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‘We don’t know where the money is going’: the ‘carbon cowboys’ making millions from credit schemes

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Friday, March 15, 2024

In the districts surrounding Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe, most people have little idea their villages were at the centre of a multimillion-dollar carbon boom. Punctuated by straw-thatched mud houses, the Miombo woodlands on the edge of the enormous artificial lake are mostly home to smallholder farmers. The gravel roads are full of potholes; cars are infrequent, as are medical facilities and internet connections. Data on the region is patchy, but Hurungwe district, that covers a number of the villages has an average poverty rate of 88%.These communities fall within the vast, lucrative Kariba conservation project, encompassing an area almost the size of Puerto Rico. It is among the largest in a portfolio of forest offsetting schemes approved by Verra, the world’s largest certifier. Since 2011, this project alone has generated revenue of more than €100m (£85m) from selling carbon credits equivalent to Kenya’s 2022 national emissions to western companies, according to now-deleted figures published by the project developer. Proponents say these schemes are a quick way of transferring billions of dollars of climate and biodiversity finance to the developing world through company net zero pledges.A forest conservation area in Mbire, one of four districts involved in the project. Photograph: Cynthia R Matonhodze/Bloomberg/Getty ImagesMore than a decade on from the project’s inception, however, many local people say the projects and infrastructure they anticipated never emerged. Only a fraction of the €100m has been distributed to the villages within the project.‘We are not seeing money trickle down’“Surely a reward must come,” says Rogers Kavura, a 46-year-old who lives in Chikova village in Hurungwe district. He became a forest ranger with the local council, funded by the offsetting project.Rogers Kavura, a forest ranger in Chikova village in Hurungwe, says the community would like to see improvements to roads, schools, health and irrigation. Photograph: Annie Mpalume/The Guardian“We hear reports that the company has been making lots of money, but we do not know where this money is going. The community is complaining because they are not seeing money trickle down,” Kavura says.South Pole, the carbon scheme’s broker and technical lead, walked away from the Kariba scheme in October saying it was determined to learn from its experience on the project. The changes followed exposés by Follow the Money, Die Zeit and the New Yorker, which raised concerns about its financial transparency and undisclosed trophy-hunting activity in the project area. The confusion leaves Kariba’s villages and forests with an uncertain future. And after a year of controversies, the wider carbon market is in crisis – with some experts concerned other schemes around the world could be abandoned amid evidence that many projects are producing huge numbers of worthless credits that many believe do not mitigate global heating.Under this kind of carbon offsetting scheme, communities are meant to be rewarded – via cash or investment in local infrastructure – for keeping trees standing. In reality, however, there are no legal or contractual obligations for companies selling offsets to share revenues, which are often kept secret by project developers.What is a carbon credit?Carbon credits represent a ton of carbon dioxide or equivalent greenhouse gas that has been removed from the atmosphere, or whose release has been avoided. How are they created?The vast majority of credits are generated by avoiding emissions. For example: protecting a section of carbon-dense rainforest that would otherwise be cut down, or paying to switch the energy supply in a developing country to renewables when it would otherwise have been unaffordable to do so.  What is offsetting?Credits are used by companies to “offset” their emissions, theoretically cancelling out the impact of polluting activities like flying, driving or buying new clothes.Do they work? Supporters of carbon markets say that they can have a major impact on slowing global heating by providing desperately needed funds for mitigation, particularly in developing countries. But whether it be renewable energy or rainforest protection schemes, many studies show that carbon offsetting projects often have limited benefits. A growing number of regulators are taking action, with the EU set to ban the use of offsetting for advertising claims by 2026 in the bloc. Much of the €100m revenue generated by Kariba has been carved off along the way by the project developers in fees and expenses: €86m went into costs and profits assigned to the broker and technical lead South Pole and to the project coordinator Carbon Green Investments. In the end, only a maximum of €14m went to Kariba’s communities through cash transfers and infrastructure improvements.Schoolchildren at a tap installed by Carbon Green Investments at Chikova secondary school as part of the Kariba project. Photograph: Annie Mpalume/The GuardianThe Guardian reviewed project documents, approached district council officials, contacted Verra, South Pole and Steve Wentzel, the Zimbabwean entrepreneur who owns land for the Kariba project and owns Carbon Green Investments, the company responsible for distributing the funds; and sent a reporter to Kariba to interview people and look for evidence of projects. While there was evidence some funds had been distributed to communities in the area, we found that only a fraction of the project’s revenue reached ground level.South Pole – which was not involved in providing any services on the ground – made €18m (£15m) profit, according to its figures, since deleted from its website – more than was spent on Kariba itself. The Swiss firm deducted €24m in costs before sending €57m to Wentzel for his 30% share of revenue, project costs and local communities.“On paper, the money has been given. But in practice, it has not been seen on the ground,” says Bigboy Mangirazi, a teacher living in the carbon project area.Carbon Green Investments installed solar-powered pumps and water tanks in Chikova. Photograph: Annie Mpalume/The Guardian“I have been speaking with local chiefs. They have nothing to show for it,” he says. “There is a small agriculture field and a few borehole projects. We need to see visible things on the ground. People are very angry. How much are we benefiting from the carbon project?”Under the rules of Verra – which approves three-quarters of all voluntary carbon offsets – project developers are not required to disclose or audit where the money from credits goes.The ‘carbon cowboys’For companies that traded in Kariba’s carbon credits, however, there is little doubt of the financial benefits generated by the project. During the pandemic, prices for forest carbon credits rose dramatically, from less than $1 a tonne to more than $30 a tonne (78p to £23.30) for some schemes. In the process, projects like Kariba were transformed from struggling conservation schemes into financial assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The credits have been traded by a growing number of carbon desks at investment banks and oil companies at lucrative premiums.Experts say that the Kariba example is illustrative of wider issues within the market, where forest-preservation projects often benefit international traders over local communities.A Kariba project poster in an office of the Mbire district council. Photograph: Cynthia R Matonhodze/Getty Images“Nature-based carbon markets have largely been co-opted by groups affectionately known in the industry as ‘carbon cowboys’. These groups spent much of the last 15 years snapping up and enrolling large tracts of land in the developing world, with little care for Indigenous rights governing these areas, or ensuring that local inhabitants get paid for their conservation work,” says Elias Ayrey, a remote-sensing forest scientist who runs Renoster, a company that reviews the quality of carbon projects, and who publicly raised concerns about the project a year ago.He calls Kariba “a textbook example”. “Them walking away from the project is an abandonment of the commitments that they made at the start … to ensure that the trees remained intact for 30 years and that local people benefited from the work,” Ayrey says.Concerns about “carbon cowboys” and management of carbon projects are widespread. Away from Kariba, insiders worry about whether organised crime and money laundering have infiltrated carbon markets, where tens of millions of dollars can pass through schemes with few checks. In some projects, people have been forced from their homes. One scheme has faced allegations of widespread sexual abuse while claiming it was supporting local women. Other project developers have promised to establish land rights or provide community benefits, then failed to deliver.“It is common for developers of carbon offsetting projects to forcefully assert local communities and Indigenous peoples are the main beneficiaries of their initiatives – yet these claims are usually unverifiable given the secrecy reigning over projects’ revenues and expenses,” says Luciana Téllez, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch. “Generally, only companies running the projects really know how much money is trickling down, and how much their executives and business partners are cashing in.”Pupils of Kazangarare primary school in Hurungwe shelter from the sun. Photograph: Annie Mpalume/The GuardianShe continues: “The certification standards that dominate the voluntary carbon market do not actually require developers to equitably share profits with communities on whose land the project may be taking place. As it stands, the lack of transparency over projects’ revenues makes it impossible to fact check the sweeping claims about offsetting projects being a major source of livelihood for Indigenous peoples and local communities.”After the New Yorker and Follow the Money published reports on the Kariba project and South Pole left the scheme, Renat Heuberger, the longtime South Pole CEO, stepped down. The company would not speak to the Guardian about the scheme, instead pointing to two previous statements defending Kariba as a positive example of carbon markets working, which had benefited local people. South Pole said distributing funds from the project had not been its responsibility and announced senior leadership team changes in 2024.Wentzel, the owner of Carbon Green Investments, has faced significant scrutiny of the financial management and book-keeping on the project. He was ultimately able to provide the Guardian with internal documentation explaining €14m of distributed funds, including detailed receipts and invoices for about €4.5m of that total. He is undertaking a voluntary audit with Deloitte.Farmers in a Carbon Green Investments community garden in Chikova. Photograph: Annie Mpalume/The GuardianHe says: “Experiencing the realities on the ground, along with understanding the associated costs and challenges, provides valuable context. Despite being operational for 12 years, Kariba Redd+ remains the only project of its kind in Zimbabwe, indicating the absence of viable alternatives or investor interest. Zimbabwe’s unique economic climate over the past 22 years defies comparison or adherence to standard guidelines.” Wentzel says the project would need to continue selling carbon credits to keep going.There are also questions about whether companies that bought the offsets from the unregulated market have had the environmental impact they were promised. Analysis by Renoster concludes that the project has massively overstated the threat to the forest. The methodology used to generate the credits has since been discontinued by Verra.Verra said it could not comment on many of the issues raised about Kariba while it is under review, but says it is an outlier.“Kariba represents an unprecedented situation … and remains an outlier in the long history of impactful Redd+ projects around the world. Verra-registered projects have kept forests standing and are a critical solution to avoiding the worst impacts of climate change,” a spokesperson says.Carbon Green Investments reportedly helped to install gutters on Chikova secondary school buildings. Photograph: Annie Mpalume/The GuardianVerra says project proponents can be suspended if unethical or illegal behaviour takes place, and it is assessing options to deal with alleged issues with the environmental integrity of the Kariba carbon credits. It says a key principle of its carbon standard is that it does not negatively affect the natural environment or local people.A teetering marketThe Kariba mega-project is unlikely to be alone in facing uncertainty. In January 2023, a joint investigation by the Guardian found more than 90% of offsets from a large proportion of projects were likely to be worthless. Many of the largest rainforest offset projects produced huge numbers of worthless credits, according to studies analysed in the investigation. Verra is reforming the system, introducing new rules for dozens of projects. But the reforms could mean schemes like Kariba are caught in between if they receive far fewer credits under the new system.The value of the carbon market dropped significantly in 2023, falling from more than $2bn in 2021 to $343m in part-year figures to November of 2023, according to figures released in November by Ecosystem Marketplace. Companies are also facing scrutiny for their offsetting claims.Delta, which is being sued in California over its claims to be a “carbon neutral” company, has stopped buying carbon credits. Delta strongly disputes the case. Barclays, L’Oréal and McKinsey are among the companies that say they have either used up all their Kariba credits or have no plans to buy more, according to Bloomberg. The US’s climate envoy, John Kerry, says the voluntary carbon market could become the “largest marketplace the world will have ever known”, but there is little sign of that becoming reality in the short term.Forest in Mbire. ‘Forest protection projects are leaving a track record of winners and losers,’ says one researcher. Photograph: Cynthia R Matonhodze/Bloomberg/Getty Images“Far from being the win-win solution that project developers and others promote, forest protection projects, especially when over-credited, are leaving a track record of winners and losers,” says Libby Blanchard, a researcher at the University of Utah who co-authored a UC Berkeley report in September identifying widespread issues with the offsetting system.“These cases make forest protection schemes look more like a money-making machine for the developed world than a real intervention,” she says.“In the Kariba project, project developers walked away with significant amounts of money and won. The people whose livelihoods the project affected – and who are the least responsible for climate change – lost out on leveraging those funds, as did the forest and biodiversity.”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

Carbon schemes are touted as a way to transfer billions in climate finance to the developing world – but people at the Kariba project in Zimbabwe say most of the profits never arriveIn the districts surrounding Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe, most people have little idea their villages were at the centre of a multimillion-dollar carbon boom. Punctuated by straw-thatched mud houses, the Miombo woodlands on the edge of the enormous artificial lake are mostly home to smallholder farmers. The gravel roads are full of potholes; cars are infrequent, as are medical facilities and internet connections. Data on the region is patchy, but Hurungwe district, that covers a number of the villages has an average poverty rate of 88%.These communities fall within the vast, lucrative Kariba conservation project, encompassing an area almost the size of Puerto Rico. It is among the largest in a portfolio of forest offsetting schemes approved by Verra, the world’s largest certifier. Since 2011, this project alone has generated revenue of more than €100m (£85m) from selling carbon credits equivalent to Kenya’s 2022 national emissions to western companies, according to now-deleted figures published by the project developer. Proponents say these schemes are a quick way of transferring billions of dollars of climate and biodiversity finance to the developing world through company net zero pledges. Continue reading...

In the districts surrounding Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe, most people have little idea their villages were at the centre of a multimillion-dollar carbon boom. Punctuated by straw-thatched mud houses, the Miombo woodlands on the edge of the enormous artificial lake are mostly home to smallholder farmers. The gravel roads are full of potholes; cars are infrequent, as are medical facilities and internet connections. Data on the region is patchy, but Hurungwe district, that covers a number of the villages has an average poverty rate of 88%.

These communities fall within the vast, lucrative Kariba conservation project, encompassing an area almost the size of Puerto Rico. It is among the largest in a portfolio of forest offsetting schemes approved by Verra, the world’s largest certifier. Since 2011, this project alone has generated revenue of more than €100m (£85m) from selling carbon credits equivalent to Kenya’s 2022 national emissions to western companies, according to now-deleted figures published by the project developer. Proponents say these schemes are a quick way of transferring billions of dollars of climate and biodiversity finance to the developing world through company net zero pledges.

A forest conservation area in Mbire, one of four districts involved in the project. Photograph: Cynthia R Matonhodze/Bloomberg/Getty Images

More than a decade on from the project’s inception, however, many local people say the projects and infrastructure they anticipated never emerged. Only a fraction of the €100m has been distributed to the villages within the project.

‘We are not seeing money trickle down’

“Surely a reward must come,” says Rogers Kavura, a 46-year-old who lives in Chikova village in Hurungwe district. He became a forest ranger with the local council, funded by the offsetting project.

Rogers Kavura, a forest ranger in Chikova village in Hurungwe, says the community would like to see improvements to roads, schools, health and irrigation. Photograph: Annie Mpalume/The Guardian

“We hear reports that the company has been making lots of money, but we do not know where this money is going. The community is complaining because they are not seeing money trickle down,” Kavura says.

South Pole, the carbon scheme’s broker and technical lead, walked away from the Kariba scheme in October saying it was determined to learn from its experience on the project. The changes followed exposés by Follow the Money, Die Zeit and the New Yorker, which raised concerns about its financial transparency and undisclosed trophy-hunting activity in the project area. The confusion leaves Kariba’s villages and forests with an uncertain future. And after a year of controversies, the wider carbon market is in crisis – with some experts concerned other schemes around the world could be abandoned amid evidence that many projects are producing huge numbers of worthless credits that many believe do not mitigate global heating.

Under this kind of carbon offsetting scheme, communities are meant to be rewarded – via cash or investment in local infrastructure – for keeping trees standing. In reality, however, there are no legal or contractual obligations for companies selling offsets to share revenues, which are often kept secret by project developers.

What is a carbon credit?

Carbon credits represent a ton of carbon dioxide or equivalent greenhouse gas that has been removed from the atmosphere, or whose release has been avoided. 

How are they created?

The vast majority of credits are generated by avoiding emissions. For example: protecting a section of carbon-dense rainforest that would otherwise be cut down, or paying to switch the energy supply in a developing country to renewables when it would otherwise have been unaffordable to do so.  

What is offsetting?

Credits are used by companies to “offset” their emissions, theoretically cancelling out the impact of polluting activities like flying, driving or buying new clothes.

Do they work? 

Supporters of carbon markets say that they can have a major impact on slowing global heating by providing desperately needed funds for mitigation, particularly in developing countries. But whether it be renewable energy or rainforest protection schemes, many studies show that carbon offsetting projects often have limited benefits. A growing number of regulators are taking action, with the EU set to ban the use of offsetting for advertising claims by 2026 in the bloc. 

Much of the €100m revenue generated by Kariba has been carved off along the way by the project developers in fees and expenses: €86m went into costs and profits assigned to the broker and technical lead South Pole and to the project coordinator Carbon Green Investments. In the end, only a maximum of €14m went to Kariba’s communities through cash transfers and infrastructure improvements.

Schoolchildren at a tap installed by Carbon Green Investments at Chikova secondary school as part of the Kariba project. Photograph: Annie Mpalume/The Guardian

The Guardian reviewed project documents, approached district council officials, contacted Verra, South Pole and Steve Wentzel, the Zimbabwean entrepreneur who owns land for the Kariba project and owns Carbon Green Investments, the company responsible for distributing the funds; and sent a reporter to Kariba to interview people and look for evidence of projects. While there was evidence some funds had been distributed to communities in the area, we found that only a fraction of the project’s revenue reached ground level.

South Pole – which was not involved in providing any services on the ground – made €18m (£15m) profit, according to its figures, since deleted from its website – more than was spent on Kariba itself. The Swiss firm deducted €24m in costs before sending €57m to Wentzel for his 30% share of revenue, project costs and local communities.

“On paper, the money has been given. But in practice, it has not been seen on the ground,” says Bigboy Mangirazi, a teacher living in the carbon project area.

Carbon Green Investments installed solar-powered pumps and water tanks in Chikova. Photograph: Annie Mpalume/The Guardian

“I have been speaking with local chiefs. They have nothing to show for it,” he says. “There is a small agriculture field and a few borehole projects. We need to see visible things on the ground. People are very angry. How much are we benefiting from the carbon project?”

Under the rules of Verra – which approves three-quarters of all voluntary carbon offsets – project developers are not required to disclose or audit where the money from credits goes.

The ‘carbon cowboys’

For companies that traded in Kariba’s carbon credits, however, there is little doubt of the financial benefits generated by the project. During the pandemic, prices for forest carbon credits rose dramatically, from less than $1 a tonne to more than $30 a tonne (78p to £23.30) for some schemes. In the process, projects like Kariba were transformed from struggling conservation schemes into financial assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The credits have been traded by a growing number of carbon desks at investment banks and oil companies at lucrative premiums.

Experts say that the Kariba example is illustrative of wider issues within the market, where forest-preservation projects often benefit international traders over local communities.

A Kariba project poster in an office of the Mbire district council. Photograph: Cynthia R Matonhodze/Getty Images

“Nature-based carbon markets have largely been co-opted by groups affectionately known in the industry as ‘carbon cowboys’. These groups spent much of the last 15 years snapping up and enrolling large tracts of land in the developing world, with little care for Indigenous rights governing these areas, or ensuring that local inhabitants get paid for their conservation work,” says Elias Ayrey, a remote-sensing forest scientist who runs Renoster, a company that reviews the quality of carbon projects, and who publicly raised concerns about the project a year ago.

He calls Kariba “a textbook example”. “Them walking away from the project is an abandonment of the commitments that they made at the start … to ensure that the trees remained intact for 30 years and that local people benefited from the work,” Ayrey says.

Concerns about “carbon cowboys” and management of carbon projects are widespread. Away from Kariba, insiders worry about whether organised crime and money laundering have infiltrated carbon markets, where tens of millions of dollars can pass through schemes with few checks. In some projects, people have been forced from their homes. One scheme has faced allegations of widespread sexual abuse while claiming it was supporting local women. Other project developers have promised to establish land rights or provide community benefits, then failed to deliver.

“It is common for developers of carbon offsetting projects to forcefully assert local communities and Indigenous peoples are the main beneficiaries of their initiatives – yet these claims are usually unverifiable given the secrecy reigning over projects’ revenues and expenses,” says Luciana Téllez, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch. “Generally, only companies running the projects really know how much money is trickling down, and how much their executives and business partners are cashing in.”

Pupils of Kazangarare primary school in Hurungwe shelter from the sun. Photograph: Annie Mpalume/The Guardian

She continues: “The certification standards that dominate the voluntary carbon market do not actually require developers to equitably share profits with communities on whose land the project may be taking place. As it stands, the lack of transparency over projects’ revenues makes it impossible to fact check the sweeping claims about offsetting projects being a major source of livelihood for Indigenous peoples and local communities.”

After the New Yorker and Follow the Money published reports on the Kariba project and South Pole left the scheme, Renat Heuberger, the longtime South Pole CEO, stepped down. The company would not speak to the Guardian about the scheme, instead pointing to two previous statements defending Kariba as a positive example of carbon markets working, which had benefited local people. South Pole said distributing funds from the project had not been its responsibility and announced senior leadership team changes in 2024.

Wentzel, the owner of Carbon Green Investments, has faced significant scrutiny of the financial management and book-keeping on the project. He was ultimately able to provide the Guardian with internal documentation explaining €14m of distributed funds, including detailed receipts and invoices for about €4.5m of that total. He is undertaking a voluntary audit with Deloitte.

Farmers in a Carbon Green Investments community garden in Chikova. Photograph: Annie Mpalume/The Guardian

He says: “Experiencing the realities on the ground, along with understanding the associated costs and challenges, provides valuable context. Despite being operational for 12 years, Kariba Redd+ remains the only project of its kind in Zimbabwe, indicating the absence of viable alternatives or investor interest. Zimbabwe’s unique economic climate over the past 22 years defies comparison or adherence to standard guidelines.” Wentzel says the project would need to continue selling carbon credits to keep going.

There are also questions about whether companies that bought the offsets from the unregulated market have had the environmental impact they were promised. Analysis by Renoster concludes that the project has massively overstated the threat to the forest. The methodology used to generate the credits has since been discontinued by Verra.

Verra said it could not comment on many of the issues raised about Kariba while it is under review, but says it is an outlier.

“Kariba represents an unprecedented situation … and remains an outlier in the long history of impactful Redd+ projects around the world. Verra-registered projects have kept forests standing and are a critical solution to avoiding the worst impacts of climate change,” a spokesperson says.

Carbon Green Investments reportedly helped to install gutters on Chikova secondary school buildings. Photograph: Annie Mpalume/The Guardian

Verra says project proponents can be suspended if unethical or illegal behaviour takes place, and it is assessing options to deal with alleged issues with the environmental integrity of the Kariba carbon credits. It says a key principle of its carbon standard is that it does not negatively affect the natural environment or local people.

A teetering market

The Kariba mega-project is unlikely to be alone in facing uncertainty. In January 2023, a joint investigation by the Guardian found more than 90% of offsets from a large proportion of projects were likely to be worthless. Many of the largest rainforest offset projects produced huge numbers of worthless credits, according to studies analysed in the investigation. Verra is reforming the system, introducing new rules for dozens of projects. But the reforms could mean schemes like Kariba are caught in between if they receive far fewer credits under the new system.

The value of the carbon market dropped significantly in 2023, falling from more than $2bn in 2021 to $343m in part-year figures to November of 2023, according to figures released in November by Ecosystem Marketplace. Companies are also facing scrutiny for their offsetting claims.

Delta, which is being sued in California over its claims to be a “carbon neutral” company, has stopped buying carbon credits. Delta strongly disputes the case. Barclays, L’Oréal and McKinsey are among the companies that say they have either used up all their Kariba credits or have no plans to buy more, according to Bloomberg. The US’s climate envoy, John Kerry, says the voluntary carbon market could become the “largest marketplace the world will have ever known”, but there is little sign of that becoming reality in the short term.

Forest in Mbire. ‘Forest protection projects are leaving a track record of winners and losers,’ says one researcher. Photograph: Cynthia R Matonhodze/Bloomberg/Getty Images

“Far from being the win-win solution that project developers and others promote, forest protection projects, especially when over-credited, are leaving a track record of winners and losers,” says Libby Blanchard, a researcher at the University of Utah who co-authored a UC Berkeley report in September identifying widespread issues with the offsetting system.

“These cases make forest protection schemes look more like a money-making machine for the developed world than a real intervention,” she says.

“In the Kariba project, project developers walked away with significant amounts of money and won. The people whose livelihoods the project affected – and who are the least responsible for climate change – lost out on leveraging those funds, as did the forest and biodiversity.”

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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‘It can’t withstand the heat’: fears ‘stable’ Patagonia glacier in irreversible decline

Scientists say Perito Moreno, which for decades defied trend of glacial retreat, now rapidly losing massOne of the few stable glaciers in a warming world, Perito Moreno, in Santa Cruz province, Argentina, is now undergoing a possibly irreversible retreat, scientists say.Over the past seven years, it has lost 1.92 sq km (0.74 sq miles) of ice cover and its thickness is decreasing by up to 8 metres (26 ft) a year. Continue reading...

One of the few stable glaciers in a warming world, Perito Moreno, in Santa Cruz province, Argentina, is now undergoing a possibly irreversible retreat, scientists say.Over the past seven years, it has lost 1.92 sq km (0.74 sq miles) of ice cover and its thickness is decreasing by up to 8 metres (26 ft) a year.For decades, Perito Moreno defied the global trend of glacial retreat, maintaining an exceptional balance between snow accumulation and melting. Its dramatic calving events, when massive blocks of ice crashed into Lago Argentino, became a symbol of natural wonder, drawing millions of visitors to southern Patagonia.Dr Lucas Ruiz, a glaciologist at the Argentine Institute of Nivology, Glaciology and Environmental Sciences, said: “The Perito Moreno is a very particular, exceptional glacier. Since records began, it stood out to the first explorers in the late 19th century because it showed no signs of retreat – on the contrary, it was advancing. And it continued to do so until 2018, when we began to see a different behaviour. Since then, its mass loss has become increasingly rapid.”Scientists and local guides warn that the balance is beginning to shift. “The first year the glacier didn’t return to its previous year’s position was 2022. The same happened in 2023, again in 2024, and now in 2025. The truth is, the retreat continues. The glacier keeps thinning, especially along its northern margin,” said Ruiz. This sector is the farthest from tourist walkways and lies above the deepest part of Lago Argentino, the largest freshwater lake in Argentina.Calving events at Perito Moreno, when ice collapses into the lake, are becoming louder, more frequent, and much larger. Photograph: Philipp Rohner/Getty Images/500pxThe summer of 2023-24 recorded a maximum temperature of 11.2C, according to meteorological data collected by Pedro Skvarca, a geophysical engineer and the scientific director of the Glaciarium centre in El Calafate, Patagonia. Over the past 30 years, the average summer temperature rose by 1.2C, a change significant enough to greatly accelerate ice melt.Ice thickness measurements are equally alarming. Between 2018 and 2022, the glacier was thinning at a rate of 4 metres a year. But in the past two years, that has doubled to 8 metres annually.“Perito Moreno’s size no longer matches the current climate; it’s simply too big. It can’t withstand the heat, and the current ice input isn’t enough to compensate,” Ruiz said.Ice that once rested on the lakebed owing to its weight, said Ruiz, had now thinned so much that it was beginning to float, as water pressure overtook the ice’s own.With that anchor lost, the glacier’s front accelerates – not because of increased mass input from the accumulation zone, where snow compacts into ice, but because the front slides and deforms. This movement triggers a feedback loop that further weakens the structure, making the process potentially irreversible.Xabier Blanch Gorriz, a professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, who studies ice calving at the Perito Moreno glacier front, said: “Describing the change as ‘irreversible’ is complex, because glaciers are dynamic systems. But the truth is that the current rate of retreat points to a clearly negative trend.” He added: “The glacier’s retreat and thinning are evident and have accelerated.”Ruiz confirmed another disturbing trend reported by local guides: calving events are becoming louder, more frequent, and much larger. In April, a guide at Los Glaciares national park described watching a tower of ice the height of a 20-storey building collapse into the lake. “It’s only in the last four to six years that we’ve started seeing icebergs this size,” he told Reuters.skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionIn January of this year, Blanch Gorriz and his team installed eight photogrammetric systems that capture images every 30 minutes, enabling the generation of 3D models of about 300 metres of the glacier front. Initial comparisons between December and June already reveal significant ice loss. Satellite images further highlight a striking retreat over just 100 days.Today, nothing seems capable of halting the glacier’s retreat. Only a series of cooler summers and wetter winters might slow the trend, but climate projections point in the opposite direction.“What we expect is that, at some point, Perito Moreno will lose contact with the Magallanes peninsula, which has historically acted as a stabilising buttress and slowed the glacier’s response to climate change. When that happens, we’ll likely see a catastrophic retreat to a new equilibrium position, farther back in the narrow valley,” said Ruiz.Such a shift would represent a “new configuration” of the glacier, raising scientific questions about how this natural wonder would behave in the future. “It will be something never seen before – even farther back than what the first researchers documented in the late 19th century,” Ruiz nadded.How long the glacier might hold that future position remains unknown. But what scientists do know is that the valley, unlike the Magallanes peninsula, would not be able to hold the glacier in place.Perito Moreno – Latin America’s most iconic glacier and part of a Unesco world heritage site since 1981 – now joins a regrettable local trend: its neighbours, the Upsala and Viedma glaciers, have retreated at an astonishing rate over the past two decades. It is also part of a global pattern in which, as Ruiz put it, humanity is “digging the grave” of the world’s glaciers.

Seeing fewer fireflies this year? Here’s why, and how you can help.

Fireflies are vulnerable to climate change and habitat loss. Some simple landscaping tricks and turning off porch lights can make a big difference.

It’s firefly season in the Blue Ridge.  As the sun goes down, they begin to blink and glow along the water, in the trees, and across open fields. Some species twinkle in unison, others off and on. One of nature’s loveliest light shows enchants onlookers of all ages, especially in the Smoky Mountains, which is home to about 20 percent of the 100 or so species found in the United States. But many of those who have long delighted in this essential feature of a humid East Coast summer say something feels different. Casual observers and scientists alike are seeing fewer fireflies, and studies show that habitat loss, rising temperatures, light pollution, and drought threaten these beloved bugs. Some populations are already dwindling, including about 18 species in the U.S. and Canada. “We’ve been hearing anecdotal reports of fireflies’ population declining for years,” said Sarah Lower, a biologist at Bucknell University. “Every time I would go out and give a scientific talk somewhere, somebody would raise their hand and say, ‘You know, I’ve been out in my yard and when I’m with a kid I remember there being fireflies everywhere, now I don’t see them.’” Lower and Darin J. McNeil, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Kentucky, examined  firefly population patterns last summer, using citizen science data collected nationwide to draw connections with environmental conditions.Though their observations don’t specifically confirm a decline, they suggest reasons we might be seeing fewer fireflies in some places. Climate change is already reshaping the Southeast with hotter, drier summers — conditions that could push fireflies past their limits. In some wetter regions, though, they may find new habitat. McNeil said these changing patterns are impacting firefly populations already. “They’re very, very sensitive to temperature and weather and things like that,” McNeil said. “In Southern areas where we expect it to get quite warm — and maybe get outside the comfort zone of fireflies — we might expect the fireflies are going to do poorly.” Read Next A year after Helene, river guides in Appalachia are navigating a new world Katie Myers Fireflies are carnivorous beetles. They don’t live long, and spend two years of their short lives in the soil as larvae, hunting slugs and other moisture-loving critters. “Disrupt that access to the soil, McNeil said, “and fireflies disappear very quickly.” The insects thrive in woodland areas (and, oddly, on farmland, despite herbicides), and habitat loss poses a threat. “We have this effect of fragmentation where people are chopping up the forest into little chunks and then the forest that’s left behind doesn’t get managed in any way,” McNeil said. McNeil would like to see researchers study how forest management, including prescribed burning, impacts fireflies. In the meantime, there’s a lot that ordinary folks can do to help them thrive. In western North Carolina, Brannen Basham and Jill Jacobs have built their lives around native landscapes. Their small business, Spriggly’s Beescaping, teaches people about pollinators — and increasingly, fireflies. The pair have a seemingly endless knowledge of fun facts about lightning bugs.  “One random interesting fact is that these animals never stop glowing,” Jacobs said. “They’re glowing as little eggs, even.” And one of the most common front yard genus, Photuris, use their glow to lure nearby males — then eat them. They take firefly conservation seriously, running regular workshops to teach people how to make their yards more welcoming to fireflies and pollinators, particularly as climate change disrupts growing seasons. “Fireflies might enter into their adult form and find themselves emerging into a world in which their favorite plants have either already bloomed or they haven’t bloomed yet,” Basham said. “By increasing the diversity of native plants in your space, you can help ensure that there’s something in bloom at all times of the growing season.” Basham and Jacobs have a few other tips for helping fireflies thrive. You don’t need to be a scientist to help protect fireflies. In fact, the biggest difference comes from how we care for our own backyards. Here are a few things Basham and Jacobs recommend: Turn off your porch lights. Fireflies are incredibly sensitive to artificial light and it can confuse them. Ditch the manicured lawn and embrace native plants. In addition to being easier to care for, they suit the local environment and conserve water. Leave some leaves behind when you rake in the fall. They’re a great place for fireflies to find food, stay cool, and lay eggs. Plant shrubs, tufting grasses, and other, large plants. These can shelter fireflies during rainstorms and other severe weather.  If you spot fireflies, jot down when and where you saw them and add your observations to citizen science databases like iNaturalist, Firefly Watch or Firefly Atlas to help scientists collect data. Even among those who study fireflies, the thrill of spotting them remains magical. Lower has made many excursions to the southern Appalachian mountains to find the famous, ethereal “blue ghosts.” Rather than flicker, the insects emit a continuous bluish-green glow. “You walk into the pitch black woods and at first you can’t really see anything right because your eyes are getting used to the darkness,” Lower said. “But eventually you start to see all these dim glows.” On other nights, Lower has seen so many fireflies it felt like she was walking among he stars. She’s been lucky enough to witness a phenomenon called spotlighting, in which lightning bugs hover in a circle of light. She’s even used pheromones as a tactic to lure them out of their hiding spots in the dead of winter, feeling elated as the creatures drifted toward her: “You can imagine me dancing and yelling and screaming in the forest.” This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Seeing fewer fireflies this year? Here’s why, and how you can help. on Jul 11, 2025.

Drought is draining water supplies and driving up food costs where you’d least expect

From Mexico City to the Mekong Delta, increasingly severe droughts caused by climate change are laying waste to ecosystems and economies everywhere.

Taking shovels and buckets to a dried-up sandy belt of the Vhombozi River in Zimbabwe last August, groups of Mudzi district villagers gathered to dig with the hope of somehow finding water. The southern African region had entered into a state of severe drought, which had shriveled the Vhombozi, a primary water supply for more than 100,000 people. Before long, a maze of makeshift holes revealed shallow puddles along the otherwise arid riverbed. The frantic digging had worked — there was water. There was just one big problem: It wasn’t blue. It was a muddy brown color, and villagers worried that consuming it would make them ill. But as there were scarcely other options, many took their chances with drinking it and bathing with it.  Almost a year later, the persistent drought has led to a deluge of devastation on the region’s food system. Corn yields dropped 70 percent across the country, causing consumer prices to double. Thousands of cattle were lost to thirst and starvation. A local UNICEF emergency food distribution lost all of the food crops it harvested, which forced the NGO to reduce charitable food provisions from three meals a week to one. Child malnutrition levels in Mudzi doubled, driving up the demand for health care, and causing a quarter of health care clinics to run out of water reserves. Between January and March, about 6 million people in Zimbabwe faced food insecurity. According to a new report by the U.S. National Drought Mitigation Center, or NDMC, and the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification, or UNCCD, the combined effects of global warming, drought, and El Niño have triggered similar crises all over the world, from Mexico City to the Mekong Delta. Using impact reports alongside government data, scientific and technical research, and media coverage of major drought events, the authors examined case-by-case how droughts compound poverty, hunger, energy insecurity, and ecosystem collapse in climate hot spots around the world. They measured impacts in 2023 and 2024, when the planet saw some of the most widespread and damaging drought events in recorded history. What they found is a lesson and a warning sign: Increasingly severe droughts caused by climate change are laying waste to ecosystems and economies everywhere.  “This report is a blistering reminder that climate change and punishing drought are already devastating lives, livelihoods, and food access,” said Million Belay of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, and general coordinator of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, who wasn’t involved in the research. “We need to get serious about resilience and real adaptation.” A local farmer carries vegetables near a partially dry canal of a Chinampa, or floating garden, in San Gregorio Atlapulco, on the outskirts of Mexico City, Mexico, on May 23, 2024. Daniel Cardenas / Anadolu via Getty Images Mexico City A focal point in the analysis is Mexico, where prolonged drought conditions provoked a water crisis that has had repercussions for food affordability and access.  The situation began to intensify in 2023, when the country entered into a period of historically low rainfall. By June, the bulk of Mexico’s reservoirs dropped below 50 percent capacity. The rainy winter of 2023 brought some relief, but not enough.  By the next summer, 90 percent of the country was experiencing some level of drought, and Mexico City’s water supply system reached a record low of 39 percent capacity. Abnormally low rainfall and high temperatures, made worse by inefficient water infrastructure and overextraction of the city’s aquifer, would persist into early 2025. These struggles to obtain water have been further exacerbated by distribution needs as mandated by a water-sharing treaty Mexico has long shared with the United States.  A severe lack of water has been found to be closely linked with food insecurity, as water scarcity impacts food access through reductions in agricultural production that can fuel food shortages and higher grocery prices. Roughly 42 percent of Mexico’s population was food-insecure in 2021, according to national statistics, with consumer food inflation rates steadily climbing since then. Price hikes were eventually reflected in grocery stores, causing the costs of produce like cilantro to soar by 400 percent, alongside other climbing price tags for goods like onions, broccoli, and avocados.  “Ripple effects can turn regional droughts into global economic shocks,” said NDMC’s Cody Knutson, who co-authored the report. “No country is immune when critical water-dependent systems start to collapse.”  Locals carry banana produce over the dry Solimoes riverbed in the Pesqueiro community in Northern Brazil, on September 30, 2024. Michael Dantas / AFP via Getty Images Amazon Basin During those same years, the Amazon River Basin became another drought and hunger hot spot. According to the new report, climate change caused waterways to drop to historically low levels in September of 2023. Drinking water became contaminated by mass die-offs of marine life, and local communities weren’t able to eat the fish they rely on.  Supply chain transportation was also greatly affected, as the low water levels made it impossible for boats to travel in and out of certain regions. Brazil’s AirForce would be deployed to distribute food and water to several states where river supply routes were impassable.  Residents in some towns dug wells on their own properties to replace river water they would normally depend on for drinking, cooking, and cleaning, according to the U.N.-backed report. Others were stuck waiting on government aid. Disruptions to drinking water and food supplies due to low river levels continued through late 2024 as the drought persisted. By September, waterways that had previously been navigable were bone-dry.  A 2025 report released by the nonprofit ACAPS found that many communities in the Amazon region were already believed to be suffering malnutrition, making them more vulnerable to the emerging health and food insecurity effects of the drought.  Climate change plays “a critical role in food security,” said FAO economist Jung-eun Sohn, who is unaffiliated with the UNCCD report. He noted that warming not only can impact both availability of and access to food, but that natural hazards are “one of three main risks of food insecurity,” along with conflict and economic risks, in hunger hot spots.  A woman stands in a dried-out banana plantation in Ben Tre Province, Vietnam, in 2016. At the time, Vietnam’s Mekong Delta was experiencing its worst drought in 90 years. Christian Berg / Getty Images Mekong Delta  Though a central contributor to the interconnected water-and-food crisis, climate change isn’t the only factor in many hunger hot spots — failing infrastructure and inefficiencies in water delivery systems have also been flagged as critical contributors to widespread water shortages. The compounding effect of El Niño, or a naturally-occurring weather phenomena that drives above-average global heat and more intense natural disasters in parts of the planet, is another culprit.  “It’s now abundantly clear that industrial, chemical-intensive agriculture, with its high water demands and uniform crops, is deeply vulnerable to drought and intensifying the crisis,” said Belay, the IPES expert.  One study found that saltwater intrusion, much like what persistently plagues the Mekong River Delta in Vietnam, also causes a significant reduction in food production. The watershed flows through six Asian countries, and over 20 million people depend on the rice grown in the region, which is Vietnam’s most productive agricultural area. It is also the region of Vietnam that is most vulnerable to hunger, with up to half of its rural households struggling to afford enough food.  A woman looks over her spoiled watermelon field in Ben Tre Province, Vietnam, in 2016. At the time, Vietnam’s Mekong Delta was experiencing its worst drought in 90 years. Christian Berg / Getty Images So when an early heat wave struck the Mekong Delta in 2024, and an abnormally long dry spell followed suit, causing canals to dry up, excessive salinity, heat, and water scarcity killed farmers’ catch in droves, reducing what communities were able to supply and sell, which led to shortages that prompted the local government to intervene and help producers quickly sell their wares. As the drought persisted, communities undertook other desperate measures to mitigate losses; renovating ditches, constructing temporary reservoirs, digging wells, and storing fresh water. Even so, according to the report, up to 110,000 hectares of agricultural resources, including fruit crops, rice fields, and aquaculture, have been impacted in the last year by the drought and excess salinity. The situation contributed to rice shortages, prompting a widespread inflationary effect on market prices. “These instances highlight how interconnected our global economies and food supplies are,” Paula Guastello, NDMC drought impacts researcher and lead author of the report, told Grist. “Drought has widespread implications, especially when it occurs on such a large, intense scale as during the past few years. In today’s global society, it is impossible to ignore the effects of drought occurring in far-off lands.”  All told, the authors argue that without major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, rising temperatures will lead to more frequent and severe droughts by continuing to inflate heat, evaporation, and volatile precipitation patterns. All the while, urbanization, land use changes, and population growth are expected to continue to strain water resources and influence which assets and areas are most vulnerable to drought impacts. The world’s resilience to those impacts, the report denotes, ultimately depends on the fortification of ecosystems, the adoption of changes to water management, and the pursuit of equitable resource access.  “Proactive drought management is a matter of climate justice, equitable development, and good governance,” said UNCCD Deputy Executive Secretary Andrea Meza in a statement about the report. Stronger early warning systems and real-time drought impact monitoring, for example, those that assess conditions known to fuel food and water insecurity, are some of the ways countries can better fortify their systems in preparedness for the next big drought event. Others include watershed restoration, the broad revival of traditional cultivation practices, and the implementation of alternative water supply technologies to help make infrastructure more climate-resilient. Adaptation methods, however, must also account for the most vulnerable populations, the authors say, and require global cooperation, particularly along critical food trade routes.  “Drought is not just a weather event,” said report co-author and NDMC assistant director Kelly Helm Smith. “It can be a social, economic, and environmental emergency. The question is not whether this will happen again, but whether we will be better prepared next time.” This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Drought is draining water supplies and driving up food costs where you’d least expect on Jul 9, 2025.

Provocative new book says we must persuade people to have more babies

The population is set to plummet and we don't know how to stop it, warn Dean Spears and Michael Geruso in their new book, After the Spike

A large population may enable innovation and economies of scalePHILIPPE MONTIGNY/iStockphoto/Get​ty Images After the SpikeDean Spears and Michael Geruso (Bodley Head (UK); Simon & Schuster (US)) Four-Fifths of all the humans who will ever be born may already have been born. The number of children being born worldwide each year peaked at 146 million in 2012 and has been falling overall ever since. This means that the world’s population will peak and start to fall around the 2080s. This fall won’t be gradual. With birth rates already well below replacement levels in many countries including China and India, the world’s population will plummet as fast as it rose. In three centuries, there could be fewer than 2 billion people on Earth, claims a controversial new book. “No future is more likely than that people worldwide choose to have too few children to replace their own generation. Over the long run, this would cause exponential population decline,” write economists Dean Spears and Michael Geruso in After the Spike: The risks of global depopulation and the case for people. This, you might think, could be a good thing. Won’t it help solve many environmental issues facing us today? No, say the authors. Take climate change: their argument isn’t that population size doesn’t matter, but that it changes so slowly that other factors such as how fast the world decarbonises matter far more. The window of opportunity for lowering carbon dioxide emissions by reducing population has largely passed, they write. Spears and Geruso also make the case that there are many benefits to having a large population. For instance, there is more innovation, and economies of scale make the manufacture of things like smartphones feasible. “We get to have nice phones only because we have a lot of neighbors on this planet,” they write. So, in their view, our aim should be to stabilise world population rather than letting it plummet. The problem is we don’t know how, even with the right political will. As we grow richer, we are more reluctant to abandon career and leisure opportuntiies to have children While some government policies have had short-term effects, no country has successfully changed long-term population trends, argue the authors. Take China’s one-child policy. It is widely assumed to have helped reduce population growth – but did it? Spears and Geruso show unlabelled graphs of the populations of China and its neighbours before, during and after the policy was in place, and ask the reader which is China. There is no obvious difference. Attempts to boost falling fertility rates have been no more successful, they say. Birth rates jumped after Romania banned abortion in 1966, but they soon started to fall again. Sweden has tried the carrot rather than the stick by heavily subsidising day care. But the fertility rate there has been falling even further below the replacement rate. All attempts to boost fertility by providing financial incentives are likely to fail, Spears and Geruso argue. While people might say they are having fewer children because they cannot afford larger families, the global pattern is, in fact, that as people become richer they have fewer children. Rather than affordability being the issue, it is more about people deciding that they have better things to do, the authors say. As we grow richer, we are more reluctant to abandon career and leisure opportunities to have children. Even technological advances are unlikely to reverse this, they say. On everything other than the difficulty of stabilising the population, this is a relentlessly optimistic book. For instance, say the authors, dire predictions of mass starvation as the world’s population grew have been shown to be completely wrong. The long-term trend of people living longer and healthier lives can continue, they suggest. “Fears of a depleted, overpopulated future are out of date,” they write. Really? Spears and Geruso also stress that the price of food is key to determining how many go hungry, but fail to point out that food prices are now climbing, with climate change an increasing factor. I’m not so sure things are going to keep getting better for most people. This book is also very much a polemic: with Spears and Geruso labouring their main points, it wasn’t an enjoyable read. That said, if you think that the world’s population isn’t going to fall, or that it will be easy to halt its fall, or that a falling population is a good thing, you really should read it. New Scientist book club Love reading? Come and join our friendly group of fellow book lovers. Every six weeks, we delve into an exciting new title, with members given free access to extracts from our books, articles from our authors and video interviews.

‘This is a fight for life’: climate expert on tipping points, doomerism and using wealth as a shield

Economic assumptions about risks of the climate crisis are no longer relevant, says the communications expert Genevieve GuentherClimate breakdown can be observed across many continuous, incremental changes such as soaring carbon dioxide levels, rising seas and heating oceans. The numbers creep up year after year, fuelled by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.But scientists have also identified at least 16 “tipping points” – thresholds where a tiny shift could cause fundamental parts of the Earth system to change dramatically, irreversibly and with potentially devastating effects. These shifts can interact with each other and create feedback loops that heat the planet further or disrupt weather patterns, with unknown but potentially catastrophic consequences for life on Earth. It is possible some tipping points may already have been passed. Continue reading...

Climate breakdown can be observed across many continuous, incremental changes such as soaring carbon dioxide levels, rising seas and heating oceans. The numbers creep up year after year, fuelled by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.But scientists have also identified at least 16 “tipping points” – thresholds where a tiny shift could cause fundamental parts of the Earth system to change dramatically, irreversibly and with potentially devastating effects. These shifts can interact with each other and create feedback loops that heat the planet further or disrupt weather patterns, with unknown but potentially catastrophic consequences for life on Earth. It is possible some tipping points may already have been passed.Dr Genevieve Guenther, an American climate communications specialist, is the founding director of End Climate Silence, which studies the representation of global heating in the media and public discourse. Last year, she published The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It, which was described by Bill McKibben as “a gift to the world”. In the run-up to the Global Tipping Points conference in July, Guenther talks to the Guardian about the need to discuss catastrophic risks when communicating about the climate crisis.The future of her son and all children motivates Dr Genevieve Guenther to protect the planet from further global heating. Photograph: Laila Annmarie Stevens/The GuardianThe climate crisis is pushing globally important ecosystems – ice sheets, coral reefs, ocean circulation and the Amazon rainforest – towards the point of no return. Why is it important to talk about tipping points? We need to correct a false narrative that the climate threat is under control. These enormous risks are potentially catastrophic. They would undo the connections between human and ecological systems that form the basis of all of our civilisation.How have attitudes changed towards these dangers? There was a constructive wave of global climate alarm in the wake of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on 1.5C in 2018. That was the first time scientists made it clear that the difference between 1.5C and 2C would be catastrophic for millions of people and that in order to halt global heating at a relatively safe level, we would need to start zeroing out our emissions almost immediately. Until then, I don’t think policymakers realised the timeline was that short. This prompted a flurry of activism – Greta Thunberg and Indigenous and youth activists – and a surge of media attention. All of this converged to make almost everybody feel that climate change was a terrifying and pressing problem. This prompted new pledges, new corporate sustainability targets, and new policies being passed by government.This led to a backlash by those in the climate movement who prefer to cultivate optimism. Their preferred solution was to drive capitalist investment into renewable technologies so fossil fuels could be beaten out of the marketplace. This group believed climate fear might drive away investors, so they started to argue it was counterproductive to talk about worst-case scenarios. Some commentators even argued we had averted the direst predictions and were now on a more reassuring trajectory of global warming of a little under 3C by 2100.There is a misconception that wealthier places, such as the UK, Europe (including Italy, pictured) and the US will not be affected by the climate crisis but this is wrong, says Guenther. Photograph: Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty ImagesBut it is bananas to feel reassured by that because 3C would be a totally catastrophic outcome for humanity. Even at the current level of about 1.5C, the impacts of warming are emerging on the worst side of the range of possible outcomes and there is growing concern of tipping points for the main Atlantic Ocean circulation (Amoc), Antarctic sea ice, corals and rainforests.If the risk of a plane crashing was as high as the risk of the Amoc collapsing, none of us would ever fly because they would not let the plane take off. And the idea that our little spaceship, our planet, is under the risk of essentially crashing and we’re still continuing business as usual is mindblowing. I think part of the problem is that people feel distant from the dangers and don’t realise the children we have in our homes today are threatened with a chaotic, disastrous, unliveable future. Talking about the risks of catastrophe is a very useful way to overcome this kind of false distance.In your book, you write that it’s appropriate to be scared and the more you know, the more likely you are to be worried, as is evident from the statements of scientists and the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres. Why? Some people at the centre of the media, policymaking and even research claim that climate change isn’t going to be that bad for those who live in the wealthy developed world – the UK, Europe and the United States. When you hear these messages, you are lulled into a kind of complacency and it seems reasonable to think that we can continue to live as we do now without putting ourselves, our families, our communities under threat within decades. What my book is designed to do is wake people up and raise the salience and support for phasing out fossil fuels.[It] is written for people who are already concerned about the climate crisis and are willing to entertain a level of anxiety. But the discourse of catastrophe would not be something I would recommend for people who are disengaged from the climate problem. I think that talking about catastrophe with those people can actually backfire because it’ll just either overwhelm them or make them entrench their positions. It can be too threatening.The Donnie Creek wildfire burns in British Columbia, Canada, in 2023. Photograph: Noah Berger/APA recent Yale study found that a degree of climate anxiety was not necessarily bad because it could stir people to collective action. Do you agree? It depends. I talk about three different kinds of doomerism. One is the despair that arises from misunderstanding the science and thinking we’re absolutely on the path to collapse within 20 or 30 years, no matter what we do. That is not true.Second, there’s a kind of nihilistic position taken by people who suggest they are the only ones who can look at the harsh truth. I have disdain for that position.Finally, there’s the doomerism that comes from political frustration, from believing that people who have power are just happy to burn the world down. And that to me is the most reasonable kind of doomerism. To address that kind of doomerism, you need to say: “Yes, this is scary as hell. But we must have courage and turn our fear into action by talking about climate change with others, by calling our elected officials on a regular basis, by demanding our workplaces put their money where their mouth is.”You need to acknowledge people’s feelings, meet them where they are and show how they can assuage their fear by cultivating their bravery and collective action.The most eye-opening part of your book was about the assumptions of the Nobel prize winner William Nordhaus that we’ll probably only face a very low percentage of GDP loss by the end of the century. This surely depends on ignoring tipping points? The only way Nordhaus can get the result that he does is if he fails to price the risk of catastrophe and leaves out a goodly chunk of the costs of global heating. In his models, he does not account for climate damages to labour productivity, buildings, infrastructure, transportation, non-coastal real estate, insurance, communication, government services and other sectors. But the most shocking thing he leaves out of his models is the risk that global heating could set off catastrophes, whether they are physical tipping points or wars from societal responses. That is why the percentage of global damages that he estimates is so ridiculously lowballed.The idea that climate change will just take off only a small margin of economic growth is not founded on anything empirical. It’s just a kind of quasi-religious faith in the power of capitalism to decouple itself from the planet on which it exists. That’s absurd and it’s unscientific.Some economists suggest wealth can provide almost unlimited protection from catastrophe because it is better to be in a steel and concrete building in a storm than it is to be in a wooden shack. How true is that? There’s no evidence that these protections are unlimited, though there are economists who suggest we can always substitute technologies or human-made products for ecosystems or even other planets like Mars for Earth itself. This goes back to an economic growth theorist named Robert Solow, who claims technological innovation can increase human productivity indefinitely. He stressed that it was just a theory, but the economists advising Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s took this as gospel and argued it was possible to ignore environmental externalities – the costs of our economic system, including our greenhouse gas pollution – because you could protect yourself as long as you kept increasing your wealth.Floods due to heavy rains at Porto Alegre airport left a plane stranded on the runway in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, last year. Photograph: Diego Vara/ReutersExcept when it comes to the climate crisis? Yes, the whole spectacle of our planet heating up this quickly should call all of those economic assumptions into question. But because climate change is affecting the poor first and worst, this is used as evidence that poverty is the problem. This is a misrepresentation of reality because the poor are not the only ones who are affected by the climate crisis. This is a slow-moving but accelerating crisis that will root and spread. And it could change for the worst quite dramatically as we hit tipping points.The difference between gradual warming and tipping points is similar to the difference between chronic, manageable ailments and acute, life-threatening diseases, isn’t it? Yes. When people downplay the effects of climate change, they often represent the problem as a case of planetary diabetes – as if it were a kind of illness that you can bumble along with, but still have a relatively good quality of life as long as you use your technologies, your insulin, whatever, to sustain your health. But this is not how climate scientists represent climate change. Dr Joelle Gergis, one of the lead authors on the latest IPCC report, prefers to represent climate change as a cancer – a disease that takes hold and grows and metastasises until the day when it is no longer curable and becomes terminal. You could also think of that as a tipping point.This is a fight for life. And like all fights, you need a tremendous amount of bravery to take it on. Before I started working on climate change, I didn’t think of myself as a fighter, but I became one because I felt I have a responsibility to preserve the world for my son and children everywhere. That kind of fierce protectiveness is part of the way that I love. We can draw on that to have more strength than our enemies because I don’t think they’re motivated by love. I believe love is an infinite resource and the power of it is greater than that of greed or hate. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be here.Tipping points: on the edge? – a series on our future Composite: Getty/Guardian DesignTipping points – in the Amazon, Antarctic, coral reefs and more – could cause fundamental parts of the Earth system to change dramatically, irreversibly and with devastating effects. In this series, we ask the experts about the latest science – and how it makes them feel. Tomorrow, David Obura talks about the collapse of coral reefsRead more

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