Anthropocene Magazine

A self-assembling coating made from seaweed and zinc can keep fruit fresher and lasting longer than even the cool interior of a fridge. This invention, described in a new paper from a team of Canadian scientists, enabled even delicate strawberries to survive at room temperature for four days without molding. It strikes two sustainability targets at once: reducing food waste, and limiting dependence on carbon-intensive cold chains. 

The main seaweed ingredient in this invention sounds unusual but is actually a widely-used food additive and vegan gelatin-substitute called agar that is produced from red algae. This made up the bulk of the new fruit coating, but when combined with the micronutrient zinc and tannic acid it did something interesting that the researchers are still trying to understand, swiftly self-organizing into a thin layer of microparticles that evenly coated any fruit dipped into it. For this, the researchers tested out fresh strawberries, apple slices, and whole grapes. 

Next, they trialled their new coating both inside and outside a fridge, comparing dipped fruit with fruit that remained untreated. This led to the most striking discovery, that coated strawberries at room temperature outperformed uncoated strawberries placed in the fridge. The treated, uncooled fruit held out for at least four days or more before becoming moldy, while the untreated but refrigerated fruits started molding on day four. Meanwhile, coated strawberries that were kept in the fridge were even more robust, lasting a full six days.

At room temperature the untreated strawberries stayed mold-free for just two days, compared to the four-day staying power of treated strawberries. Cut apple slices stayed fresh for roughly 24 hours while the untreated controls began to show visible signs of decay at about 12 hours. The treated grapes, meanwhile, lasted almost 14 days, taking a full week longer to show signs of wrinkling and shrinkage than the untreated fruit. 

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:A new cooling technology freezes food without warming the climate

 

Overall, the novel agar dip extended fruits’ shelf life by at least twofold, and reduced weight loss at the four day mark from 30% to 13%. The researchers say the coating has antibacterial qualities which can explain its preserving features, is safe for human consumption, maintains the nutritional quality of the treated fruit, and can easily be washed off when food is ready to eat.

A lifecycle analysis also revealed that the coating had a lower or equivalent emissions impact to refrigeration. And although these reductions were relatively modest, the researchers say the benefits would become much more significant when extrapolated to a whole cold chain system, where small gains can add up to big savings.  

In Canada where the research was based, food waste is a huge problem, with some reports estimating that 46% of fresh produce is lost or wasted in the country each year, valued at $58 billion.

Upgraded with commercially-available agar and used on a wider range of fruits, the researchers believe their invention could make a real dent in this problem, becoming a “practical, sustainable strategy to mitigate food loss and build resilient fresh produce supply chains,” they write.

Yang et. al. “Self-Assembled Metal−Phenolic−Agar Microparticle-Derived Coatings Enable Scalable and Sustainable Fresh Produce Preservation.” Agricultural and Food Chemistry. 2026.

Image: Slashio Photography for UnSplash

The planet’s oceans are an ally for fighting climate change. They absorb about a third of all human-generated carbon dioxide emissions. Many researchers are looking at ways to speed up the ocean’s ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

One proposed solution is to dump iron into ocean waters. This would trigger a bloom of phytoplankton—microscopic plant-like organisms that use sunlight to produce food—which would pull large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

But research published in the journal Nature shows that not all places are equal when it comes to ocean iron fertilization (OIF). The carbon dioxide removal strategy could have unintended side-effects, and its ecological impact and effectiveness depends on where it is put into action.

The team from the University of California, Irvine has found that implementing OIF at higher latitudes rather than near the equator could reduce environmental impacts while still achieving removal of carbon dioxide

“The Central Pacific should be avoided for OIF due to the severe ecological risks, and the Southern Ocean may offer the best balance between carbon sequestration and ecological risk over decadal timescales,” says Jun Yu of UCI’s department of earth systems science.

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:How seaweed farms could change the arithmetic of ocean carbon capture...for the better.

 

Artificial OIF is more than a theoretical concept, Yu says. Researchers have conducted field tests in the past. But those short-term OIF experiments were designed to see whether iron “is the limiting nutrient for phytoplankton growth in ocean regions, not to serve as a climate solution.”

To work as a climate solution, OIF would need to be done at much larger scales over longer periods. That could have unintended environmental consequences such as biodiversity loss, expansion of oxygen minimum zones, and disturbance of fish habitats. That’s because the added iron can deplete nutrients from water. That results in less zooplankton, tiny organisms that serve as food for fish and larger marine animals.

Yu, J. Keith Moore, Adam Martiny and colleagues set out to see which regions can achieve efficient, durable carbon dioxide removal, and what the ecological impact would be. They used an ocean iron fertilization model to analyze the fertilization potential and ecosystem impact across ten ocean biomes over 60 years.

The team found that OIF removed up to 5.3 parts per million of carbon dioxide, or 0.70 gigatons of carbon dioxide per year. They also found that the areas with the largest plankton blooms, and hence the most effective at carbon dioxide removal, were the Southern Ocean and the equatorial Pacific.

However, the strategy depleted nutrients near the equator. Fertilizing 0.35% of the ocean in the equatorial Pacific leads to at least 10% decline in zooplankton. Meanwhile, fertilizing 0.2% of the Southern Ocean led to a 10% increase in zooplankton.

“The next step would be to explore the fishery impact of OIF, with additional model experiments at more locations in the Southern Ocean to test the benefits and risks,” Yu says.

Source: Jun Yu et al. Climate benefit and ecological cost trade-offs for ocean iron fertilization. Nature, 2026.

Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory

The world’s butterflies are on the move.

Whether it’s the iridescent blue Godartiana byses flitting south in Brazil as temperatures rise or Europe’s endangered Danube clouded yellow losing ground to more intensive agriculture, roughly 1 in 10 of the world’s 19,000 butterfly species appear today in different places than they were once found.

That’s according to perhaps the most through accounting to date of how butterflies are changing locations as the planet changes around them, published last week in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

“We found butterfly species shifting their ranges on every continent where they occur. The scale is astonishing,” said Shawan Chowdhury, the paper’s lead author and head of Monash University’s Global Change Ecology Lab in Melbourne, Australia.

This isn’t the first time such butterfly shifts have been documented. But much of the past research has concentrated on insects in North America and Europe, where money and scientific infrastructure support more intensive and long-running research. That, however, isn’t where most butterfly species occur. They are concentrated in the biodiversity hotspots of the tropics.

To remedy this mismatch and create a more comprehensive picture of what’s happening to butterflies, Chowdhury and colleagues went beyond the usual sources of scientific papers. They sought out research published in languages other than English. And they surveyed 68 butterfly experts from 49 countries to get their insights.   

“When we included non‑English studies and expert knowledge, a completely different global picture emerged,” said Chowdhury. “Without these sources, we would have dramatically underestimated the global patterns of range shifts, especially overlooking key patterns in the tropics, where 80% of insect species live.”

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:A bold new experiment suggests humans could help butterflies outrun global warming

 

The resulting picture was one of global turmoil, with butterflies buffeted by both climate change and habitat loss. Of the 1,758 species reported to have altered their location, 80% expanded their range, showing up in places where they previously hadn’t been seen, including Brazil’s little Godartiana. Those range expansions were concentrated in the tropics, where insects already live at the edge of the temperature limits they can tolerate.

In contrast, nearly 30% of species lost ground in some places, a phenomenon chiefly documented in Europe and North America. Meanwhile, 22% of species had moved to different elevations, a phenomenon often associated with rising temperatures, which organisms try to escape by moving to higher ground.

While the reasons for these changes are many, two major factors emerged most frequently in the literature. Climate change was identified as a major driver in 79% of the species in which scientists had identified causes of the butterfly movements. Habitat disturbance and agriculture were cited most often in cases where a butterfly species saw its range shrink.

These mass movements of butterflies around the globe highlight the need for conservation initiatives that can aid them, the authors write. That includes identifying and protecting places likely to provide the most hospitable conditions for a species as the climate changes; reducing harm from activities such as farming; preserving land that connects different patches of habitat to aid the butterflies in their movements; and forecasting where species are likely to move when considering what land to protect.

While butterflies are attention grabbing thanks to their beautiful colors and the remarkable metamorphoses they undergo from larva to adult, the alarm over the changes in their locations isn’t just about the insects. It’s also an alert that something bigger is amiss.

Much as Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring” tied the pesticide-induced loss of insects to broader ecological mayhem, so people can read a bigger message into the movement of butterflies. “Butterflies are early warning indicators,” said Chowdhury. “If their ranges are shifting this dramatically, it signals profound changes across ecosystems.”

Chowdhury, et. al. “Extensive climate-induced range shifts in butterflies across the globe.” Nature Ecology & Evolution. Aug. 5, 2026.

Photo by Evie S. on Unsplash

Replacing a gasoline car of any age—even a brand-new one—with an electric vehicle will almost always lower overall carbon emissions, according to a new analysis. The findings resolve a key conundrum about making the switch from gasoline to electric vehicles, the researchers say.

Driving an electric vehicle (EV) produces less emissions than driving a gasoline car, and the disparity is growing ever wider as electric grids decarbonize. So it has been obvious for a while that if you’re in the market for a new car the best choice for the environment is an EV. But manufacturing an EV produces more emissions than manufacturing a gasoline car, and this has led to uncertainty about the break-even point.

That is, if you own a gasoline car that works fine now and are considering when to replace it with an EV, should you drive the gasoline car into the ground, staving off the hefty emissions burden of EV manufacture for as long as possible? Or should you replace it as soon as budget allows, and start to reap the benefits of the EV’s much lower operating emissions?

“Even if you scrapped a new gas car, the EV still wins,” says study team member J. Elliott Campbell, chair of the environmental studies department at the University of California in Santa Cruz.  “The environmental advantage of EVs is now crystal clear.”

Campbell and his collaborator Roland Geyer, at the University of California in Santa Barbara, calculated the life-cycle carbon emissions of keeping a gasoline car on the road for 16 years (the typical lifetime of a passenger vehicle) compared to replacing it with an EV.

They considered many different vehicle types and timelines for replacement, as well as electricity sources, individual driving habits, battery size, and other parameters.

Replacing a gasoline car with an EV makes climate sense across a broad range of scenarios, even when the gasoline car is new, the researchers found. Of course, that won’t be affordable for most people. But it’s a stark illustration of the climate benefits of EVs.

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:In a comparison of life-cycle emissions, EVs crushed combustion cars

 

In the analysis, climate benefits were generally greatest when gasoline car was scrapped in year 1, leading to an average 58% reduction in emissions over the 16-year period. It takes about three years of driving an EV to make up for the greater emissions involved in manufacturing it.

“I was shocked that even scrapping a hybrid gives big climate benefits,” Campbell says.

In 92% of the scenarios the researchers ran, replacing a gasoline car or hybrid vehicle with a battery electric vehicle before the end of its lifespan reduced overall carbon emissions. The exceptions: scenarios involving the least efficient EVs drawing power from the dirtiest electric grids; plug-in hybrids; and gasoline cars that are driven very few miles annually.

The energy mix of local electricity grids can shift the break-even point. But across most of the United States, it’s worth replacing even the most efficient gasoline cars early. And for the most common gasoline car models sold in the United States, early replacement makes climate sense even in areas with the dirtiest electric grids.

The benefits of switching to an EV will become even greater in the coming years, as electric grids decarbonize and battery recycling technology improves, which will decrease manufacturing emissions associated with EVs.

Campbell is now working on an analysis of the mass of materials involved in EVs compared to gasoline cars. “An EV has a 0.5 ton battery but a gas vehicle can use 20 tons of petroleum in its life,” he says. Batteries can be recycled, “but once you burn petroleum it’s essentially gone forever.  I think more work needs to be done to explore this material advantage for EVs.”

Source: Campbell J.E. and R. Geyer. “The climate benefits of retiring a fully operational internal combustion engine vehicle.” Science 2026.

Image: © Anthropocene Magazine.

Using the waste created by one of the world’s staple foods, researchers have made a filter that can clean water. They converted discarded rice husks into a sponge-like filter that can remove polluting industrial dyes such as the ones released by textile, leather, and other industries.

The low-cost material could help clean waterways while reducing agricultural waste. The researchers published their findings in the journal Sustainable Chemistry and Pharmacy.

Many industries such as textile manufacturing, leather processing, paper production and aquaculture use synthetic dyes. These industrial dyes persist in aquatic environments for a long time, “diminishing light penetration, disturbing aquatic ecosystems, and polluting drinking water sources,” the researchers write in the paper. Many of these dyes are toxic and some can be carcinogens.

Manufacturers can remove these dyes from wastewater before it is released into the environment. One of the most promising, cost-effective, and sustainable method for the removal of dyes are materials that can adsorb dyes, that is, soak them up on the surface via physical or chemical mechanisms.

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:The unlikely ingredient that cleans wastewater and turns it into fertilizer: Bubbles. 

 

The team at Florida International University set out to make such an adsorbent from waste rice husks. Rice is the most-eaten food globally. The world produces over 540 million tonnes of rice every year, and discards some 136 million tonnes of the outer husk of the grains.

To make the water filter, the researchers first heat waste husks in a low-oxygen environment. This converts the organic material into biochar, a sponge-like material with a very high surface area and a porous network that can trap contaminants.

But the researchers boosted the performance of the biochar by combining it with special materials called layered double hydroxides, which are clay-like minerals composed of layers of magnesium and aluminum hydroxide sheets with charged ions and water molecules trapped in the spaces between the layers.

In laboratory tests, the material captured brilliant green and malachite green dyes, two commonly used industrial dyes. The material was also reusable. The researchers found that it could be reused at least five times without losing its efficacy. They now plan to test the material on other dyes, heavy metals and various contaminants found in real-world water samples.

Source: Noel Abhick Lawrence et al, Waste-to-resource approach: Sustainable synthesis and life cycle assessment of rice husk char-supported Mg–Al layered double hydroxide for dye biosorption, Sustainable Chemistry and Pharmacy, 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

Your age shapes your diet’s impact will be—and while older people drive overall emissions increases at global scales, it’s surprisingly the youth who have a higher individual footprint, a new study finds.

The Nature Food research brought together a multinational team who say their work indicates that a one-size-fits-all approach won’t be effective in tackling dietary impacts: instead we need tailored approaches that target different age groups, they believe.  

The research draws on data from 149 countries, from the period spanning 2000 and 2019, and evaluates dietary emissions linked to 141 commonly-consumed foods. What makes this study different from most others like it is that it looked at how much of each product was consumed across more than 20 age groups. 

Key patterns emerged. Chief among these is that across the 149 countries overall, seniors—people aged 60 years or more—were responsible for most of the emissions growth linked to food. However, this wasn’t because older people individually ate more greenhouse gas-intensive diets, as is often assumed. Instead the larger dietary contribution of older folks simply comes down to their greater numbers. That’s because many of the 149 countries included in the study—mainly high and middle-income nations—now have aging populations.  

In fact, it was teenagers, aged 11 to 19 years, and young adults aged 20 to 29, who were responsible for consuming more greenhouse gas-intensive meals at the individual level. Meat and dairy were the main drivers of increased emissions in diets across all age groups. But in young people’s diets the presence of meat and dairy was especially pronounced, and hiked up their per capita emissions impact. 

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:New US dietary guidelines would worsen carbon emissions and land use

 

The researchers say this partly reflects young people’s higher energy requirements. But it also reveals increasing lifestyle-related dietary preferences for animal-based foods. This trend is becoming more pronounced in lower-middle-income countries, where changing dietary traditions and increasing per capita food intake seem to be fueling a greater appetite for dairy and meat. 

In these countries, young people actually turned out to be the main contributors to total dietary emissions too, because youth tend to make up the majority of those populations.

This complex picture suggests we’ll need a more nuanced approach if we’re going to try and encourage people to make more sustainable food choices. For young people, the research team underscores the value of education and behavioral change through school and restaurant environments that mainly attract the youth.

For older people, despite not having the highest per capita footprint, there are still dietary emissions reductions to be made across this group and these could have huge potential considering its size. 

One delicate factor to navigate is that in some lower-middle-income countries, there’s an association between increased meat and dairy consumption and nutritional gains. So, balancing sustainability with health in these places may in fact require a slower shift in food systems, to increase access to a diversity of nutrient-rich foods, not just dairy and meat. 

For now, the researchers simply want us to consider this other, overlooked factor in what shapes global dietary emissions: “Who we are, as much as what we eat, is becoming a defining factor in future climate trajectories,” they say.

Li et. al. “Youth lead current dietary emissions while seniors increasingly drive total emission growth.” Nature Food. 2026.

Image: © Anthropocene Magazine

When people talk about living near mountain lions, it’s usually about the threat they pose. But what if these big carnivores are also making us safer?

Having more of these big cats in the neighborhood can translate into fewer car collisions with deer, according to research published today in Current Biology.  

“Living alongside large carnivores isn’t simply about protecting wildlife; it’s about protecting the many ways they quietly benefit us every day,” said ecologist Mark Elbroch, who was involved in the new study and heads mountain lion research for the conservation group Panthera.

The findings in some ways resemble the more widely known story of how wolves helped revive Yellowstone vegetation by driving down elk populations that had spiraled out of control due to a lack of predators. The actions of one species can ripple through an ecosystem, sometimes in unexpected ways. In the case of mountain lions in Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula, add the unnatural automobile to the equation.

The discovery of this phenomenon emerged from years of work by native tribes of the peninsula to track deer and mountain lion populations. The research involved scientists from the Lower Elwha Klallam, Skokomish, Quinault, Makah and Port Gamble S’Klallam tribes. Wildlife cameras placed at more than 500 locations, combined with GPS-equipped collars on 59 mountain lions, provided a detailed picture of where the cats and their prey were spending time.

The researchers paired this data with the locations of nearly 1,000 collisions between cars and wildlife on the peninsula between 2020 and 2025. Those crashes were associated with more than 80 injuries, two fatalities and $14.7 million in car repairs and medical care.

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:Pumas are quietly tracking your hiking and biking habits better than you think

 

The pattern of where these collisions happened couldn’t be explained simply by the abundance of deer (based on the wildlife cameras) or by the level of human development and traffic. But when the scientists added the data from the mountain lion collars, it revealed that these cats were a major factor.

In places where mountain lions occurred with relatively high frequency, the likelihood of a car running into a deer was 67% lower, the scientists found. Overall, having lots of mountain lion activity in an area translated into a 76% drop in the total number of expected collisions over five years, according to a model scientists used to analyze the interactions between the cats, their prey and motorists.

The dynamic appears to be related to how deer behave when mountain lions, also known as pumas, are in the area. Much as mountain lions adjust their movements when people are nearby, deer do the same when one of their most fearsome predators is on the prowl.

“Deer alter their use of both space and time where pumas are present, overlapping less with roads and reducing activity at night, when some of the most dangerous collisions occur,” said lead author Justin Suraci, an ecologist at California-based Conservation Science Partners. “Increased road safety thus represents an ecosystem service that large predators like pumas can provide to human communities.”

Wildlife advocates are hoping awareness of benefits like these might help make the case for conserving such species, which often make the headlines only when they attack people.

“Carnivores may well be providing a similar road safety service elsewhere around the globe where populations have persisted and this valuable ecosystem service has just gone unnoticed,” said Suraci.

In fact, deer are far more deadly than mountain lions. A 2011 study by the U.S. Geological Survey found that mountain lion encounters at their 1990s peak resulted in approximately 5 injuries and 1 fatality per year in North America. Two deaths involving mountain lion attacks have been reported in the 2020s.

By contrast, in 2024 alone more than 200 people died in vehicles that ran into wildlife, mostly deer.

Suraci, et. al. “Large carnivores shape road safety through effects on prey space use.” Current Biology. Aug. 5, 2026.

Photo: ©Glen Kalisz, WSDOT

Climate change is an extremely politically polarized topic in the United States, with Democrats generally concerned about human-caused climate change and Republicans more skeptical. But these familiar broad strokes hide both differences within parties and bipartisan agreement—as well as a broad, messy middle, according to a new analysis based on two decades of polling data.

“Americans are deeply divided on climate change, but the real story is much deeper than a simple Democrat-Republican split,” says Mayank Kejriwal of the Information Science Institute at the University of Southern California.

Past studies have provided hints that other socio-demographic factors such as income, age, and education may also shape climate attitudes. But the new study employs a methodology that enabled researchers to assess a comprehensive set of factors at the same time to see where the fault lines truly lie.

Kejriwal and USC engineering graduate student Yidan Sun analyzed responses to an annual Gallup Poll survey that queried U.S. adults on various environmental topics from 2000 to 2020. They assessed climate attitudes and looked at how support for 14 different climate-related policy proposals varies both within and across parties.

As expected, party identification is the strongest factor influencing climate beliefs, the researchers found. The partisan divide on climate has long existed, but it deepened after Donald Trump was first elected to the presidency in 2016.  In the 2017 poll, climate concern jumped among Democrats and Independents like a collective eyebrow raise, while remaining at a flat, relatively low level among Republicans.

But people aren’t just blue or red, they’re individuals. And their opinions are shaped by more than just their political party, the researchers discovered when they dug into the influence of age, income, ethnicity, and education.

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:Trump is slashing federal climate action. States could cost-effectively fill the gap

 

“Climate opinion is polarized, but it is not uniform, and understanding those internal differences matters if we want to understand where public support for climate policy may grow,” says Kejriwal.

The biggest divide within the Republican party is by age. Republicans under age 35 are more likely than older Republicans to support renewable energy and oppose fossil fuel development.

Yet the devil is still in the details: Young Republicans might support renewable energy development, but they tend to oppose a carbon tax right along with their elder partisans. Meanwhile, young Democrats show high support for both policies.

In general, Republicans tend to be more open to technology- and market-oriented climate policies, suggesting that future climate communication efforts could frame policies in these terms rather than emphasizing regulations that are unpopular among conservatives.

Among Democrats, education is the most important factor shaping climate attitudes, with higher levels of education linked to greater support for various climate policies. Education moves Republican beliefs to a much lesser degree.

“One striking result was how consistently policy support depended on the design of the policy, not just on general concern about climate change,” says Kejriwal.

For example, policies to limit household energy use are unpopular across the political spectrum, in line with people’s general preference for climate carrots over sticks. And some policies like government investment in solar energy and development of alternative fuels enjoy broad support regardless of political party.

Another pattern seen across the political spectrum is inconsistency: a substantial proportion of Democrats (26.8%), Independents (42.6%), and Republicans (36.3%) alike fall into what the researchers call the “mixed middle”—people with complicated, sometimes contradictory views on climate, rather than pure skepticism or concern. Messages that link climate policies to economic or public health benefits could help sway this group, the researchers suggest.

Source: Sun Y. and M. Kejriwal. “Modeling complex associations between socio-demographic factors and climate policies using Conditional Inference Trees.” Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 2026.

Image: © Anthropocene Magazine (based on Adobe Stock/Julia)

Tomatoes are some of the most widely-produced and consumed crops worldwide. They’re also vulnerable to increasing soil salinity. But now researchers say they may have a solution—and it comes in the form of a refreshing spritz for developing tomato plants.

Using their new spray, they’ve dramatically increased plant weight, photosynthetic capabilities, and crop resilience, compared to untreated tomatoes that have been exposed to the same level of salt stress.

Salinity affects 3.2 million square miles of global cropland, an area about the size of Australia. Finding solutions is a priority for future farming—especially for tomatoes, which have been the subject of many salt-fighting studies. Tomatoes are “known to be fairly salt-sensitive,” said Hamidreza Sharifan, an assistant professor of environmental chemistry at Florida Atlantic University, and the study’s lead author. “If it works well in tomatoes, that’s a strong signal it could be adapted to other salt-sensitive crops.”

Sharifan and team tested their spray in a series of greenhouse experiments on two main batches of tomato plants, each exposed to medium and high salt stress in the soil. They sprayed one group, while the other went untreated. Their concoction combines two ingredients: manganese oxide nanoparticles and chitosan, an ingredient found in crustacean shells of which there is also an abundant supply from seafood waste streams. 

In the untreated tomatoes, the highly saline soils reduced their biomass and the quantity of photosynthesizing pigments like chlorophyll and carotenoids. The plants also showed more signs of oxidative stress, which ultimately leads to cell damage.

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:A tiny tomato may harbor the secret to salt-tolerance in a climate-changed world

 

The spritzed tomatoes, on the other hand, fared strikingly well: their roots doubled in weight, increasing by 55% compared to the unsprayed controls. Photosynthesizing pigments also increased in these plants by between 25 and 91%. Signs of cellular damage declined, and the responsiveness of key antioxidants in plant tissues increased by between 100 and 300% compared to the controls, suggesting that these tomatoes were overall much more resilient plants. 

The benefits come down to the spray’s carefully-selected ingredients, Sharifan explained to Anthropocene. “The manganese nanoparticles help activate the plant’s own antioxidant enzymes, which neutralize oxidative damage. Chitosan acts more like a protective coating, it helps the plant hold onto water, stabilizes cell membranes, and supports the plant’s internal salt-water balance,” he said. “Together, they work synergistically better than either one alone.” 

Spraying the leaves helps the plants absorb the beneficial tonic quickly, instead of a root treatment which would first have to bypass the large quantity of salt in the surrounding soil, Sharifan added. 

The results are striking, but the researcher cautioned that so far they’ve only been demonstrated under relatively controlled, greenhouse conditions. The next step will be to test their spray out in the field to find out if it can sustain tomatoes against salt in other growing conditions. 

“This isn’t about fighting the salt directly, it’s about giving the plant the tools to protect itself. That’s a shift in philosophy from a lot of traditional approaches, and it’s why the treatment works at such a low dose,” Sharifan said. 

That might also make it more cost-effective for struggling farmers, he said. “It points to a practical, affordable tool that could help farmers keep growing food on land that’s becoming too salty to farm, which is a fast-growing problem worldwide.”

Sharifan et. al. “Synergistic alleviation of salinity stress in tomato: unraveling the physiological, biochemical, and antioxidant mechanisms modulated by manganese nanoparticles and chitosan.” International Journal of Phytoremediation. 2026.

Image: Based on Foodie-girl/Freerange Stock

More than 11 million tons of textiles end up in landfills or incinerators every year in the US alone. Now, engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hope to make a dent in that fabric waste with a recyclable elastic yarn.

The yarn is made from polyethylene, the widely produced plastic used in milk bottles and grocery bags. That means that a discarded garment made from the yarn could be melted and then re-spun into new yarn for fabrics.

Many modern high-performance fabrics contain a blend of materials that impart stretchiness and strength while being lightweight. The yarns are made of a spandex core sheathed in a polyester or nylon. Spandex, or polyurethane, is highly elastic and makes high-performance fabrics stretchy and comfortable. The nylon or polyester add durability and strength. But the blended material make garments difficult to recycle because the polymers have to be separated.

“Eighty percent of textiles on the U.S. market currently contain some amount of spandex, which makes them nonrecyclable,” said Svetlana Boriskina, a researcher in MIT’s mechanical engineering department, in a press release. “There’s no widely adopted technology now that recycles textiles into textiles. With our new yarn, we hope to change that.”

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:Large-scale recycling of modern textiles is now in sight

 

The new yarn, reported in the journal ACS Materials Letters, mimics the strength and stretchiness of spandex-polyester and spandex-nylon blends. But it is made from just one type of plastic, which makes it easier to recycle. Both the stretchy core and tougher sheath are made of polyethylene-based polymers. So the entire fiber can be recycled without the chemical separation required for traditional yarns.

To demonstrate this, the researchers spun a spool of yarn, melted it, and re-spun it into new yarn several times. Even after 10 cycles, the yarn was as strong and flexible as conventional blended fibers. “Because they are exactly the same chemistry, they play nicely together,” Boriskina said. “That’s what makes this yarn very recyclable.”

The researchers believe the technology can be scaled up for industrial production.

Source: SeongHyeon Kim et al. Polyethylene-Based Thermo-Mechanically Recyclable Stretchable Yarns for Circular Sustainable Textiles. ACS Materials Letters, 2026.

Image: Based on Adobe stock/fotoyou. ©Anthropocene Magazine

 

Giant sequoias are built to live with fire. Their thick, spongy bark shields the underlying wood from flames. The lower trunks are largely devoid of foliage, offering little fuel to help fires reach the canopy. Heat pops open their dense cones, releasing seeds for the next generation.

But today’s fires, supercharged by climate change and underbrush left by decades of fire suppression, are too much even for these long-lived behemoths. In 2020 and 2021 wildfires in western California raged through sequoia groves, killing thousands of the trees in Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks.

In the aftermath scientists are learning that the most effective way to help save these trees is to fight fire with fire. In places within the parks where land managers had reduced underbrush by intentionally setting low-intensity fires, sequoias were 77% less likely to die, according to new research in Nature Communications.

 “Prescribed burns are effective at reducing giant sequoia mortality, even for today’s extreme wildfires,” said lead author Dan Dixon, who was a University of California Davis postdoctoral researcher when the study was conducted. “If the goal is protecting giant sequoias, prescribed fire is an essential tool.”

Prescribed fires have long been considered a critical—if underutilized—strategy for turning down the temperature in today’s era of megafires. The aim is to return fire-adapted forests to something closer to the conditions in which many of them evolved, when fires often acted more like cleansers than destroyers.

Triggered by lightning or Indigenous peoples, flames would regularly burn through forest understories, turning bushes and fallen trees to ash while leaving big, healthy trees relatively unscathed. Rarely, it’s thought, did they spawn the canopy-destroying firestorms of recent years, fueled by dense undergrowth left from a century of aggressive fire suppression.

Despite the reported benefits of prescribed fire, the effect at a very detailed level, such as the fate of an individual tree species, hadn’t been clearly demonstrated. Then, the Castle (2020) and KNP Complex (2021) fires happened. Over two years, these fires burned more than 1,000 square kilometers of forest in California’s Sierra Nevadas. That included some of the last remaining groves of the giant sequoia, a species found only in that region. The largest tree species on Earth, they can live more than 3,000 years and grow to the mass of 15 blue whales. In those two years, as many as 13,000 sequoias are thought to have perished.

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:Burning forests now means fewer mega-fires later. But who’s gonna light the match?

 

“These trees live for so long and have experienced so much variability of climate, differences in wildfire, drought—they’ve seen it all,” Dixon said. “Having so many die in just two years was unprecedented.”

It also offered scientists an unusual opportunity. Since the 1960s, park managers had used prescribed burning in some of the sequoia groves. This gave researchers a chance to compare the fates of trees in landscapes that had been intentionally burned, and ones that had been untouched by fire for years until the devastating wildfire struck.

To tease out the differences, researchers used high-resolution satellite images that could show individual trees. They then trained a computer program to pick out giant sequoias and distinguish between live and dead trees before and after the fires. Finally, images of the forest created using LIDAR, a powerful imaging technique capable of peering through foliage, enabled the scientists to discern details including tree heights, spacing and other details about the forest structure.

All told, they examined 19 sequoia groves in the national parks totaling an estimated 26,403 of the giant trees. They spotted almost 8,000 trees killed by the fires – nearly a third of all the trees. The prescribed burning turned out to be a major factor in whether trees lived or died. In groves where a prescribed burn had been done within the previous decade, there was a 77% lower chance of a tree dying from the fires, according to a statistical model paired with the observations. There was even a notable benefit in places where the prescribed fire had happened between 10 and 15 years earlier.

If all the trees had been treated with prescribed burns, the scientists estimate it would have saved another 3,900 sequoias.

Though the new findings provide strong evidence for the benefits of burning, that’s not the case for other popular forms of forest treatments, such as selective logging to thin out overcrowded forests. While none of the groves had received such thinning, the scientists attempted to simulate the potential effects by looking at the LIDAR data to compare tree deaths in places with different forest structure – such as the density of trees. Those factors appeared to have no effect on the likelihood of sequoias dying.

That doesn’t mean such treatments are of no value, the scientists cautioned. It’s possible that fire conditions were so extreme that it erased benefits that might appear in less severe fires. It’s also possible these ancient, more structurally complex forests benefit less from selective logging than previously logged forests that have grown back.

The main message is clear, however. If people want to help sequoias withstand future fires, they’re going to need to learn to love fire.

Dixon, et. al. “Previous prescribed burns saved thousands of ancient sequoias 1 during historically unprecedented wildfires.” Nature Communications. July 11, 2026.

Photo: ©Katherine E Kerlin

Small, everyday environmentally friendly behaviors don’t distract people from taking more meaningful collective action or supporting policies to limit climate change, according to a new study. But nor do those individual actions prime the pump for collective action and policy support.

“Individual and systemic actions should not be viewed as competing alternatives,” says study team member Omid Ghasemi, a climate psychologist at the University of New South Wales in Australia. “People can support both, and encouraging one does not appear to come at the expense of the other.”

Ghasemi and his collaborators survey responses from almost 2,800 Australians who participated in the National Climate Action Survey, an annual poll conducted from 2021 through 2024, in at least two years.

The survey asked people about environmentally friendly behaviors like recycling, using reusable cups and containers, taking public transit, eating a greener diet, and cycling to work. It also included questions about their participation in collective climate actions like signing petitions and attending demonstrations, and support for climate policies such as EV mandates and net-zero target dates.

“There’s been considerable discussion about whether personal climate actions either distract people from larger systemic solutions or act as a gateway to greater climate engagement,” Ghasemi says.

Past research in this area has yielded mixed and contradictory results. The new work is one of only a few longitudinal studies on the topic, tracking how people’s actions and attitudes developed over the course of years.

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:The warm glow people get from recycling has a downside

 

“One result that surprised me was how little evidence we found for either side of the debate,” says Ghasemi.

Survey participants who took more individual actions were also more likely to participate in collective climate actions and be more supportive of climate policies, the researchers found.

Crucially, when a person’s personal climate actions increased in one year, this did not make them more—or less—likely to take collective action or support climate policies the next year. Nor was there any evidence of a gradual, cumulative effect of individual action over multiple years on broader climate engagement.

Instead, individual action, collective action, and policy support all seem to come as a package deal, representing an expression of a person’s pre-existing values.

This means that governments and environmental advocates don’t need to worry that encouraging everyday climate actions will “crowd out” other forms of climate engagement—as long as those small, individual efforts aren’t presented as the whole solution.

“One of the biggest questions our study leaves open is what drives people to become more engaged with climate change in the first place,” Ghasemi says. That’s what he’s investigating now, he reports, using longitudinal and experimental studies to probe how people perceive climate risk and judge the effectiveness of solutions, and how these translate into action and policy support.

Source: Ghasemi O. et al.  “Personal climate actions do not crowd out collective action and policy support: longitudinal evidence.” NPJ Climate Action 2026.

Image: © Unsplash+

A growing problem of modern industrial agriculture is the accumulation of ‘forever chemicals’ like PFAS in the soil. But now, researchers have developed a three-part plan involving hemp plants to draw it out of the soil—one that they say will cost a fraction of regular toxic clean up, and remove CO2 while they’re at it.

For decades, groups of persistent synthetic chemicals like PFAS have been used to make a range of products including food-contact materials, so accumulating in our bodies, and then our waste—which often becomes fertilizer. This has created a situation where swathes of farmland is now straining under a toxic load. Some farms in US states like Maine have even been forced to shut down because their soils exceeded safe limits for crop production and consumption. 

The new study proposes that the solution to this industrial threat is plants, rock dust and biochar. The research, led out of Yale University, developed a pollution remediation model based on available data from farms in Maine and looked at two types of PFAS: PFOS and PFOAS. They first considered what would happen if they applied basalt rock dust to the soil, a common approach for sequestering carbon dioxide—but which also changes the pH in ways that makes chemicals more mobile in the soil.

While that might sound counterintuitive to the goal, it makes chemicals like PFAS more available for uptake by plants—like the hemp and perennial grasses the researchers tested in the study. They modeled the effects of this plant growth, and then also looked at what would happen if the cuttings were turned into biochar, the heat in this process being a way to neutralize the toxicity of the chemicals. As a final step, they considered scattering this biochar product across other particularly contaminated farmlands as a method to trap forever chemicals and stop them from entering run off and further polluting other ecosystems from farms.

The application of the rock dust was found to increase uptake of PFOS via plants, accelerating the decline of this chemical in the soil by between 20 and 40 percent. The effects weren’t as strong for PFOAS, but PFOS are considered the bigger regulatory priority, the researchers say. 

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:In the race to pull carbon from the air, did rocks just overtake trees?

 

If the uptake plants were recycled into biochar and spread over contaminated farmland, this would immobilize enough PFAS to reduce the runoff of these chemicals by 95%. Overall, they found that these combined solutions could limit PFAS levels in US soils to below the thresholds of concern within a decade. The double-whammy of rock dust and biochar would also remove 10.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually if these remediation methods were scaled up cross-country. 

Conventional clean-up methods would involve excavating and burning a huge quantity of farmland soil: this huge endeavour would cost an estimated $1.6 million per hectare, ultimately amounting to $8 trillion ultimately. Meanwhile, the researchers calculate that their approach would cut that per-hectare annual cost to a fraction—just $1,460.

The study focused on the US, but its authors are keen to emphasize its rest-of-the-world relevance. In Europe 50% of sewage sludge—about 10 millions tons—produced annually is spread over farmland; China applies the same amount to its soils. In the UK that figure is 70%. PFAS is likely to keep accumulating in soil, but their solution to this problem is “broadly applicable,” the researchers say. 

“We outline a path that allows farmers to continue to work their land while restoring soil health.”

Planavsky et. al. “Integrated thermal and phytoremediation of agriculturalsoils impacted by PFAS.” PNAS. 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

Emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is easy. Pulling it back out? Not so much. Researchers have now developed a battery-like device that captures carbon dioxide from air by using a charging and discharging process.

The technology relies on electricity and saltwater chemistry. It promises to be simpler, more economic and sustainable than known methods for direct air capture (DAC). The team of engineers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Toyota Research Institute of North America report their findings in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

The use of fossil fuels isn’t slowing down despite rise in alternative energy technologies. Most climate scientists agree that removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is going to be a necessary tool for meeting climate targets.

But carbon dioxide is present in the atmosphere at relatively low concentrations. Today’s DAC technology relies on huge fans that blow air over expensive materials that soak up carbon dioxide. Once the materials have sopped up the gas, they need to be heated to release it for storage underground or to make useful chemicals and fuels.

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:Chemists turn plastic waste into carbon capture material

 

Companies have been trying to scale up DAC for years, and some projects are underway, but the technology remains expensive and hard to deploy on large scale.

Instead of heat and sorbent materials, the new DAC system uses a battery-like electrochemical cell. The researchers make the device by putting together potassium-stabilized manganese dioxide electrodes in a saltwater solution.

The capture and release of carbon dioxide happens in a two-step reversible cycle. In one step, the device changes changes the pH of the solution, making it alkaline so it absorbs carbon dioxide. When they flip the device’s current, it reduces the alkalinity and releases the greenhouse gas for storage.

The early laboratory results look promising, but the researchers say there are challenges they need to overcome to make the technology ready for scale up. The main one is to prevent the mixing between its two separate liquid streams. This will reduce energy consumption and boost its capture efficiency.

Source: Paul G. Rozzi et al, Toward a Low-Energy Direct-Air Capture Cycle by Reversible Proton-Intercalation-Mediated Alkalization, Environmental Science & Technology (2026).

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

If drivers of gasoline cars refrained from speeding, they would collectively save an average of 57,000 metric tons of carbon emissions every day in the United States—while spending less than a minute more behind the wheel, a new study reveals.

“We are presenting a somewhat obvious, but impactful, way to reduce energy and emissions that doesn’t require a new vehicle or new technology, just backing off the accelerator pedal,” says study team member William Northrop, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Minnesota.

The analysis proceeds from a simple and well-known proposition: driving fast is disproportionately energy intensive, as drag force increases exponentially with speed and the engine burns more and more fuel. “That’s physics,” Northrop says.

But no one had ever added up the impact at a national scale before.

In the new study, Northrop and University of Minnesota graduate student Bharat Jayaprakash analyzed a database of more than 120 million actual trips made by light-duty vehicles such as cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks across the United States to gain insight into how often and how fast drivers speed.

They used a computer model to quantify the energy consumption, fuel cost, and carbon emissions from the actual vehicle trips. Then they modeled what would happen if those same trips had all taken place without the drivers ever exceeding posted speed limits.

Driving the speed limit would save an average of 6.7 million gallons of fuel, 57,000 metric tons of carbon emissions, and $22 million in fuel costs daily across the United States, the researchers found.

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:In a comparison of life-cycle emissions, EVs crushed combustion cars

 

Why don’t people comply with posted speed limits? Mostly, because they want to save time. But the analysis shows that slowing down would only add about 190 seconds of drive time per 100 miles traveled—which works out to about 54 seconds per day for the average driver.

“The core takeaway is that the individual time savings gained from speeding are statistically negligible, but the collective environmental and economic costs are massive,” Jayaprakash says.

Obeying the speed limit only cuts fuel consumption by about 2.4-3%, depending on the time of year. But across the United States, that all adds up to an annual fuel savings equivalent to taking about 5.5 million passenger cars off the road.

Plus, the savings estimate is likely a conservative one since the researchers only evaluated speeding on roads with posted speed limits of at least 45 miles per hour.

The team also analyzed the effect of speeding on energy use and emissions generated by EVs in California (the only state where there are enough EVs for a statistically significant analysis). This investigation showed that obeying speed limits would yield small but collectively significant savings for EV drivers too: a single day’s savings of 195 megawatt hours of electricity could power 82 EVs for an entire year.

“There is no free lunch here; no matter what vehicle you drive, speeding and aggressive driving cost energy regardless of what energy source powers it,” Northrop says; the stop-speeding strategy remains important even as the vehicle fleet goes electric.

Source: Jayaprakash B. and W. F. Northrop. et al. “Speeding incurs substantial environmental and economic costs nationwide for negligible travel time savings.” Communications Sustainability 2026.

Image: © Anthropocene Magazine.