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Climate change is hampering US apple quality and output: Study

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Monday, January 6, 2025

Many of the nation's biggest apple-generating regions are confronting challenges in crop growth and development, due to the impacts of a changing climate, a new study has found. While apple orchards nationwide have become increasingly vulnerable to warming trends, the three U.S. counties with the biggest output are among the most affected, according to the study, published on Monday in Environmental Research Letters. At the top of that list was Yakima County, Wash., which is home to more than 48,800 acres of orchards — and which showed worrisome signs in five of six metrics analyzed by Washington State University scientists. Next in line were Kent County, Mich., and Wayne County, N.Y. “We shouldn’t take the delicious apples we love to consume for granted,” said corresponding Deepti Singh, a Washington State climate scientist, in a statement. “Changing climate conditions over multiple parts of the growth cycle pose potentially compounding threats to the production and quality of apples.” Worldwide, the U.S. is currently ranked third among apple exporters, trailing behind the European Union and China during the 2022-2023 season, according to the US Department of Agriculture. At a state level, Washington is the biggest annual producer, followed by Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania. The top markets for U.S. apples are Mexico, Canada, Taiwan and Vietnam. Using both historical trends and climate metrics, the Washington State scientists evaluated six metrics that could affect apples over more than four decades, from 1979 to 2022. The metrics included the number of extreme heat days, warm nights and cold days, as well as the quantity of chilly hours needed for a tree go dormant, the last day of spring frost and the quantity of "growing degree days," or those above a certain temperature that are conducive to apple growth.  Shifts in these metrics, the authors explained, can alter the time when apple flowers bloom, while also raising the risk of sunburn on apples and influencing appearance and quality. The U.S. West has undergone the strongest such detrimental changes across multiple metrics, according to the study.  Making these developments more complex is the fact that apple trees are perennials — meaning, they bear fruit for many years. “What goes on in different seasons can affect long-term health as well as the performance and productivity of the apple tree during that specific season,” co-author Lee Kalcsits, a Washington State tree physiologist, said in a statement. “It just keeps going around in a cycle." With these cyclical knock-on effects in mind, Washington state producers are now using netting and evaporative cooling to stave off sunburn, according to Kalcsits.  The researchers also stressed that not all the observed climatic shifts are having negative impacts on apple cultivation, as some regions are actually benefiting from the changes. "Fewer cold degree days and earlier last day of frost could be beneficial by reducing exposure of apples to freezing temperatures allowing the use of less cold hardy crop varieties," the scientists stated. "Yet, it could also diminish plant cold hardiness, increasing vulnerability to extreme cold events," they added. Co-author Kirti Rajagopalan, a Washington State biological systems engineer, described Washington as an ideal case study, especially since parts of the state endure hot summers. "If we can manage it here, then it's likely manageable elsewhere too," Rajagopalan continued.  Going forward, the authors emphasized the importance of tailoring adaptive measures to varied stages of apple growth — an effort that Singh said could "minimize overall harmful impacts.”

Many of the nation's biggest apple-generating regions are confronting challenges in crop growth and development, due to the impacts of a changing climate, a new study has found. While apple orchards nationwide have become increasingly vulnerable to warming trends, the three U.S. counties with the biggest output are among the most affected, according to the...

Many of the nation's biggest apple-generating regions are confronting challenges in crop growth and development, due to the impacts of a changing climate, a new study has found.

While apple orchards nationwide have become increasingly vulnerable to warming trends, the three U.S. counties with the biggest output are among the most affected, according to the study, published on Monday in Environmental Research Letters.

At the top of that list was Yakima County, Wash., which is home to more than 48,800 acres of orchards — and which showed worrisome signs in five of six metrics analyzed by Washington State University scientists. Next in line were Kent County, Mich., and Wayne County, N.Y.

“We shouldn’t take the delicious apples we love to consume for granted,” said corresponding Deepti Singh, a Washington State climate scientist, in a statement. “Changing climate conditions over multiple parts of the growth cycle pose potentially compounding threats to the production and quality of apples.”

Worldwide, the U.S. is currently ranked third among apple exporters, trailing behind the European Union and China during the 2022-2023 season, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

At a state level, Washington is the biggest annual producer, followed by Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania. The top markets for U.S. apples are Mexico, Canada, Taiwan and Vietnam.

Using both historical trends and climate metrics, the Washington State scientists evaluated six metrics that could affect apples over more than four decades, from 1979 to 2022.

The metrics included the number of extreme heat days, warm nights and cold days, as well as the quantity of chilly hours needed for a tree go dormant, the last day of spring frost and the quantity of "growing degree days," or those above a certain temperature that are conducive to apple growth. 

Shifts in these metrics, the authors explained, can alter the time when apple flowers bloom, while also raising the risk of sunburn on apples and influencing appearance and quality.

The U.S. West has undergone the strongest such detrimental changes across multiple metrics, according to the study. 

Making these developments more complex is the fact that apple trees are perennials — meaning, they bear fruit for many years.

“What goes on in different seasons can affect long-term health as well as the performance and productivity of the apple tree during that specific season,” co-author Lee Kalcsits, a Washington State tree physiologist, said in a statement. “It just keeps going around in a cycle."

With these cyclical knock-on effects in mind, Washington state producers are now using netting and evaporative cooling to stave off sunburn, according to Kalcsits. 

The researchers also stressed that not all the observed climatic shifts are having negative impacts on apple cultivation, as some regions are actually benefiting from the changes.

"Fewer cold degree days and earlier last day of frost could be beneficial by reducing exposure of apples to freezing temperatures allowing the use of less cold hardy crop varieties," the scientists stated.

"Yet, it could also diminish plant cold hardiness, increasing vulnerability to extreme cold events," they added.

Co-author Kirti Rajagopalan, a Washington State biological systems engineer, described Washington as an ideal case study, especially since parts of the state endure hot summers.

"If we can manage it here, then it's likely manageable elsewhere too," Rajagopalan continued. 

Going forward, the authors emphasized the importance of tailoring adaptive measures to varied stages of apple growth — an effort that Singh said could "minimize overall harmful impacts.”

Read the full story here.
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Why is climate action stalling, not ramping up as Earth gets hotter?

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

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

Climate
Crisis
Food

How to make data centers less thirsty

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

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

Climate
Energy
Water

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

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

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

Climate
Conservation
Education

Climate Realism Is a Delusion

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

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

Climate
Animals
Energy

Many Hoped UN Climate Talks in Brazil Would Be Historic. They May Be Remembered as a Flop

For years, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, along with many climate experts, had high hopes for the U.N. climate talks that just finished in Brazil

This year’s U.N. climate conference in Brazil had many unique aspects that could have been part of an historic outcome.COP30, as it’s called, was hosted in Belem, a city on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, a crucial regulator of climate and home to many Indigenous peoples who are both hit hard by climate change and are part of the solution. It had the heft of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, an influential and charismatic leader on the international stage known for his ability to bring people together. And encouraged by Lula’s rousing speeches in the summit’s beginning days, more than 80 nations called for a detailed road map for the world to sharply reduce the use of gas, oil and coal, the main drivers of climate change.In the end, none of that mattered.The final decision announced Saturday, which included some tangible things like an increase in money to help developing nations adapt to climate change, was overall watered-down compared to many conferences in the past decade and fell far short of many delegates' expectations. It didn't mention the words “fossil fuels,” much less include a timeline to reduce their use. Instead of being remembered as historic, the conference will likely further erode confidence in a process that many environmentalists and even some world leaders have argued isn’t up to the challenge of confronting global temperature rise, which is leading to more frequent and intense extreme weather events like floods, storms and heat waves.The criticism was withering and came from many corners.“A climate decision that cannot even say ‘fossil fuels’ is not neutrality, it is complicity,” said Panama negotiator Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez. “Science has been deleted from COP30 because it offends the polluters.”Even those who saw some positives were quick to say they were looking toward the future.“Climate action is across many areas, so on the whole it is a mixed bag. They could have done much, much more,” said Lidy Nacpil, coordinator of the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development.“All eyes are already turning to COP31,” added Nacpil, referring to next year's conference, which will be held in Turkey. High expectations for COP30 Saturday's final resolution was the culmination of three years of talk, from measured optimism to hoopla, about a Conference of the Parties, as the summit is known, that could restore confidence in the ability of multilateral negotiations to tackle climate change. It was even called a “COP of truth.” From the time Lula was reelected in October 2022, he began pitching his vision of hosting a climate summit for the first time in the Amazon. By 2023, the U.N. had confirmed Brazil's bid to host it in Belem. The choice of Belem, a coastal city in northeast Brazil, raised many questions, both in Brazil and in many countries, because Belem doesn't have the infrastructure of other Brazilian cities such as Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo.For Lula, that was the point: This was a chance for the world to get a taste of the Amazon, truly understand what was at stake, and a chance for thousands of Indigenous peoples, who live across the vast territory shared by many South American nations, to participate.By the time the conference began Nov. 6 with two days of world leaders' speeches, Lula was able to change the subject from Belem, in large part by laying out a vision of what the conference could be. “Earth can no longer sustain the development model based on the intensive use of fossil fuels that has prevailed over the past 200 years,” Lula said Nov. 7, adding: “The fossil fuel era is drawing to a close."Words like those, coming from the leader who has both curbed deforestation in the Amazon and unabashedly supported oil exploration in it, raised hopes among many delegates, scientists and activists. Here was Lula, the ultimate pragmatist from a major oil-producing country, which gets most of its energy for domestic uses from renewables like hydropower, pushing a major change. Previous naming of fossil fuels In late 2023, during COP28 in Dubai, the final resolution declared the world needed to “transition away” from fossil fuels. The past two years, though, nothing had been done to advance that. Indeed, instead of phasing away, greenhouse gas emissions worldwide continue to rise. Now at COP30, there was talk of a “road map” to fundamentally changing world energy systems. A few days before the talks concluded, there were signs that even Lula, arguably Brazil's most dominating political figure of the past 25 years, was tempering his expectations. In a speech Wednesday night, he made the case that climate change was an urgent threat that all people needed to pay attention to. But he was also careful to say that nations should be able to transition to renewable energies at their own pace, in line with their own capacities, and there was no intention to “impose anything on anybody." Negotiators would lose much of Thursday, as a fire at the venue forced evacuations. An outcome that many nations blasted By Friday, the European Union, along with several Latin American and Pacific Island nations and others, were flatly rejecting the first draft of a resolution that didn't identify fossil fuels as the cause of climate change or have any timeline to move away from them. “After 10 years, this process is still failing,” Maina Vakafua Talia, minister of environment for the small Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, said in a speech Friday, talking about the decade since the 2015 Paris Agreement, which set international goals to limit temperature rise. After an all-nighter from Friday into Saturday, the revised resolution, which U.N. officials called the “final,” did not include a mention of fossil fuels. Environmental activists decried the influence of major oil producing countries like Saudi Arabia, which historically have fought against proposals that put a timeline on reducing oil. When delegates met Saturday afternoon for the final plenary, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago gaveled in the text while also promising to continue the discussion of fossil fuels and work with Colombia on a road map that could be shared with other countries. Technically, Brazil holds the presidency of the climate talks until the summit in Turkey next year. That was little consolation for several dozen nations that complained, including some, such as Colombia, that flatly rejected the outcome. “Thank you for your statement," do Lago would say after each one. "It will be noted in the report.”Associated Press reporters Seth Borenstein, Melina Walling and Anton Delgado contributed to this report. Peter Prengaman, AP's global climate and environment news director, was previously news director in Brazil. The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – Nov. 2025

Climate
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Forests

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Sounding the Alarm ~ America's Climate Crisis

"It's really hard being a fire family. Every day it's getting worse." -Brett, wife of Marin County Battalion Chief in California.Every day, Americans who live close to the land and sea face the dangers of climate change—from a firefighter in California, to a beekeeper in Arizona, to a climate refugee losing her home in Florida. The changing climate affects our food systems, water and way of life. These American families are in the trenches sacrificing everything while facing depression, PTSD, and suicide—collateral damage of a crisis unchecked. Award-winning filmmaker, Peter Goetz, captures America's faces and voices, shot in 2020 leading up to the presidential election. Goetz and the Biden campaign made history, producing the first national climate spot to run during a presidential election. But this film dives deeper into the American climate crisis to explore the lives of the people who are sounding the alarm, worried about their grandchildren’s future, asking, "If not us, then who?" This is a story of the resilience, perseverance, and ingenuity of the American people. Ever hopeful, they collectively take on a common enemy. As the young, Navajo solar visionary Brett Issac insists, "We've got to turn this train around before it's too late."

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In Pursuit of Passive

Follows the construction of the first net-zero, passive house built in the Greater Tetons-Yellowstone region near Jackson, WY, while explaining the Passive House building approach for designing and constructing more sustainable buildings and exploring the many associated climate and energy performance benefits. Features the home’s designers – Lindsey Love and Lindsay Schack, co-founders of a sustainable architecture and design firm based out of Bozeman, MT and Driggs, ID – along with building and climate experts.

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The Whale Guitar: Instrument of Change

Inspired by Herman Melville's epic tale, "Moby-Dick or The Whale", a late-blooming singer/songwriter and former toy designer, Jen Long, acts on a startling vision and commissions the design and build of a remarkable custom electric guitar. It's body is "The Whale" itself as it snags the mad Captain Ahab in the tangled ropes of his own obsession, and prepares to launch a boat of his whalers to their doom. The entire guitar reinterprets Melville's tale as an Anthropocene climate change warning, with the whale representing the seas and storms of climate change arising on this "third day" of late stage capitalism. Hundreds of guitarists, including J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr., and Marissa Paternoster of Screaming Females, have played and signed this "Instrument of Change" to amplify the alarm to turn our ship of over-production and over-consumption around while there is still time. As the embroidered strap featuring Starbuck's last words implores: "oh! Ahab, not too late is it, even now, the third day, to desist."

Music
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Can Hydroponic Farming Help Reduce the Effects of Climate Change?

"Can Hydroponic Farming Help Reduce the Effects of Climate Change?" is an entertaining and educational short film. Rachel and her remarkable robot companion, Rex, witness the dire consequences of climate change through news reports of devastating natural disasters. When Rex encounters an alien emissary, he embarks on a journey to a ruined world where pollution and climate change led to the collapse of an entire civilization. Returning to Earth the three main causes of global warming are reveal—electricity production, transportation, and wasteful agriculture—and stress the importance of transitioning to clean energy sources, electric transport, and hydroponic farming. Rex takes on the mission of educating robots and humans alike about combating climate change. The film ends with a global commitment to address the crisis and a poignant celebration of Rex's role in this vital endeavor, reminding us of the urgency to protect our planet from climate catastrophe.

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Inside The Grand Canyon

This guerrilla style documentary film captures a Colorado River rafting expedition through the Grand Canyon. Exhilarating and sometimes dangerous expeditions like this are not often considered when discussing global climate change but could be helpful to enlighten more folks about the changes to our planet. This rafting trip will soon be a thing of the past with record draughts continuing due to ongoing global climate change caused largely by humans. This is just a tiny slice of natures many warning signs of things to come. We find ourselves in a world of ongoing disbelief and hesitation in lieu of planning for the clear and present dangers from climate change. The Colorado River has already reached devastating levels for communities that depend on the water and electrical power resource. Government study in 2022 showed that Lake Powell could reach ""dead pool"" by 2023. There is no plan to mitigate the catastrophe that will leave over a million and a half people with no electricity.

Water
Climate
Sustainable

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