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Key words: Conjuncture
Chris Goldie unpacks the concept of conjuncture, and how theorists from Louis Althusser to Stuart Hall use it to analyse social formations
The post Key words: Conjuncture appeared first on Red Pepper.
The legal block on climate action
Wonnarua elder welcomes heritage listing of Ravensworth Homestead as a step to justice
Wonnarua elder Scott Franks has welcomed the NSW Government’s decision to list Ravensworth Homestead on the State Heritage Register, saying it is a critical step toward truth-telling and justice for Wonnarua people.
Tribal and Environmental Advocates Denounce Certification of Consistency Approval for the Delta Conveyance Project
Groups warn the project ignores state law, threatens important Tribal cultural sites and the health of the Delta ecosystem.
For Immediate Release:
April 23, 2026
Contact:
Ashley Castaneda, ashley@restorethedelta.org
Sacramento, CA – A coalition of tribes and environmental advocates expressed sharp criticism following the Delta Stewardship Council’s approval of the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) Certification of Consistency for the proposed Delta Conveyance Project (DCP). The coalition argues that the project violates state law and poses an imminent threat to Delta communities, its ecosystem and cultural heritage.The coalition, consisting of the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians, the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, San Francisco Baykeeper, Center for Biological Diversity, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, Little Manila Rising, Friends of the River, California Indian Environmental Alliance, Sierra Club California and Restore the Delta, appealed the Certificate of Consistency late last year, citing the project would:
- Irreparably harm Tribal Cultural Resources including cultural sites, burial grounds and traditional use areas – highlighting the lack of any meaningful Tribal consultation
- Intensify environmental harm by increasing diversions from the Delta, reducing protective water flows for threatened fish species and increasing harmful algal blooms
- Worsen environmental injustices, placing disproportionate burdens on Delta residents including low-income, Tribal and Latino communities
- Increase water reliance on the Delta, directly contradicting Delta Plan requirements, and weakening water flow protections
In the decision, the Council did defer back to the DWR two important issues related to the Golden Mussel and Sacramento Sewer’s Water program for further review. Rather than resolving these concerns within the proceeding, the draft decision directs DWR to consider whether additional measures are warranted, but only requires changes where deemed feasible.
STATEMENTS FROM COALITION MEMBERS:
Malissa Tayaba, Vice Chair, Chingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians:
“Consistency with a plan meant to ensure co-equal goals can only be achieved by projects that treat Delta tribal and environmental water goals as truly equal. The Delta Conveyance Project treats our goals as less equal than the goal of diverting more water out of the Delta. The fact that the Governor’s appointees determined otherwise doesn’t change this fundamental reality. Yet again we are seeing political expediency win out over commitments to a healthy estuary. We will continue fighting against this destructive project.”
Gary Mulcahy, Government Liaison at Winnemem Wintu Tribe:
“The Delta Stewardship Council does not know the legality of what they ruled on because DWR’s documents do not support the consistency of the project for Tribes, environmental justice communities and fisheries. It’s just another giveaway to the Newsom Administration and DWR before the Governor leaves office.
Eric Buescher, Managing Attorney, San Francisco Baykeeper:
“The Delta Stewardship Council’s decision to accept DWR’s Certification of Consistency with the Delta Reform Act contradicts evidence and records provided by the coalition. “The Delta Reform Act was passed to protect, restore, and enhance the ecosystem of the San Francisco Bay-Delta and to preserve the Delta as a place. The Delta Conveyance Project would do the opposite.
The Stewardship Council’s decision to conclude that this project is consistent with the co-equal goals of the Act is disappointing and inconsistent with the law and the evidence. The Council’s decision ignores the big picture and common sense in favor of a cramped understanding of the statute and of the Delta itself. In doing so, the Council abandons the co-equal goals and abandons the Delta.”
Christie Ralston, Associate Attorney, San Francisco Baykeeper:
“Today, the Delta Stewardship Council ignored clear defects in the Draft Decision on the appeals of the Department of Water Resource’s Certification of Consistency for the Delta Conveyance Project. It did this in order to ram through the governor’s desire to break ground on the Delta Tunnel as soon as possible regardless of the impacts on Delta wildlife, ecosystems, economies, communities, and Tribes.
In denying the many appeals the Council received, it has allowed DWR to sweep under the rug the devastating effects the Tunnel could have for years to come. And the breakneck speed at which the Council moved in making its decision robbed the public, appellants, and even the Council members themselves from being able to digest the Decision and meaningfully engage with it. Disappointingly, the Delta Stewardship Council has failed in its role as steward of the Delta.”
Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director at Restore the Delta adds, “Today’s Delta Stewardship Council meeting and vote was farcical. They failed to consider the vast majority of documented records by appellants as they twisted regulations to justify their political actions. Citing incorrectly that the Council followed the law proves that Newsom appointees do not have the backbone to learn and implement the law accurately. We are disappointed but not surprised.”
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The post Protected: Equitable Building Decarbonization [waiting for title] appeared first on Asian Pacific Environmental Network.
Agrarian Reform, Agroecology and Food Sovereignty: ICARRD+20
Nurses applaud passage of critical A.I. bills out of committee
Plastic Policy is Public Health Policy
Since Philadelphia banned single-use plastic bags in 2021, more than 200 million of them have been kept out of the city’s waste stream, streets, and tree branches.
This is huge progress and a clear example of the power of public policy. But the harm of plastics is not limited to our natural environment. We urge Philadelphians to consider how plastics affect our health, too.
When the Clean Air Council was founded in 1967, Americans were fighting smog and rivers so polluted that they caught fire. Those problems have not disappeared, but today we also face less visible dangers. Chemicals used in plastics, including bisphenols and phthalates, have been linked to reproductive harm, metabolic disorders, diabetes, and some cancers.
That growing concern is reflected in the new Netflix documentary The Plastic Detox, which follows couples trying to reduce their exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals while navigating infertility.
The film raises a question that should concern all of us: How can we protect ourselves from harmful plastic-related chemicals when plastic is woven into so much of daily life?
There are steps individuals can take. People can avoid thermal paper receipts, choose natural fibers over synthetic ones, and replace plastic food and drink containers with glass, stainless steel, wood, or ceramic when possible. But individual choices can only go so far.
The burden should not fall on people to “detox” from a system they did not create. Public policy should make healthier choices easier and safer materials more available and affordable.
And we should be honest about how little of our plastic waste is actually recycled: only about 6%. Millions of tons are still sent to landfills, and millions more are burned.
That matters here in Philadelphia, where city officials are negotiating new waste disposal contracts.
Chester residents, along with Clean Air Council and other advocates, are urging the city to stop sending trash to the Reworld incinerator – the nation’s largest. The Stop Trashing Our Air Act, introduced by Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, would prohibit Philadelphia from contracting with companies that burn municipal waste.
If we are serious about reducing the harm of plastics, we cannot act as though disposal is someone else’s problem.
Philadelphia’s plastic bag ban showed that local action works. Now the city and the state should build on that progress by reducing unnecessary plastic use, expanding policies that limit exposure, and making safer alternatives more common once again. Pennsylvania should also stop lagging behind other states on actions to reduce single-use plastics.
Plastic policy is public health policy, we need to treat it that way.
Migrant Summer: Status Now!
Join migrants, allies, and supporters across Canada from June 21–28 for a Migrant Summer Week of Action. We’re stepping up our action in response to the federal government’s cuts to permanent and temporary residency levels and the passing of Bill C-12, as we build toward our mass day of action with allies in the Migrant Rights Network on September 20, 2026.
When the summer heats up, so do our issues: unpredictable weather and wildfires, unsafe and un-air conditioned housing, stolen wages, lack of work, not enough income to eat or send money home, and mass permit expiries. We’re exhausted and stressed, but we’re getting ready to fight back.
Sign up now to stay connected. You’ll get updates on local actions, digital actions, and ways to get involved during Migrant Summer and beyond.
Digital action matters, too. Can’t attend? Show your solidarity by joining us in taking digital action on social media, or signing and sharing our petitions.
By coming together, we’re showing the federal government and employers that we’re not going to stay silent. Migrants deserve the same rights and protections as everyone else.
As the summer gets hotter, so will our struggle. We can’t keep waiting for change — this year, we will be the change.
Find an actionSearch for events near you and RSVP inline.
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} }); } function cleanWidget() { var area = document.getElementById(areaId); if (!area) return; area.querySelectorAll("input, textarea, select").forEach(function (input) { hideNearbyFieldTitles(area, input); }); addEventClasses(area); addDetailClasses(area); hideActionNetworkBranding(area); } function startCleanup() { cleanWidget(); var area = document.getElementById(areaId); if (!area) return; var observer = new MutationObserver(function () { cleanWidget(); }); observer.observe(area, { childList: true, subtree: true }); setTimeout(cleanWidget, 400); setTimeout(cleanWidget, 1200); setTimeout(cleanWidget, 2500); setTimeout(cleanWidget, 5000); } if (document.readyState === "loading") { document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", startCleanup); } else { startCleanup(); } })();The post Migrant Summer: Status Now! first appeared on Migrant Workers Alliance for Change.
The post Migrant Summer: Status Now! appeared first on Migrant Workers Alliance for Change.
Advocates urge CA officials to oppose Trump’s Drill Baby Drill’ agenda, stop expediting new oil permits
The post Advocates urge CA officials to oppose Trump’s Drill Baby Drill’ agenda, stop expediting new oil permits appeared first on Last Chance Alliance.
Terry Tempest Williams – The Glorians Are Among Us
Terry Tempest Williams, one of our nation’s living literary treasures and a guiding light for many of us regarding ethics and citizenship, shares how she emerged from a dream during the pandemic in 2020 with a renewed vow she had forgotten. In this time of political and climate chaos, as we seek beauty and cohesion wherever we can find its glimmer, Terry focused on “The Glorians,” the overlooked presences—animal, plant, memory, moment—that reveal our shared vulnerability and interconnectedness with the natural world and how they can inspire us to carry forward with grace. “The Glorians are reaching out to us,” she writes,” inviting us to dream a new world into being.”
This talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.
Terry Tempest Williams, a writer, educator, and environmental activist known for her lyrical and impassioned prose, is the author of over twenty creative nonfiction books including the environmental literature classic, Refuge – An Unnatural History of Family and Place, and: The Open Space of Democracy, Finding Beauty in a Broken World, When Women Were Birds, and Erosion – Essays of Undoing. Her most recent book is the The Glorians – Visitations from the Holy Ordinary (spring ’26). A Recipient of Guggenheim and Lannan literary fellowships, Ms. Williams’ work has appeared widely, including in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Progressive, and Orion, and has been translated worldwide. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she is currently Writer-in-Residence at the Harvard Divinity School.
Learn more at terrytempestwilliams.com
EXPLORE MORE Terry Tempest Williams: Noticing the Glorians in a Fractured WorldIn a recent conversation with Bioneers co-founder Nina Simons, Terry Tempest Williams reflects more personally on the inner terrain behind her work — art, activism, spirituality, and the discipline of staying open. She speaks to grief as a form of love, to community as a site of imagination, and to the quiet but radical act of not looking away. As she describes it, “finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find.”
Erosion and Evolution: Our Undoing is Our BecomingIn this podcast episode, Terry Tempest Williams asks: How do we find the strength to not look away at all that is breaking our hearts? Hands on the earth, we remember where the source of our authentic power comes from.
The post Terry Tempest Williams – The Glorians Are Among Us appeared first on Bioneers.
Speculation and Greed Explain the Price of Gasoline, not Supply and Demand
The economic impacts of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran were felt by Canadians within hours of its launch. Prices for gasoline, diesel, and home heating oil (widely used in Atlantic Canada) shot up very quickly. This is both surprising and infuriating—since those products were produced, refined, and delivered long before the war started. Why do consumers have to pay more, given the war had no impact on the cost of production?
Centre for Future Work director Jim Stanford pursued this question in a commentary originally published in the Toronto Star.
Policy Choices, not Market Forces, Explain Why We’re Getting Soaked at the Pump… Again By Jim StanfordFor beleaguered consumers, it’s déjà vu all over again. War breaks out on the other side of the world. Within 24 hours, gasoline prices take off – rising up to 50 cents a litre on average across Canada since the war started. Natural gas and heating oil prices will follow, along with costs for anything that uses petroleum intensively (like transportation services, food, and construction).
It’ll get worse when the Bank of Canada jumps into the fray with higher interest rates to counteract renewed inflation. Then the victims of oil-fired inflation will be punished again.
We’ve seen this movie before. Sadly, we haven’t learned its lessons.
In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine – a country that does not produce significant amounts of oil. World oil prices soared 65% in weeks, propelled unduly by speculative bets placed on financialized futures markets.
Prices subsided by the end of the year, after it became clear world oil supply was unaffected by that war (which still drags on). But the damage was done. The 2022 oil spike was the biggest single cause of the resulting inflation that caused such turmoil around the world.
In Canada, that surge in oil prices directly accounted for 43% of post-pandemic inflation, which peaked at 8% four months later. The indirect costs were even bigger: including price hikes on energy-intensive products, subsequent higher interest rates, and job losses as high rates chilled the aggregate economy. I have estimated that the cumulative toll for Canadian consumers from the 2022 oil price surge exceeded $200 billion over three years – a staggering $12,000 per household.
Now prices are soaring again, following U.S.-Israeli attacks and Iranian counter-attacks. Before banging their heads against the nearest brick wall over the prospect of a painful sequel, consumers should pause to ask two fundamental questions. Why must we pay so much more for oil and gas produced, processed, and consumed right here in Canada, with no connection to the Middle East whatsoever? And who benefits from this outcome?
The gasoline stored in pumps right now sells for much more than before the war started. But it was refined weeks ago, from oil extracted months ago. Canada produces far more oil than it consumes; three-quarters of our production is exported. Of the modest volumes imported into eastern Canada, almost none comes through the Persian Gulf.
So there’s no energy ‘supply shock’ in Canada. The cost of producing and refining gasoline hasn’t changed at all. Yet Canadian consumers are already being soaked. And the worst is yet to come.
Petroleum companies profit immensely from this gap between soaring revenues and steady costs. That produced historic petroleum profits after the Ukraine invasion – almost $1 trillion worldwide in 2022 alone. In Canada, after-tax petroleum profits (upstream and downstream) totaled $154 billion from 2022 through 2024, when the inflationary burst finally subsided. That propelled after-tax corporate profits to 21% of Canadian GDP in 2022 (the highest share in history), even as Canadians struggled with affordability.
This new war has roiled real oil supplies (not just futures markets), so the price shock will likely be worse and longer lasting. But it’s not inevitable that we should tolerate the resulting economy-wide inflation and higher interest rates here at home.
Regulation could curtail the speed and extent to which foreign shocks are reflected in domestic prices. Energy prices could be tied to the actual cost of production (like we already do with electricity). And accelerating the transition to hydro, wind, solar, and geothermal (none of which traverse the Straits of Hormuz!) would further protect us.
Of course, petroleum lobbyists complain that insulating Canadian oil prices from global chaos will cause price ‘distortions’. But it’s hard to imagine anything more distortionary than inflicting another pointless cycle of inflation followed by contraction on an entire national economy – one that is blessed with far more energy than it needs.
The oil industry’s preferred solution to everything – build more export pipelines – would clearly make affordability even worse. New LNG projects, in particular, will amplify upward pressure on domestic gas prices, something the Alberta government’s recent provincial budget explicitly celebrated.
Perhaps Canada can’t do much about interminable conflict in the Middle East. But we can certainly do more to protect our own economy from its fallout.
The post Speculation and Greed Explain the Price of Gasoline, not Supply and Demand appeared first on Centre for Future Work.
Annotated Bibliography on the Net Employment Benefits of the Energy Transition
Investments in sustainable energy and energy conservation are larger than investments in fossil fuel energy systems. Moreover, the work involved is more labour-intensive than fossil fuel projects (which have very small labour inputs relative to the scale of capital investments or GDP). For both reasons, the shift from fossil fuels to sustainable alternatives will definitely create far more jobs than are lost in fossil fuel industries as the economy transitions to net-zero.
This is a summary of previous research on the net employment benefits of sustainable energy projects, and other dimensions of the energy transition. It reviews several studies of the employment impacts of renewable energy and related investments in Canada, and then several international reports on parallel trends in the global economy.
Previous Canadian Studies- In a report for the Pembina Institute, Kaddoura et al. (2020) forecast potential new employment in four areas of emissions-reducing investment in Alberta, over a ten-year period. The report estimated that over 67,000 new jobs would be created in the province over a decade, driven by investments in four broad areas: renewable electricity generation, public transit and electric vehicle infrastructure, energy efficiency improvements in buildings and industry, and a program of remediation and methane reduction in oil and gas extraction facilities. That is enough new employment to offset two-thirds of all jobs in the province’s existing petroleum industry.
- In neighbouring B.C., Lee and Klein (2020) estimated the employment impacts of investing 2% of provincial GDP in renewable energy and energy conservation initiatives (as proposed by Nicholas Stern in his landmark international report, 2006). They projected an investment programme of this scale would create and maintain 42,000 jobs in the provincial economy – far more than are presently supported by fossil fuel industries in that province. Due to the higher labour content of alternative energy and related products, shifting investment from fossil fuel production to renewable energy, energy efficiency, and decarbonized transportation systems generates net employment growth.
- Another provincial-focused study was published by the Ecology Action Centre (2019) for Nova Scotia. This research simulated the employment impacts of a programme to reduce provincial GHG emissions by 50% by 2030, in line with Canada’s Paris Agreement commitments. Investments in renewable energy generation, energy efficiency, and public transit would support the creation of 15,000 net new jobs in Nova Scotia – and thousands more spin-off jobs elsewhere in Canada. The province would benefit from expanded GDP growth, enhanced tax revenue, and $675 million in additional annual personal income (measured in real 2019 dollar terms).
- A project initiated by the David Suzuki Foundation modeled the investment and technological dimensions of an ambitious effort to expand and decarbonize Canada’s electricity system, through the rapid deployment of renewable power sources and conversion of heating, transportation, and industrial energy uses to electric power (Thomas and Green, 2022). The report also estimated the employment effects of this investment programme, which would achieve a net-zero electricity system by 2035. The analysis considered only direct construction and operation jobs associated with economy-wide electrification; it did not include indirect (upstream) or induced (downstream) spin-off jobs (such as jobs in manufacturing activities spurred by electrification), nor jobs in other emerging technologies (such as battery storage). In this regard, the forecast is very conservative. The report expects about 75,000 new jobs related to electricity generation and infrastructure to be created over the first 15 years of investment. Proportionately, the largest job growth is experienced in Alberta and Saskatchewan, where the GDP and employment gains from electrification are especially significant.
- Jobs for Tomorrow (Bridge and Gilbert, 2017), focused on the impacts of the energy transition for employment among building and construction trades. That report catalogued likely investments across three broad categories of emissions-reduction activity: renewable energy generation and transmission; building energy efficiency and district energy systems; and transportation. It then estimated employment impacts of those projects on the basis of previously published employment coefficients. Across those three categories of activity, the report projected that a total of 3.3 million person-years of employment would be created in construction trades by 2050. Two-thirds of that growth was concentrated in non-residential construction (as builders updated existing structures, and built new ones, to incorporate rigorous new energy efficiency standards). Clearly, the massive investments required to facilitate the energy transition in Canada and meet international emissions-reduction commitments imply very strong ongoing demand for construction trades work.
- A sequel to that 2017 report, now titled Jobs for Today, updated those projections of construction jobs arising from major investments in renewable energy systems, energy conservation, and sustainable transportation (Bridge and Stanford, 2025). This report surveyed evidence on the impacts of sustainable energy investments that are already visible on Canadian labour markets. Then it forecast the scale of investment spending that would be required to meet Canada’s official net-zero commitments in three broad areas: the full range of non-emitting energy systems (hydro, solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear, and tidal) and associated transmission investments; investments in energy-efficient buildings and community infrastructure (including new super-efficient industrial, commercial, and institutional buildings, retrofits of existing buildings, and energy-conserving district energy systems), and investments in sustainable transportation systems (including EV charging networks, urban public transit, and high-speed inter-city rail). The application of employment coefficients derived from official economic data and other published data can then translate those investment forecasts into employment projections. These investments are forecast to support the creation of 6.3 million to 9.5 million jobs years of work for construction and building trades workers – equivalent to an average of 235,000 to 350,000 new jobs on average over the next 25 years. The estimates do not include indirect or spin-off jobs in supply chains or associated manufacturing.
- A deeper dive into the impacts of the energy transition for one specific trade – electricians – was undertaken by Electricity Human Resources Canada (2023). This report compiled estimates of new jobs arising from the expansion of renewable energy generation, along with transmission expansion and upgrades. The shift to renewable energy and electrification will accelerate demand for electricians considerably. The report projects net job growth of 12,000 positions in the five years ending in 2028. That is on top of the need to replace over 15,000 anticipated electrician retirements in the same period. There is no doubt that electricians are an occupation with increasing employment opportunities in coming years. The report urged additional investments in training and apprenticeships by employers and governments.
- Another specific construction trade that will experience new job opportunities from the growing focus on energy conservation is insulators. Calvert and Crabtree (2022) and Calvert (2023) relate the experience of Local 131 of the insulators’ union (in New Brunswick), which pro-actively undertook an independent program of free energy audits for owners of commercial and industrial buildings. The goal was to highlight for building owners the operational and cost savings from upgraded insulation and energy conservation upgrades. The campaign was successful and generated significant amounts of new work for members of the union. Other insulator union locals have also launched industry awareness programs to promote energy retrofits, similarly generating new work opportunities for union members (Calvert and Tallon, 2016; Calvert, 2019).
- The positive employment effects of electrification were further explored in a report by the David Suzuki Foundation (Thomas and Green, 2022). This report mapped the investments required to support deep electrification of Canada’s economy, on the strength of massive investments in renewable energy generation, transmission, distribution and storage facilities. To decarbonize existing electricity generation (by 2035, as per existing federal standards), and then meet the extra demand for electricity from the spread of emissions-free technologies in other sectors (such as transportation and heating), an 18-fold increase in total wind and solar generation will be needed by 2050. Some 1.5 million person-years of work will be created in the construction, operation, and maintenance of new wind and solar generating capacity, and associated battery storage. The implications of this ambitious electrification strategy for carbon emissions are hopeful: this plan would reduce emissions by a cumulative total of 3.2 billion tonnes in the period to 2050.
- Clean Energy Canada has published successive reports estimating employment growth in what it calls Canada’s “clean energy economy” (Clean Energy Canada, 2019, 2021; Navius Research, 2019). The research estimated that as of 2020 some 430,000 jobs already existed in a broadly-defined clean energy sector: including renewable energy production and distribution, construction and retrofit of energy efficient buildings, clean energy transportation, and specialized clean energy industries (such as low-carbon machinery, and emission detection and control). That was an increase of over 130,000 jobs (or over one-third) from 2017. And under the climate policy outlook adopted by the federal government, clean energy jobs were forecast to grow by another 200,000 positions by 2030 – outweighing a projected decline in fossil fuel-related employment of 125,000 positions over the same time. Clean Energy Canada’s modeling confirms net gains in employment from the transition to clean energy will be experienced in all parts of Canada, including in fossil fuel-producing provinces.
- A separate report prepared for Clean Energy Canada by Dunsky Energy Consulting (2018) considered the macroeconomic and employment effects from energy efficiency improvements, as mandated in the previous federal-provincial Pan Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change. The Dunsky modeling traces several channels of impact from the energy efficiency provisions of that federal-provincial agreement: including energy efficiency standards in new buildings, retrofits of existing buildings, new energy efficiency standards in appliances and equipment, and industrial energy efficiency. Those efficiency improvements were expected to meet 25% of Canada’s Paris commitments for emissions reduction. The economic stimulus from energy efficiency comes from two major channels: increased demand for efficiency-related goods and services (including building construction and retrofit), and reallocated savings on energy costs by consumers and businesses (which redeploy their energy savings into other forms of expenditure). Those effects more than offset the reduced economic activity associated with energy production resulting from reduced demand for the energy. The jobs impact of the efficiency improvements was estimated at an average net gain in ongoing employment of 118,000 over a 13-year period (to 2030), and a 1% increase in national GDP over the baseline trajectory.
- Xuereb and Hillel (2023) simulated the employment impacts of an ambitious programme of proposed investment in a range of energy transition and conservation initiatives, worth a cumulative total of $287 billion over five years. (The details of this investment programme are described in Lee et al., 2023.) Based on an allocation of investment spending across different components of activity associated with each project category, this research estimated that investments on this scale would support between 187,000 and 226,000 new jobs by the fifth year of the programme. The ‘low’ estimate includes only direct and supply-chain jobs associated with the new investments; the ‘high’ estimate includes downstream jobs in consumer industries, stimulated by the increased incomes (and hence consumer spending) generated in the renewable energy and related industries.
- Researchers at RBC mapped the intersectoral employment transitions and associated skills and training requirements resulting from the shift to a net-zero economy in Canada (Guldimann and Powell, 2022). Like other research, this study projected enormous job-creation potential in clean energy, infrastructure, energy conservation, and related fields. The study forecasts between 235,000 and 400,000 new jobs will be created in occupations whose tasks and qualifications have changed because of the energy transition. That total job-creation would be even larger if Canada stepped up its investments in new energy systems; the report estimates $60 billion per year in incremental capital spending estimated is necessary to meet climate targets. New work in these evolving and emerging occupations will substantially outweigh the gradual decline in employment in traditional fossil fuel energy production and use. RBC expects existing skills shortages for construction, managerial, technical, and manufacturing workers to become even more pressing as the energy transition gathers pace, and these net new jobs are created. The report calls for urgent action by governments, employers, and educators to prepare for the coming surge in demand for skilled workers in fields related to sustainable energy.
- The Centre for Future Work developed a detailed breakdown of the various channels through which employment adjustments can be facilitated during a gradual phase-out of fossil fuel production and use, and corresponding ramp up of renewable energy and energy conservation projects (Stanford, 2021). In this forecast, a gradual phase-out of direct fossil fuel-related employment (estimated at 159,000 jobs across Canada in 2019, or 0.9% of total employment) would be possible over a 20- or 25-year phase-out (consistent with reaching net-zero targets by 2050), with no involuntary layoffs. Much of this transition would be facilitated through retirements, since workers in fossil fuel industries are older than the economy-wide average. New jobs created in renewable energy and other sustainable activities (including amelioration of former fossil fuel production sites) would be important in smoothing the transition. But there are many other pathways through which fossil fuel jobs could also be replaced, including through job-creation in other sectors (such as construction, non-fossil minerals, transportation, and private and public services). Supports for the roughly 4000 non-retiring fossil fuel workers who would need redeployment each year (according to that phase-out timeline) could include income insurance programs, retraining supports, relocation incentives, and small business start-up grants. Successful transition plans in other examples of fossil fuel phase-out (including Germany’s gradual shut-down of black coal mining, or Ontario’s phase-out of coal-fired electricity) prove that gradual, supported transitions of this sort can be accomplished without lay-offs, so long as timelines are long and gradual, and affected workers are supported with a portfolio of adjustment supports.
All countries are grappling with the economic and labour market issues related to the energy transition, and there is now a large body of international research attesting to the powerful employment-creating effects of major renewable energy and emissions-reduction investments. Here we summarize a few of the more notable international research efforts:
- The International Energy Agency (2021) has developed a detailed global forecast of employment opportunities generated by worldwide investments to meet commitments to net-zero emissions by 2050. These investments will involve trillions of dollars of new capital spending on renewable energy systems, transmission facilities, energy conservation, and related construction work. These investments would create 30 million new jobs globally by 2030: 14 million positions in clean energy systems, and 16 million in construction and retrofit work. That will far more than offset the 5 million jobs expected to disappear from the fossil fuel sector over the same period, as fossil energy is gradually phased out. The IEA forecast does not include new jobs in related manufacturing activity, nor the spillover employment (through upstream supply chains and downstream consumer industries) spurred by these enormous investments.
- Annual research has been published for a decade by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), documenting the steady growth of global employment in renewable energy activities. Its most recent report (2023) tallies 13.7 million renewable energy jobs worldwide in 2022, up 8% from the previous year – and almost double the number 10 years earlier (in IRENA’s first report). Two-thirds of those jobs are in Asia, and over 40% are in China alone (which leads the world in new solar and wind installations). The biggest single sector for renewable energy employment is solar photovoltaic power investments, supporting 4.9 million jobs worldwide in 2022. But the employment benefits of renewable energy are widespread across several other sectors, including wind, hydro, bioenergy, geothermal, and heat pumps. The IRENA tally does not include jobs in energy conservation or upgrading work, nor jobs in manufacturing renewable energy equipment. IRENA’s research highlights especially strong job-creation potential in decentralized projects, such as small-scale hydropower and decentralized solar installations.
- A project to catalogue the global employment benefits from renewable energy and emissions-reduction investments in five case-study countries was undertaken by the United Nations International Development Organization and the Global Green Growth Initiative (2015). This project estimated the macroeconomic and employment effects of an investment programme worth 1.5% of national GDP in Brazil, Germany, Indonesia, South Africa, and South Korea. The investment was divided between renewable energy projects and energy conservation and emissions reduction projects. The employment impacts of these investments considerably outweighed employment declines associated with fossil fuel production. The employment benefits of energy transition investments were greater in developing countries (due to lower wage levels and greater labour-intensity of production methods). Final employment created for each $1 million (U.S.) of investment ranged from 9.5 in Germany to over 100 in Indonesia.
- An especially ambitious modeling exercise was undertaken by Jacobson et al. (2017) to simulate a road-map for steep emission reduction (consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C) in 139 countries by 2050. The research first compiled a plan for the scale and composition of investments required to achieve such emissions reduction. It then estimated the combined employment effects of those investments, across all 139 countries included in the project, on the basis of employment coefficients for specific types of investment spending and energy production. It anticipated a total of 52 million new jobs to be created by those investments over the period to 2050, almost double the 27 million jobs expected to disappear from fossil fuel production and use over the same period.
- A team at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has developed a template methodology for estimating the employment gains from green energy investment plans in various U.S. states, and nationally. One recent application of that template is reported by Pollin et al. (2023), describing the estimated employment impacts of three major energy-related initiatives of the Biden administration: the Bipartisan Infrastructure Legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS Act (Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors). Applying employment input coefficients across all industries affected by the various measures in that Act, and capturing indirect (supply chain) and induced (consumer spending) effects, the research predicted an average of 2.9 million new jobs over the first five years of the measures. The construction sector alone was expected to add almost one-half million new jobs under the combined effect of the three bills.
- The C40 network of mayors of major global cities (C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, 2021) modeled the employment impacts from a proposed major green investment programme for 96 cities around the world – recognizing that large urban centres face particular challenges and opportunities in transitioning to renewable energy. Their green recovery scenario sees over 50 million net new jobs created in those city regions by 2030, powered by capital investments in renewable energy systems, urban transit, conservation and building retrofits, and other emissions reduction projects. Each $1 million U.S. in green capital spending supports 10 to 21 job-years of new employment – considerably more than conventional carbon-intensive projects and energy systems. The faster the commitment to renewable energy investments, the larger are the job benefits: in an accelerated green investment scenario (which would speed up capital spending by 2 years), some 80 million net new jobs are created in the 96 cities in the same time frame. As a case study, the C40 work also featured a focused analysis of investment and employment opportunities arising from the energy transition in Canada (Berensson et al., 2021). Their analysis forecast up to 1.8 million new person-years of employment in Canada arising between 2020 and 2030 from a major emissions-reduction investment scheme in 12 large cities, including construction, manufacturing, and operating and maintenance roles. Building construction and retrofits accounted for over half of that total.
- A group of researchers (Batinit et al., 2022) conducted simulations of the impacts of investments in a variety of carbon-neutral or carbon-sink projects – ranging from non-emitting power generation to environmental reclamation. Including indirect effects through supply chains, and induced impacts on downstream consumer spending, these projects generated strong multiplier effects, ranging from 1.1 to 1.7. Multiplier effects consistently larger than one indicate that each dollar invested in one of these projects, generates a final magnified impact on total economic output (and hence on employment), larger than the size of the initial investment. In contrast, fossil fuel investment projects have total multiplier effects less than one: ranging from 0.4 to 0.7. Climate-friendly investments thus generate more than twice as much final economic output as fossil fuel projects, per dollar invested.
- Very similar results were generated by another macroeconomic study (Shah and Wu, 2025) comparing investments in both renewable energy and energy efficiency measures, with traditional non-eco-friendly investment projects. In this study, as well, renewable energy and energy efficiency projects generate multiplier effects consistently greater than one in the medium-term, indicating that the final impact on GDP is larger than the amount initially invested. The multiplier impacts were somewhat stronger for energy conservation initiatives (such as building retrofits), ranging up to 1.3, than for renewable energy projects (1.0-1.1). Investments in fossil fuel projects and other non-eco-friendly investments were much lower than one (in the rang of 0.3 in the medium-term), reflecting their low labour intensity.
Batini, Nicoletta, Mario Di Serio, Matteo Fragetta, Giovanni Melina, and Anthony Waldron (2022). “Building back better: How big are green spending multipliers?,” Ecological Economics 193, March.
Berensson, Markus, et al. (2021). Canada: The Case for an Urban Green and Just Recovery, Technical Report(London: C40 Cities), https://www.greenpolicyplatform.org/sites/default/files/C40%20Cities%20(2021)%20Canada%20-%20The%20case%20for%20an%20urban%20green%20and%20just%20recovery%20(Technical%20report).pdf.
Bridge, Tyee, and Jim Stanford (2025). Jobs for Today: Canada’s Building Trades and the Net-Zero Transition, Centre for Civic Governance, https://ccg.eco/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Jobs_for_Today_Report.pdf.
C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (2021), The Case for a Green and Just Recovery (London: C40 Cities), https://c40.my.salesforce.com/sfc/p/#36000001Enhz/a/1Q000000gRCH/24OgSbRwj1hZ305yJbyPMZJQKhXXWNYE8k8sr2ADsi8
Clean Energy Canada (2019). Missing the Bigger Picture (Vancouver: Clean Energy Canada), https://cleanenergycanada.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Report_TER2019_CleanJobs_20190516_v3_ForWeb_FINAL.pdf.
Clean Energy Canada (2021). The New Reality (Vancouver: Clean Energy Canada), https://cleanenergycanada.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Report_CEC_CleanJobs2021.pdf.
Dunsky Energy Consulting (2018). The Economic Impact of Improved Energy Efficiency in Canada: Employment and Other Economic Outcomes from the Pan-Canadian Framework’s Energy Efficiency Measures (Montreal: Dunsky Energy Consulting), https://cleanenergycanada.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/TechnicalReport_EnergyEfficiency_20180403_FINAL.pdf.
Ecology Action Centre (2019). Nova Scotia Environmental Goals and Sustainable Prosperity Act: Economic Costs and Benefits for Proposed Goals (Halifax: Ecology Action Centre), https://ecologyaction.ca/sites/default/files/2022-06/EAC_GP_Climate%20Jobs%20Report_Sept2019_0.pdf
Guldimann, Colin, and Naomi Powell (2022). Green Collar Jobs: The skills revolution Canada needs to reach Net Zero (Toronto: RBC Canada), https://thoughtleadership.rbc.com/green-collar-jobs-the-skills-revolution-canada-needs-to-reach-net-zero/.
International Energy Agency (2021). Net Zero by 2050 (Paris: International Energy Agency), https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/deebef5d-0c34-4539-9d0c-10b13d840027/NetZeroby2050-ARoadmapfortheGlobalEnergySector_CORR.pdf.
International Renewable Energy Agency (2023). Renewable Energy and Jobs Annual Review 2023 (Abu Dhabi: IRENA), https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2023/Sep/IRENA_Renewable_energy_and_jobs_2023.pdf.
Jacobson, Mark Z., et al. (2017). “100% Clean and Renewable Wind, Water, and Sunlight All-Sector Energy Roadmaps for 139 Countries of the World,” Joule 1(1), pp. 108-121, Supplementary Tables Available at https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S2542435117300120-mmc1.pdf.
Kaddoura, Saeed, et al. (2020). Alberta’s Emerging Economy: A Blueprint for Job Creation through 2030(Calgary: Pembina Institute), https://www.pembina.org/reports/albertas-emerging-economy.pdf.
Lee, Marc, and Seth Klein (2020). Winding Down BC’s Fossil Fuel Industries: Planning for Climate Justice in a Zero-Carbon Economy (Vancovuer: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives), https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/BC%20Office/2020/03/ccpa-bc_Winding-Down-BCs-Fossil-Fuel-Industries.pdf.
Lee, Marc, Caroline Brouillette, and Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood (2023). Spending What it Takes: Transformational Climate Investments for Long-Term Prosperity in Canada (Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives), https://policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/spending-what-it-takes.
Navius Research (2019). Quantifying Canada’s Clean Energy Economy: An Assessment of Clean Energy Investment, Value-Added and Jobs (Vancouver, Navius Research), https://cleanenergycanada.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/2019-03-13-Clean-Energy-Economy-FINAL-REPORT.pdf.
Shah, Syed Sadaqat Ali, and Kai Wu (2025). “How effective are green spending multipliers? Eco-friendly vs non-eco-friendly spending in OECD economies,” Energy Policy 204, September.
Stanford, Jim (2021). Employment Transitions and the Phase-Out of Fossil Fuels, (Vancouver: Centre for Future Work), 113 pp., https://centreforfuturework.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Employment-Transitions-Report-Final.pdf.
Thomas, Stephen, and Tom Green (2022). Shifting Power: Zero-Emissions Electricity Across Canada by 2035(Vancouver: David Suzuki Foundation), https://davidsuzuki.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Shifting-Power-Zero-Emissions-Across-Canada-By-2035-Report.pdf.
United Nations International Development Organization and the Global Green Growth Initiative (2015). Global Green Growth: Clean Energy Industry Investments and Expanding Job Opportunities (Vienna: UNIDO), https://gggi.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/2015-06-Global-Green-Growth-Clean-Energy-Industrial-Investments-and-Expanding-Job-Opportunities-Overall-findings.pdf.
Xuereb, Slias, and Inez Hillel (2023). Job Creation Through Transformational Climate Investments: Assessing the Impact of Proposed Climate Investments in Canada (Ottawa: Vivic Research), https://vivicresearch.ca/work/employment-impacts-of-spending-what-it-takes
The post Annotated Bibliography on the Net Employment Benefits of the Energy Transition appeared first on Centre for Future Work.
A Matrix of Care: What does ‘care’ really mean in agroecology?
Rail Union calls for Free Fares to cut cost of living in response to war on Iran
Rail Union calls for Free Fares to cut cost of living in response to war on Iran
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
Transport and travel union TSSA has called on the government to take immediate action to help the public with the cost of living in the face of ongoing economic volatility related to the US/Israel conflict with Iran.This includes making public transport free at the point of use for the next year.
Read the full statement on the TSSA site here.
TSSA’s Earth Day Blog Rails of change: why public transport is our climate lifeline assesses the rising impact of the Transport sector on carbon emissions, the opportunities presented by rail nationalisation to join up transport policy, boost electrification, shift freight and for City Mayors to run with this agenda.
On this Earth Day, as the sun sets through a haze of Saharan dust, let us look not to the sky for salvation, but to the railway tracks. The solution to the climate crisis is not a sci-fi technology; it is a reliable, frequent, electric train. Let’s fight for it.
Read the whole blog here. Online Thursday April 23 – 5.50 – 7.00 We’ll see you there! Join Us
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SubmitThe post Rail Union calls for Free Fares to cut cost of living in response to war on Iran first appeared on Greener Jobs Alliance.
Shareholder Vote for Paramount-Warner Bros. Deal Won’t Be the Final Word on This Dangerous Mega-Merger
On Thursday, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) shareholders voted to accept Paramount Skydance’s $110 billion bid to acquire the news and entertainment company. The merger of these two companies would create a media colossus with CBS, CNN, HBO, Nickelodeon, Warner Bros. Pictures and Paramount Pictures — among other major media properties — all under one roof.
The vote follows a week of protests against the deal led by a coalition of First Amendment advocates, unions, democracy defenders and even famous Hollywood actors and directors who say that the deal would give one company the power and incentives to raise prices, lay off thousands of workers and limit consumer options, while giving one family — the Ellisons — the power to shape public discourse to suit their political agenda and that of their allies in the Trump White House.
Free Press Co-CEO Craig Aaron said:
“Today, Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders voted for their short-term financial gains, not for the public good. While shareholders voted against fat pay packages for departing executives — a symbolic rebuke, since the board doesn’t have to listen to them — they’ve opened the door to wholesale layoffs across the news and entertainment industry, more propaganda in news coverage, higher prices for consumers and fewer choices for audiences across the United States and around the world. But shareholders don’t get the final word.
“That’s why we have antitrust enforcers and courts of law. With Trump officials cheering on this deal, state attorneys general must investigate this massive industry consolidation and step in to stop Paramount’s takeover. This mega-merger will diminish creativity and diversity in entertainment, weaken journalists’ ability to expose wrongdoing and hold those in power accountable and further endanger our democracy. It also concentrates far too much media power in the hands of one company and one family, the Ellisons.
“This corrupt merger is far from a done deal. Just because Paramount shareholders won’t take a stand against billionaire and White House control of the media, it doesn’t mean we can’t. While Paramount is flaunting its corruption and fêting Trump officials, we’re standing with the workers and artists at the heart of the news and entertainment industries — and with the American public, which deserves more than an ever-shrinking circle of control over what they see, hear and read.”
Background:
April has seen widespread and growing popular opposition to the Paramount/WBD merger. Last week, nearly 4,000 professionals across the film and television industry signed an open letter declaring their opposition to the pending deal.
On Wednesday, Free Press and the American Economic Liberties Project hosted a press call with former FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, Writers Guild of America West President Michele Mulroney, former CNN Chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta and Oscar-winning director David Borenstein to detail the many reasons this deal should not go through and call on state attorneys general to investigate and oppose the merger. Free Press and allied organizations also delivered 171,000 signed petitions to Rob Bonta’s office, urging the California attorney general to investigate.
On Thursday morning, protesters gathered with New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander and Congressman Dan Goldman outside WBD’s New York City headquarters, where they urged action to stop this dangerous merger from going forward. In addition, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani issued a statement via social media: “Today, as Warner Bros. and Paramount shareholders vote, New York City is on record: this merger should be stopped.”
Industry Insider Seeks to Eviscerate U.S. Forest Service
As the country hurtles toward a potentially record-setting fire season, a recent announcement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to drastically resize and restructure the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) would effectively eviscerate key research and protections for the nation’s public lands, according to a new report released today by Public Citizen.
“Restructuring the Forest Service in this way will dramatically reduce its ability to conduct scientific research,” said Lois Parshley, research director with Public Citizen’s Climate Program and author of the report. “These relocations will undermine key data collection needed to understand climate change.”
Schultz’s restructuring of the USFS would close two-thirds of the agency’s research stations, disrupting data collection on long-running experiments. The shift will reduce the agency’s ability to collect environmental data, weaken its capacity to track conditions, and hamper research that informs land management decisions.
The agency’s headquarters, which have been located in Washington for more than a century, would be relocated to Salt Lake City, and approximately 260 employees have been informed they must relocate or lose their jobs—a move that echoes the first Trump administration’s relocation of the Bureau of Land Management to Grand Junction, Colorado.
The two leaders at the center of the evisceration have longstanding conflicts with the USFS. Before Schultz’s appointment to lead the USFS, he worked at the Idaho Forest Group, one of the country’s largest lumber producers. Within months of taking office, Schultz began implementing policies aligned with positions he advocated as a timber industry representative.
Michael Boren, the USDA’s Undersecretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and Environment, which oversees the agency, once faced a restraining order for allegedly buzzing a U.S. Forest Service trail crew at low altitude in a helicopter. Boren also ran afoul of the government by building a private airstrip on national recreation land and an unauthorized cabin on national forest land.
“As an industry executive, Schultz advocated to reduce environmental reviews and more recently testified to Congress in support of an industry wish list,” said Parshley. “DOGE cuts and an early retirement program drove nearly a fifth of Forest Service employees to leave the agency last year. Fewer people are being asked to do more, at the same time as fire seasons are growing longer and forests are under mounting stress from climate change.”
Bill that helps transition ADN nurses to employment moves forward
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #17 2026
Every article we list here is eyeball-scanned by a real human but we do lean on bibliographic catalogs (publication databases) to supply article metadata for assembly of each edition of our weekly research surveillance scan. A little in-house software on our end connected via an API to a rich suite of upstream bibliographic information makes regular production possible.
While recently making API changes to improve our background tooling for New Research, we found ourselves unable to resist tapping into a little more information to include in our regular product. There's one key metric to help us all better understand what practicing scientists find most useful (and stimulating) in the torrent of climate-related research reports we sample here each week: "how many investigators cite a work in their own inquiries?" Our knowledge boundaray inexorably expands past any given report, but older results may well be foundational to newer exploration. So, we've added an little retrospective to each domain section in our weekly listing. For each section, we query our data, asking "what paper listed here 2 years ago has been most cited since it appeared?" This new feature appears at the end of each section:
There's a vast wealth in our bibliographic resources of ways to see how fresh information travels and effloresces after publication. For instance, by looking at raw cite statistics one might think that Springer-Nature is the center of mass of the entire academic publishing world. But by other metrics quite likely better describing concentration of thought and new insight, the barycenter of cutting-edge human intellect may well lie elsewhere. Given enough effort it's possible to "see" such things in diagram form— but there are not 36 hours in a day, unfortunately. Hopefully we'll have time to explore more!
After this round of tinkering, we now rely entirely on OpenAlex for bibliographic catalog API services. While this speeds internal production, we continue to recommend Unpaywall, and particularly the Unpaywall browser extension which for readers denied institutional privileges affords much handier access to many research articles.
Open access notablesIncreasing Population and Cropland Exposure to Human-Induced Sequential Heatwave-Downpour Events, Guan et al., Earth s Future
Compound sequential heatwave-downpour (SHD) events, characterized by abrupt shifts from heatwaves to heavy rainfall, pose serious threats to health, infrastructure, and agriculture. However, the anthropogenic influence on the increasing trend of SHD events is poorly understood, and projections also exhibit large uncertainties. Our study revealed that the affected area of SHD events has grown notably across the Northern Hemisphere. The anthropogenic influences account for approximately 82.2% of the increase in affected areas of SHD events, with greenhouse gas emissions contributing the most. The constrained projection found that the exposure of population and cropland will increase nearly 8-fold under a high-emission scenario in the long term (2081–2100), compared to the current climate baseline (1991–2020). Notably, climate change, rather than population or land use change, is identified as the dominant driver of this increased exposure. Our finding highlights that reducing greenhouse gas emissions can mitigate the impacts of SHD on populations and croplands.
Dramatic increase in ecosystem respiration causes record-breaking atmospheric CO2 growth rate in 2024, Dong et al., Nature Communications
2024 is the hottest year on record, accompanied by extreme precipitation, droughts and fires. The global atmospheric CO2 growth rate in 2024 reached a historic high of 3.73 ppm yr-1, significantly surpassing the previous record set during the 2015/16 El Niño event. Here, we investigate the causes and underlying mechanisms of this record-high growth rate by combining satellite-based atmospheric inversions and estimates of gross primary production and fire emissions. We find that the record-high CO2 growth rate is due to large reductions in the land CO2 sink. This is dominated by a dramatic increase in total ecosystem respiration, which occurred primarily in grass and shrub lands, owing to compound hot-wet climatic conditions in 2024. Given the projected increase in the frequency and intensity of compound pluvial-hot extremes under warming, changes in ecosystem respiration will become more drastic and cause positive feedback to climate warming.
Climate futures require politics, Leininger et al., Nature Communications [commentary]
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) seventh assessment cycle (AR7) has begun. Scientists have started to assess the literature on feasible and just climate and sustainability scenarios. The recommendations of the IPCC Workshop on the lessons learnt from the use of scenarios in AR6 point to the need for political science expertise to improve scenarios1. One key aspect highlighted in this report is political development2, including the quality and effectiveness of institutions, rule of law, and maintenance of peace. These factors have not yet been incorporated systematically and quantitatively into the Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) used to generate pathways of climate action that are assessed in the IPCC. Findings of the IPCC have substantially influenced global climate action. If the omission of political development biases the conclusions drawn from scenario analysis, then the real-world merit of the scenario-based findings is called into question. Therefore, the purpose of this commentary is to suggest steps to improve the incorporation of political development in scenarios during the AR7 assessments and beyond.
A weakened diurnal weather constraint leads to longer burning hours in North America, Luo et al., Science Advances
Contemporary North American wildfires exhibit increasingly erratic intraday burning, posing immediate operational and socioeconomic challenges. Here, we show that climate-driven weakening of day-night (diurnal) weather constraints extends and intensifies burning hours, a key mechanism behind broader fire regime transformations. Analyzing hourly geostationary satellite observations for ~9000 fires (>200 hectares; 2017–2023), we found western mountains and boreal forests experienced the longest active burning hours, with approximately one-third of active days exceeding 12 hours. About 60% of fires reached peak intensity within 24 hours of detection, while 14% of active days peaked at night. On the basis of fire weather, annual potential burning hours were estimated to rise 36% over 1975–2024, with pronounced increases in western regions and spring/fall (48 to 57%). Regions with significant changes gained 26 more potential active days annually and 1.2 additional potential burning hours daily, while extreme days (≥12 or 24 potential burning hours) rose 81 to 233% in fire-prone biomes. Future management requires adaptation to wildfires that increasingly defy diurnal norms.
From this week's government/NGO section:Climate Change Concern Near Its High Point in U.S, Jeffery Jones, Gallup
Americans’ concern about global warming or climate change remains elevated compared with what it had been prior to 2017. At least four in 10 U.S. adults have expressed “a great deal” of concern about the matter throughout the past decade except for a 39% reading in 2023. Between 2009 and 2016, worry was typically in the low-to-mid 30% range but dropped to as low as 25% in 2011. Currently, 44% of U.S. adults worry a great deal about global warming or climate change, among the highest in the full trend since 1989, along with 46% measured in 2020 and 45% in 2017.A Global Fleet Under Wind: Scaling Wind Propulsion for Emission Reduction, Energy Demand and Equity, Mason et al., Seas at Risk
The authors present a first-ever study showcasing the benefits of wind propulsion when scaled up to the global fleet. Drawing on 1.74 billion kilometers of real voyage data – the equivalent distance from Earth to Saturn – wind propulsion could, conservatively, reduce modelled wind ship fuel use by 6.3-9.4%, with an even greater potential if paired with other optimization measures such as weather routing, slowing down speeds, and hull cleaning. By 2050, it could deliver up to 762 million tons of cumulative CO2 savings, getting us closer to our climate targets. The technology is here, but is policy willing? 173 articles in 70 journals by 1545 contributing authorsPhysical science of climate change, effects
Can Large-Scale Clustering of Tropical Precipitation Be Used to Constrain Climate Sensitivity?, Blackberg & Singh, Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres Open Access 10.1029/2025jd045282
Global warming intensifies pantropical coupling and its control on northern hemisphere tropical cyclones, Zhao et al., npj Climate and Atmospheric Science Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41612-026-01412-w
Large Overestimation of Projected Western U.S. Wildfire Burned Forest Area With Warming, Cheng et al., AGU Advances Open Access 10.1029/2026av002350
Response of Ocean Mesoscale Coherent Eddies to Global Warming, Yang et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl120228
The combined role of sea surface temperature and sea ice in the summer heatwaves over Pakistan, Li et al., Atmospheric Research 10.1016/j.atmosres.2026.108977
The Emergence of a Human Fingerprint in the Boreal Winter Extratropical Zonal Mean Circulation, Blackport & Sigmond, Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2026gl121773
The role of upper ocean stratification in resurgent marine heatwaves in the East/Japan Sea, Kim et al., Scientific Reports Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41598-026-47541-3
Weakening sensitivity of China’s terrestrial evapotranspiration to vegetation greening in a warmer world, Guo et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 10.1016/j.agrformet.2026.111183
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Hydrologic cycle weakening in hothouse climates, Science Advances, 10.1126/sciadv.ado2515 13 cites.
Observations of climate change, effects
A weakened diurnal weather constraint leads to longer burning hours in North America, Luo et al., Science Advances Open Access 10.1126/sciadv.aed0725
Declines in Autumn Precipitation in Southwestern China and the Yangtze River Basin Linked to the Tropical Pacific and Atlantic Warmings, Deng et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-25-0479.1
Dramatic increase in ecosystem respiration causes record-breaking atmospheric CO2 growth rate in 2024, Dong et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-72189-y
Global glacier mass change in 2025, Network et al., Nature Reviews Earth & Environment 10.1038/s43017-026-00777-z
Heatwave Characteristics and Trends Across Eight Japanese Cities, Mcgregor & Suzuki-Parker, Durham Research Online (Durham University) Open Access pmh:oai:durham-repository.worktribe.com:5179207
Increasing Population and Cropland Exposure to Human-Induced Sequential Heatwave-Downpour Events, Guan et al., Earth s Future Open Access 10.1029/2025ef007442
Large-scale aggregation of humid heatwaves exacerbated by coastal oceanic warming, Cai et al., Nature Geoscience 10.1038/s41561-026-01952-z
Ocean warming weakens the sea–land breeze in coastal megacities, Xiao et al., Earth s Future Open Access pdf 10.1029/2022ef003341
Tropical precipitation response to anthropogenic climate change in recent decades, Joseph et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-026-71187-4
Warming and snow loss increase reliance on old groundwater in a Colorado River headwater, Siirila-Woodburn et al., Nature Geoscience Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41561-026-01945-y
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Record-breaking fire weather in North America in 2021 was initiated by the Pacific northwest heat dome, Communications Earth & Environment, 10.1038/s43247-024-01346-2 36 cites.
Instrumentation & observational methods of climate change, effects
A harmonized 2000–2024 dataset of daily river ice concentration and annual phenology for major Arctic rivers, Qiu et al., Earth system science data Open Access 10.5194/essd-18-2703-2026
ALTICAP: a new global satellite altimetry product for coastal applications, Cancet et al., Earth system science data Open Access pdf 10.5194/essd-18-2319-2026
Annually resolved atmospheric CO2 growth rate over the past nine centuries, Zhang et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-72220-2
From Extreme Days to Event-Scale Persistence: Characterizing for Persistent Extreme Precipitation Across Multisource Datasets, Zhao et al., Weather and Climate Extremes Open Access 10.1016/j.wace.2026.100905
Improvements and limitations of the new Climate Hazards Center Infrared Precipitation with Stations (CHIRPSv3) dataset: Insights from multiple spatio-temporal scales in Colombia, Valencia et al., Atmospheric Research 10.1016/j.atmosres.2026.108971
Precipitation observing network gaps limit climate change impact assessment, Su et al., Nature Open Access 10.1038/s41586-026-10300-5
Sampling Biases in Daily Average Temperatures From Greenland Climate Records, Rapp et al., International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.70317
Warming-induced positive age trends challenge MXD detrending, Esper et al., Dendrochronologia Open Access 10.1016/j.dendro.2026.126529
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Data Drought in the Humid Tropics: How to Overcome the Cloud Barrier in Greenhouse Gas Remote Sensing, Geophysical Research Letters, 10.1029/2024gl108791 22 cites.
Modeling, simulation & projection of climate change, effects
Air Quality Penalty in Southeast Asia Driven by AMOC Slowdown, Vella et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl121309
Amplified European Future Warming Under Mesoscale-Resolving Sea Surface Temperature Forcing, Moreno?Chamarro & Ortega, Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl120578
Climate change affects future sea-bed mobility via storms and sea level rise, Rulent et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03500-4
Emerging Importance of Compound Flooding in Future Tropical Cyclone Hazard Profiles, Gori et al., Open MIND pmh:10.17615/ggmz-8m83
Enhanced Decadal Variance in Nordic Seas With AMOC Weakening in CESM, Patrizio et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl118635
Impact attribution of the March 2022 Antarctic heatwave reveals amplification by cloud feedbacks and increased future meltwater, González et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-026-03485-0
Mediterranean and Global Sea Surface Temperature Trends to 2100: An ARIMAX Time-Series Forecasting Approach, Yildirim et al., Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 10.1016/j.jastp.2026.106810
Multi-Model Evaluation and Future Projections of Radio Refractivity over West Africa Using CMIP6, Israel et al., Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 10.1016/j.jastp.2026.106811
Multidecadal Oscillation Masks Ocean Wave Climate Trends in 75-Year Global Wave Hindcast, Shimura et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans Open Access 10.1029/2025jc022340
The Hydroclimate Paradox of the Indian Summer Monsoon Projections: Dual Amplification of Deficit and Excess Rainfall in CMIP6 Models, Kulkarni et al., International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.70401
Twenty-First Century Projections and Trends of JJAS Rainfall Over the Greater Horn of Africa Under CMIP6 Shared Socioeconomic Pathways Scenarios, Jima et al., International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.70390
Widespread shift toward extreme dominated precipitation with pronounced trends in arid and mediterranean regions, Zaerpour et al., Scientific Reports Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41598-026-47708-y
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Characteristic changes in compound drought and heatwave events under climate change, Atmospheric Research, 10.1016/j.atmosres.2024.107440 49 cites.
Advancement of climate & climate effects modeling, simulation & projection
Advancing Weather and Climate Science in Mesoamerica and the Caribbean: A Novel Regional Multiweek Convection-Permitting Simulation, Ocasio et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 10.1175/bams-d-25-0023.1
CMIP7 Data Request: atmosphere priorities and opportunities, Dingley et al., Geoscientific model development Open Access pdf 10.5194/gmd-19-2945-2026
Evaluating model uncertainty in critical threshold estimations from time series data: application to the Atlantic meridional Overturning Circulation, Cotronei et al., Frontiers in Climate Open Access 10.3389/fclim.2026.1761461
Modeling snowpack dynamics and surface energy budget in boreal and subarctic peatlands and forests, Nousu et al., cryosphere Open Access 10.5194/tc-18-231-2024
Three decades of simulating global temperature patterns with coupled global climate models, Brunner et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03497-w
Towards improved Euro-Mediterranean discharge simulations in regional coupled climate models: a comparative assessment of hydrologic performance, Hamitouche et al., Geoscientific model development Open Access 10.5194/gmd-19-2881-2026
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Projected changes in compound hot-dry events depend on the dry indicator considered, Communications Earth & Environment, 10.1038/s43247-024-01352-4 29 cites.
Cryosphere & climate change
A harmonized 2000–2024 dataset of daily river ice concentration and annual phenology for major Arctic rivers, Qiu et al., Earth system science data Open Access 10.5194/essd-18-2703-2026
Antarctic Meltwater-Stratification Feedback Is Less Pronounced Under High Climate Forcing, Kreuzer et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl118643
Atmospheric Teleconnections as Potential Drivers of Ross Ice Shelf Basal Melt, Xiahou, Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans Open Access 10.1029/2026jc024241
Giant iceberg behaviour impacts regional biogeochemical cycling in the Southern Ocean, Taylor et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03440-z
Glacier mass balance and its response to 2022 heatwaves for Kangxiwa Glacier in the eastern Pamir: insights from time-lapse photography, Xie et al., cryosphere Open Access pdf 10.5194/tc-20-2279-2026
Global glacier mass change in 2025, Network et al., Nature Reviews Earth & Environment 10.1038/s43017-026-00777-z
Ice front positions for Greenland glaciers (2002–2021): a spatially extensive seasonal record and benchmark dataset for algorithm validation, Lu et al., Earth system science data Open Access 10.5194/essd-18-2635-2026
Permafrost tipping point triggered by warming-driven loss of old carbon, Wei et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-026-72122-3
Recent extremes in Antarctic sea ice extent modulated by ocean heat ventilation, Wilson et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Open Access pdf 10.1073/pnas.2530832123
Regional extreme Antarctic sea-ice retreat linked to tropical forcing, Liang et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03488-x
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Geometric amplification and suppression of ice-shelf basal melt in West Antarctica, , 10.5194/egusphere-2023-1587 8 cites.
Sea level & climate change
Rapid Intensification and Relative Sea-Level Rise Amplify Compound Flooding From Hurricanes Harvey and Beryl, Lee et al., Earth s Future Open Access 10.1029/2025ef007678
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Sustained increase in suspended sediments near global river deltas over the past two decades, Nature Communications, 10.1038/s41467-024-47598-6 61 cites.
Paleoclimate & paleogeochemistry
Climate and ocean circulation changes toward a modern snowball Earth, Obase et al., arXiv (Cornell University) Open Access pdf pmh:oai:arXiv.org:2603.26700
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Ocean cavity regime shift reversed West Antarctic grounding line retreat in the late Holocene, Nature Communications, 10.1038/s41467-024-47369-3 9 cites.
Biology & climate change, related geochemistry
Biogeochemistry of climate driven shifts in Southern Ocean primary producers, Fisher et al., Biogeosciences Open Access pdf 10.5194/bg-22-975-2025
Bumble bee species display contrasting phenological responses to climate variation, Elshoff et al., Ecology 10.1002/ecy.70385
Climate change and non-climatic drivers jointly enhanced the NDVI of alpine grassland in the Source Region of the Yellow River (2000–2022), An et al., Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution Open Access 10.3389/fevo.2026.1748078
Climate change dominates blue-green water shifts in China’s Arid Northwest: Evidence from the Heihe River Basin, Ma et al., Environmental Earth Sciences Open Access pdf 10.1007/s12665-026-12940-2
Climate modes can be leveraged to forecast coral bleaching months in advance, Galochkina et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-026-03438-7
Climate warming and drought modify galling effects on tall goldenrod, Parker et al., Oecologia Open Access pdf 10.1007/s00442-026-05889-3
Dramatic increase in ecosystem respiration causes record-breaking atmospheric CO2 growth rate in 2024, Dong et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-72189-y
Drivers of Thermal Habitat Use in Turtles Studied Under Semi-Natural Conditions, White et al., Ecology and Evolution Open Access 10.1002/ece3.73325
Ecological Divergence Governs Plant Resilience to Compound Salinity–Waterlogging Stress Under Global Change, Qiu et al., Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.70875
Fire and Snow: Effects of Snowpack Variation and Wildfire on Small Mammal Dynamics in Sub-Alpine Habitats, Green et al., Ecology and Evolution Open Access 10.1002/ece3.73525
Fish and Zooplankton Co-Responses to Environmental Gradients Under Different Climate Change Scenarios, Paquette et al., Global Change Biology Open Access 10.1111/gcb.70845
Frequent Dry–Hot Extremes Slow the Loss of Semi-Arid Ecosystem Resilience, Shi et al., Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.70835
Gene-to-Population Level Responses to Multiple Stressors on the Rocky Shore, Wilson et al., Ecology and Evolution Open Access 10.1002/ece3.73368
Giant iceberg behaviour impacts regional biogeochemical cycling in the Southern Ocean, Taylor et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03440-z
Global Warming Amplifies Nitrogen Over Phosphorus Limitation in Aquatic Ecosystems: A Multi-Trophic Meta-Analysis, Zhong et al., Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.70832
Hyperdominant Trees Reveal Savanna Vulnerability Under Climate Change, Alvarez et al., Global Change Biology Open Access 10.1111/gcb.70859
Mesothermic fishes face high fuel demands and overheating risk in warming oceans, Payne et al., Science Open Access 10.1126/science.adt2981
Monitoring Coral Reef Metabolism Under Changing Oceans–Novel Insights From Seawater Stable Carbon Isotopes, Bolden et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences Open Access 10.1029/2025jg009416
Permanence Risks to Biodiversity and Nature-Based Carbon Offsets, Dhond et al., Conservation Letters Open Access 10.1111/con4.70044
Predicted Range Shifts of Non-Native Grasses in Response to Climate Change Are Influenced by Photosynthetic Pathway: A Case Study in the Hawaiian Islands, Daehler et al., Diversity and Distributions Open Access 10.1111/ddi.70190
Projected heatwave-related excess mortality under climate change scenarios across 2288 communities in Australia: a nationwide ecological projection modelling study, Chen et al., The Lancet Planetary Health Open Access 10.1016/j.lanplh.2026.101446
Quantifying Under-Ice Phytoplankton Blooms in the Changing Arctic and Southern Oceans, Payne et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2026gl121750
Reconsidering the role of introduced species in the climate-affected and highly invaded eastern Mediterranean, Katsanevakis et al., Conservation Biology Open Access 10.1111/cobi.70288
Temperature-Related Changes in Avian Nestling Provisioning: A Global Analysis, Molenaar et al., Global Change Biology Open Access 10.1111/gcb.70871
Temporal shifts in kelp forest structure and distribution largely reflect recent ocean warming trends, Salland et al., Ecography Open Access 10.1002/ecog.08280
The effect of trait choice on hybrid species distribution model projections under climate change, Delva et al., Ecography Open Access 10.1002/ecog.08355
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Mechanisms, detection and impacts of species redistributions under climate change, Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 10.1038/s43017-024-00527-z 165 cites.
GHG sources & sinks, flux, related geochemistry
2019–2024 trends in African livestock and wetland emissions as contributors to the global methane rise, Balasus et al., Atmospheric chemistry and physics Open Access 10.5194/acp-26-4601-2026
Annually resolved atmospheric CO2 growth rate over the past nine centuries, Zhang et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-72220-2
Deadwood carbon pool and uncertainty estimates: effects of decay status and vegetation types, Masanja et al., Frontiers in Forests and Global Change Open Access pdf 10.3389/ffgc.2026.1706865
Diurnal versus spatial variability of greenhouse gas emissions from an anthropogenic modified German lowland river, Koschorreck et al., Biogeosciences Open Access pdf 10.5194/bg-21-1613-2024
Drivers and implications of declining fossil fuel CO2 concentrations in Chinese cities revealed by radiocarbon measurements, Li et al., Atmospheric chemistry and physics Open Access 10.5194/acp-26-5085-2026
Hydrological Control on Soil Redox Condition and Carbon Loss of Coastal Wetland Under Sea-Level Rise, Chen et al., Earth s Future Open Access 10.1029/2025ef007528
Permafrost tipping point triggered by warming-driven loss of old carbon, Wei et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-026-72122-3
Quantifying urban and landfill methane emissions in the United States using TROPOMI satellite data, Wang et al., Science Advances Open Access 10.1126/sciadv.adz9308
Soil texture prevails over vegetation change in determining soil organic carbon storage in an African savanna, Zhou et al., Journal of Ecology Open Access 10.1111/1365-2745.70307
Space-based observation of global increase in urban methane emissions from 2019–2023, Whiting et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Open Access pdf 10.1073/pnas.2504211123
Tidal Wetland Soil Carbon Accumulation Rates for Coastal California, Holmquist et al., Scientific Data Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41597-026-06935-8
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
An Assessment of CO2 Storage and Sea?Air Fluxes for the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea Between 1985 and 2018, Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 10.1029/2023gb007862 23 cites.
CO2 capture, sequestration science & engineering
Achieving carbon neutrality in China via carbon capture and storage with onshore-offshore geological storage, Wen et al., Global Environmental Change 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2026.103158
Current and potential carbon storage in soils of Chilean Patagonia, Figueroa et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access pdf 10.3389/fenvs.2026.1789707
Decades of increased emissions from forest-fuelled BECCS, Searchinger et al., Nature Sustainability 10.1038/s41893-026-01817-8
Hydrological Mismatch in Arid Planted Shrublands: Non-Responsiveness to Precipitation Changes and Unsustainable Water Use, You et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences 10.1029/2026jg009715
Machine learning reveals insufficient carbon capture storage deployment to meet climate goals, Li et al., Global Environmental Change 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2026.103157
Rethinking carbon dioxide removal: a justice-centred analysis of CDR perspectives research, Pues et al., Figshare Open Access 10.6084/m9.figshare.31864323
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Public perceptions on carbon removal from focus groups in 22 countries, Nature Communications, 10.1038/s41467-024-47853-w 56 cites.
Decarbonization
Aligning offshore wind deployment with local priorities to accelerate power system decarbonization, Peng et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-026-03533-9
Does rail transportation matter for climate outcomes? evidence from public transport systems in Asia, Choudhary et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access pdf 10.3389/fenvs.2026.1807635
Exponential AI growth and the physical limits of renewable energy systems, Henni & Mohammed, Energy Policy Open Access 10.1016/j.enpol.2026.115314
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Artificial intelligence-aided wind plant optimization for nationwide evaluation of land use and economic benefits of wake steering, Nature Energy, 10.1038/s41560-024-01516-8 39 cites.
Geoengineering climate
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
The Potential of Stratospheric Aerosol Injection to Reduce the Climatic Risks of Explosive Volcanic Eruptions, Geophysical Research Letters, 10.1029/2023gl107702 8 cites.
Aerosols
Contrail Formation Within Cirrus: Contrail Induced Perturbations and Cirrus Adjustments, Verma & Burkhardt, Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres Open Access 10.1029/2025jd045269
Isotopic apportionment of sulfate aerosols between natural and anthropogenic sources in the outflow of South Asia, Clarke et al., Atmospheric chemistry and physics Open Access 10.5194/acp-26-5333-2026
Significant Radiative Absorption of Brown Carbon Aerosols From Residential Fuel Combustion in Developing Regions, Gao et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2026gl121829
Substantial aircraft contrail formation at low soot emission levels, Voigt et al., Nature Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41586-026-10286-0
Climate change communications & cognition
Apocalyptic Climate Change Conspiracy Theories and Misinformation in White-Nationalist Communities Online: An Analysis of 25 Years of Discourse on Stormfront, Ophir et al., Environmental Communication 10.6084/m9.figshare.31832763.v1
Heatwaves and online climate sentiment: evidence from Chinese social media, Feng et al., Figshare Open Access 10.6084/m9.figshare.32032693
How Communication of Scientific Uncertainty Affects Trust in Science—A Systematic Review, Schuster & Scheu, Risk Analysis 10.1111/risa.70233
Questioning Net Zero: a case study of the UK’s national press coverage, Painter et al., Climate Policy 10.1080/14693062.2026.2649378
The convergence of barriers: why people resist personal carbon account?, Wu et al., Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 10.1007/s11027-026-10308-2
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
“This community will grow” — little concern for future wildfires in a dry and increasingly hotter Swedish rural community, Regional Environmental Change, 10.1007/s10113-024-02227-2 10 cites.
Agronomy, animal husbundry, food production & climate change
A land-based pathway to carbon neutrality in rural districts, Pizzileo et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access pdf 10.3389/fenvs.2026.1792209
Adaptive Sowing Helps Mitigate Future Wheat Losses Globally, Qiao et al., Earth s Future Open Access 10.1029/2025ef006554
Asymmetric Shifts in Precipitation Alter Nitrogen Use Strategies in Global Croplands, Cui et al., Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.70863
Enhanced weathering leads to substantial C accrual on crop macrocosms, François, Open Science Framework Open Access 10.17605/osf.io/ah75t
Food sovereignty and climate resilience through regional development assistance programs: insights from the Pacific region, Platts & Yoon, Climate and Development 10.1080/17565529.2026.2654672
From heterogeneity factors to targeted policy: an application of econometrics and machine learning to Climate-Smart Agriculture adoption in maize production, Zhao et al., Figshare Open Access 10.6084/m9.figshare.32016933
Hydrological Mismatch in Arid Planted Shrublands: Non-Responsiveness to Precipitation Changes and Unsustainable Water Use, You et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences 10.1029/2026jg009715
Increasing Population and Cropland Exposure to Human-Induced Sequential Heatwave-Downpour Events, Guan et al., Earth s Future Open Access 10.1029/2025ef007442
Interactive effects of heat and drought on wheat yield change from synergistic to antagonistic as their severity increases, Chisaka et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology Open Access 10.1016/j.agrformet.2026.111189
Mapping current and future coffee suitability in Peru under climate change: implications for restoration and deforestation-free development, Zabaleta-Santisteban et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access pdf 10.3389/fenvs.2026.1777634
Measuring carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation potential of croplands under different climatic scenarios using RothC model, Adeel et al., Frontiers in Climate Open Access 10.3389/fclim.2026.1801916
Peak carbon sequestration rate reached on the Loess Plateau plantations, Jia et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03419-w
Phosphorus enrichment does not enlarge the predicted CO2 fertilization effect on forest carbon sequestration, Wang et al., Open Access CRIS of the University of Bern Open Access 10.48620/97012
Polish Agriculture in the Face of Climate Change: Better or Worse?, Szwed & Holka, International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.70387
Positive effects of species mixing on soil carbon sequestration and water retention in global forest plantations, Huang et al., Journal of Ecology 10.1111/1365-2745.70321
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Rethinking the social license to operate? A theoretical exploration of its synergies with social acceptance and energy justice for a just transition, Energy Research & Social Science, 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103552 26 cites.
Hydrology, hydrometeorology & climate change
Declines in Autumn Precipitation in Southwestern China and the Yangtze River Basin Linked to the Tropical Pacific and Atlantic Warmings, Deng et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-25-0479.1
From Extreme Days to Event-Scale Persistence: Characterizing for Persistent Extreme Precipitation Across Multisource Datasets, Zhao et al., Weather and Climate Extremes Open Access 10.1016/j.wace.2026.100905
Green water will deviate the planetary boundary twice by the end of the 21st Century, Yang et al., Global and Planetary Change 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2026.105482
Precipitation observing network gaps limit climate change impact assessment, Su et al., Nature Open Access 10.1038/s41586-026-10300-5
Rapid Intensification and Relative Sea-Level Rise Amplify Compound Flooding From Hurricanes Harvey and Beryl, Lee et al., Earth s Future Open Access 10.1029/2025ef007678
Regional drying over the Western U.S. driven by enhanced atmospheric subsidence amid global moistening from 1980 to 2020, Ding et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-71818-w
Towards improved Euro-Mediterranean discharge simulations in regional coupled climate models: a comparative assessment of hydrologic performance, Hamitouche et al., Geoscientific model development Open Access 10.5194/gmd-19-2881-2026
Transpiration Changes With Soil Warming: Insights From a Mechanistic Model, Luo et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl120046
Tropical precipitation response to anthropogenic climate change in recent decades, Joseph et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-026-71187-4
Twenty-First Century Projections and Trends of JJAS Rainfall Over the Greater Horn of Africa Under CMIP6 Shared Socioeconomic Pathways Scenarios, Jima et al., International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.70390
Warming and snow loss increase reliance on old groundwater in a Colorado River headwater, Siirila-Woodburn et al., Nature Geoscience Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41561-026-01945-y
Widespread shift toward extreme dominated precipitation with pronounced trends in arid and mediterranean regions, Zaerpour et al., Scientific Reports Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41598-026-47708-y
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Dynamic pathway linking Pakistan flooding to East Asian heatwaves, Science Advances, 10.1126/sciadv.adk9250 62 cites.
Climate change economics
Achieving climate justice: climate finance and income inequality in developing countries, Li et al., Open MIND Open Access pmh:10.6084/m9.figshare.31389871
Digital economy-driven decarbonization pathways: analyzing how digital economy and globalization impact climate change in the top-10 digital economies, Bashir et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access pdf 10.3389/fenvs.2026.1784967
Fixed climate feedback assumptions systematically underestimate policy-relevant economic risks: Implications for climate resilience, SHEN et al., Advances in Climate Change Research Open Access 10.1016/j.accre.2026.04.004
Loss and damage fund and countries’ incentives to compensate for climate-related damages, Silipo et al., Energy Policy Open Access 10.1016/j.enpol.2026.115300
Making expertise in international environmental governance: establishing loss and damage expert groups in the UNFCCC, Johansson, Environmental Sociology Open Access 10.1080/23251042.2026.2657318
Public support for climate finance to developing countries: a contingent valuation study in South Korea, Shin & Huh, Figshare Open Access 10.6084/m9.figshare.32054467.v1
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
The relationship between CO2 emissions and macroeconomics indicators in low and high-income countries: using artificial intelligence, Environment Development and Sustainability, 10.1007/s10668-024-04880-3 18 cites.
Climate change and the circular economy
Water–energy–food nexus in the circular economy: implications for climate mitigation, Papadas et al., Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability Open Access 10.1016/j.cosust.2026.101649
,Climate change mitigation public policy research
Aligning climate change mitigation strategies with policy objectives beyond cost savings, [authors did not process], Nature Climate Change 10.1038/s41558-026-02617-w
Humanitarian blind spots in Western climate change policy and discourse, Qamar & Baig, Nature Climate Change 10.1038/s41558-026-02613-0
Regional priorities in implementing forestation and wind energy as climate solutions in facing their trade-offs, Zhang et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-71674-8
Sector-specific climate policies for a green industrial transition with public support, Hansen & Koslowski, Figshare Open Access 10.6084/m9.figshare.31939110.v1
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Modeling V2G spot market trading: The impact of charging tariffs on economic viability, Energy Policy, 10.1016/j.enpol.2024.114109 44 cites.
Climate change adaptation & adaptation public policy research
Adapting to what? Regional climate policy in Russia, Andreeva, Climate Policy 10.1080/14693062.2026.2643215
Assessing walkability and climate adaptive capacity in relation to urban morphology and historical development, Shartova & Mironova, GeoJournal 10.1007/s10708-026-11635-2
Centring Power in Climate Adaptation Politics Through Cross-Scale Governmentalities: A Systematic Review of High-Income Countries, Garland et al., Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change Open Access 10.1002/wcc.70057
Gender and climate change: differential risks and resilience among internal migrants at their urban destination in coastal Bangladesh, Brisebois & Hoffmann, Climate and Development Open Access 10.1080/17565529.2026.2651955
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Challenges for climate change adaptation in Latin America and the Caribbean region, Frontiers in Climate, 10.3389/fclim.2024.1392033 27 cites.
Climate change impacts on human health
A global research and evaluation agenda for centering health and equity in city Climate Action Plans, Adlakha et al., PLOS Climate Open Access 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000891
Association Between Observed Climate Change and Cardiovascular Disease in the United States, Yeager et al., GeoHealth Open Access 10.1029/2025gh001588
Climate and health at a critical juncture, Lokmic-Tomkins et al., PLOS Climate Open Access 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000895
Global hotspots of compound extreme heat-pollution linked to local surface and atmospheric conditions, Huang et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-026-03460-9
Projected heatwave-related excess mortality under climate change scenarios across 2288 communities in Australia: a nationwide ecological projection modelling study, Chen et al., The Lancet Planetary Health Open Access 10.1016/j.lanplh.2026.101446
Weather forecasts become more important for reducing mortality as the climate warms, Shrader et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Open Access 10.1073/pnas.2523372123
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Mapping urban heatwaves and islands: the reverse effect of Salento’s “white cities”, Frontiers in Earth Science, 10.3389/feart.2024.1375827 4 cites.
Climate change & geopolitics
Global climate cooperation under the 2 °C goal: Mechanisms and pathways via a coupled CGE–ABM framework, Chen et al., Advances in Climate Change Research Open Access 10.1016/j.accre.2026.04.002
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Transparency is what states make of it: whose climate priorities are reflected in the Paris Agreement’s enhanced transparency framework?, Climate Policy, 10.1080/14693062.2024.2341945 10 cites.
buffer/CCGPClimate change impacts on human culture
Climate Influences on Intangible Cultural Heritage in China over Two Millennia and its SDG Implications, Zhang et al., Anthropocene 10.1016/j.ancene.2026.100543
Extreme heat and humidity reduce the recreational value of urban green spaces, WANG et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03389-z
Do scientometric studies serve climate research?, Dyachenko et al., Climate and Development 10.1080/17565529.2026.2652538
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Diversity in global environmental scenario sets, Global Environmental Change, 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102839 6 cites.
Informed opinion, nudges & major initiatives
Climate futures require politics, Leininger et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-71711-6
Editorial: Assessing greenhouse gas emissions at city and regional levels: challenges and methods, Hu et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access pdf 10.3389/fenvs.2026.1839415
Why more fossil fuels won’t fix the Iran energy crisis, Wagner, Nature 10.1038/d41586-026-01197-1
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Human influence can explain the widespread exceptional warmth in 2023, Communications Earth & Environment, 10.1038/s43247-024-01391-x 19 cites.
Book reviews
What does the future hold for the thawing Arctic?, Gehrke, Nature 10.1038/d41586-026-01258-5
Articles/Reports from Agencies and Non-Governmental Organizations Addressing Aspects of Climate ChangeClimate Change Concern Near Its High Point in U.S, Jeffery Jones, Gallup
Americans’ concern about global warming or climate change remains elevated compared with what it had been prior to 2017. At least four in 10 U.S. adults have expressed “a great deal” of concern about the matter throughout the past decade except for a 39% reading in 2023. Between 2009 and 2016, worry was typically in the low-to-mid 30% range but dropped to as low as 25% in 2011. Currently, 44% of U.S. adults worry a great deal about global warming or climate change, among the highest in the full trend since 1989, along with 46% measured in 2020 and 45% in 2017.Utility Spending is Rising: A Review of Utility Capital Expenditure Plans, Powerlines
PowerLines found that investor-owned utilities are planning to spend at least $1.4 trillion over the next five years through 2030 on capital expenditures (CapEx)—a more than 21 percent increase over the $1.1 trillion over a five-year period outlined last year. Capital expenditures include expenses on physical assets such as power plants, transmission lines, and distribution poles and wires. This planned spending comes at a time when utility bills are rapidly rising. PowerLines analysis has shown that utility bills have increased approximately 40 percent since 2021, with no signs of slowing down. In 2025 alone, utilities requested $31 billion in rate increases, while electricity and gas became the fastest drivers of inflation. Most utilities expect high levels of capital spending to continue through 2030, a trend that promises to intensify growing affordability pressures. While these proposed spending amounts do not necessarily equate on a one-to-one basis to rate increases, utility CapEx plans are often a leading indicator of incoming rate increase requests. These growing costs could become the key driver behind utility rate increase requests over the next five years.Delivering on Adaptation: An Assessment of International Adaptation Finance Flows, INKA Consult, DanChurchAid
The authors map and analyze international public adaptation finance, providing a better understanding for how progress toward the goal of tripling adaptation finance by 2035 can be achieved. The authors used publicly available data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Climate-Related Development Finance (CRDF) database. There have been some estimates to enable the analysis.Measure twice, cut once: A state-level framework for effective wildfire risk mitigation, Wara et al., Milliman
The authors present a risk-based framework guiding states to focus their efforts where they are more likely to see results: the built environment, particularly existing structures and surrounding vegetation, and electricity infrastructure. The framework consists of six steps including inventory the universe at risk; establish metrics for quantifying risks and damages; determine the key physical risks to mitigate and the appropriate actions needed to address each of them; assess the cost of mitigations and potential funding source; secure stakeholder buy-in; and create an action plan prioritizing mitigation methods and targets.2026 Heat Safety Awareness Toolkit, Shivank Jhanji, The Alliance for Heat Resilience and Health
The author developed a new toolkit to help organizations and individuals take meaningful action around the national Heat Safety Week. It is designed for anyone who wants to raise awareness about extreme heat and support policies that protect the people most at risk. The toolkit is structured around three levels of engagement: Level 1: Social Media Amplify heat safety messages during NIHHIS Heat Safety Week (May 18–22). Share content, use #HeatSafety, and help spread the word. Level 2: Proclamation Request an official proclamation from your mayor or governor recognizing Heat Safety Week, using our step-by-step guide and templates. Level 3: Legislation Explore local and state policy options to protect your community from extreme heat, with real-world examples.Stop Greed, Build Green: A Working Class Climate Strategy, Bigger et al., Climate and Community Institute
The US is staring down deepening cost-of-living and climate crises. A framework that focuses on immediate relief, robust regulation, state capacity, and massive investment can move us towards a stable, green economy that works for everyone. Enter Green Economic Populism (GEP), an intellectual framework and political strategy for a new era of climate and economic urgency. GEP recognizes that the affordability crisis is not a temporary setback but a structural challenge that will be intensified by the climate crisis. Therefore, any attempt to solve or even to alleviate the affordability crisis must, in tandem, address the climate crisis. The Green Economic Populism has four key planks including provide immediate economic relief to the cost-of-living crisis; regulate the industries and corporations driving economic and climate catastrophe; build a public sector that works for everyone; and mobilize massive green investments in communities, infrastructure, and industry.A Global Fleet Under Wind: Scaling Wind Propulsion for Emission Reduction, Energy Demand and Equity, Mason et al., Seas at Risk
The authors present a first-ever study showcasing the benefits of wind propulsion when scaled up to the global fleet. Drawing on 1.74 billion kilometers of real voyage data – the equivalent distance from Earth to Saturn – wind propulsion could, conservatively, reduce modelled wind ship fuel use by 6.3-9.4%, with an even greater potential if paired with other optimization measures such as weather routing, slowing down speeds, and hull cleaning. By 2050, it could deliver up to 762 million tons of cumulative CO2 savings, getting us closer to our climate targets. The technology is here, but is policy willing?The State(s) of Distributed Solar — 2025 Update, Ingrid Behrsin, The Institute for Local Self-Reliance
Distributed solar, which can be owned by individuals, small businesses, and public entities, is turning the electricity industry upside down as individuals choose to generate their own solar power on their rooftop or through participation in community solar. In 2025, of the 36 new gigawatts of solar capacity installed, 19% (6.8 GW) was distributed throughout communities. Many individuals who cannot go solar themselves can subscribe to a community solar garden. These solar arrays offer the same electric bill stability and savings as rooftop solar, but operate remotely under a subscription model. In 25 states and the District of Columbia, there’s sufficient distributed solar to serve one in every 25 households (a state distributed solar saturation of more than 100 watts per capita). This is the same as last year, although the average watts per capita among these leading states has risen from 273 to 329, suggesting that leading states continue to progress.Mayor Bass' Climate Action Plan for Los Angeles, City of Los Angeles
Los Angeles is working to address the growing impacts of climate change and build a safer and more sustainable city. Developed in partnership with City departments, the roadmap outlines the actions, investments, and measurable targets needed to reduce emissions, strengthen infrastructure, and protect communities. Taking action now is critical to improving public health, reducing climate risks, and ensuring a more resilient and equitable future for all Angelenos. About New ResearchClick here for the why and how of Skeptical Science New Research.
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