The Win-Wins of Climate and Biodiversity Solutions

What’s better for plants and wildlife is better for the climate. But where do we start to accomplish the best results?

The climate is changing, and species are going extinct faster than any time since civilization began. The two crises are not independent. That’s good news — it means there are solutions that benefit both biodiversity and climate.

Nature is already our best defense against runaway increases of greenhouse gas emissions. Earth’s lands and waters currently absorb about 40% of the carbon dioxide human activity and natural processes release into the atmosphere. That can’t continue, though, without our oceans acidifying and plants reaching the limit of what they can absorb.

As an ecologist, I’ve spent nearly three decades working to conserve biodiversity within landscapes largely managed for food and goods production. Now, as special projects director at Project Drawdown, I study how climate solutions can benefit the planet’s biodiversity. Through all of this work, I’ve found that many climate-friendly initiatives also help with conservation. Although some solutions can come with costs or tradeoffs to plants and animals, what’s better for biodiversity is generally better for climate. That means protecting and restoring nature needs to be a critical part of an all-of-the-above set of solutions for reducing the total amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Stopping or slowing habitat loss, for example, is good for biodiversity and the climate. Plants absorb carbon dioxide from the air to grow, and a portion of that carbon is stored in plants and soil. Habitat loss releases the carbon stored in soil and plants, so it’s a major source of emissions. Tropical deforestation alone, mostly to clear land for agriculture, accounts for 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. If deforestation were a country, it would be the third biggest greenhouse gas emitter, trailing only China and the United States.

log pile — Photo: Martyn Fletcher (CC BY 2.0)

Climate solutions can also enhance nature’s role as a carbon sink — its ability to store carbon. A complex habitat structure supports more species and stores more carbon at a greater rate. Protecting, restoring and enhancing biodiversity on managed lands all enhance sinks.

In other words, protecting natural habitat both reduces production of greenhouse gases and boosts nature’s ability to sock them away.

But with so many ecosystems under threat, and the climate crisis getting worse by the day, where do we start?

Protect What’s Left

To achieve the most benefits for both biodiversity and the climate, we must start by protecting the Earth’s remaining intact ecosystems.

Protecting all remaining habitat is, of course, important, but destroying intact areas disproportionately affects species loss compared to further destroying fragmented areas. And clearing and degrading intact areas is also a double whammy for climate. The existing carbon stock is emitted and the habitat’s ability to act as a sink is lost.

It’s like the gift that keeps on giving — except it keeps on taking away.

A mountain lion caught on a trail cam at Headwaters Forest Reserve. Photo: Bureau of Land Management.

And the impact compounds over time — when you include the foregone sequestration, the carbon impact over a decade of clearing tropical forest can be six times higher than the immediate emissions alone.

Intact areas have more carbon in the vegetation and soils and a higher species diversity than degraded areas. Intact areas are also better carbon sinks. They store carbon at a faster rate than degraded areas. For example, nearly a fifth of the world’s forests are legally protected, yet they store more than a quarter of the carbon accumulated across all forests every year.

But protection is not on pace with loss. Forest protected areas almost doubled from 1992 to 2015, from 16.6 to 32.7 thousand square miles. During that same time, nearly 200,000 square miles were deforested. If you had a gap like this between savings and withdrawals in your bank account, you would — and should — be very, very worried. We need to accelerate the rate of designating new protected areas.

Protected areas need not be parks. In fact, many of them shouldn’t be parks. Indigenous communities play an essential role in protecting biodiversity and reducing the threat of climate change around the world. Areas managed by Indigenous people are commonly more intact than neighboring private and public lands. Securing land and water rights for Indigenous communities is not just good for nature. It helps protect identity and sovereignty.

Restore What We Can

So what about habitats that have been altered by human activity? They’re still important. Restoring disturbed lands and waters to a natural state boosts their ability to conserve biodiversity and increases their potential to suck carbon from the atmosphere and store it in vegetation and soils.

Restorations generally have lower species diversity and a simpler structure than intact ecosystems and are not as effective at storing carbon. However, they’re an essential part of recovering ecosystems where only small fragments remain, such as the grasslands of North America, Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, Mediterranean forests and scrublands in North America, Europe, and Africa, and dry forests of Asia.

Volunteers collect seeds for grassland restoration. Photo: BLM Wyoming.

Unfortunately, the list of endangered ecosystems is much longer than those few examples.

Restorations also are less beneficial than protecting intact land from a climate perspective, since carbon accumulates slowly over decades or hundreds of years. And we can’t assume that today’s acorns will become tomorrow’s oak trees — or, if they do, that those trees will escape harvest, natural disasters or pest outbreaks long enough to serve as meaningful carbon sinks or legitimate sources of carbon offset credits.

Enhance Biodiversity on Working Lands

Of course, not all lands can remain natural. We need space for farms, wood production, roads, homes and businesses. Croplands and rangelands cover 38% of all land on Earth. Forests cover about another third of the land, of which 60% is managed for timber and other forest products. That means about 58% of all ice-free land is used to produce food and forest products.

Several climate solutions that can be implemented on agricultural lands, such as agroforestry and managed pastures, also benefit biodiversity. Although these solutions may provide smaller benefits at the scale of a farm field or forest stand, a little bit of change everywhere can add up to a lot of carbon stored and locally provide species diversity, habitat structure, and ecosystem function. Ocean-based solutions exist too, and researchers are learning more about how they benefit both biodiversity and climate.

Targeting Actions

Each ton of carbon is equally important. The potential avoided emissions and carbon stored for several solutions are summarized in two key publications, The Drawdown Review and Natural Climate Solutions.

For biodiversity, some land, water and coastlines are more important than others. How much land and water do we need to protect biodiversity? Truth is, we don’t really know. But very basic rules are true: More is better, bigger is better, more connected is better, and more geographically and climatologically diverse is better.

Initiatives like the Global Safety Net lay out a roadmap for conserving biodiversity, maintaining highly productive agricultural lands, and stabilizing climate by protecting or managing 50% of all ice-free land on Earth. Other efforts have identified critical areas (or frameworks) for protecting marine and freshwater biodiversity.

(Potentially Huge) Bonus Points

Several other climate solutions can indirectly benefit biodiversity. For example, shifting to plant-based diets, reducing food waste, and sustainably intensifying food production on smallholder farms all reduce the need to expand agricultural lands, the biggest cause of habitat loss and degradation.

When these solutions are implemented, agriculture’s land footprint would not only stop expanding — it could shrink. The land used for grazing or growing animal feed could instead be used to restore ecosystems or to produce fiber and fuel.

Big or Small, It Takes All

We need all efforts, big and small, to solve the biodiversity and climate crises.

Yes, we need a concerted effort among governments, companies and investors for transformational change. But individual efforts, from managing a small fish farm in a mangrove forest to protecting tiny prairie remnants, matter too. Small changes accumulate and help shift the social norm of what we expect from our neighbors, CEOs and presidents.

An all-in, all-of-the-above approach is essential. All we need are the incentive and motivation to start.

The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or its employees.

Previously in The Revelator:

5 Ways Climate Change Will Affect Plants and Animals

Humans and Jaguars Can Live Together — Here’s How

More than 25 years of experience illustrate how to live successfully in a landscape with jaguars, just as they’re starting to return to the United States.

Humans and jaguars can coexist, even in areas where livestock is a priority.

As a biologist, I’ve spent the past 25 years working on issues related to jaguar conservation in South and Central America. I’ve seen how people and big cats can share the same land, to the benefit of both species.

Now that jaguars (Panthera onca) have started returning to the United States, with three documented big cats since 2015, the same thing can happen here.

It seems there are a lot of “what if” concerns about living with jaguars in the United States — questions that stem, in many ways, from one important fact: Jaguars have been gone from the American landscape for so long that we’ve forgotten they were ever here.

In fact, we have solid evidence of jaguars all around areas like central New Mexico, the Gila Wilderness complex, the rugged Mogollon rim in Arizona and the adjacent forests. Not that many records, but enough, and trustworthy examples.

Perhaps the historical record seems thin. The late 1800s were turbulent in this region, with severe collisions between European descendant settlers and Native Americans. The wild areas in the jaguars’ mountain ranges were not a place for naïve naturalists to be traipsing around observing tracks and taking notes.

Despite that, there are strong, reliable records from the 1800s through the mid-1900s.

Of course, the fact that most of the historical records are of dead jaguars does a lot to explain why the cats disappeared from the region so quickly.

Jaguars occurred — without a doubt — in Southern California, as far north as central Arizona and New Mexico and in southern Texas. I bet they sometimes used the riparian forests that lace rivers in the southern prairies. They were here.

Jaguar Arizona — Male jaguar in the Santa Rita Mountains. Photo courtesy of University of Arizona/USFWS

And they weren’t just transient visitors, either. Jaguar reproduction has been documented as far north as the south rim of the Grand Canyon, roughly 250 miles north of Mexico, at altitudes of 7,000 feet. Pregnant female jaguars don’t wander hundreds of miles. Generally, they hunker down in the best habitat they can find. When they give birth, their range is miniscule, as the cubs need tending. Gradually, as their cubs mature, the mothers’ range expands to a “normal” adult female range, which is never as large as male jaguar ranges. Pregnant female jaguars are residents.

To me, debating whether this area was historical jaguar range is obfuscation. Why not take pride that such a magnificent beast graced our Southwest and acknowledge the cultural and fauna exterminations that occurred, contributing to the jaguar’s extinction in the area?

A Century of Eradication

When Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery crossed the West from 1804 to 1806, that northern country was vast and relatively “wild.” By 1880, just eight decades later, the original human inhabitants of almost the entire West had been reduced drastically in number and lifestyle and forced into reservations. The bison were nearly extinct, rescued in Yellowstone and the Flathead Valley. Grizzlies were occupying far less ground than previously. Their highest densities had been in California’s Central Valley (good soils can grow grizzlies or artichokes and avocados). Fortunately, grizzlies had a few sanctuaries, notably in Yellowstone and Glacier national parks.

During the same period, the jaguars of the Southwest faced similar persecution but had no equivalent areas or options for refuge. The U.S. government offered bounty payments for dead jaguars, one of the major factors in the disappearance of the species from the northern portion of its range. Following such vigorous expansion and eradication campaigns, jaguars eventually disappeared from the American landscape and psyche.

Coexistence Is Possible and Being Practiced Farther South

One of the points of greatest resistance to jaguars recovering in their former U.S. range, I’ve detected, is a perception among some that livestock production and jaguar conservation are incompatible.

By looking across the 50 degrees latitude farther south where jaguars presently occur, we can see coexistence in practice, with notable examples of success.

I formally got into the jaguar/prey/habitat conservation business in 1996 — 25 years ago. The study area for my dissertation was an 80,000-hectare working cattle ranch and wildlife refuge, with about 10,000 head of cattle and wild populations of peccaries, capybara, deer, tapir, anacondas and caimans — and jaguar and puma. I lived on that ranch for three years, and we evaluated the factors that contributed to conflicts between cattle and big cats.

Roughly 10 years later, ecologist Wlodzimierz Jedrzejewski and his team assessed the jaguar population and found approximately 4 per 100 square kilometers (38 square miles) — a robust population and a metric of coexistence success.

Note that densities of about 2 jaguars may be more “normal.” Generally, this species covers the landscape thinly, using large territories. Male home ranges may run roughly between 100 and 1,000 square kilometers (38-380 square miles), with the most common being between 250 and 450 square kilometers (96-174 square miles). Female ranges average 50 to 200 square kilometers (19-77 square miles).

So why were jaguars in that ranch and refuge so successful?

First, the region retained some large forest blocks with no livestock. The ratio of forests to savannas and pastures was roughly 50:50.

Second, the ranch maintained tight control of the livestock, moving herds seasonally, controlling reproductive seasons and calving locations, and defending vulnerable calves.

Third, the region retained adequate levels of native prey as a readily available alternative to domestic livestock.

That’s something I’ve learned in the past quarter century: To reduce the frequency and severity of jaguar attacks on livestock — and improve human-jaguar coexistence — it’s important that the jaguars never learn to take livestock in the first place. It’s not a natural food for them.

Another lesson: Jaguars prefer forested areas. They use open areas, but usually with reticence and in moderation. Carnivore researcher Ronaldo Morato and his colleagues evaluated radio locations of 40 telemetered jaguars across five biomes and found jaguars selected forests with more than 58% forest cover.

A scene in the Gran Chaco Jaguar Conservation Unit, Bolivia. Photo: John Polisar

That can vary, as can the character of what constitutes forest. Jaguars occupy scrubby semi-xeric Chaco, flooded forests (Varzea) in the Amazon, humid forests in the Amazon, Guianas, and Central America and even pass-through areas of over 9,800 feet in elevation in cloud forest in various places.

To me there’s an important take-home message from all of these habitats: Cows, pigs or sheep should not graze free in forest. Simple and economical methods that exclude domestic livestock from prey-rich “natural” habitats can go a long way toward reducing attack incidents.

Enhancing Coexistence

What else can we do to help predators, people and livestock live in harmony?

Many ranches have employed measures to deter or reduce attacks, and in some cases, studies have shown them to be both efficient and cost-effective.

A 2016 study focused on six medium- to large-sized ranches in the dry forests of the Paraguayan Chaco, an area not unlike the southwestern United States. There, biologist Laura Villalba and her team identified pastures that had experienced high levels of livestock predation and introduced combinations of six methods to reduce the incidence of attacks: solar-powered blinking LED lights, electric fences, keeping cattle at greater distances from forest, secure locations at night, concentration of birthing seasons, and reduced hunting of natural prey by humans. The livestock losses dropped to zero. The value of cattle saved was far more than what was invested in antipredation techniques — sometimes as much as 15 times higher.

In 2021, Antonio De la Torre and his team published a similar study with 11 smaller-scale livestock operations in the Selva Lacandona rainforest of southern Mexico. They found that the investment in electric fences generated returns more than 13 times the cost in economic value. Other methods were also evaluated, with results showing as much as 26 times the economic benefit compared to the costs.

In both Paraguay and Mexico, jaguars survived while calves were saved. Investments were required, but those investments delivered economic and conservation returns.

Even where electric fences are challenging to install and maintain, other, lower tech solutions can help reduce attacks. De la Torre’s team also measured changes in livestock productivity, which saw increases due to tighter management. In both studies, researchers and farmers or ranchers worked together closely to find solutions.

Those are just two better quantified examples of the impacts of anti-depredation techniques. In fact, there’s practically a cottage industry of tools and strategies within occupied jaguar range, including but not limited to:

- Using protective night corrals for young, vulnerable livestock.
- Distributing water sources to avoid carnivore and livestock overlap, keep cattle out of forests and influence distribution of prey — ideally natural prey and livestock would use different water sources.
- Fencing cattle out of forest blocks and even placing fences back from forest edges.
- Controlling the timing and location of calving and protecting maternity pastures.
- Switching large, experienced animals into “problem pastures,” where they can defend smaller animals from predators.
- Using predation-resistant races of livestock.
- Carefully disposing of cadavers and dead livestock.
- And in general, tightening up the husbandry and management of the livestock through better veterinary processes and nutrition, which leads to improved production, profits and fewer overall losses.

These methods work. Recently Fabricio Diaz Santos and I concluded a Darwin DEFRA-funded project with 100 farmers in the very remote Mosquitia region of Mesoamerica, with the goal of balancing economic and environmental priorities in these very small livestock operations and an eye towards forest conservation. In Nicaragua, livestock production and family incomes increased, forests recovered, and predation losses to jaguars dropped to zero due to tighter cattle management (including health, nutrition, and separation from forests).

Another study, led by Skarleth Chinchilla in an adjacent region of the Honduran Mosquitia, included 50 farmers and concluded that tighter herd management — night corrals, veterinary care and protection of vulnerable calves — would solve a substantial portion of livestock losses, not all of which are attributable to large cats. In fact, in Skarleth’s area and in many others, challenges such as diseases, accidents and cattle thefts are much more substantial causes of losses, all of which may be reduced by tighter herd management.

Most of this isn’t new. Progress on these techniques started as early as 1982 with Edgardo Mondolfi and Rafael Hoogesteijn’s Notes on the Biology and Status of Jaguars in Venezuela and ignited in 1992 with Howard Quigley and Peter Crawshaw’s Conservation Plan for the Jaguar Panthera onca in Brazil.

Moving Forward

We have over a quarter century of work on human-jaguar coexistence. I’m not going to say that achieving coexistence is easy, but it’s definitely possible. There are numerous examples to draw upon from diverse ecological and management contexts in the species’ range. There’s even a massive 2016 volume, produced by Instituto Humboldt of Colombia, titled Conflicts Between Cats and People in Latin America that summarizes the knowledge to date.

There are tools for human-jaguar coexistence.

When I work in the southwestern U.S. jaguar arena, the species’ proven historic range, I sometimes wonder what all the “fuss” and even what the opposition to real recovery is about.

Coexistence is possible. I’ve lived it and seen it, and so have my colleagues.

The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or its employees.

Previously in The Revelator:

Can Saving Jaguars Sustain Local Economies?

Protecting Jaguars Across Borders

“We Roam With Jaguars” — 5 Questions With Wildlife Artist Racheal Rios

To Save a Seabird, Scientists Must Restore Balance to an Island Ecosystem

On the Farallon Islands, invasive mice and hungry owls are a deadly combination that threatens the endangered ashy storm petrel.

Thirty miles off the coast of San Francisco, scientists on the Farallon Islands are planning a conservation project they hope will halt the worrying decline of an endangered bird called the ashy storm petrel (Hydrobates homochroa).

About 5,000 of these swallow-sized seabirds — half of the species’ total population — breed on the rocky chain of islands that make up Farallon Islands National Wildlife Refuge. But their numbers there have steadily declined since the early 2000s.

An ashy storm petrel.
Photo by Ilana Nimz/PRBO Conservation Science, courtesy U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southwest Region

Researchers know why. The refuge has a mouse problem.

But solving the problem is complicated. Invasive house mice (Mus musculus), it turns out, don’t directly harm the storm petrels. Instead these rodents are a tempting food source for migrating burrowing owls (Athene cunicularia), who spend part of the year on the islands.

And that’s where things go wrong for the storm petrels. Every year a few owls, rather than continuing south along their traditional migratory path, choose to spend the winter on the island, eating not just mice but storm petrels, too.

A burrowing owl on the Farallons. Photo courtesy Point Blue Conservation Science

To save the petrels, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed a one-time application of rodenticide to rid the island of the mice. Officials believe that without this plentiful rodent food source, migrating burrowing owls will have little reason to stay on the islands, leaving storm petrels to nest in peace.

The plan — which faces opposition from some local animal-rights groups — will need approval from the California Coastal Commission, the state agency charged with regulating projects and development along the state’s coast. The plan could receive that go-ahead before the end of the year, allowing the project to start next year.

Pete Warzybok is the Farallon program leader for Point Blue Conservation Science, the nonprofit that has collaborated with the Service for over 50 years on research and projects on the islands.

“This is an opportunity to have a real, lasting conservation impact,” Warzybok says. “It will be, quite frankly, one of the greatest conservation achievements that we’ve been able to do.”

Restoration efforts on the Farallon Islands have been ongoing since their designation as a National Wildlife Refuge in 1968. While it’s difficult to know exactly what the islands looked like before 19th century seal hunters arrived with stowaway mice aboard their ships, researchers know the owls’ increased presence is new and poorly timed.

When the owls arrive in autumn during their southern migration, the rodent population is at its peak and can reach a staggering 490 mice per acre, a number rarely documented anywhere else. With so many scurrying about, it’s no wonder that the owls are encouraged to stay and take advantage of the plentiful food source.

House mouse — A house mouse on the Farallon Islands. Photo © Oscar Johnson via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

But during winter, inclement weather and a lack of plants and insects cause the mice population to crash — just in time for the petrels’ return to the islands to breed after months at sea. With few mice and plentiful storm petrels, the owls switch from eating mice to eating the seabirds.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Ebirdography (@ebirdography)

This phenomenon is called hyperpredation, and many islands around the world have suffered its effects. A famous example took place on Santa Cruz Island, where feral pigs were introduced in the 1850s and began attracting golden eagles. But the eagles started eating the endemic island foxes, whose numbers quickly plummeted. The removal of the pigs in 2005, combined with fox reintroduction, allowed the island fox population to recover.

Scientists know the owls are a major threat to storm petrels thanks to a convenient, if gruesome, fact. The owls usually pluck off the petrels’ wings, which they’re not interested in eating. This allows researchers on the island to conduct “wing walks,” looking for disembodied wings.

A 2019 study published in Ecosphere used wing walks to determine that the owls can kill up to 100 storm petrels every year. But dangerous terrain leaves parts of the islands inaccessible, and the true number of petrels eaten by owls is likely much higher than surveys reveal.

While 100 storm petrel deaths may not seem like many, scientists say it has been enough to drive the population decline. Ashy storm petrels take up to eight years to mature and begin breeding; they only lay one egg at a time and don’t always breed every year. Compounded with a small global population, their slow reproduction leaves them susceptible to the added pressure from the owls.

Researchers have modeled possible scenarios for ashy storm petrels if mice were completely eradicated, the results of which suggest that even slightly fewer owls could mean the difference between the ashy storm petrel’s continued decline or a stable population. We already know the birds fare better and experience lower declines on years when fewer owls visit the islands.

While eradicating one species to change the behavior of a second that’s affecting a third may sound both controversial and tricky, scientists can point to success stories on a few other islands. On Allen Cay in the Bahamas, invasive house mice enticed barn owls to stick around, but the owls soon added sensitive Audubon’s shearwaters to the menu. Since the mice on the island were eradicated, the number of owl-caused shearwater deaths has dropped.

Successful rodent removals have been conducted on hundreds of islands around the world, many with the use of rodenticides. Most of these cases experienced rapid changes in the ecosystems as populations of flora and fauna returned to healthy levels.

With these success stories in mind, biologists on the Farallon Islands say they’re confident that mice eradication will be a long-term solution to the hyperpredation problem.

“These ashy storm petrels are really rare birds, and they’re really sensitive,” says Gerry McChesney, the Farallon Islands National Wildlife Refuge manager. “So, does it matter whether it’s a direct impact or indirect impact? I don’t think it does. The fact is that they [mice] are impacting the ecosystem.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Eva 🔻let’s tessellate🔺 (@biohemian)

Opponents have expressed concerns that the poison will affect more than mice and say they would rather see a plan to reduce mice numbers without rodenticide or to relocate the burrowing owls to the mainland. But scientists are looking for a long-term solution and say sustainable mice reduction and owl relocation would require continual effort year after year.

And while the owls are the main threat to ashy storm petrels, McChesney’s concerns extend beyond the fate of the seabirds. As a manager, he must act on behalf of all the native species that call the islands home.

The Farallon camel cricket (Farallonophilus cavernicolus) exists nowhere else in the world and is falling prey to both the mice and the owls. The crickets are also food for the Farallon arboreal salamander (Aneidis lugubris farallonensis), now forced to compete with mice and owls for food. Unique native vegetation on the island has also taken a direct hit from the mice.

Removing mice from the islands may yield immediate benefits for plants, but it could take many years for ashy storm petrels to recover. For McChesney, the islands will never be fully restored until all the mice are gone.

“We have a very special place, the Farallon Islands,” McChesney says. “It’s an actual jewel of the Pacific … and it’s an ecosystem that’s out of balance.”

Previously in The Revelator:

Penguin vs. Rabbit: Native Island Wildlife Needs More Than Luck When Invasive Species Take Over

Kids and Climate Change: New Book Exposes Why Some Schools Fail to Teach the Science

In Miseducation, investigative journalist Katie Worth reveals big inequities in climate education and a gap that mirrors state politics.

Sad. Afraid. Anxious. That’s how most young people, aged 16-25, said climate change made them feel when surveyed for a study in Nature. The researchers interviewed 10,000 youths in 10 countries and revealed a growing “climate anxiety” among the respondents.

That shouldn’t come as a surprise. Another recent study found children born in 2020 could face seven times more climate disasters than those born in 1960.

Climate change is likely to color every part of young people’s lives — from the jobs they hold to where they call home. And yet, despite the rise and importance of young climate activists, climate change isn’t even being taught in many U.S. schools.

Perhaps worse, some teachers are providing misleading, outdated or false information. That’s what journalist Katie Worth found when researching her new book, Miseducation: How Climate Change Is Taught in America. Sometimes, she learned, teachers don’t have the right training or resources to teach climate change. But often, the roots of the problem are much more troubling.

“Fossil fuel lobbyists, flaccid text-book companies, networks of free-marketeers and evangelical leaders, and the American political machine have each had a role in the widespread, calamitous, and in some cases, intentional miseducation of American children,” she writes in the book.

We spoke with Worth about why so many American kids aren’t getting a climate education, how to counter the inequities, and where she sees progress.

How did the idea for this book come about?

When I was a reporter for “Frontline” we got a grant to do a climate story and we went to the Marshall Islands to interview kids there about their future. Because of climate change, their homeland may not be inhabitable at some point this century.

It was really striking to us how knowledgeable the kids were about climate change. They could speak very fluently about the phenomenon and were much more articulate than most of the adults I know here.

One of the kids that we wound up featuring in our interactive documentary was this 9-year-old named Izerman whose family was thinking about moving to Oklahoma because they had some extended family there. The parents thought maybe the education would be better in Oklahoma than in the Marshall Islands. So the question came up, if these kids moved to someplace like Oklahoma, what would they learn about climate change in school?

And the answer, we found out, is basically nothing. At least that’s how it’s been, although Oklahoma just updated their academic standards to include a little bit of climate education in middle school.

When you dug into this issue further, what did you find about the rest of the country?

Education is by nature a very diverse enterprise in this country. There’s no national curriculum and we have 3 million teachers educating 50 million children enrolled in 100,000 public schools. Each of those teachers is teaching based on the state standards, but also based on their expertise and their style. State academic standards guide what a kid should know at the end of a particular grade or subject, but how they get there is very much up to the district or the teacher.

When it comes to what academic standards say about climate change, there’s a pretty clear red-blue divide when we compare academic standards to a [political] map of the country based on state legislatures, which are the ones that are in charge of state’s academic standards.

The Texas Freedom Network and the National Center for Science Education teamed up on this research and graded each state’s academic standards based on how well they taught climate change.

They found that no blue state got less than a B plus, and there were a few red states that got B pluses or even As, but the majority of red states did considerably worse. And several red states got Fs. [Editor’s note: Check climategrades.org to see how your state compares.]

Also to my knowledge, there has been one robust study of what teachers teach about climate change. And in that, one third teach it like it’s a debate: “Some scientists think this, and others think that, and what do you think?” And another one third self-reported that they tell their students that many scientists think that climate change might be natural. That’s one third of science teachers! Of course, what’s so wrong is that zero scientists actually think that. It’s just patently false information that’s being told to millions of students a year.

Another issue is textbooks that are adopted by each state or school district also vary. Some textbooks say things like, “While many scientists think that global warming is human caused, some believe that it’s natural.” And another one of my favorites says, “Climate change will have some positive effects and some less positive effects.” They couldn’t even bring themselves to say negative effects.

There are more modern textbooks that are much less equivocal about it. As you might imagine, blue states are adopting these newer and more accurate textbooks, while a lot of the red states aren’t. That also reinforces this red-blue divide.

So, what you come to is an equity issue. Depending on what state you’re in, you might learn something about the phenomenon that will totally define the century you’re born into, or you might not.

How does this information, or misinformation, in school align with what kids are hearing outside the classroom or actually experiencing in their lives?

Of course the most important people in a kid’s life are their parents or their guardians, right? So if their parents or guardians think climate change is a hoax — and I met many kids who told me that — then they are very motivated to think that too, especially when they’re young.

I grew up in the town of Chico, which is in Northern California, 14 miles from Paradise, which burned down in the 2018 Camp fire. I attended a seventh-grade science class of Paradise Intermediate School for a few weeks the year of the fire. The school had been displaced because the whole town burned down, so they moved to Chico into the only real estate that was available, a shuttered big-box hardware store.

The teacher was teaching a unit on climate change, which of course scientists say is contributing to growing wildfires in California and the West, including the Camp fire. He was teaching these kids about climate change and some of the kids were hearing at home that it was a hoax. That was something that the teacher had to navigate.

So, depending on the forces in their lives, these kids may be more credulous or incredulous about it. But regardless, it’s still important that they’re exposed to the information and maybe down the road, if they’re exposed to more and more information that eventually helps them understand the world as it is.

It also goes both ways. There was a recent study that looked at kids who went through a unit on climate change and the effects on what their family thought about climate change. And they found that families where the kids had been educated about climate change in school were more likely to become concerned about the climate crisis afterward. So there was this intergenerational effect where kids were feeding concern about the climate crisis to their parents or guardians.

What can we do to help ensure kids — regardless of their state’s politics — get a good climate education?

Teachers need to be trained in this stuff, too. A lot of teachers didn’t learn about climate change themselves in school because it wasn’t taught until recently. Fortunately, there are a lot of resources for professional development and also lesson plans. Some of this has been amassed on a one-stop portal.

Climate doubt also didn’t arise in classrooms by accident or spontaneously. It arose because there was a long climate-doubt campaign perpetuated mainly by fossil fuel companies and their allies. A doubtful public is a public that will hesitate to take action, right? So, if you’re not 100% sure if there’s a threat then you’re not likely to agree to new taxes or making major changes to the economy. The fossil fuel industry wants to keep seeding this doubt, and there’s been an effort to get that doubt into schools, too, [with fossil fuel-funded education programs, curricula, field trips and other materials] because kids become the deciders of tomorrow.

And that’s just going to provide more time for the fossil fuel industry to extract oil from the ground and reap profits. If doubt and inaction reign for another 30 years, that’s a matter of trillions of dollars for the fossil fuel industry and also a huge catastrophe for our planet and the living things on it, including us.

What do you see that’s encouraging?

Hope isn’t my area of specialty, but I do think that education is powerful. And I don’t mean to minimize this: There are tons of teachers out there who are intrepid and — no matter what their state academic standards are, or the politics of their school districts — they’re working really hard to make sure that kids are armed with the correct information about the world and what it’s facing.

There’s other encouraging news. Washington, for example, has a project where they are giving professional development about climate change to every science teacher in the state. And some other teachers as well. New Jersey just adopted academic standards that include climate change in not just science, but in civics, history, English and other subjects. Then there’s activists like Greta Thunberg and a lot of youth leadership.

We know that Gen Z is much more likely to be worried about the climate emergency we’re facing than any of their elders. And they’re not buying the doubt and the apathy as much as older generations have. They’ve been really crucial in driving action and in pointing the camera at this issue.

Schools aren’t the only place that they’re encountering this issue, there’s a lot of opportunity for them to learn about it elsewhere. But they should have the right to learn about it in their public education, no matter where they live.

I hope that people who read the book or learn about this issue who have kids in their lives inquire about what they’re learning in school about climate change.

Here’s another example: There was an earth science textbook where the kind of “rocks for jocks” version of the class — the general education science class — hardly includes anything about climate change and even questions whether it was even happening. But the advanced version of this same book spent a ton of time on climate change.

So the implication is that the “academically successful” kids who have the resources to take advanced classes have the opportunity to learn about this issue that may shape all their future decisions, but not other kids.

That’s not how it should be. You would want the lowest common denominator to be everybody getting some good education about this issue and not just the wealthy, white, ambitious kids.

So I think asking your kids’ schools what they’re teaching about this and who they are teaching is important. It’s worth putting a bit of community pressure on schools and districts to make sure that they’re educating all their kids.

COP26 and Nature: Grizzly Bears Show Us the Connection Between Our Global and Local Actions

A window to the natural world reveals human–predator conflict and makes biodiversity loss, ecosystem destruction and species extinction irrefutable and real.

Two subadult grizzly bears recently ventured into the public trash bins near my home.

The bears, already desperate from sparse nutrient sources due to this summer’s drought, were attracted to open bins of smelly food. As the bears fatten up for a winter of hibernation, they’re understandably enticed by an easy meal.

With climate change–induced weather extremes taking their toll — and the human footprint growing — apex predators like grizzly bears are having a hard time. Mountain pine beetles have killed many white-bark pine trees, aquatic invasive species have outcompeted native Yellowstone cutthroat trout, wildfires have decimated habitats. This means bear mortality has been at record highs in recent years, with most deaths related to human causes: trash, livestock, road kills and run-ins with hunters.

For perspective, there were more than 50,000 grizzly bears roaming from present-day Mexico to northern Alaska in 1800, before Lewis and Clark made their journey west. Now the population in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem fluctuates around 700.

I am fortunate to call Paradise Valley, Montana, home. The traditional territories of the Apsaalooké (Crow), Cheyenne and Očeti Šakówiŋ (Sioux) nations, the Yellowstone River meanders through the valley, undammed and unaltered by humans. Nestled in this ecosystem, species like grizzlies, black bears, wolves, bison, wolverines, pronghorn antelope, elk and bald eagles share this landscape.

It’s a privilege to live in a space that embodies such deep natural history, but it comes with responsibility.

Broadly speaking, it’s a responsibility to act in the interest of long-term preservation, to think in terms of system dependencies, and to consider the implications of our daily activities on the natural world.

It’s an approach humanity the world over must adopt. A window to the natural world simply makes biodiversity loss, ecosystem destruction and species extinction irrefutable and real.

With these realities in mind, it’s understandable that policies determining how humans coexist with nature are under intense global deliberation.

From Biden’s Build Back Better infrastructure bill in the United States, to the annual United Nations Biodiversity Conference held earlier this year in China, to the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow — never has more been at stake for our natural environment.

Robust commitments from global institutions set a necessary course and provide guiding principles. But we also need national, state and local policies that align with broad global climate objectives. Small and accumulated local actions, good or bad, should not be underestimated.

In many ways this describes the balance stakeholders in Glasgow set out to achieve. Fossil fuel and methane emission reductions, clean energy transitions, deforestation declines, nature-based solution investments — all must happen at a significant enough scale by nearly two hundred individual countries to have meaningful impact globally. From global to local, and local to global. That’s the needed give-and-take.

This brings me back to our local bears.

In Paradise Valley — as in many other places — we need to consider the complexity of issues leading to increased human–predator conflict. Most immediately, in our day-to-day lives, this means adapting human behavior to help an endangered apex predator survive, and along with it, a multitude of other species and ecosystems. Simple measures allow for coexistence, such as bear-proof trash receptacles, electric fence around chickens, thoughtful placement of livestock, picking up fruit from trees, and carrying bear spray in the backcountry.

grizzly scratches — Grizzly scratches. Photo: Suzanna Soileau/USGS

More broadly, our community must consider the underlying problem, adopt long-term solutions, and examine how city, county, state and national policies will aggressively mitigate climate change and the impact of human activity on wildlands and wildlife.

Be it through global climate change talks, state wildlife laws or citizen-led council meetings, humanity must consider the interdependencies of our actions now more than ever before. A community’s ability to understand the ripple effect of its behaviors is increasingly essential. Responses require us to avoid the pitfalls of short-termism and embrace sophisticated solutions — in our case, ones more nuanced than trapping a “problem bear” and euthanizing it.

It’s not surprising that the philosophy needed for humanity to thrive stems from Indigenous wisdom. In essence, that’s the notion of “collective obligations,” believing people were born to serve past, present and future generations — and the planet herself.

As a collective, we are faced with resolving a complicated predicament we’ve created for ourselves. This requires addressing tensions between preserving the environment and relying upon it, adjusting our behaviors with consideration of their broader impact.

COP26 has served as the first time that nature, biodiversity and Indigenous peoples have been integrated into the broader climate change negotiations. Understanding the implicit connection is a step in the right direction. It’s time to see ourselves as part of the landscape, not passing through it. Humans. Wildlife. Nature. We’re all in this together. What we do to our natural environment, we ultimately do to ourselves.

The grizzly bears in my backyard are sending a valuable sign about the borderless impacts of climate change. Let’s not ignore the connection between our local and global actions.

The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or its employees.

Previously in The Revelator:

Yellowstone to Yukon: Can a Model for Interconnection Save the Wild?

Say Goodbye to Your National Parks Road Trips?

Get your hikes and other recreation in while you can. A new study finds warming temperatures could mean big changes in how we use our public lands.

Climate change is already shaking up the natural world, changing the timing of seasonal snow melts, flower blooms and animal migrations. Now a new study from researchers at Utah State University suggests that, not surprisingly, it will also change when people interact with those landscapes.

The research, published in Global Environmental Change, projected how the use of state and federal public lands in the United States may change in the next 30 years under two different warming scenarios.

The biggest changes, they found, will come during the summer months. Their research showed that by 2050 it will simply be too hot to have fun outdoors in many places. As a result of these rising temperatures, they predict that outdoor recreation on public lands in the summer will fall 18% under medium emissions projections and 28% under a high emissions scenario.

As for the winter months, when current temperatures tend to keep people away from forests and woodlands, that will change, too. Warmer temperatures will result in more people looking to access public lands — a projected rise of 12-20%.

Springtime will only see a slight bump of 5-9%. They found no significant likely changes in the fall.

Those numbers reflect the United States as a whole, but there were also some significant regional variations. The researchers saw summer use declines in all locations, but the sharpest dip would occur in the South Atlantic-Appalachian region — where things are already hot. Public lands recreation there could fall as much as 79%.

When it comes to winter, the Great Lakes region is likely to see the biggest jump in use, with a 42% increase under the medium warming scenario. The only region expected to see a decline in winter demand is the Upper Colorado Basin, where skiing and other snow sports are a favorite winter pastime that just won’t be possible as often under higher temperatures.

Changing Operations

These changing patterns will come with costs, not just for those planning their annual summer tour of national parks but also for park managers and people living in communities near popular public lands.

“In many locations, land managers may want to consider preparing for an increased peak season length, and more visitors in the winter compared to levels observed in the past,” the researchers wrote in the study.

Managers may need to shift resources to accommodate these changes. A bump in traffic during previously slow “shoulder seasons” could require a change in staffing and maintenance. The corresponding shifts would also have financial implications for the communities surrounding public lands that may see typical summer crowds fall off and more visitors during current off-peak times.

That administrative burden comes on top of the challenges many parks already face. National park visitations jumped 15% in the past decade. At the same time budgets remain flat, and some parks are dealing with staffing shortfalls, the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks reports. Rocky Mountain National Park, for example, saw a 58% increase in visitors between 2010 and 2019, but had 16% fewer employees to handle the rush of tourists.

To deal with crowds, national parks like Glacier and Acadia now charge fees for parking or driving in popular spots. Others, like Yosemite National Park and the Three Sisters Wilderness in Oregon, have instituted an advance reservation permit system to limit use.

A drop in summer visits could help ease some of this strain, but warming temperatures will trigger other changes to public lands and bring different concerns.

An Incomplete Picture

In the Global Environmental Change study, researchers noted that they didn’t take into account any indirect changes from rising temperatures. In addition to the heat, climate change could remove many of the qualities people currently admire about our public lands — or make them more inhospitable.

For example, people may not want to plan their recreational activities in parks “with melted glaciers or in places that recently experienced wildfire.”

This isn’t hypothetical. Climate change has already triggered challenges to public lands’ access. In September high-wildlife risk forced California officials to temporarily close all the state’s national forests. And last year, during the height of the tourism season, Yosemite National Park closed because of dangerous air quality from the region’s wildfires. Climate change is increasing the severity of fire risk across the West, and shifting the annual fall foliage season in the northeast.

The National Parks Conservation Association has warned that rising seas, longer droughts, less snow, and more severe storms from climate change also threaten these prized ecosystems.

“Nearly everything we know and love about the parks — their plants and animals, rivers and lakes, glaciers, beaches, historic structures, and more — is already under stress from these changes, which together amount to a state of crisis for our public lands,” the organization reported.

Ironically, while public lands face big threats from climate change, many of those same lands are used for extracting the fossil fuels that drive the crisis. A 2018 report by the U.S. Geological Survey found that emissions from fossil fuel extraction on federal lands amounted to more than one quarter of national emissions. That’s led environmental groups to call for an end to fossil fuel extraction on public lands and for the lands to instead become a climate change solution.

“Given that wildlands on public lands are managed by the federal government, there’s a clear opportunity to ensure they act as carbon sinks and not carbon sources,” the Wilderness Society reported. “Protected wildlands on public lands could maximize the absorption of carbon dioxide and avoid unnecessary release of greenhouse gases that would hinder other efforts to slow down climate change.”

That would be welcome news to all who benefit from public lands — not just humans.

Human Rights Depend on a Thriving Natural World

Any work to achieve human-rights gains will be upended unless we address our climate and biodiversity crises.

In October the UN Human Rights Council voted to recognize the right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a human right. Notable among the dissenting voices was the United Kingdom, which eventually begrudgingly voted in favor, while stressing the fact that no country would be legally bound to the resolution’s terms. Four member states — China, India, Japan and Russia — abstained.

This resolution was long overdue. Air pollution alone kills an estimated 7 million people every year, according to the World Health Organization. Yet the resolution doesn’t go nearly far enough: It’s not legally binding, as the U.K. was keen to point out, nor has it been incorporated into any of the 70-plus human-rights treaties that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has inspired.

Moreover, this issue goes beyond the concept of a safe, sustainable environment as a single human right. The fact is that all our most fundamental human rights rely on thriving natural systems — from the right to adequate food to a livelihood worthy of human dignity and even the right to life.

Speaking after the resolution was made, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said: “[This is] about protecting people and planet — the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat. It is also about protecting the natural systems which are basic preconditions to the lives and livelihoods of all people, wherever they live.”

She’s right. And yet across the world, the twin biodiversity and climate crises are coming together to form a full-blown human-rights emergency.

Climate

Fires, floods and storms are ravaging the world, growing in severity as global heating escalates. Over the past two years, unprecedented fires in Australia, Canada, the Mediterranean, Brazil, the United States and other countries have devastated homes and communities, leaving destitution and death in their wake.

In the record-breaking 2020 hurricane season, Hurricane Eta was followed under two weeks later by Hurricane Iota, together affecting more than 7.5 million people in Central America and leaving at least 200 dead. Nor are the impacts restricted to sudden-onset disasters. After a fourth year of drought, Madagascar is currently experiencing world’s first “climate change famine” with more than one million people now in need of emergency food aid.

The climate crisis is already seriously undermining human rights around the world, directly destroying people’s homes and livelihoods, and taking lives. But it is also a threat multiplier, compounding existing economic, political, and social stresses and driving a rising likelihood of violent conflict.

residents lined up for aid — The Coast Guard supporting humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations in Honduras after Hurricane Eta. Photo: U.S. Coast Guard, (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Ecosystems

Alongside this grim reality, the world is facing its sixth mass extinction — this time human-caused — with the rate of species extinction already at tens to hundreds of times higher than over the past 10 million years. In 2020, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity reported that we had missed all 20 targets set to bring biodiversity loss to a halt.

Again, this puts human rights at risk. For example, as we empty our ocean of marine life through destructive and illegal fishing, coastal communities are losing not only their livelihoods but also essential food security as vital protein becomes more and more scarce. In a recent investigation, we found that basic human rights of Ghana’s fishing communities, including the right to adequate food, adequate standard of living and just working conditions, are under threat because of the government’s failure to tackle overfishing and illegal fishing by foreign-owned industrial trawlers. Over half of the 215 canoe fishers, processors and traders we spoke to reported going without sufficient food over the past year.

And of course, the COVID-19 pandemic represents the latest tragedy to emerge from our rampant exploitation of the natural world. As ecological degradation accelerates, animals that wouldn’t mix closely in the wild are brought into close contact with other species — and with humans. These conditions are perfect for the emergence of new and deadly viruses.

Injustice

Weaving through these crises and tragedies is the fact that the world’s poorest and most vulnerable communities invariably pay the highest price. This is an environmental injustice.Global heating has led to a 25% increase in inequality between countries over the past half century, as hotter, poorer countries tend to suffer the most from the actions of cooler, richer ones. The World Bank estimates that the COVID-19 pandemic pushed some 97 million vulnerable people into poverty in 2020.

At the same time, we’ve seen examples of initiatives, some perhaps well meaning, driving local communities, Indigenous peoples and the poor from traditional areas in the name of conservation or so-called protected areas. Such initiatives often completely disregard the importance of historic lands to the culture, history and well-being of communities. In our efforts to protect and restore our natural world, we must prevent this abuse of basic human rights and recognize the contribution that these communities have made and can make to genuinely effective conservation.

Equity and fairness are scarce in a world where the fundamental concepts of environmental justice are ignored, denied and circumvented.

Achieving true environmental justice and ending the twin crises of biodiversity and climate breakdown requires us to reassess our connection to nature and to recognize once and for all that humanity doesn’t exist outside the natural world.

We must make the right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment a universal, legally binding human right, starting with the UN codifying this new declaration into existing treaties, then making it legally binding on the national and international level. We are entirely dependent on nature for our most basic needs and fundamental human rights, and we all have a role to play in nurturing and protecting it.

The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or its employees.

Links From the Brink: Trump Reversals, Tuskless Elephants, Methane and Giant Snails

The month’s best and worst environmental news, plus other stories, science and context you don’t want to miss.

October brought in more than its fair share of scares, but the arrival of autumn also carried good news on the wind. So warm up your favorite seasonal beverage and settle in for this month’s highlights — and a few lowlights.

Best News of the Month: With the process to pass the Biden administration’s infrastructure bills stretching out into apparent infinity, sometimes it feels as if nothing in Washington will ever move forward.

But there’s one area in which the Biden administration has a fairly good record: unraveling the Trump legacy.

And we’ve seen a lot of that unravelling over the past month. Among the most celebrated events was the reinstatement of Bears Ears National Monument, along with two others the previous administration had slashed in size and scope. This fulfills a Biden campaign promise and represents a major victory for conservation and Native American populations for whom Bears Ears is a sacred place.

road through red rocks — Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. Photo: Bob Wick, BLM

The Biden administration also finalized restorations to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and laid out plans to similarly restore National Environmental Policy Act rules, both of which were severely slashed under Trump. In addition, Biden announced plans to dramatically increase offshore wind power, which his predecessor partially banned by executive order a year ago.

Rivers, streams, wetlands could get some relief, too. The Biden administration announced it would change the Waters of the U.S. (WOTUS) rule that determines which waterways get federal protections. Trump gutted the regulation, which was enacted under Obama, putting wildlife and the drinking water of millions of people in harm’s way.

The new guys also restored and expanded climate.gov, the essential website that presents a wide range of timely, user-friendly data and articles on climate change. The site had languished under Trump, whose administration had a nasty habit of scrubbing information about climate change from government websites.

And before the month closed out, the White House also announced two big steps forward in restoring protections for endangered species.

Returning to the pre-Trump status quo isn’t exactly progress, but it does serve to slow or reverse environmental destruction wrought under the previous administration.

Unfortunately there’s still a lot of damage remaining to restore, and obstructionist Republicans (and a few Democrats) waiting around every corner. But after four years of deregulation and destruction, this may just lay the groundwork for progress in the future, depending on how the 2022 midterms go — and of course, the 2021 election isn’t looking like a great portent of environmental boons to come.

Worst News of the Month: Some elephants have started evolving without tusks due to rampant poaching for their ivory. C’mon, people: Evolution is supposed to be a slow process.

This Headline Made Our Brains Hurt: A melting glacier could mean a chance for Alaska’s biggest hydroelectric project to expand

Mind the Gap: A new United Nations report finds current national pledges for greenhouse gas reductions fall far short of what’s needed. Unless more stringent targets are put forward and met, the report found, the world is on track for a global temperature rise of 2.7 degrees C, which would lead to “catastrophic changes in the Earth’s climate.”

Focus on Methane: Closing that gap will require, in many ways, focusing on methane, the potent greenhouse gas that traps 25-80 times more heat than carbon dioxide. That got a start at the COP26 UN climate conference, where 105 nations pledged to cut their methane emissions by 30% over the next nine years.

Flame from oil/gas flare — Flaring at oil and gas wells release methane into the air. Photo: WildEarth Guardians, (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

We don’t take huge stock in pledges, which are largely non-binding, but these goals remain important, as we saw in the methane-related headlines from the past few weeks:

This new pledge won’t solve the problem — big emitters like Russia and China haven’t signed on, and it doesn’t address meat production — but reducing methane is a vital step if we have any hope of avoiding disaster.

The Extinction Crisis Hurts Us: One of the new international Covid-19 vaccines relies on bark from Chile’s quillay tree. There’s just one problem: The tree is an endangered species. As NBC News reported, “With no reliable data on how many healthy quillay trees are left in Chile, experts and industry officials are divided on how quickly the supply of older trees will be depleted by rising demand.”

Wild (and Icky): In invasive species victory news, Florida officials announced this month that the state has eliminated giant African land snails (Lissachatina fulica), a species that does just fine in its normal habitat but tore through the Sunshine State like a hurricane, eating everything from stucco to crops — and giving people parasitic nematodes.

This is the second time Florida has eradicated the species, which probably arrived in Florida after hitching a ride on a cargo vessel. Let’s hope we don’t have to go round three in the future, as the giant snails remain an invasive threat in far too many parts of the world.

What’s Next? News from the COP26 climate conference has already dominated the early days of November. Of course, the real trick will be if we’re still talking about results from COP26 in December and beyond.

The days and weeks ahead will see some fallout from the 2021 election, and we may finally achieve forward motion on President Biden’s infrastructure agenda (we’re paying particular attention to how much gets slashed out of it). Other stories we’re watching include both drought and flooding in different parts of Africa, the coup in climate-plagued Sudan, and pushes to protect more wildlife under the Endangered Species Act.

November will also bring World Fisheries Day, Remembrance Day for Lost Species and the anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species.

That does it for this edition of Links From the Brink. For more environmental news throughout the month, including bigger stories you won’t find anywhere else, subscribe to the Revelator newsletter or follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

Why We Need Environmental Justice at the Heart of Climate Action

The Global South and communities of color in Global North countries disproportionately face harms from climate change, writes Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate in her new book, A Bigger Picture.

In February 2013, Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah had a fatal asthma attack in London after experiencing a seizure, the sort that had required her to be hospitalized twenty-seven times in the previous three years. She was nine years old. Ella’s death brought home to me the connection between racial justice and the climate crisis that’s one of the least recognized: public health.

I learned about Ella’s story in December 2020. That’s when the international media reported that a UK court had, for the first time in British history, allowed air pollution to be recorded as the cause of someone’s death. The coroner noted that the area of southeast London where Ella lived, Lewisham, had levels of nitrogen dioxide higher than European Union or World Health Organization guidelines. Nitrogen dioxide, which contributes to toxic ground-level ozone, is a by-product of car engines that run on diesel.

We’ve known for decades the visible damage done to the environment by fossil fuels. We’re increasingly familiar with the ever-upward trajectory of parts per million of atmospheric carbon dioxide: reaching 420 in April 2021, a level not seen in recorded history. But much of the climate crisis is invisible. We can’t see the planet warming or the GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions in the atmosphere.

The effect of invisible particulate matter on our health may be as severe as the visible pollution of oil spills and algal blooms. The particles are so small that they can affect the heart, lungs, and other vital organs, increasing the risk of strokes, heart attacks, and, of course, problems associated with the lungs, such as asthma. My mother suffered from bad asthma when I was younger. I remember the anxiety I felt and the pain in her face as she struggled to breathe. I can only imagine what it must have felt like to Ella and her mother, Rosamund Kissi-Debrah.

Air pollution doesn’t only come at a cost to human lives, but to economies in the Global North and South. The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air has estimated that the cost to public health of air pollution is at least U.S. $8 billion a day (or 3.3 percent of global GDP).

Of course, the drag on the economy cannot mask the terrible consequences for Ella or anyone else of inhaling so much particulate matter. In Delhi, widely considered to be one of the most polluted cities in the world, more than 50,000 people died in 2020 due to air pollution, according to a report from Greenpeace Southeast Asia.

Some of the most damning research on fossil fuels and public health is in a report released in February 2021 by Harvard and three British universities. A team of researchers found that more than eight million people were killed by fossil fuels in 2018, much higher than earlier research estimates. Even the researchers were shocked by the results, which they called “astounding.” One of them, Eloise Marais, a geographer at University College, London, said, “We are discovering more and more about the impact of this pollution. It’s pervasive.”

Given the enormous costs to public health and economic activity, along with the tragic loss of individual lives like Ella’s, why haven’t we dealt with our addiction to fossil fuels in favor of clean, renewable sources of energy?

One reason may be that, like many victims, Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah was Black. Neither powerful or wealthy, or well-connected, she and her family lived in an economically disadvantaged area of London. Her neighborhood is crisscrossed, as many low-income urban areas are, by highways packed with traffic. It’s important that we ask ourselves, if Ella had been rich and white, would she have had to live with and die from such severely polluted air, and would it have taken seven years after her death for the coroner to issue his report?

UK climate activist Elijah Mckenzie-Jackson told me that he doesn’t think people in the UK took on board the lesson from Ella’s death: “She was a young woman, a female, Black. The headlines weren’t enough,” he said. “If we had a middle-class white male who died from air pollution, everyone would know about it.”

The reason why I’m writing about Ella, and why the coroner was compelled to hear the case on which he produced his landmark ruling, is that Ella’s mother, Rosamund, wasn’t silent or resigned. She made extraordinary efforts to make sure her daughter’s death had a reason, a cause: that something or someone brought it about. She has become a clean air campaigner and has set up a foundation in Ella’s name to improve the lives of young people with asthma in South London.

Ella’s death — and the deaths of millions of others like her — are not simply accidents of fate, just as it isn’t accidental that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The inequalities we see and those we don’t — between South and North, wealthy and less wealthy, and people of color and white people — are stark.

Throughout the Global North, Black and other communities of color are more likely to live near sewage treatment plants, landfill sites, and chemical industries; and bus depots and toxic landfills will be located in their neighborhoods. Their residences will be more likely to be situated near slaughterhouses or factory farms that pollute nearby waterways, foul their air, can make them sick, and can cause respiratory diseases. Or they may inhabit low-lying areas, intensifying their exposure to floods, storm surges, and waterborne diseases.

Here, people may not be able to afford air-conditioners, or they may have jobs that require them to be in the street for long periods of time.

Too often, when some people think of environmentalism or climate change, they assume a color-blind or economically neutral perspective, Leah Thomas, a Black writer and intersectional environmental activist living in Los Angeles, told me. Over and over again, Black communities suffer from higher levels of air and water pollution. “Sometimes, when people think about environmentalism, they try to exclude the aspect of race or wealth, and how those things might play a role in who is experiencing environmental injustice.” This is a mistake, she says, “because the people who are currently being faced with environmental injustices the most are communities of color, and that’s going to continue to happen if we don’t address it.”

Leah offers a number of potentially transformational ideas for the U.S. government. In addition to declaring a climate emergency, she suggests establishing a council of youth environmentalists and a council for intersectional environmentalism to work directly with grassroots climate activists. She adds: “I want to see real-time environmental justice legislation that specifically addresses the fact that communities of color are plagued with these environmental issues and makes environmental racism a civil rights violation.”

Environmental justice is also at the center of the work of Veronica Mulenga, a climate activist from Zambia. “At first, I didn’t know about environmental justice,” she told me. “Then while I was doing the research on climate change, I also came across how disproportionately it affects us in the Global South. I was really shocked. We’re the ones that are causing and contributing the least to the climate crisis and then we’re the ones being affected the most.”

Veronica lives with persistent shortages of power. Rainfall in Zambia has decreased, leaving rivers low and dams without enough water volume for the hydroelectric power plants from which Zambia draws 95 percent of its formal energy capacity. “We experience power cuts from eight to fourteen hours or more every single day,” she says. People who can afford generators buy them, she adds, but they run on fossil fuels and emit carbon dioxide. Purchasing enough solar panels to power a whole house is expensive. “We’re saving to get a solar panel someday,” Veronica says of her family. “I would love the international community to help a lot of us here with financial aid and adaptation methods.”

5 Ways Climate Change Will Affect Plants and Animals

Warming temperatures, stronger storms and rising seas present a cascade of challenges that researchers are racing to understand.

Scientists have provided another reminder that, when it comes to climate change, we’re all in this together. A study published last month in Nature Climate Change concluded that at least 85% of the world’s population has already been affected by climate change.

“It is likely that nearly everyone in the world now experiences changes in extreme weather as a result of human greenhouse gas emissions,” Friederike Otto, a senior lecturer at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College, told the Washington Post.

While we’re all in it together, not everything is equal. Wealthier countries like the United States play an outsized role in pumping fossil fuels into the atmosphere, but less wealthy nations face the gravest risks. We also know far less about how climate change will affect poorer countries — much more research and resources have been dedicated to studying North America compared to Africa or South America, the study found.

These knowledge gaps don’t just affect people, either. Countless species of plants and animals face a warming world. Researchers have found that rising temperatures and related impacts can force changes in behavior, reproduction, migration and foraging. Biologist Thor Hanson wrote in a recent book that 25% to 85% of species on the planet are already on the move because of climate change. What happens when new neighbors interact in these novel ecosystems is something we know little about so far because the ripple effects are far-reaching and numerous.

But the more scientists uncover about how plants and animals — and their habitats — may change, the more effective conservation measures will be.

The Revelator has been keeping tabs on the growing field of climate change biology. Here are five new findings that scientists have made recently about wildlife and climate change.

Wisps of cottongrass blows in the wind — Cottongrass blows in the wind at the edge of Etivlik Lake, Alaska. The plant is a sedge with wind-dispersed seeds. Photo: Western Arctic National Parklands, (CC BY 2.0)

1. Pack your bags. Numerous bat species will need to move to find suitable habitat as their current homes are predicted to get hotter and drier. Some, like the Isabelline Serotine bat (Eptesicus isabellinus), could be forced to relocate 1,000 miles. The largest exodus will likely come from Coastal Europe and North Africa, which already support the greatest amount of species richness.

2. Not a breeze. While fish can swim to colder waters as the ocean heats up, plants may have a harder time finding suitable habitat in a changing climate. A 2020 study found that wind-dispersed or wind-pollinated trees in the tropics or on the windward sides of mountain ranges could face the biggest problems because the wind isn’t likely to move them in a climate-friendly direction.

3. Forest for the trees. Mangrove forests can help mitigate climate change and have been shown to store up to four times as much carbon as other tropical forests. They also help protect coastlines from hurricane damage. Nature-based solutions to help lessen the blows from climate change are good news, but researchers have also learned that mangroves themselves are threatened by rising seas. If we want help from mangroves, we’re going to need to cut our greenhouse emissions to help them, too.

4. Disasters abound. So far this year the United States has been walloped by 18 weather and climate disasters costing $1 billion each. An increase in the severity of extreme weather isn’t just an economic concern, though. Researchers say that such events can also take a toll on wildlife by killing animals or indirectly destroying food and habitat, contaminating water, or forcing wildlife to move to areas with greater competition or predation.

5. Taking the slow lane. Sometimes you just need a good place to hide. Last year the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment dedicated an entire issue to new research about how to identify and manage climate-change refugia — areas where the effects of rising temperatures are largely buffered because of unique local conditions. As one of the studies explained, “As the effects of climate change accelerate, climate‐change refugia provide a slow lane to enable persistence of focal resources in the short term, and transitional havens in the long term.”

The hunt for climate refugia is another reminder of the benefits research can have on conservation, and why such scientific efforts need geographic parity so that some regions — and their biodiversity — aren’t overlooked.

Want to know more? Here’s additional coverage from The Revelator’s archives:

Move or Change: How Plants and Animals Are Trying to Survive a Warming World

Will Climate Change Push These Amphibians to the Brink?

Want to Fight Climate Change? Start by Protecting These Endangered Species

A Rare ‘Bird of Two Worlds’ Faces an Uncertain Future

Coral in Crisis: Can Replanting Efforts Halt Reefs’ Death Spiral?

Climate Change Really Gets This Researcher’s Goat

10 Species Climate Change Could Push to Extinction

Forests vs. Climate Change: Researchers Race to Understand What Drought Means for the World’s Trees

Climate Change Is Causing a ‘Catastrophic’ Shortage of Food for Birds in the Galápagos

Offshore Wind Power Is Ready to Boom. Here’s What That Means for Wildlife

The Race to Build Solar Power in the Desert — and Protect Rare Plants and Animals