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The problem with forcing people back to the office? All the carbon emissions.

News Feed
Tuesday, April 30, 2024

This story was produced by Grist and was co-published with Fast Company. When office workers stopped working in offices in 2020, trading their cubicles for living room couches during COVID-19 lockdowns, many began questioning those hours they had spent commuting to work. All those rushed mornings stuck in traffic could have been spent getting things done? Life was often lonely for those stuck in their homes, but people found something to appreciate when birdsong rang through the quiet streets. And the temporary dip in travel had the side effect of cutting global carbon emissions by 7 percent in 2020 — a blip of good news in an otherwise miserable year. Emissions bounced back in 2021, when people started resuming some of their normal activities, but offices have never been the same. While remote work was rare before the pandemic, today, 28 percent of Americans are working a “hybrid” schedule, going into the office some days, and 13 percent are working remotely full-time. Recent data suggest that remote work could speed along companies’ plans to zero out their carbon emissions, but businesses don’t seem to be considering climate change in their decisions about the future of office work. “In the U.S., I’m sad to say it’s just not high on the priority list,” said Kate Lister, the founder of the consulting firm Global Workplace Analytics. “It gets up there, and then it drops again for the next shiny object.” Commuter travel falls under a company’s so-called “Scope 3” emissions, the indirect sources that routinely get ignored, but represent, on average, three-quarters of the business world’s emissions.  A 10 percent increase in people working remotely could reduce carbon emissions by 192 million metric tons a year, according to a study published in the journal Nature Cities earlier this month. That would cut emissions from the country’s most polluting sector, transportation, by 10 percent. Those findings align with other peer-reviewed research: Switching to remote work instead of going into the office can cut a person’s carbon footprint by 54 percent, according to a study published in the journal PNAS last fall, even when accounting for non-commute travel and residential energy use. “It seems like a very obvious solution to a very pressing and real problem,” said Curtis Sparrer, a principal and co-founder of the PR agency Bospar, a San Francisco-based company where employees have been working remotely since it started in 2015. “And I am concerned that this whole ‘return to office’ thing is getting in the way.” Many companies are mandating their employees show up for in-person work regularly. Last year, big tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Meta told employees that they had to come back to the office three days a week or face consequences, like a lower chance of getting promoted. Even Zoom, the company that became a household name during the pandemic for its videoconferencing platform, is making employees who live within 50 miles of the office commute two days a week.  Amazon employees in Seattle watch as others join a walkout to protest the company’s return-to-office policies in May 2023. Organizers called attention to the climate impact of commutes, saying it runs counter to the company’s climate pledge to be carbon-neutral by 2040. AP Photo / Lindsey Wasson Of course, there are many benefits that come with heading into the office to work alongside other humans. Interacting with your coworkers in person gives you a social boost (without the awkward pauses in Zoom meetings) and a compelling reason to change out of your sweatpants in the morning. From a climate change standpoint, the problem is that most Americans tend to jump in their cars to commute, instead of biking or hopping on the bus. A recent poll from Bospar found that two-thirds of Americans are driving to work — and they’re mostly in gas-powered cars. Even though purchases of electric vehicles are rising, they still make up roughly 1 percent of the cars on the road. The climate benefits start falling off quickly when people are summoned into the office. Working from home two to four days a week cut emissions by between 11 and 29 percent compared with full-time office work, according to the study in PNAS by researchers at Cornell University and Microsoft. If you only work remotely one day a week, those emissions were only trimmed by 2 percent. Another big factor is that maintaining physical office space sucks up a lot of energy, since it needs to be heated and cooled. So should companies be allowed to claim they’re going green when they’re forcing employees to commute? Many Americans don’t think so, according to Bospar’s survey. Well over half of Millennials and Gen Zers said it’s hypocritical for companies to observe Earth Day while requiring employees to attend work in-person.  Sparrer points to Disney, which celebrated Earth Month in April with a campaign to promote its environmental efforts but ordered workers to come into the office four days a week last year. Nike, meanwhile, promoted its Earth Day collection of “sustainable” leather shoes while its CEO, John Donahoe, argued that remote work stifled creativity. “In hindsight, it turns out, it’s really hard to do bold, disruptive innovation, to develop a boldly disruptive shoe on Zoom,” he told CNBC earlier this month. “We are entering a time of magical thinking, where people seem to think that this is enough, and it’s not,” Sparrer said. “And the frustration I have is that we all got to experience what it’s like to work from home, and we know how it works, and we know how it can be improved.” Working from home, though, could present some environmental challenges. Recent research that looked at trends before the pandemic found that if 10 percent of the workforce started working remotely, transit systems in the U.S. would lose $3.7 billion every year, a 27 percent drop in fare revenue, according to the study in Nature Cities, conducted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Florida, and Peking University in Beijing. Some experts worry that remote work could push people into the suburbs, where carbon footprints tend to be higher than in cities. Right now, there are many employees who want to work at home full-time but are forced to go into the office, Lister said. She sees the return-to-office mandates as a result of corporate leadership that wants to go back to how things used to be. “As that generation retires,” she said, “I think that a lot of these conversations will go away.” This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The problem with forcing people back to the office? All the carbon emissions. on Apr 30, 2024.

Return-to-office mandates could be getting in the way of companies' climate goals.

This story was produced by Grist and was co-published with Fast Company.

When office workers stopped working in offices in 2020, trading their cubicles for living room couches during COVID-19 lockdowns, many began questioning those hours they had spent commuting to work. All those rushed mornings stuck in traffic could have been spent getting things done? Life was often lonely for those stuck in their homes, but people found something to appreciate when birdsong rang through the quiet streets. And the temporary dip in travel had the side effect of cutting global carbon emissions by 7 percent in 2020 — a blip of good news in an otherwise miserable year.

Emissions bounced back in 2021, when people started resuming some of their normal activities, but offices have never been the same. While remote work was rare before the pandemic, today, 28 percent of Americans are working a “hybrid” schedule, going into the office some days, and 13 percent are working remotely full-time.

Recent data suggest that remote work could speed along companies’ plans to zero out their carbon emissions, but businesses don’t seem to be considering climate change in their decisions about the future of office work. “In the U.S., I’m sad to say it’s just not high on the priority list,” said Kate Lister, the founder of the consulting firm Global Workplace Analytics. “It gets up there, and then it drops again for the next shiny object.” Commuter travel falls under a company’s so-called “Scope 3” emissions, the indirect sources that routinely get ignored, but represent, on average, three-quarters of the business world’s emissions. 

A 10 percent increase in people working remotely could reduce carbon emissions by 192 million metric tons a year, according to a study published in the journal Nature Cities earlier this month. That would cut emissions from the country’s most polluting sector, transportation, by 10 percent. Those findings align with other peer-reviewed research: Switching to remote work instead of going into the office can cut a person’s carbon footprint by 54 percent, according to a study published in the journal PNAS last fall, even when accounting for non-commute travel and residential energy use.

“It seems like a very obvious solution to a very pressing and real problem,” said Curtis Sparrer, a principal and co-founder of the PR agency Bospar, a San Francisco-based company where employees have been working remotely since it started in 2015. “And I am concerned that this whole ‘return to office’ thing is getting in the way.”

Many companies are mandating their employees show up for in-person work regularly. Last year, big tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Meta told employees that they had to come back to the office three days a week or face consequences, like a lower chance of getting promoted. Even Zoom, the company that became a household name during the pandemic for its videoconferencing platform, is making employees who live within 50 miles of the office commute two days a week. 

Photo of an office building and two people looking out windows
Amazon employees in Seattle watch as others join a walkout to protest the company’s return-to-office policies in May 2023. Organizers called attention to the climate impact of commutes, saying it runs counter to the company’s climate pledge to be carbon-neutral by 2040. AP Photo / Lindsey Wasson

Of course, there are many benefits that come with heading into the office to work alongside other humans. Interacting with your coworkers in person gives you a social boost (without the awkward pauses in Zoom meetings) and a compelling reason to change out of your sweatpants in the morning. From a climate change standpoint, the problem is that most Americans tend to jump in their cars to commute, instead of biking or hopping on the bus. A recent poll from Bospar found that two-thirds of Americans are driving to work — and they’re mostly in gas-powered cars. Even though purchases of electric vehicles are rising, they still make up roughly 1 percent of the cars on the road.

The climate benefits start falling off quickly when people are summoned into the office. Working from home two to four days a week cut emissions by between 11 and 29 percent compared with full-time office work, according to the study in PNAS by researchers at Cornell University and Microsoft. If you only work remotely one day a week, those emissions were only trimmed by 2 percent. Another big factor is that maintaining physical office space sucks up a lot of energy, since it needs to be heated and cooled.

So should companies be allowed to claim they’re going green when they’re forcing employees to commute? Many Americans don’t think so, according to Bospar’s survey. Well over half of Millennials and Gen Zers said it’s hypocritical for companies to observe Earth Day while requiring employees to attend work in-person. 

Sparrer points to Disney, which celebrated Earth Month in April with a campaign to promote its environmental efforts but ordered workers to come into the office four days a week last year. Nike, meanwhile, promoted its Earth Day collection of “sustainable” leather shoes while its CEO, John Donahoe, argued that remote work stifled creativity. “In hindsight, it turns out, it’s really hard to do bold, disruptive innovation, to develop a boldly disruptive shoe on Zoom,” he told CNBC earlier this month.

“We are entering a time of magical thinking, where people seem to think that this is enough, and it’s not,” Sparrer said. “And the frustration I have is that we all got to experience what it’s like to work from home, and we know how it works, and we know how it can be improved.”

Working from home, though, could present some environmental challenges. Recent research that looked at trends before the pandemic found that if 10 percent of the workforce started working remotely, transit systems in the U.S. would lose $3.7 billion every year, a 27 percent drop in fare revenue, according to the study in Nature Cities, conducted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Florida, and Peking University in Beijing. Some experts worry that remote work could push people into the suburbs, where carbon footprints tend to be higher than in cities.

Right now, there are many employees who want to work at home full-time but are forced to go into the office, Lister said. She sees the return-to-office mandates as a result of corporate leadership that wants to go back to how things used to be. “As that generation retires,” she said, “I think that a lot of these conversations will go away.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The problem with forcing people back to the office? All the carbon emissions. on Apr 30, 2024.

Read the full story here.
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Related News

The rich must eat less meat

Here’s a sobering fact: Even if the entire world transitions away from fossil fuels, the way we farm and eat will cause global temperatures to rise 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels — the critical threshold set in the Paris Climate Agreement. The further we go above that limit, the more intense the effects of […]

Here’s a sobering fact: Even if the entire world transitions away from fossil fuels, the way we farm and eat will cause global temperatures to rise 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels — the critical threshold set in the Paris Climate Agreement. The further we go above that limit, the more intense the effects of climate change will get. The good news is that we know the most effective way to avert catastrophe: People in wealthier countries have to eat more plant-based foods and less red meat, poultry, and dairy. Such a shift in diets — combined with reducing global food waste and improving agricultural productivity — could cut annual climate-warming emissions from food systems by more than half. That’s one of the main findings from a new report by the EAT-Lancet Commission, a prestigious research body composed of dozens of experts in nutrition, climate, economics, agriculture, and other fields.   The report lays out how agriculture has played a major role in breaking several “planetary boundaries”; there’s greenhouse gas emissions — of which food and farming account for 30 percent — but also deforestation and air and water pollution. The new report builds on the commission’s first report, published in 2019 — an enormous undertaking that examined how to meet the nutritional needs of a growing global population while staying within planetary boundaries. It was highly influential and widely cited in both policy and academic literature, but it was also ruthlessly attacked in an intensive smear campaign by meat industry-aligned groups, academics, and influencers  — a form of “mis- and disinformation and denialism on climate science,” Johan Rockström, a co-author of the report, said in a recent press conference.   Our food’s massive environmental footprint stems from several sources: land-clearing to graze cattle and grow crops (much of them grown to feed farmed animals); the trillions of pounds of manure those farmed animals release; cattle’s methane-rich burps; food waste; fertilizer production and pollution; and fossil fuels used to power farms and supply chains. But this destruction is disproportionately committed to supply rich countries’ meat- and dairy-heavy diets, representing a kind of global dietary inequality. “The diets of the richest 30% of the global population contribute to more than 70% of the environmental pressures from food systems,” the new report reads.  To set humanity on a healthier, more sustainable path, the commission recommends what they call the Planetary Health Diet, which consists of more whole grains, fruits, vegetables, legumes, and nuts than what most people in high- and upper-middle-income countries consume, along with less meat, dairy, and sugar. But in poor regions, like Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, the commission recommends an increase in most animal products, as well as a greater variety of plant-based foods. If globally adopted, this plant-rich diet would prevent up to 15 million premature deaths each year. (The commission notes that the diet is a starting point and should be adjusted to accommodate individual needs and preferences, local diets, food availability, and other factors.) It would also reshape the global food industry, resulting in billions of fewer land animals raised for meat each year and a significant increase in legume, nut, fish, and whole grain production (while many regions currently eat more fish per capita than the report recommends, total global fish production would increase over time under the report’s parameters to meet demand from growing populations).  Rather than expecting billions of people to actively change how they eat, the commission recommends a number of policies, including reforming school meals, federal dietary guidelines, and farming subsidies; restricting marketing of unhealthy foods; and stronger environmental regulations for farms. If EAT-Lancet’s main recommendations were to be implemented, shifting to plant-rich diets would account for three-quarters of the major reduction in agricultural emissions. Other recommendations, like improving crop and livestock productivity and reducing food waste, are important, but their impact would be much smaller than diet change, contributing a quarter of expected agricultural emissions reductions.   The report is thorough and nuanced, but its conclusions aren’t exactly novel; for the past two decades, scientists have published a trove of studies on the environmental impact of agriculture and have landed on the same takeaways — especially that rich countries must shift their diets to be more plant-based. But that message has, with few exceptions, failed to incite action by governments and food companies, or even the environmental movement itself.  That failure can be explained, in part, by the meat industry’s aggressive, denialist response to the scientific consensus on meat, pollution, and climate change. The meat industry’s anti-science crusade, briefly explained In the 2010s, it seemed possible that the US and other wealthy countries might adopt more plant-based diets: Some researchers and journalists predicted that better plant-based meat products, from companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, could disrupt the conventional meat industry; governments in several countries recommended more plant-based diets; and campaigns like Meatless Monday and Veganuary had gained momentum. This story was first featured in the Processing Meat newsletter Sign up here for Future Perfect’s biweekly newsletter from Marina Bolotnikova and Kenny Torrella, exploring how the meat and dairy industries shape our health, politics, culture, environment, and more. Have questions or comments on this newsletter? Email us at futureperfect@vox.com! These trends posed an existential threat to the livestock sector, and it was in this environment that the first EAT-Lancet report was published. It made international headlines, but the backlash was swift: The meat industry coordinated an intense and successful online backlash operation. Shortly after, the World Health Organization pulled its support for an EAT-Lancet report launch event. One report author said she was “overwhelmed” with “really nasty” comments, and another said he faced career repercussions.   In the years that followed, the industry ramped up its efforts to steer policy and narratives in its favor and out of line with scientific consensus:  From 2020 to 2023, European meat companies and industry groups successfully weakened EU climate policy.  The number of delegates representing the meat industry at the UN’s annual climate change conference tripled from 2022 to 2023. A 2023 United Nations report on reducing climate emissions in the food system omitted meat reduction as an approach, which some environmental scientists found “bewildering” (this could be due to intense meat industry pressure imposed on UN officials). The industry spent a great deal of money attacking plant-based meat companies, downplaying meat’s environmental impact, cozying up to environmental nonprofits, and spreading the narrative that voluntary, incremental tweaks to animal farming methods are sufficient — not regulations and diet shifts. Now, as global ambitions to reduce meat consumption and livestock production have shriveled in the face of intense pressure from industry, the new EAT-Lancet report feels more important, and also more vulnerable, than ever. But I worry most of the climate movement is only too eager to go along with the industry’s preferred approaches and narratives because many environmental advocates, like virtually everyone else across society, don’t want to accept that meat reduction in richer countries is non-negotiable. That much was evident when I attended last month’s Climate Week NYC, the world’s second-largest climate change gathering. The meat conversation missing from Climate Week The annual event brings together some 100,000 attendees for more than 1,000 events across the city. This year, only five events centered on plant-based food as a solution to climate change. In other words, what environmental scientists consider to be the most effective solution to addressing around 16 percent of greenhouse gas emissions received around 0.5 percent of the week’s programming. At the same time, the meat and dairy sectors managed to establish a large presence at Climate Week’s food and agriculture programs.  The Protein Pact, a coalition of meat and dairy companies and trade groups, sponsored a panel put on by the climate events company Nest Climate Campus, which listed one of Protein Pact’s representatives — who spoke on its main stage — as a “climate action expert.” The Protein Pact is also a leading sponsor of Regen House, an agriculture events company that hosted several days of Climate Week programming. Meanwhile, the Meat Institute — the founder of the Protein Pact — sponsored events put on by Food Tank, a nonprofit think tank. It would be one thing if the Protein Pact were open to compromise on environmental regulation and spoke more honestly about their industries’ climate impact. But many of its members lobby against environmental action and downplay the industry’s environmental footprint. Some even participated in the campaign against EAT-Lancet’s first report. Given this track record, it’s hard to see the industry’s presence at Climate Week as anything but a reputation laundering effort.  The Meat Institute, Food Tank, Nest Climate Campus, and Regen House didn’t respond to requests for comment.  This dynamic — in which meat industry narratives are welcomed and legitimized in much of the environmental movement — has contributed to public ignorance of the industry’s pollution and its underreporting in the news media.  According to a new, exclusive analysis from the environmental nonprofit Madre Brava, only 0.4 percent of climate coverage in US, UK, and European English-language news outlets mention meat and livestock. Madre Brava also polled US and Great Britain residents and found they underestimated animal agriculture’s environmental impact.  Finding hope in Climate Week’s Food Day   A lot of climate news coverage — including this story — is depressing and fatalistic, so I’ll try to end on a hopeful note. I felt a bit of this strange emotion at Food Day, a Climate Week event organized by Tilt Collective, a philanthropic climate foundation advocating for plant-rich diets. I’ve attended a lot of conferences on shifting humanity toward more plant-based diets, and I usually end up seeing a lot of the same people. That wasn’t the case at Food Day. There were a lot of unrecognizable faces — people from climate foundations, environmental nonprofits, government agencies, and universities — all eager to take on this big, challenging, fascinating problem, however intimidating it may be.  The following day, I attended a climate journalism event hosted by Sentient, a nonprofit news outlet that covers meat and the environment. Similarly, the room was packed with journalists and communications professionals, most of whom don’t cover these issues but were there to learn about them. These events — and the few others that centered on plant-based foods — were overshadowed by the meat industry’s Climate Week presence. But the events did suggest that there’s growing acceptance that we must change the way we eat, and that time is running out to do something about it. That’s not enough, but it’s better than nothing. Given the state of our politics and environmental policy, that’s maybe the best one can hope for.  

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In First Address on Climate Change, Pope Leo Signals Continuity With Francis—and Opposition to Trump

Pope Leo on Wednesday spoke before a slowly melting chunk of glacial ice in Vatican City in his first address on climate change. On a stage adorned with ferns and lush plants, Leo addressed a crowd of roughly 1,000 attendees representing Indigenous groups and environmental organizations across the world. The remarks were the strongest signal […]

The pontiff called on people all over the world to demand action on climate from their governments. Right-wing pundits in the U.S. immediately denounced his message as “woke.”By Carl David Goette-LuciakPope Leo on Wednesday spoke before a slowly melting chunk of glacial ice in Vatican City in his first address on climate change. On a stage adorned with ferns and lush plants, Leo addressed a crowd of roughly 1,000 attendees representing Indigenous groups and environmental organizations across the world. The remarks were the strongest signal yet that the new pope intends to continue his predecessor’s legacy on climate issues, placing the Catholic Church squarely in the fight against global warming. 

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A Recipe for Avoiding 15 Million Deaths a Year and Climate Disaster Is Fixing Food, Scientists Say

Scientists are presenting new evidence that the worst effects of climate change can’t be avoided without a major transformation of food systems

Their conclusion: Without substantial changes to the food system, the worst effects of climate change will be unavoidable, even if humans successfully switch to cleaner energy.“If we do not transition away from the unsustainable food path we’re on today, we will fail on the climate agenda. We will fail on the biodiversity agenda. We will fail on food security. We’ll fail on so many pathways,” said study co-author Johan Rockström, who leads the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.The commission's first report in 2019 was regarded as a “really monumental landmark study” for its willingness to take food system reform seriously while factoring in human and environmental health, said Adam Shriver, director of wellness and nutrition at the Harkin Institute for Public Policy and Citizen Engagement. Key points from the latest report: A ‘planetary health diet’ could avert 15 million deaths every year The first EAT-Lancet report proposed a “planetary health diet” centered on grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes. The update maintains that to improve their health while also reducing global warming, it's a good idea for people to eat one serving each of animal protein and dairy per day while limiting red meat to about once a week. This particularly applies to people in developed nations who disproportionately contribute to climate change and have more choices about the foods they eat.The dietary recommendations were based on data about risks of preventable diseases like Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, not environmental criteria. Human and planetary health happen to be in alignment, the researchers said.Rockström said it may seem “boring” for an analysis to reach the same conclusion six years later, but he finds this reassuring because food science is a rapidly moving field with many big studies and improving analytics.Food is one of the most deeply personal choices a person can make, and “the health component touches everyone’s heart,” Rockström said. While tackling global challenges is complicated, what individuals can do is relatively straightforward, like reducing meat consumption without eliminating it altogether.“People associate what they eat with identity” and strict diets can scare people off, but even small changes help, said Emily Cassidy, a research associate with climate science nonprofit Project Drawdown. She wasn’t involved with the research. Our food choices could push the planet past a tipping point The researchers looked beyond climate change and greenhouse gas emissions to factors including biodiversity, land use, water quality and agricultural pollution — and concluded that food systems are the biggest culprit in pushing Earth to the brink of thresholds for a livable planet.The report is “super comprehensive” in its scope, said Kathleen Merrigan, a professor of food systems at Arizona State University who also wasn’t involved with the research. It goes deep enough to show how farming and labor practices, consumption habits and other aspects of food production are interconnected — and could be changed, she said. “It’s like we’ve had this slow awakening to the role of food” in discussions about planetary existence, Merrigan said. Changing worldwide diets alone could lead to a 15% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, because the production of meat, particularly red meat, requires releasing a lot of planet-warming gases, researchers concluded. Increased crop productivity, reductions in food waste and other improvements could bump that to 20%, the report said.Cassidy said that if the populations of high- and middle-income countries were to limit beef and lamb consumption to about one serving a week, as recommended in this latest EAT-Lancet report, they could reduce emissions equal to Russia's annual emissions total. Incorporating justice in an unequal world Meanwhile, the report concludes that nearly half the world's population is being denied adequate food, a healthy environment or decent work in the food system. Ethnic minorities, Indigenous peoples, women and children and people in conflict zones all face specific risks to their human rights and access to food.With United Nations climate talks around the corner in November, Rockström and other researchers hope leaders in countries around the world will incorporate scientific perspectives about the food system into their national policies. To do otherwise “takes us in a direction that makes us more and more fragile,” he said.“I mean both in terms of supply of food, but also in terms of health and in terms of stability of our environments,” Rockström said. “And this is a recipe to make societies weaker and weaker.”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

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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

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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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