder to quantify compared to climate change, he said."This is an innovative study in terms of the data sources employed, and it mostly confirms common sense expectations: fires causing major fatalities and economic damage tend to be those in densely populated areas and to occur during the extreme fire weather conditions that are becoming more common due to climate change," said Jacob Bendix, a geography and environment professor at Syracuse University who studies fires, but wasn't part of this research team.Not only does the study makes sense, but it's a bad sign for the future, said Mike Flannigan, a fire researcher at Thompson Rivers University in Canada. Flannigan, who wasn't part of research, said: "As the frequency and intensity of extreme fire weather and drought increases the likelihood of disastrous fires increases so we need to do more to be better prepared."The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – Sept. 2025

Climate
Crisis
Science

Senior Tories dismayed at Badenoch’s ‘catastrophic’ vow to repeal Climate Change Act

Theresa May, Alok Sharma, business and church leaders say plan would harm UK and not even Margaret Thatcher would have countenanced itUK politics live – latest updatesThe former prime minister Theresa May has condemned a promise made by Kemi Badenoch to repeal the Climate Change Act if the Tories win the next general election, calling the plans a “catastrophic mistake”.She joined other leading Tories, business groups, scientists and the Church of England in attacking the Conservative leader’s announcement, which would remove the requirement for governments to set “carbon budgets” laying out how far greenhouse gas emissions will be cut every five years, up to 2050. Continue reading...

The former prime minister Theresa May has condemned a promise made by Kemi Badenoch to repeal the Climate Change Act if the Tories win the next general election, calling the plans a “catastrophic mistake”.She joined other leading Tories, business groups, scientists and the Church of England in attacking the Conservative leader’s announcement, which would remove the requirement for governments to set “carbon budgets” laying out how far greenhouse gas emissions will be cut every five years, up to 2050.May called it a “retrograde” step which upended 17 years of consensus between the UK’s main political parties and the scientific community. She continued: “To row back now would be a catastrophic mistake for while that consensus is being tested, the science remains the same. We owe it to our children and grandchildren to ensure we protect the planet for their futures and that means giving business the reassurance it needs to find the solutions for the very grave challenges we face.”Green Tories have been increasingly concerned at Badenoch’s move to position the Tories closer to the Reform party, whose senior leaders deny climate science, on energy and net zero policy.Repealing the 2008 Climate Change Act and cancellation of the target of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 would remove obligations to cut carbon and dismantle the cornerstone of climate policy.Under the act, which was passed by Labour with the support of David Cameron’s Conservative party, with only five rebels voting against, ministers must set five-yearly limits on the UK’s future emissions and bring in policies to meet them. It was the first such legislation in the world, but scores of other countries have since followed suit.Alok Sharma, the Tory former minister and peer who was president of the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow in 2021, told the Guardian: “Thanks to the strong and consistent commitment of the previous Conservative government to climate action and net zero, the UK attracted many tens of billions of pounds of private sector investment and accompanying jobs. This is a story of British innovation, economic growth, skilled jobs and global leadership – not just a matter of environmental stewardship.”He warned that Badenoch risked not just alienating allies on the world stage, but discouraging voters. “Turning our back on this progress now risks future investment and jobs into our country, as well as our international standing,” he said. “The path to a prosperous, secure, and electable future for the Conservative party lies in building on our achievements, not abandoning them.”Lord Deben, who served as environment secretary under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, said none of Badenoch’s predecessors would have countenanced such a move. “This is not what Margaret Thatcher would have done,” he told the Guardian. “She understood this. If you want de-industrialisation of Britain, then [repealing the Climate Change Act] is the right way to go about it.”Business leaders also warned of serious economic damage. Rain Newton-Smith, the chief executive of the CBI, the UK’s biggest business association, said: “The scientific reality of climate change makes action from both government and business imperative. Scrapping the Climate Change Act would be a backwards step in achieving our shared objectives of reaching economic growth, boosting energy security, protecting our environment and making life healthier for future generations.”She said investment had been stimulated, not stifled as Badenoch suggested, by the legislation. “The Climate Act has been the bedrock for investment flowing into the UK and shows that decarbonisation and economic growth are not a zero-sum game. Businesses delivering the energy transition added £83bn to the economy last year alone, providing high-paying jobs to almost a million people across the UK,” she said. “Ripping up the framework that’s given investors confidence that the UK is serious about sustainable growth through a low-carbon future would damage our economy.”If Badenoch were to repeal the Climate Change Act, Britain’s exports could be hit under the EU’s green tariffs. The EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism, now in its trial stages, imposes levies on companies from countries that are not judged to have an adequate price on carbon. The measure, intended to prevent other countries from undercutting climate rules, could add crippling costs to the UK’s industrial exports to its biggest trading partner.Civil society also rallied to reject Badenoch’s plans. Both the Church of England and the Catholic church spoke out, with Graham Usher, the bishop of Norwich, lead for environmental affairs for the Church of England, saying: “For Britain, the Climate Change Act reflects the best of who we are as a country: a nation that cares for creation, protects the vulnerable and builds hope for future generations. To weaken it now would be to turn our back on that calling and on the values we share as a nation. That is why the Church of England has committed to strive for net zero by 2030, because caring for God’s creation is not optional; it is essential if we are to safeguard the Earth for those who come after us.”Bishop John Arnold, the Catholic lead for the the environment, referred to the speech by Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday, criticising climate sceptics. “Pope Leo XIV yesterday inspired us to work with unity and togetherness on the challenges facing our common home … More than ever, we need to work together, to think of future generations and take urgent action if we are to truly respond to the scale of this climate crisis. A crisis which affects those who are poorest and most vulnerable and have done least to cause it.”

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Business
Government

Tories pledge to scrap landmark climate legislation

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says her party would axe legally binding targets to cut emissions.

The Conservatives have pledged to scrap the UK's landmark climate change legislation and replace it with a strategy for "cheap and reliable" energy.The Climate Change Act 2008, which put targets for cutting emissions into law, was introduced by the last Labour government and strengthened under Tory PM Theresa May.Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said her party wanted to leave "a cleaner environment for our children" but argued "Labour's laws tied us in red tape, loaded us with costs, and did nothing to cut global emissions".Environmental groups said the move would be an act of "national self-harm", while Labour said it would be "an economic disaster and a total betrayal of future generations".The 2008 act, which was passed when current Energy Secretary Ed Miliband was in the same role in Gordon Brown's government, committed the UK to cutting carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. In 2019, under May's premiership, this legally binding target was updated to reaching net zero by 2050 - meaning the UK must cut carbon emissions until it removes as much as it produces.At that time the legislation passed through Parliament with the support of all major parties.However, the political consensus on net zero has since fragmented.Badenoch has previously said the target of net zero by 2050 is "impossible" for the UK to meet and promised to "maximise" extraction of oil and gas from the North Sea.Reform UK has also said it would scrap net zero targets if it wins the next election, blaming the policy for higher energy bills and deindustrialisation in the UK.The UK was the first country to establish a long-term legally binding framework to cut carbon emissions and since the act was passed many other countries have introduced similar legislation.However, the Tories said the act forced ministers "to make decisions to meet arbitrary climate targets, even if they make the British people poorer, destroy jobs, and make our economy weaker".Badenoch said: "We want to leave a cleaner environment for our children, but not by bankrupting the country."Climate change is real. But Labour's laws tied us in red tape, loaded us with costs, and did nothing to cut global emissions. Previous Conservative governments tried to make Labour's climate laws work - they don't."Under my leadership we will scrap those failed targets. Our priority now is growth, cheaper energy, and protecting the natural landscapes we all love."However, Miliband said: "This desperate policy from Kemi Badenoch if ever implemented would be an economic disaster and a total betrayal of future generations."The Conservatives would now scrap a framework that businesses campaigned for in the first place and has ensured tens of billions of pounds of investment in homegrown British energy since it was passed by a Labour government with Conservative support 17 years ago."The Liberal Democrats also criticised the announcement.The party's energy security and net zero spokesperson Pippa Heylings said: "The reality is that investing in renewables is the greatest economic growth opportunity in this century and will protect the planet for future generations."Meanwhile, Richard Benwell, chief executive of the Wildlife and Countryside Link coalition of environmental groups, said: "The real route to lasting security is in homegrown clean power, not burning more fossil fuels."Without binding climate law, ministers will be free to trade away our future - and it is nature and the poorest communities that will pay the price."

Climate
Business
Government

Pope Leo calls for environmental action worldwide

The first American pope urged people everywhere to become politically active on issues like climate change.

The first American pope urged people everywhere to become politically active on issues like climate change.

Climate

Team Trump Will Spend $625 Million and Open Public Lands to Revive a Dying Industry

This story was originally published by Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The White House will open 13.1 million acres of public land to coal mining while providing $625 million for coal-fired power plants, the Trump administration has announced. The efforts came as part of a suite of initiatives from the Department of the […]

This story was originally published by Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The White House will open 13.1 million acres of public land to coal mining while providing $625 million for coal-fired power plants, the Trump administration has announced. The efforts came as part of a suite of initiatives from the Department of the Interior, Department of Energy, and Environmental Protection Agency, aimed at reviving the flagging coal sector. Coal, the most polluting and costly fossil fuel, has been on a rapid decline over the past 30 years, with the US halving its production between 2008 and 2023, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). “This is an industry that matters to our country,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a livestreamed press conference on Monday morning, alongside representatives from the other two departments. “It matters to the world, and it’s going to continue to matter for a long time.” “This is a colossal waste of our money at a time when the federal government should be spurring along the new energy sources.” Coal plants provided about 15 percent of US electricity in 2024—a steep fall from 50 percent in 2000—the EIA found, with the growth of gas and green power displacing its use. Last year, wind and solar produced more electricity than coal in the US for the first time in history, according to the International Energy Agency, which predicts that could happen at the global level by the end of 2026. Despite its dwindling role, Trump has made the reviving the coal sector a priority of his second term amid increasing energy demand due to the proliferation of artificial intelligence data centers. “The Trump administration is hell-bent on supporting the oldest, dirtiest energy source. It’s handing our hard-earned tax dollars over to the owners of coal plants that cost more to run than new, clean energy,” said Amanda Levin, director of policy analysis at the national environmental nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council. “This is a colossal waste of our money at a time when the federal government should be spurring along the new energy sources that can power the AI boom and help bring down electricity bills for struggling families.” The administration’s new $625 million investment includes $350 million to “modernize” coal plants, $175 million for coal projects it claims will provide affordable and reliable energy to rural communities, and $50 million to upgrade wastewater management systems to extend the lifespan of coal plants. The efforts follow previous coal-focused initiatives from the Trump administration, which has greenlit mining leases while fast-tracking mining permits. It has also prolonged the life of some coal plants, exempted some coal plants from EPA rules, and falsely claimed that emissions from those plants are “not significant.” The moves have sparked outrage from environmental advocates who note that coal pollution has been linked to hundreds of thousands of deaths across the past two decades. One study estimated that emissions from coal costs Americans $13-$26 billion a year in additional ER visits, strokes and cardiac events, and a greater prevalence and severity of childhood asthma events.

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