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South Korea's fishermen keep dying. Is climate change to blame?

An increase in deadly incidents has been partly caused by climate change, an inquiry found.

South Korea's fishermen keep dying. Is climate change to blame?Jean MackenzieSeoul correspondentBBC/Hosu LeeBoat owner Hong Suk-hui says the seas are becoming more dangerousHong Suk-hui was waiting on the shore of South Korea's Jeju Island when the call came. His fishing boat had capsized.Just two days earlier, the vessel had ventured out on what he had hoped would be a long and fruitful voyage. But as the winds grew stronger, its captain was ordered to turn back. On the way to port, a powerful wave struck from two directions creating a whirlpool, and the boat flipped. Five of the 10 crew members, who had been asleep in their cabins below deck, drowned."When I heard the news, I felt like the sky was falling," said Mr Hong.Last year, 164 people were killed or went missing in accidents in the seas around South Korea – a 75% jump from the year before. Most were fishermen whose boats had sunk or capsized."The weather has changed, it's getting windier every year," said Mr Hong, who also chairs the Jeju Fishing Boat Owners Association. "Whirlwinds pop up suddenly. We fisherman are convinced it is down to climate change."South Korean CoastguardFive of Mr Hong's crew members drowned when this fishing boat capsized in FebruaryAlarmed by the spike in deaths, the South Korean government launched an investigation into the accidents.This year, the head of the taskforce pinpointed climate change as one of the major causes, as well as highlighting other problems - the country's aging fishing workforce, a growing reliance on migrant workers, and poor safety training.The seas around Korea are warming more rapidly than the global average, in part because they tend to be shallower. Between 1968 and 2024, the average surface temperature of the country's seas increased by 1.58C, more than double the global rise of 0.74C.Warming waters are contributing to extreme weather at sea, creating the conditions for tropical storms, like typhoons, to become more intense.They are also causing some fish species around South Korea to migrate, according to the country's National Institute of Fisheries Science, forcing fisherman to travel further and take greater risks to catch enough to make a living.Environmental campaigners say urgent action is needed to "stop the tragedy occurring in Korean waters".BBC/Hosu LeeSome fish species are migrating from the waters around South KoreaOn a rainy June morning, Jeju Island's main harbour was crammed with fishing boats. The crews hurried back and forth between sea and land, refuelling and stocking up for their next voyage, while the boats' owners paced anxiously along the dock watching the final preparations."I'm always afraid something might happen to the boat, the risks have increased so much," said 54-year-old owner, Kim Seung-hwan. "The winds have become more unpredictable and extremely dangerous."A few years ago, Mr Kim began to notice that the popular silvery hairtail fish he relied on were disappearing from local waters, and his earnings plunged by half.Now his crews have to journey into deeper, more perilous waters to find them, sometimes sailing as far south as Taiwan."Since we're operating farther away, it's not always possible to return quickly when there's a storm warning," he said. "If we stayed closer to shore it would be safer, but to make a living we have to go farther out."BBC/Hosu LeeFishermen on South Korea's Jeju Island say hairtail fish have become scarcerProfessor Gug Seung-gi led the investigation into the recent accidents, which found that South Korea's seas appear to have become more dangerous. It noted the number of marine weather warnings around the Korean Peninsula - alerting fishermen to gales, storm surges, and typhoons - increased by 65% between 2020 and 2024."Unpredictable weather is leading to more boats capsizing, especially small fishing vessels that are going further out and are not built for such long, rough trips," he told the BBC.Professor Kim Baek-min, a climate scientist at South Korea's Pukyong National University, said that although climate change was creating the conditions to make strong, sudden wind gusts more likely, a clear trend had not yet been established – for that, more research and long-term data is needed.BBC/Hosu LeeCaptain Park fishes for anchovies from this small boatOne foggy morning, we left shore in the dark on a small trawler with Captain Park Hyung-il, who has been fishing anchovies off Korea's south coast for more than 25 years. He sang sea shanties, determined to stay upbeat. But when we reached the nets he had left out overnight, his mood crumpled.As he wound them in, the anchovies could barely be seen among the hordes of jellyfish and other fodder. Once the anchovies had been separated out, they filled just two boxes."In the past, we'd fill 50 to 100 of these baskets in a single day," he said. "But this year the anchovies have vanished and we're catching more jellyfish than fish."This is the predicament facing tens of thousands of fishermen along South Korea's coastlines. Over the past 10 years, the amount of squid caught in South Korean waters each year has plummeted 92%, while anchovy catches have fallen by 46%.BBC/Hosu LeeThere are far fewer anchovies to be sorted by fishing workersEven the anchovies Park had caught were not fit for market, he said, and would need to be sold as animal-feed."The haul is basically worthless," he sighed, explaining it would barely cover the day's fuel costs, let alone his crew's wages."The sea is a mess, nothing makes sense anymore," Park continued. "I used to love this job. There was joy knowing that someone, somewhere in the country was eating the fish I caught. But now, with barely anything to catch, that sense of pride is fading."And, with livelihoods disappearing, young people no longer want to join the industry. In 2023 almost half of South Korea's fishermen were over the age of 65, up from less than a third a decade earlier.Increasingly, elderly captains must rely on help from migrant workers from Vietnam and Indonesia. Often these workers do not receive sufficient safety training, and language barriers mean they cannot communicate with the captains – further compounding the dangers.Woojin Chung, South Korea's chief representative at the UK-based Environmental Justice Foundation, described it as "a vicious and tragic cycle".When you combine more extreme weather with the pressure to travel further, the increased fuel costs this brings, and the need to rely on cheap, untrained foreign labour, "you have a higher chance of meeting disaster", she explained.BBC/Hosu LeeFishermen Jong-un (left) and Yong-mook (right) were killed in a fishing boat accident this yearOn 9 February this year, a large shipping trawler sank suddenly near the coastal city of Yeosu, killing 10 of the crew. It was a bitterly cold, windy day, and smaller boats had been banned from going out, but this trawler was deemed sturdy enough to withstand the gales. The reason it went down is still a mystery.One of those killed was 63-year-old Young-mook. A fisherman for 40 years, he had been planning to retire, but that morning someone called and asked him to fill a last-minute opening on the boat."It was so cold that once you fell in you wouldn't survive the hypothermia, especially at his age," said his daughter Ean, still distraught over his death.Ean thinks it has become too easy for boat owners to blame climate change for accidents. Even in cases where bad weather plays a role, she believes it is still the owners' responsibility to assess the risks and keep their crew safe. "Ultimately it is their call when to go out," she said.BBC/Hosu LeeYoung-mook's daughter Ean (right) wants boat owners to make their vessels saferAs a child, she remembers her father's fridge would be filled with crabs and squid. "Now the stocks are gone, but the companies still force them to go out, and because these men have worked as fishermen their whole lives, they don't have alternative job options, so they keep fishing even when they're too frail to do so," she said.Ean also wants owners to better maintain their boats, which are aging too. "Companies have insurance, so they get compensated after a boat sinks, but our loved ones can't be replaced."The authorities, aware they cannot control the weather, are now working with fishermen to make their boats safer. As we were with Mr Hong, whose boat capsized earlier this year, a team of government inspectors arrived to carry out a series of on-the-spot checks on two of his other vessels.The government's taskforce is recommending that boats be fitted with safety ladders, fisherman be required to wear life jackets, and that safety training be mandatory for all foreign crew. It also wants to improve search and rescue operations, and for fisherman to have access to more localised and real-time weather updates.Some regions are even offering to pay fishermen for the jellyfish they catch, to try to clean up the seas, while squid fishermen are being given loans to protect them from bankruptcy, and encourage them to retire.BBC/Hosu LeeBecause the problem will likely worsen. The UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation forecasts that total fish catches in South Korea will decline by almost a third by the end of this century, if carbon emissions and global warming continue on their current trajectories."The future looks very bleak," said the anchovy fisherman Captain Park, now in his late 40s. He recently started a YouTube channel documenting his catches in the hope of earning some extra money. Park is the third generation of his family to do this work and likely the last."Back then it felt romantic getting up early and heading out to sea. There was a sense of adventure and reward.""These days it's just really tough."Additional reporting by Hosu Lee and Leehyun Choi

Animals

Government

Weaponizing wastewater laws to block abortion

An anti-abortion group has been co-opting environmental laws in an effort to restrict access to medication abortion.

London Judge Finds Global Mining Company BHP Group Liable in Brazil’s Worst Environmental Disaster

A London judge has ruled that BHP Group is liable for Brazil’s worst environmental disaster

LONDON (AP) — A London judge ruled Friday that global mining company BHP Group is liable in Brazil’s worst environmental disaster when a dam collapse a decade ago unleashed tons of toxic waste into a major river, killing 19 people and devastating villages downstream.High Court Justice Finola O’Farrell said that Australia-based BHP was responsible, despite not owning the dam at the time, finding its negligence, carelessness or lack of skill led to the collapse.Anglo-Australian BHP owns 50% of Samarco, the Brazilian company that operates the iron ore mine where the tailings dam ruptured on Nov. 5, 2015. Sludge from the burst dam destroyed the once-bustling village of Bento Rodrigues in Minas Gerais state and badly damaged other towns. Enough mine waste to fill 13,000 Olympic-size swimming pools poured into the Doce River in southeastern Brazil, damaging 600 kilometers (370 miles) of the waterway and killing 14 tons of freshwater fish, according to a study by the University of Ulster in the U.K. The river, which the Krenak Indigenous people revere as a deity, has yet to recover.A decade later, legal disputes have prolonged reconstruction and reparations and the river is still contaminated with heavy metals. Even as Brazil tries to define itself as a global environmental leader while hosting the U.N. COP30 climate summit, advocacy groups say the dam collapse is a reminder of industry-friendly policies that have ecological protection. Victims of the disaster called the ruling a historic victory in seeking justice.“We had to cross the Atlantic Ocean and go to England to finally see a mining company held to account," said Mônica dos Santos of the Commission for Those Affected by the Fundão Dam. Gelvana Rodrigues, whose 7-year-old son, Thiago, was killed in a mudslide, celebrated the step forward and said she wouldn't rest until those responsible are punished."The judge’s decision shows what we have been saying for the last 10 years: it was not an accident, and BHP must take responsibility for its actions,” Rodrigues said. The judge agreed with lawyers representing 600,000 Brazilians and 31 communities in the class-action case who argued that BHP was heavily involved in the Samarco operation and could have prevented the disaster, but instead encouraged raising the dam to allow more production. “The risk of collapse of the dam was foreseeable,” O'Farrell wrote in the 222-page decision. "It is inconceivable that a decision would have been taken to continue raising the height of the dam in those circumstances and the collapse could have been averted."BHP said that it plans to appeal.The claimants are seeking 36 billion pounds ($47 billion) in compensation, though the ruling only addressed liability. A second phase of the trial will determine damages. The case was filed in Britain because one of BHP’s two main legal entities was based in London at the time.Under the agreement, Samarco — which is also half owned by Brazilian mining giant Vale — agreed to pay 132 billion reais ($23 billion) over 20 years. The payments were meant to compensate for human, environmental and infrastructure damage.BHP had said the U.K. legal action was unnecessary, because it duplicated matters covered by legal proceedings in Brazil.The judge ruled that those who were compensated in the settlement in Brazil could still bring claims, though they might be limited by any waivers they signed. Brandon Craig, BHP’s president of Minerals Americas, said that nearly half of the claimants could be eliminated from the group because of settlement agreements they signed in Brazil.BHP shares fell more than 2% on the London market after the ruling and the company said that it would update its financial provisions.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – Oct. 2025

Indigenous

Data centers are putting new strain on California’s grid. A new report estimates the impacts

A new report estimates that California’s data centers are driving increases in electricity use, water demand and pollution even as lawmakers stall on oversight.

In summary A new report estimates that California’s data centers are driving increases in electricity use, water demand and pollution even as lawmakers stall on oversight. California is a major hub for data centers — the facilities that store and transmit much of the internet. But just how much these power-hungry operations affect the state’s energy use, climate and public health remains an open question for researchers. A new report released this week by the environmental think tank Next 10 and a UC Riverside researcher attempts to quantify that impact — but its authors say the report is only an estimate without harder data from the centers themselves. “We are just making these reports pretty much in the dark — since there’s almost zero information,” said Shaolei Ren, an AI researcher at UC Riverside and co-author of the report. “We have extremely little information about data centers in California.” Ren and his coauthors conclude that between 2019 and 2023, electricity use and carbon emissions by California data centers nearly doubled, while on-site water consumption slightly more than doubled. Much of the increases were attributable to the electricity required to run artificial intelligence computations. But many of the report’s estimates, including its health impacts, are based on limited data — a key issue researchers said they encountered repeatedly when crafting the report. The report underscores a growing tension in the industry: advocates who support clean energy and experts who study energy demand agree the days of steady, flat energy use at data centers are over, but there’s far less consensus on just how sharply electricity demand will climb. “In very simple terms, a lot of the uncertainty comes from: what is our life going to look like with AI in the next five years, 10 years, 20 years — how integrated is it going to become?” said Maia Leroy, a Sacramento-based advocate who focuses on clean energy and the grid. “Are we reaching a point where the use is going to plateau, or is it going to continue?” Experts say more transparency is essential to better understand what resources data centers demand in California. Liang Min, who manages the Bits and Watts Initiative at Stanford University, says the state should improve its forecasts for energy demand to support clean energy goals. Min, who investigates AI’s growing strain on the electric grid, told CalMatters that demand at power centers rises in rapid, unpredictable phases and can shift quickly with each new generation of hardware. The California Energy Commission, which plans for energy use and the growth in demand, “can play a pivotal role,” in understanding and adapting to the demands of AI. As demand grows, policy responses lag In Sacramento, efforts to add transparency and guardrails around data centers have struggled this year. California lawmakers shelved most consumer and environmental proposals aimed at data centers, even as they approved a plan to regionalize California’s power grid to help meet demand from the sector. They set aside two bills focused on curbing data centers’ energy use — one requiring operators to disclose their electricity use and another that offered clean power incentives. Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a separate proposal that would have required data center operators to report their water use, even after the bill was weakened. In the end, Newsom — who has often highlighted California’s dominance in the artificial intelligence sector — signed only one measure, allowing regulators to determine whether data centers are driving up costs. Mark Toney, who leads The Utility Reform Network and supported the transparency measure, has questioned whether data centers justify the costs they’re pushing onto ratepayers. He warned of the centers’ “voracious consumption of energy and water, increased carbon emissions, and jacking up ratepayer bills.” Hard facts about data centers are tough to find in California because most rent out power, cooling and floor space to other companies, said Ren, the UC Riverside researcher. Such colocation facilities don’t run their own servers or technology, so they report less information publicly than data centers built by major tech companies in other states. While estimates vary, California has the third-most data centers in the country, after Texas and Virginia. DataCenterMap, a commercial directory that tracks data centers worldwide, lists 321 sites across the state. More in California are expected in coming years. The centers operate around the clock and often rely on diesel backup generators to maintain service during power failures — a practice that adds both greenhouse gases and local air pollutants. They also consume energy and water depending on their cooling methods. Rising data-center demand, and rising questions F. Noel Perry, the businessman and philanthropist who founded Next 10, said his organization’s report shines light on what is fundamentally a black box. “To solve a problem, we have to understand what the problem is,” he said. “We’ve seen the proliferation of data centers in California, in the U.S. and across the world — and we also are seeing major implications for the environment,” Perry told CalMatters. “The real issue has to do with transparency — and the ability of elected officials and regulators to create some rules that will govern reductions in emissions, water consumption.” The report estimated that data centers used 10.8 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2023, up from 5.5 terawatt-hours in 2019, accounting for 6% of the nation’s total data center energy use. Unless growth is curbed or better managed, the report’s authors project demand could rise to as high as 25 terawatt-hours by 2028, equal to the power use of roughly 2.4 million U.S. homes. Carbon emissions from the sector nearly doubled during the same period, climbing from 1.2 million to 2.4 million tons, researchers estimated, while on site water use grew from 1,078 acre feet in 2019 to 2,302 acre feet in 2023. That’s enough to meet the annual water needs of almost seven thousand California households. The report’s authors also estimated the public health costs from air pollution associated with data centers have potentially risen, from $45 million in 2019 to more than $155 million in 2023, with the burden expected to reach as high as $266 million by 2028. Most of those costs stem from indirect pollution produced by fossil-fueled power plants that supply the grid. But authors pointed out that regions dense with data centers — particularly Santa Clara County, home to Silicon Valley — could face higher localized risks from diesel backup generators. Dan Diorio, vice president of state policy for the Data Center Coalition, said the report exaggerates the impact of backup diesel generators, which are tightly regulated and rarely used in California, minimizing their contributions to air pollution. Data centers don’t control the water used in electricity generation, said Diorio. Since those water impacts don’t happen on site, it’s not fair to blame that on the centers themselves. “It paints a skewed picture of this critical 21st-century industry,” Diorio said in a statement. Diorio said the report also overlooks how cooling technology varies by region and has become more efficient in recent years. But the authors say their findings underscore the need for uniform reporting standards for data centers’ energy and water use. The report said California should establish ongoing local monitoring and review of data centers — and make the findings public. Ren, the UC Riverside researcher, said that California’s cleaner grid and stricter pollution rules are helping blunt some environmental impacts of data centers already. “California — versus the national average — is doing a better job due to the cleaner grid,” he said.

Pollution

How a Texas shrimper stalled Exxon’s $10bn plastics plant | Shilpi Chhotray

Diane Wilson recognized Exxon’s playbook – and showed how local people can take on even the most entrenched industriesWhen ExxonMobil announced it would “slow the pace of development” on a $10bn plastics plant along the Texas Gulf coast, the company blamed market conditions. But it wasn’t just the market applying pressure; it was a 77-year-old shrimper named Diane Wilson who refused to stay silent. Her fight exposes big oil’s latest survival plan: ramping up oil and gas production to create plastic.I first met Wilson back in 2019 while tracking her historic lawsuit against Formosa Plastics, the Taiwanese petrochemical giant accused of dumping toxic plastic waste throughout coastal Texas. Billions of tiny plastic pellets were contaminating waterways, shorelines, and even the soil itself.Shilpi Chhotray is the co-founder and president of Counterstream Media and Host of A People’s Climate for the Nation Continue reading...

When ExxonMobil announced it would “slow the pace of development” on a $10bn plastics plant along the Texas Gulf coast, the company blamed market conditions. But it wasn’t just the market applying pressure; it was a 77-year-old shrimper named Diane Wilson who refused to stay silent. Her fight exposes big oil’s latest survival plan: ramping up oil and gas production to create plastic.I first met Wilson back in 2019 while tracking her historic lawsuit against Formosa Plastics, the Taiwanese petrochemical giant accused of dumping toxic plastic waste throughout coastal Texas. Billions of tiny plastic pellets were contaminating waterways, shorelines, and even the soil itself.When I spoke with her again a few months ago for A People’s Climate, a podcast from the Nation and Counterstream Media, she was still doing what she’s always done: holding power to account in the place she loves most. I’ve spent years covering the plastic industry’s impact on frontline communities, and Exxon’s delay isn’t a business decision to dismiss. It’s a strategic signal that the fossil-to-plastic pivot is facing growing, community-led resistance.When Exxon arrived in Calhoun county late last year, Wilson recognized the playbook: a rubber-stamp process rushed through a school-board meeting – a requirement under Texas law for the tax abatement Exxon sought. She sued that same board in May, arguing it had violated Texas open-meeting laws in what she has called “a deliberate attempt to avoid public opposition”. A district judge agreed, striking down the board’s approval of the tax abatement in late September. Less than two weeks later, Exxon announced it would pause plans for the new facility, indicating “market conditions”. The timing was hard to ignore. In a region dominated by fossil-fuel interests, that kind of outcome is unheard of.While Exxon hasn’t reached a final investment decision, this delayed matters. It shows how even the most entrenched industries can be made to pause when local people demand transparency.As gasoline demand declines, Exxon, Shell, and Dow are betting billions on petrochemicals, the feedstocks that become plastics. Industry projections show these products could drive nearly half of future oil-demand growth by 2050. Plastics are marketed as modern and indispensable, yet they come from one of the planet’s most carbon-intensive and polluting supply chains. According to Exxon’s December 2024 tax abatement application, the company’s proposed plastics plant in Calhoun county would produce 3 million tons of polyethylene pellets per year. These are the raw materials for plastic products that are used in everything from grocery bags to vinyl flooring.Exxon already runs one of the world’s largest chemical hubs, in Baytown, Texas. According to Inside Climate News, the facility would be its next link in a fossil-fuel chain stretching from gas wells in west Texas to manufacturing zones in Asia. While industry executives tout diversification, on the ground, it looks and smells like doubling down on pollution.Calhoun county’s history reads like a case study in corporate impunity. For decades, the oil and gas industry has promised jobs but delivered health risks, poisoned groundwater, and dead fisheries. Wilson grew up in Seadrift, the last authentic fishing village on the Texas Gulf coast. “The heart and soul of the community was the bay, the fish house, the boats,” she told me on A People’s Climate. “I’ve been on a boat since I was eight years old … It’s my life and my identity.”Her battle with Formosa began decades ago, after she discovered her tiny county ranked first in the nation for toxic dumping. An introvert by nature, she was thrust into activism overnight when local officials tried to silence her for asking questions. She’s since been arrested more than 50 times, led hunger strikes, and even scaled the White House fence – what she calls “soul power in action”. Wilson’s work helped prove what regulators had long denied: plastic pellets were flooding coastal ecosystems by the billions.Her historic $50m Clean Water Act settlement against Formosa Plastics was only possible after documenting years of illegal discharges into Lavaca Bay. It was the largest citizen-led environmental settlement in US history, and she didn’t take a cent. The money has gone towards local restoration: a fisheries co-op, oyster farms, and the community-science network known as Nurdle Patrol. (Formosa did not admit liability.)That case made her a target of local politics, but it also gave her something invaluable: the ability to turn frustration into organizing power. Her latest lawsuit against the school board wasn’t simply about procedure, but questions who gets to decide the future. Is it the people who live there or the corporations that profit from polluting it?Across the Gulf south, communities are demanding accountability. In St James Parish, Sharon Lavigne has also spent years fighting Formosa’s $9.4bn complex in what’s known as Louisiana’s Cancer Alley. In Port Arthur and Corpus Christi, organizers are fighting new gas export terminals. These aren’t isolated nimby fights; they’re part of a regional reckoning with a century of extraction. As record heat and hurricanes grow deadlier, Exxon still defends oil and petrochemical projects as “accelerating a just transition”, a phrase that borders on self-parody.Wilson’s small-town lawsuit shouldn’t matter in Exxon’s $500bn universe – but it does. It reminds us that grassroots power still works, even in refinery country. “Eventually I lost my husband, the house, the boat,” she told me due to her activism. “But you can lose it all and gain your soul.” When a community like Seadrift demands transparency, it widens the space for others to question why their towns should subsidize pollution in the name of development.With Cop30 in Belém under way, world leaders are once again pledging to phase out fossil fuels, while the same corporations responsible for the crisis expand drilling, petrochemical production, and greenwashing efforts behind the scenes. Recent reporting by Nina Lakhani revealed that more than 5,000 fossil-fuel lobbyists have gained access to UN climate talks over the past four years – underscoring how those driving oil and gas expansion are also shaping global climate policy.For Exxon, Calhoun county may be a temporary delay. But it must be permanent, and not simply relocated elsewhere. The world cannot afford another generation of plastic built on the same extractive logic that created the climate crisis in the first place. Exxon’s pause is a chance for regulators, investors, and communities to recognize that the oil-to-plastic pivot has catastrophic consequences. As Wilson told me: “We have drawn a line in the sand against plastic polluters, and that line now runs through Calhoun county.” Her story is a reminder that even the largest corporations can be stopped when ordinary people refuse to back down.

Chemicals

London judge rules BHP Group liable for Brazil’s 2015 Samarco dam collapse

About 600,000 people seeking compensation a decade on from disaster that killed 19 and devastated villagesA London judge has ruled that the global mining company BHP Group is liable in Brazil’s worst environmental disaster, when a dam collapse 10 years ago unleashed tons of toxic waste into a major river, killing 19 people and devastating villages downstream.Mrs Justice O’Farrell said at the high court that Australia-based BHP was responsible despite not owning the dam at the time. Continue reading...

A London judge has ruled that global mining company BHP Group is liable in Brazil’s worst environmental disaster, when a dam collapse 10 years ago unleashed tons of toxic waste into a major river, killing 19 people and devastating villages downstream.Mrs Justice O’Farrell said at the high court that Australia-based BHP was responsible despite not owning the dam at the time.Anglo-Australian BHP owns 50% of Samarco, the Brazilian company that operates the iron ore mine where the tailings dam ruptured on 5 November 2015, sending as much as 40m cubic metres of mining into the Doce River in south-eastern Brazil.Sludge from the burst dam destroyed the once-bustling village of Bento Rodrigues in Minas Gerais state and badly damaged other towns.The disaster also killed 14 tonnes of freshwater fish and damaged 370 miles (600 miles) of the Doce River, according to a study by the University of Ulster in the UK. The river, which the Krenak Indigenous people revere as a deity, has yet to recover.About 600,000 Brazilians are seeking £36bn ($47bn) in compensation, although the ruling only addressed liability. A second phase of the trial will determine damages.The case was filed in Britain because one of BHP’s two main legal entities was based in London at the time.The trial began in October 2024, just days before Brazil’s federal government reached a multibillion-dollar settlement with the mining companies.Under the agreement, Samarco, which is also half owned by Brazilian mining company Vale, agreed to pay 132 billion reais ($23bn) over 20 years. The payments were meant to compensate for human, environmental and infrastructure damage.BHP had said the UK legal action was unnecessary because it duplicated matters covered by legal proceedings in Brazil.

Government

These ancient time travelers have answers to our 21st century problems

Newly discovered patches of ancient landscape have somehow managed to survive without being turned into a farm, forest or subdivision.

REMINGTON, Virginia — For more than a century, American conservation has been about trees, from the founding of the U.S. Forest Service to the Biden administration’s plan to plant 1 billion trees to fight climate change. Opponents chided environmentalists as tree huggers — and the movement embraced the term.But what if the whole premise was flawed?We now know that European settlers were not met by a vast forest when they arrived, as popular imagination had it, but by a landscape with large swaths of open prairie and savanna. We also now know that, in our temperate climate, those grasslands hold a lot more plant and animal life than forests, and that planting such grasslands can be a far more efficient way to pull carbon out of the atmosphere than planting trees.We know this in part because scientists have begun discovering tiny, still-intact remnants of these forgotten grasslands, plant communities that have been here for thousands of years and somehow managed to survive without being turned into a farm, a forest or a subdivision.These are, in effect, accidental time travelers from a distant past — and they have come with answers for our 21st century problems.The scene along Lucky Hill Road shows just how unlucky nature has been under current human management.Follow Climate & environmentBud Light and Corona cans litter the roadside here, along with McDonald’s wrappers and pieces of Styrofoam. High-voltage power lines stretch overhead and cars whiz by. The beeping of backup alarms fills the air — coming from the cranes, backhoes and dump trucks leveling a vast field where a data center will soon rise.But immediately across the road from the construction site sits an ancient landscape that is somehow managing to hold on. A 300-year-old post oak stands sentinel over a patch of grassland containing an extraordinary 56 species of plants in just 100 square meters, including curiosities such as Parlin’s pussytoes, grass-leaf blazing star and purple false foxglove. “This,” says ecologist Bert Harris, whose Clifton Institute is trying to preserve such sites, “is a thing of beauty.”The humble patch of abundance is one of 1,700 “remnant” grasslands identified in Virginia over the past few years. Using carbon dating and other forensic techniques, scientists have found that plant communities in similar plots have existed continuously for at least 2,000 years — and possibly could date back to the last ice age. Other efforts are uncovering remnants of early grasslands in other parts of the country and the world.The discovery of these plots is remarkable, because pretty much nobody realized until recently that they existed. Virginia’s Department of Conservation Resources still says online that there are “no remnants” of precolonial prairies “in the contemporary landscape.”For much of history, fires caused by lightning or set with intention by Native Americans swept through savannas, prairies and woodlands every few years, preventing open spaces from growing into forests. After Europeans arrived, most of those grasslands were lost to agriculture, and much of what survived grew into forests as a result of a fire-supression effort over the past century. An estimated 95 to 99 percent of the original grasslands are gone in the eastern U.S., with similar losses in other regions.The remnants have been spared by happenstance: They are small pieces of land, usually an acre or less, along roadsides or underneath power lines, where nobody wanted to farm but where occasional trimming prevented them from growing into forests.This is turning out to be a most happy accident. As human activities drive countless plants and animals into decline and extinction, researchers are finding that, acre for acre, the remnants attract a rich community of insects and “are the most diverse plant systems on the continent,” says Devin Floyd, whose Piedmont Discovery Center is working to identify and preserve the remnants.Scientists are now finding that vibrant remnant grasslands can sequester about 40 percent more carbon overall than closed-canopy forests that are protected from fire, according to preliminary results shared with me from a study by Auburn University and the Southeastern Grasslands Institute. Certain remnants in Alabama have been found to store five to six times more carbon underground than these forests. And because that carbon is stored in roots rather than in the wood of trees, it isn’t rereleased into the atmosphere as happens when trees topple from wildfire, storms or disease.“The fact that these have the potential to store so much carbon in the soil kind of blew my mind,” says Heather Alexander, a professor of forestry at Auburn who is leading the study, funded by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation and now entering its third and final year.Growing a forest can take generations. But the Auburn study is finding that it takes about eight years to convert degraded landscapes into grasslands that can absorb about as much carbon as the remnant prairies.People such as Harris and Floyd are racing to collect seeds from the remnants, in hopes that they can produce an off-the-shelf seed mix that people can use to turn their fields and backyards into facsimiles of the ancient grasslands. But, as Harris notes, “the clock is ticking.” When we arrived at the remnant on Lucky Hill Road, we found a legal notice posted. Data-center developers want to turn the 2,000-year-old grassland into “Gigaland.”An old saying had it that when Europeans arrived along the East Coast, the tree canopy was so dense that a squirrel could travel from the Atlantic to the Mississippi without ever touching the ground. The virgin forest supposedly found by the early explorers became a standard trope in art and literature.But it was never so. About 40 percent of the southeastern U.S. and Mid-Atlantic were likely prairies, savannas or open woodlands. An account of the DeSoto Expedition written in 1540 mentions “the savanna” they traversed in what is now Tennessee. A 1669 map labeled large parts of Virginia “savannae.” A map of what is now North Carolina included a section called the “Grande Savane.”“Our grasslands were gone before the camera was invented, before they could be painted and largely before scientists were a thing,” observes Dwayne Estes, director of the Southeastern Grasslands Institute, which has been compiling the early writings.A “collective amnesia” set in after the Civil War, Estes says. “As the modern day science of ecology was developing around the turn of the century, it became this notion that everything was historically forested … and that set the tone for the environmental movement, and it set us off really on a misguided foot.” The forest canopy rebounded over the past century, but in the process claiming more chunks of the remaining grassland.“Everybody thinks about planting trees,” the Clifton Institute’s Harris said. “But really what we need to do in a lot of cases is not plant trees and even cut trees down.”That would be a radical shift. But the remnant grasslands hint at an extraordinary volume of life once nurtured by these landscapes.The remnants found in the southeast and Mid-Atlantic typically have 50 to 80 plant species (and as many as 130) per 100 square meters, compared to between 10 and 40 species commonly found in hayfields and areas that became closed-canopy forests. Virginia surveys by Virginia Tech, the Clifton Institute and Piedmont Discovery Center have identified 952 plant species in the tiny remnants — nearly a third of all the plant species found in the entire state. It’s no wonder that the butterflies, bumblebees, grassland birds and others that depend on these shriveling landscapes are also vanishing.My first stop with Harris and Floyd was a remnant on Ritchie Road right next to the “Flying Circus Aerodrome” in Bealeton, Virginia, just over an hour from D.C. There were cups, bottles and cans, discarded Lays and Cheetos bags, deep tire ruts in the ground and a power line overhead.Yet this postage-stamp plot contains 77 different plant species — only four of which are non-native. Among the unusual specimens were blackjack oaks and narrowleaf mountain mint, whorled milkweed and reindeer lichen, Elliott’s bluestem and fuzzy wuzzy sedge. They’ve been here for hundreds, or thousands, of years, as the parcel went from fire-maintained savanna to colonial path to telegraph corridor to power line route.Power companies and transportation departments now routinely use herbicides rather than just mowing to control growth under power lines. If a too-heavy Roundup bath comes to Ritchie Road, the remnant’s 2,000-year history will come to an end.The end will probably come sooner for the remnant at our second stop, on Lucky Hill Road in Remington. The owner of the land hopes Gigaland will be the next phase of the planned 600-acre data-center complex.Harris and Floyd know this remnant is a goner. They fill baggies with seeds and make plans to dig up some Carolina rose roots for transplanting. They discuss the legality of bringing in a backhoe to rescue some of the smaller oaks.In the growing season, the remnants are ablaze with purples, yellows and pinks. Even when we visited in the fall, the goldenrod was flowering, the grass-leaf blazing star still showed some purple and the grass stalks formed a tapestry of browns and blues.What Gigaland would destroy is exactly what many of us are trying to build. “Everybody’s doing these things called pollinator gardens and native meadows,” Floyd said above the trucks’ beeping. “What we’re all doing is attempting to reproduce this thing.”In the meadow on my farm, I’ve planted 18 species of wildflowers and two grasses — a pale imitation of the remnant savannas. But people will soon be able to plant meadows that much more closely resemble the remnants.Estes, from Tennessee, has developed a 90-species seed mix for his area that closely mimics the ancient grasslands. By the end of next year, his Southeastern Grasslands Institute will launch “Grasslandia,” an interactive map that will suggest tailored seed mixes for locations in 24 states. In backyards, in community plots and in abandoned fields, we will then be able to plant our own carbon sinks.The climate benefits of these reconstructed grasslands will vary widely based on soil quality. But the very notion that some grasslands can store more carbon than some forests is counterintuitive; it turns out their fine roots go deeper and occupy more layers of the soil than those of mighty trees.This is why grasslands “absolutely must be looked at as a major solution to carbon drawdown,” Estes says. “We’re able to heal landscapes very quickly that have gotten off kilter, and I think that’s a very scalable model that we can apply to hundreds of thousands if not millions of acres.”One of the newest solutions for a warming planet, it seems, has been with us all along.

Forests

Agriculture

First, the frogs died. Then people got sick.

An emerging area of research is uncovering hidden links between nature and human health.

First, the frogs died. Then people got sick.An emerging area of research is uncovering hidden links between nature and human health.This reporting was supported by the Pulitzer Center....moreThis reporting was supported by the Pulitzer Center....moreNovember 14, 2025 at 6:00 a.m. EST9 minutes agoALTOS DE CAMPANA NATIONAL PARK, Panama — Brian Gratwicke’s lunch box was full of frogs.Kneeling on the muddy rainforest floor, the biologist opened his red Coleman cooler and scooped one up. It was a Pratt’s rocket frog — about the size of a walnut, sporting black-and-white racing stripes. Gratwicke deposited the frog in a small mesh tent, a “catio” for indoor pets to glimpse the outdoors, and encouraged it to acclimate to its transitional home.“There you go,” he told it. “Look at all that nice leaf litter.” The frog darted into the carpet of leaves, unaware it had just leaped into a high-stakes experiment.Conservation biologist Brian Gratwicke searches with his team for frogs in Altos de Campana National Park in Panama.Nate Weisenbeck, a research intern with the Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project, checks on how a pair of Pratt’s rocket frogs are acclimating to the forest.Gratwicke is a conservation biologist who leads amphibian work at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. He had flown to Panama, in the middle of rainy season, to help resurrect frog species that had vanished from the cloud forest decades ago.Whether these amphibians can strike out on their own and thrive here again is uncertain.What is becoming increasingly clear is that without them, humans are in trouble. It turns out that frogs — in biblical times regarded as a plague — are actually guardians against disease.50 Species that Save UsThis series highlights emerging research on how plants and animals protect human health – and how their disappearance is already sickening thousands of people around the world. Explore these connections in our illustrated, interactive species cards.As dozens of frog species have declined across Central America, scientists have witnessed a remarkable chain of events: With fewer tadpoles to eat mosquito larvae, rates of mosquito-borne malaria in the region have climbed, resulting in a fivefold increase in cases.The discovery of this link is part of an emerging area of research in which ecologists and economists are trying to calculate the costs of species decline.They are revealing hidden ways that thriving populations of many plants and animals — including wolves, bats, birds and trees — underpin humanity’s well-being.They are learning that without saving nature, we cannot save ourselves.The mystery of the vanishing frogsAt first, no one knew why frogs seemed to be disappearing everywhere.In Texas, some herpetologists thought egrets were eating them. In Connecticut, people accused raccoons. In Brazil, they blamed a bout of chilly weather. But the fact that so many frogs were vanishing from so many places in the early 1990s suggested something widespread but invisible was behind the decline.Karen Lips was a graduate student at the time, working with amphibians in Costa Rica, near the border with Panama. During a trip there in 1993, she couldn’t find the toads she had been studying. “Almost everything was gone,” she recalled. At first, she blamed the weather, her headlamp, her searching technique.Then she remembered a related toad species had disappeared a few hundred miles to the north. It dawned on her: Perhaps a frog-killing “wave” was sweeping from mountain to mountain.Weisenbeck works with harlequin frogs raised at the Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project in Gamboa.Lemur leaf frogs are grouped in a breeding tank with multiple males and females at the Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project.Whatever it was, she wanted to get ahead of it. She set up camp farther east, in a cloud forest in Panama. She thought she’d have many years to study the 40-odd species of frogs there. But by 1996, many of the ones she was picking up were leathery and lethargic.“Sometimes they would make one jump and it would be their last bout of energy,” recalled Lips, today an ecologist at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. “They’d make a big jump to try and escape. And then they couldn’t move anymore at all, and they would just die there.”After she helped publish a photo of an infection on the frogs’ skin, herpetologists studying wild frogs in Australia and captive ones at the National Zoo realized they were all dealing with the same disease: a fungus that would be dubbed Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, or Bd for short.The researchers swab a yellow-flecked glass frog to assess the prevalence of Bd in wild frog communities in Altos de Campana National Park.Thought to have originated in Asia or Africa, Bd may have hitched a ride on ships or planes to traverse otherwise insurmountable oceans. It now coats every continent except Antarctica (where there are no frogs).The microscopic pathogen kills by burrowing into an amphibian’s sensitive skin, blocking electrolytes and sapping muscles of their strength. Ultimately, an infected frog becomes so fatigued that its heart stops.As the fungus swept eastward through Panama, Gratwicke and his colleagues raced to rescue as many frogs as they could. They persuaded a shipping company to donate seven containers to a Smithsonian facility an hour outside Panama City. There, along the Panama Canal, they built a makeshift ark, stacking each container floor-to-ceiling with terrariums full of frogs for a captive breeding program.The Smithsonian focused on saving nine species it assessed to be in the direst state. “It’s absolute triage,” Gratwicke said. “We can’t look after 200 species.”Among those targeted for preservation was the Panamanian golden frog, a national icon and symbol of good luck that is depicted on banners and beer cans.“It’s a huge weight of responsibility on our shoulders,” Gratwicke said. “Because if we screw this up, we screw it up for an entire species.”This year, the researchers also brought into captivity a population of Pratt’s rocket frogs that had disappeared in the national park but survived elsewhere, possibly because they had developed some immunity to the fungus. Gratwicke and his colleagues were relocating two dozen of those potentially resistant frogs to Altos de Campana. After two weeks, the researchers would unzip them from the tents, with the hope that the transplanted frogs might help repopulate the park.Globally, frog populations have crashed as a result of Bd. The fungus has affected more than 500 amphibian species, decimating at least 90 to the point where they are thought to be extinct in the wild. For the researchers watching it all unfold over the past three decades, it was clear a frog apocalypse was underway. The fungus, along with climate change and habitat loss, has made amphibians the most vulnerable group of vertebrates on Earth.Lips began studying the cascading effects of these massive losses. She found algae thrived in spots where there were no tadpoles to eat it. Snake populations, meanwhile, dwindled with fewer adult frogs to eat.When describing this upheaval in a call with other scientists, she piqued the interest of Michael Springborn, an environmental economist at the University of California at Davis. “I’d heard a little bit about Bd,” he recalled, “but I was embarrassed to learn that I didn’t really understand how impactful that had been.” The two decided to work together.Lemur leaf frogs are among the lab-raised specimens at the Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project.With statistical tools more commonly used in economics, they mapped the frog die-offs and spread of the fungus county-by-county across Costa Rica and Panama.Then they compared that spread to county-level health records of malaria in humans. They found a striking pattern: a fivefold spike in malaria cases after the fungus arrived and the frogs died. Lips, Springborn and their colleagues published the discovery in 2022 in the journal Environmental Research Letters.The region’s tapered shape, bound on either side by the Caribbean and the Pacific, allowed them to track the spread of the disease in detail. “We got lucky in a sense that there’s this … narrow strip where you had Bd arguably channeled through,” Springborn said.Some herpetologists, Lips said, would be content to stay in their lane and just “count the frogs.” But she anticipated that “if we could link it to people, maybe we could get more traction. Maybe people would care.”Biologists have long documented ways in which people benefit from nature — what, in academic circles, are called “ecosystem services.” Bees pollinate crops, trees suck heat-trapping carbon dioxide out of the air, and coral reefs guard coastal communities from storms and foster fish for food.But the interdisciplinary effort to uncover the relationship between biodiversity and human health — an approach dubbed “One Health” — is just beginning to tease out even deeper connections.The researchers are working toward the release of Panamanian golden frogs, an icon of the country.In the United States, researchers have shown that a collapse of insect-eating bat populations prompted farmers to use more pesticide on crops, which in turn led to a higher human infant mortality rate.Around the Great Lakes, the reemergence of gray wolves has had the surprising effect of keeping motorists safe. The canines prowl along roads while hunting, spooking deer from crossing and reducing collisions with cars.Also in North America, invasive emerald ash borers devastated ash trees, contributing to elevated temperatures and an increase in cardiovascular and respiratory deaths.India may have witnessed the most astounding ecological breakdown of them all. After vultures experienced a mass die-off, the livestock carcasses they once scavenged piled up. Packs of feral dogs took the place of vultures, resulting in a rise in deaths from rabies.Eyal Frank, a University of Chicago economist who helped connect the dots in the bat and vulture case studies, said we often don’t realize how crucial a plant or animal is to our well-being until it is gone.“Why preserve biodiversity?” Frank said. “We might not realize now that this species is important. But we might realize in the future that it’s important.”By 2012, the frog-killing fungus had conquered Panama, reaching its easternmost point, the Darién Gap.A remote and roadless jungle, the area is known as a treacherous stretch for migrants trying to make their way from North to South America. The resident population is small and mostly made up of Indigenous tribes.Jando Mejia, from the seminomadic Wounaan people, figures he was bitten when he was visiting his mother there in 2023. When a mosquito latched onto his skin and sucked his blood, it must have dropped a single-celled parasite called a plasmodium into his body.Within days the parasite began wreaking havoc, invading and multiplying within his red blood cells. His eyes and tongue turned yellow. His head felt like it was splitting open with pain.“I couldn’t taste food,” he said. “I lost my appetite, and I felt dizzy and weak. I couldn’t do anything.”Mejia, 23, believes he contracted malaria in eastern Panama.Mejia was at that point staying with his sister in central Panama. Her house is on concrete stilts to deter snakes and other wildlife, but its plywood walls and open-air windows provide little protection from buzzing mosquitos. Smoke wafts from spiral-shaped repellents to keep the insects away. Nearby, vendors in the village sell golden frog figurines.His sister set up a bed for him on the floor. His mother made the journey from the Darién Gap to help. “I was in bed for a week,” he said. “I could hardly remember anything.”Even after the worst of the symptoms subsided, it was weeks before he had enough strength to return to his $15-a-day job on a farm growing coffee and plantains.“He wasn’t normal,” his sister, Chanita Mejia, recalled. “Even climbing a small hill was hard. He felt tired.”By the time he could go back to work, he had lost out on a month of income.Telbinia Toscon, a traditional craftswoman in the Embera village, lost her mother to malaria.Frogs are a recurring image in Panamanian crafts.No single case of malaria can be attributed to the wave of frog deaths. And other factors, too, may have contributed to the rise in cases. José Ricardo Rovira, a mosquito researcher at Indicasat, a Panamanian institute, noted that paths made by migrants crisscrossing the Darién have further enabled the spread of malaria-carrying mosquitos.But Springborn, Lips and their colleagues estimate there were tens of thousands of additional cases of the disease in Panama and Costa Rica in the decade following the amphibian decline. Although it’s difficult to estimate, that increase in cases would have led to “a handful” of additional deaths each year, Springborn said.Rovira knows how debilitating the disease can be. He vividly remembers the fever and chills he experienced after twice contracting malaria while setting mosquito traps in the Darién.He said he doesn’t fear malaria, but has learned to respect it. Now 75, he appreciates he must be cautious. “I’m not going out to the field much anymore,” he said.Working to restore the frogsOn Gratwicke’s recent Panama trip, after depositing the Pratt’s rocket frogs in their tent, he turned to the question of how much Bd was still out there.He bounded down a series of waterfalls on a rumbling creek, sweeping his flashlight along the muddy embankment. The light caught a glint of yellow. It was a Panama rocket frog, a related species. True to its name, it shot off after being spotted. The hunt was on.With a stick, Gratwicke prodded the fugitive frog into the water. “Just wait, he’ll come up,” he said leaning over the stream. The birdlike chirps of rocket frogs used to fill this gully, he explained. Now, save for the rush of the water, it was mostly silent.“Oh, I got it!” Gratwicke yelped after reaching his gloved hands into the stream. Pulling out a long cotton swab, he dabbed the frogs’ feet, thighs and belly before letting it go. (Lab tests on the swabs would later reveal that Bd was on a third of the frogs plucked from the water that day.)Gratwicke and his team listen to frog calls while walking through Altos de Campana National Park.Conservation scientists Julie Dogger, Oliver Granucci and Orlando Garces check on tadpole development in Altos de Campana National Park. Next stop was the encampment of a crowned tree frog. This chocolate brown frog had been bred in a Smithsonian lab, and after two weeks acclimating to the forest, it was ready for release — into a still perilous place.Nate Weisenbeck, Gratwicke’s colleague from the Smithsonian, reached up and unlatched the front of a mesh cube nailed to a tree teetering on the mountainside.“This is a pilot,” Gratwicke said. “Because it’s the first time this has ever been done, you can’t really predict all the ways in which things can go wrong.”The researchers are trying to set their frogs up with the best shot at survival, but don’t know if they will succumb to the fungus or other predators. (The work is supported financially by the Bezos Earth Fund, a philanthropic initiative of Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, as well as the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, Zoo New England and the Panamanian government.)Weisenbeck had installed a variety of possible shelters for the frog to choose next: a hollow stalk of bamboo, a stack of black plastic pots, a wooden birdhouse.When the researchers came back about six hours later, wearing headlamps to navigate the pitch-black jungle at night, all those potential homes were empty.Weisenbeck unfurled a six-pronged antenna on a device that beeped to indicate whether he was homing in on the tracker tied to the frog’s back.A metamorphosing lemur leaf frog tadpole hangs on the edge of Dogger’s net. A crowned tree frog wears a radio transmitter to enable tracking within the national park.He circled the tree: beep… beep…He was careful with his feet, so as not to inadvertently step on a frog. The device grew louder. Beep… Beep…He twisted to prevent the antenna from getting tangled in the vegetation. BEEP… BEEP… BEEP…“Well done, Nate,” Gratwicke said. Weisenbeck bent down to capture one last photo of his frog, resting on a cigar plant about 30 feet from the tree.“Yeah, this could be the last time we see him,” Weisenbeck said. “He’s wild.”Two variable harlequin frogs at the Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project in Gamboa.About this storyThis article is part of The Washington Post’s “Species That Save Us” series, highlighting hidden links between nature and human health. Photos and video by Melina Mara. Design and development by Hailey Haymond. Editing by Marisa Bellack, Juliet Eilperin, John Farrell, Dominique Hildebrand and Joe Moore. Copy editing by Mike Cirelli.

Health

Nature

The climate paradox of having a dog

My dog contributes to climate change. I love him anyway.

I’ve been a vegetarian for over a decade. It’s not because of my health, or because I dislike the taste of chicken or beef: It’s a lifestyle choice I made because I wanted to reduce my impact on the planet. And yet, twice a day, every day, I lovingly scoop a cup of meat-based kibble into a bowl and set it down for my 50-pound rescue dog, a husky mix named Loki. Until recently, I hadn’t devoted a huge amount of thought to that paradox. Then I read an article in the Associated Press headlined “People often miscalculate climate choices, a study says. One surprise is owning a dog.” The study, led by environmental psychology researcher Danielle Goldwert and published in the journal PNAS Nexus, examined how people perceive the climate impact of various behaviors — options like “adopt a vegan diet for at least one year,” or “shift from fossil fuel car to renewable public transport.” The team found that participants generally overestimated a number of low-impact actions like recycling and using efficient appliances, and they vastly underestimated the impact of other personal decisions, including the decision to “not purchase or adopt a dog.” The real objective of the study was to see whether certain types of climate information could help people commit to more effective actions. But mere hours after the AP published its article, its aim had been recast as something else entirely: an attack on people’s furry family members. “Climate change is actually your fault because you have a dog,” one Reddit user wrote. Others in the community chimed in with ire, ridiculing the idea that a pet chihuahua could be driving the climate crisis and calling on researchers and the media to stop pointing fingers at everyday individuals. Goldwert and her fellow researchers watched the reactions unfold with dismay. “If I saw a headline that said, ‘Climate scientists wanna take your dogs away,’ I would also feel upset,” she said. “They definitely don’t,” she added. “You can quote me on that.” Loki grinning on a hike in the Pacific Northwest. Claire Elise Thompson / Grist The study set out to understand how to shift behavior by communicating climate truths. Instead, its media coverage revealed a troubling psychological trade-off: When climate-related messaging strikes a nerve, it may actually turn people off from the work of shifting societal norms. It’s an instinct I understand on some level. I love Loki, and my knee-jerk reaction is to defend the very personal choice of sharing one’s life with a dog. I also sympathize with redirecting the blame toward the biggest polluters: billionaires and fossil fuel companies (not Bon-Bon, the pet chihuahua in question). But is it irresponsible to shrug off any conversation about the environmental impact of our pets — something far more within our control than, say, the overthrow of capitalism? Is there a way to have a frank discussion about the climate impact of our personal lives without it going to the dogs? Oftentimes, when I’m questioning how a particular climate behavior might fit into my life, I try to imagine how it looks in my vision of a sustainable future. It’s why, for instance, I don’t own a car and am dedicated to riding public transit, even though it isn’t always super convenient. I’m keen to be an early adopter of systems I believe in. But I struggle to imagine a future without companion animals, even knowing about their environmental impact — which is admittedly substantial. Dogs and cats eat meat-heavy diets, which is where the bulk of their carbon pawprint comes from. A 2017 study from UCLA found that dogs and cats are responsible for about 25 to 30 percent of the environmental impact of meat consumption in the United States. That’s equivalent to a year’s worth of driving by 13.6 million cars. For pets that eat traditional kibble or wet food, that protein may come from meat byproducts — otherwise-wasted animal parts, such as organs and bones, not approved for human consumption. But an increasing number of pet owners are opting to feed their fur babies “human-grade” meat products, which requires additional resources and generates extra emissions. After they eat, of course, they poop. A lot. At least for dogs, that poop typically gets bagged in plastic and sent to the landfill. And it turns out all the biodegradable poop bags I’ve diligently bought over the years don’t help matters much; they also release greenhouse gases in landfills, and most composting programs don’t accept pet waste. With more dogs around than ever before — the U.S. dog population has steadily increased from 52.9 million in 1996 to a new peak of 89.7 million in 2024 — their overall climate toll is more than a chihuahua-sized issue. But pets are also more than just sources of carbon pollution. According to a 2023 Pew Research poll, 97 percent of owners say they consider their pets to be part of their families, with 51 percent of respondents saying they are on the same level as a human family member. So whenever their climate impact crops up in the discourse, as it has periodically, it makes sense that people tend to get defensive. Read Next Rez dogs are feeling the heat from climate change Taylar Dawn Stagner This don’t-you-dare-take-away-my-dog-you-horrible-environmentalist backlash is certainly not the first time the climate movement has been accused of depriving people of the things they love. Climate policy has long been painted as a force for austerity, coming for your burgers, your gas stoves, your coal-mining jobs. That framing has been politically potent, used by fossil fuel interests and their allies to stoke resentment and delay government action. Big Oil at once wants us to believe that the climate crisis is our fault and that we shouldn’t have to give up anything to fix it. For some climate advocates, the solution has been to shift messaging away from individual responsibility and focus instead on big, systemic changes like overhauling our electricity and transit systems through governmental investment in clean energy. In her essay “I work in the environmental movement. I don’t care if you recycle,” author and podcaster Mary Annaïse Heglar wrote: “The belief that this enormous, existential problem could have been fixed if all of us had just tweaked our consumptive habits is not only preposterous; it’s dangerous … It’s victim blaming, plain and simple.” Heglar and others have taken a strong stance against environmental purity — the idea that you can’t care about or advocate for systems-level change if you aren’t first changing your own habits. But not everyone agrees that individual actions should be completely deemphasized in the climate conversation. Kimberly Nicholas, a climate scientist and author of the popular book Under the Sky We Make, has argued that wealthy people living in wealthy countries — and globally, “wealthy” is a lower bar than you might think — do have a responsibility to slash their outsize carbon emissions. And particularly for those of us living in democracies, personal action isn’t just about the choices we make as consumers. “There’s still an ongoing tension between personal and system change, or individual and collective action,” Nicholas said. “It’s really hard to get that right — to get the right balance there that acknowledges the role and the importance of both, and to talk about and study and describe both in a way that motivates people to take high-impact actions.” Goldwert saw that tension play out in her maligned climate communications study. In the experiment, participants reviewed 21 individual climate actions (like eating less meat) and five systemic actions (like voting) and rated their commitments to taking each action. Two test groups then received clarifying information about the relative impact of the 21 individual actions — one group was asked to estimate their ranking before learning how they actually ranked, the other group received the information straight-up. But participants didn’t receive any data about the carbon-mitigation potential of the five collective actions, which would be far more difficult to quantify. What Goldwert’s team found surprised them: The teachings did nudge people toward higher-impact personal actions, but their stated likelihood of engaging in collective ones actually went down — a backfire effect that hints at the perils of focusing too much on personal lifestyle choices. “It might be kind of like a mental substitution,” Goldwert said. “People feel like, ‘OK, I’ve done my part individually. I kind of checked the box on climate action.’” Participants were also asked to rate the “plasticity” of each of the actions, or how easy it would be to adopt. And those measurements revealed another nuance in how people view different forms of climate action. For the individual-focused options, participants were more likely to commit to actions they saw as requiring little effort. For the systemic actions, they were more interested in whether it would have an impact — something researchers are still working on quantifying. “If you think voting or marching is just symbolic or ineffective, you’re not going to engage,” Goldwert said. “We have to show people evidence that their voice or their vote can shift policy, corporate practices, or social norms.” I, for one, was surprised to see that participants rated the commitment to “not purchase or adopt a dog” as easy. When I asked Goldwert what might be behind that, she noted that dog ownership is a decision people don’t make very often. It also doesn’t require any action at all for people who already don’t own dogs. The results surely would have been different if the listed action was “get rid of your existing dog.” (Which it was not — a point that readers seemed to miss, based on Reddit comments about the study and the “crazy emails” Goldwert said she received.) Still, for an animal lover like me, the idea of never adopting another dog doesn’t feel easy to commit to at all. It feels like an immense sacrifice. The sadness I feel at the thought of a future without dogs points me to another important factor when it comes to motivation for climate action: joy. Loki in one of his most dramatic napping positions. Claire Elise Thompson / Grist Actions we take to try and mitigate the climate crisis may be partially driven by how easy they are for us or how effective we believe them to be — but any choice we make is also driven by what we find joy in. It’s an essential part of staying committed and resilient in the fight for a better future. In this way, carbon-intensive activities like dog ownership have value beyond their weight in emissions. “People have an emotional attachment to the people and animals and creatures that we love,” Nicholas said. “And that is actually, I think, very powerful. We’re not only going to solve climate change by lining up all the numbers — we certainly need to do that, but we have to tap into what people really care about and realize all those things are on the line and threatened by the amount of climate change we’re heading for with current policies.” Would I fight to ensure that dogs, like my beloved Loki, can continue wagging happily on this planet? Heck yes, I would. I’ve always felt that being a pet person goes hand-in-hand with a sense of altruism and responsibility. And if not giving up our pets means fighting climate change, by voting, marching, donating, advocating, and consuming like our pets’ lives depend on it, I think we can all get on board. That might also mean adjusting our pets’ diets. While making my dog a full vegetarian seems challenging (though technically possible), just cutting out beef has a significant impact — shifting to “lower-carbon meats” was even one of the high-impact actions included in Goldwert’s study. That’s one Loki can easily commit to. And we already buy insect-based treats, which leave a pungent odor in my pockets but seem to please his taste buds. There are also ways that dog ownership intersects with other climate-related behaviors. Anecdotally, I would say I travel less because I have a dog whose care I need to think about. Walking him every day has also made me vastly more connected to my local environment, the goings-on in my neighborhood, and my neighbors themselves — all of which are important aspects of building climate resilience. Some dogs have even been trained to sniff out invasive species and help identify environmental contaminants. (Not Loki, who has never worked a day in his life.) Read Next Dogs are sniffing out a legacy of pollution on the Blackfeet nation Zoya Teirstein Though I’d never thought about it quite this way before I read Goldwert’s study, the climate actions I take have a lot to do with the love I feel for Loki. Not because I want to leave a better world for him — I recognize the reality that I will almost certainly outlive him — but because my feelings for him bring me closer to the love I feel for all living things on this planet. This “ice age predator” who shares my home, as the anthropologist and comedian David Ian Howe puts it, is a living reminder of the relationship humans have with other species, going back many thousands of years. As the saying goes, “‘Be the person your dog thinks you are.’” And next time you get a little worked up about the realities of the climate crisis and your accountability within it, consider taking yourself on a walk. This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The climate paradox of having a dog on Nov 14, 2025.