climate change in the us essay

How the climate crisis is already harming America – photo essay

The damage rising temperatures bring is been seen around the country, with experts fearing worse is to come

C limate change is not an abstract future threat to the United States, but a real danger that is already harming Americans’ lives, with “substantial damages” to follow if rising temperatures are not controlled.

This was the verdict of a major US government report two years ago. The Trump administration’s attitude to climate change was perhaps illustrated in the timing of the report’s release, which was in the news dead zone a day after Thanksgiving.

The report was the fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA), and is seen as the most authoritative official US snapshot of the impacts of climate change being seen already, and the estimate of those in the future.

It is the combined work of 13 federal agencies, and it warns how climate-related threats to Americans’ physical, social and economic wellbeing are rising, and will continue to grow without additional action.

Here we look at the regions of the US where it describes various impacts, with photography from these areas showing people and places in the US where climate change is very real.

Alaska – unpredictable weather

If there was a ground zero for the climate crisis in the US, it would probably be located in Alaska. The state, according to the national climate assessment, is “ on the front lines of climate change and is among the fastest warming regions on Earth”.

Since the early 1980s, Alaska’s sea ice extent in September, when it hits its annual minimum, has decreased by as much as 15% per decade, with sea ice-free summers likely this century. This has upended fishing routines for remote communities that rely upon caught fish for their food.

The thinning ice has seen people and vehicles collapse into the frigid water below, hampering transport routes. Roads and buildings have buckled as the frozen soils underneath melt. Wildfires are also an increasing menace in Alaska, with three out of the top four fire years in terms of acres burned occurring since 2000. The state’s residents are grappling with a rapidly changing environment that is harming their health, their supply of food and livelihoods.

Last year was the hottest year on record in Alaska , 6.2F warmer than the long-term average.

North-east – snowstorms, drought, heatwaves and flooding

The north-east, home to a sizable chunk of the US population and marked by hot summers and cold, snowy winters, is undergoing a major climatic upheaval.

The most rapidly warming region of the contiguous United States, the north-east is set to be, on average, 2C warmer than the pre-industrial era by 2035, decades before the the global average reaches this mark.

These rising temperatures are bringing punishing heatwaves, coastal flooding and more intense rainfall. Snow storms may decrease in number but increase in intensity, while the warming oceans are already altering the composition of available seafood – lobsters, for example, are fleeing north to the cooler waters of Maine and Canada.

High-tide flooding will soak about 20 north-east cities for at least 30 days a year by 2050, scientists predict, with the region also hit by stronger hurricanes and storms. These changes will “threaten the sustainability of communities and their livelihoods”, the national climate assessment warns.

A major challenge for the north-east will be adaptation to this hotter, more turbulent world. As home to some of America’s oldest cities, such as New York and Philadelphia, the region has plenty of ageing, inefficient housing that ill-equipped to deal with extreme heat.

Northern Great Plains – flash droughts and extreme heat

Water is the crucial issue in the northern Great Plains, a vital resource largely provided by the gradual melting of snowpack that builds up in the colder months.

Rising temperatures are set to increase the number of heatwaves and accelerate the melt of snow, leading to droughts. At the same time, rainfall intensity is growing, with downpours in winter and spring to increase by up to a third by the end of the century.

This is set to lead to a see-sawing effect where severe droughts will be interspersed by flooding, a scenario that played out in 2011, when major floods were followed by drought in 2012. This, the national assessment states, represents a “new and unprecedented variability that is likely to become more common in a warmer world”.

Midwest – heavy rains and soil erosion

The US midwest, home to 60 million people, is the agricultural heartland of the country, growing the bulk of corn, soy and other commodity crops produced on US soil.

The climate crisis is starting to play havoc with established farming routines, however, with increasing heat and pounding rainfall causing the erosion of soils and introduction of harmful pests and diseases. Overall yields are set to drop, with the productivity of the midwest set to drop back to 1980s levels by mid-century.

Forest health is declining, while the extra heat is helping spawn algal blooms in lakes that can effect tourism. The Great Lakes, which contain 20% of the world’s surface fresh water, are experiencing a decline in seasonal ice cover and growing loss from evaporation.

Worsening air quality, again caused by the heat, is expected to cause up to 550 extra deaths a year in the midwest by 2050.

South-east – flooding in Louisiana

Communities in the south-east are set to suffer the largest losses from climate change, research has suggested, due to its existing racial and economic disparities. Soaring temperatures, rising humidity and a raft of new diseases are expected to fall heaviest on poorer people and people of color.

Cities such as Birmingham, New Orleans and Raleigh are experiencing more and longer heatwaves, with diseases such as West Nile expected to spread in the region as mosquito activity increases.

Huge hurricanes such as Irma, which slammed into Florida in 2017, are “expected to become more common in the future due to climate change”, the national assessment warns, with

Southern Great Plains – Hurricane Harvey

Hurricane Harvey’s landfall on the Texas coast in 2017 was “one of the costliest natural disasters in US history”, the national assessment said. It ravaged Houston, America’s fourth largest city.

Estimates of the economic impact of the hurricane, which tore through the Caribbean, Texas and Louisiana, have been at least $90bn in loss of property and livelihoods. It was also the cause of scores of deaths.

Some new research earlier this year , based on a radical assessment, put the price tag directly linked to climate breakdown, which is making hurricanes stronger, at $67bn, far more than the previous estimates of a $20bn loss attributable to climate change, rather than natural weather conditions.

The storm made landfall 200 miles from Houston and dropped as much as 60in of rain over parts of the metropolitan area . It killed at least 68 people and flooded more than 300,000 structures in south-east Texas alone.

Harvey was Houston’s third serious flooding event in as many years.

South-west – drought in the Colorado river basin reduced Lake Mead by more than half since 2000

The US south-west is experiencing a boom in its population, placing even greater stress on its overstretched water resources.

The Colorado River is a critical water supply for seven states but is suffering from years of overuse to irrigate crops as well as a reduction in flow coming from the gradual melting of snow as rising temperatures shrink the snowpack. The volume of water in Lake Powell and Lake Mead, two critical catchments, has dropped by half in the past two decades.

Fire has long been part of this landscape, but the climate crisis is fueling larger outbreaks, with scientists estimating the area burned in the US west since the 1980s was double what it would have been had humans not heated up the planet. These wildfires can often turn deadly, as seen in 2018 when fires in California razed the town of Paradise and threatened coastal communities.

North-west – wildfire increases and associated smoke

The north-western corner of the US is renowned for its clean air, pristine water and tracts of lush forest, but the climate crisis is beginning to take its toll even here.

Rising heat is reducing snowpack and introducing new pests to the north-west’s forests, threatening the key tourism and timber industries. Commercial fisheries, too, face losses, with the warming of river waters hurting the migration and spawning of salmon.

Air quality is set to decline, with the residents of Seattle given a glimpse of this in 2017 and 2018 when smoke from distant wildfires shrouded the city.

Hawaii and Pacific islands – coral bleaching

The sprawling Pacific islands under US jurisdiction are major draws for tourists, but face increasingly perilous conditions as the world heats up.

Increasingly powerful cyclones menace the region, while rising sea levels threaten to bring salt water inundation to places that have limited freshwater supplies. Hawaii, for example, has seen a significant reduction in rainfall over the past century.

The bleaching and dying of coral reefs, caused by the warming oceans, is an unfolding disaster for the Pacific.

Caribbean – hurricanes

A large proportion of people on Caribbean islands live near the coast and rely on a narrow climatic range to grow crops such as coffee and mangoes, meaning sea-level rise and soaring temperatures pose a major challenge to people in the region.

Fiercer hurricanes are also a growing threat, as evidenced in 2017 when Hurricane Maria crunched into Puerto Rico, resulting in thousands of deaths, crippling the power grid and causing billions of dollars in damages.

This article was amended on 20 August to correct to the preferred term for Inuit people.

• Climate countdown
• Climate crisis

Most viewed

Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Read our research on:

Full Topic List

Regions & Countries

• Publications
• Our Methods
• Short Reads
• Tools & Resources

Read Our Research On:

What the data says about Americans’ views of climate change

A recent report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has underscored the need for international action to avoid increasingly severe climate impacts in the years to come. Steps outlined in the report, and by climate experts, include major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from sectors such as energy production and transportation.

But how do Americans feel about climate change, and what steps do they think the United States should take to address it? Here are eight charts that illustrate Americans’ views on the issue, based on recent Pew Research Center surveys.

Pew Research Center published this collection of survey findings as part of its ongoing work to understand attitudes about climate change and energy issues. The most recent survey was conducted May 30-June 4, 2023, among 10,329 U.S. adults. Earlier findings have been previously published, and methodological information, including the sample sizes and field dates, can be found by following the links in the text.

Everyone who took part in the June 2023 survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way, nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology .

Here are the questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and its methodology .

A majority of Americans support prioritizing the development of renewable energy sources. Two-thirds of U.S. adults say the country should prioritize developing renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, over expanding the production of oil, coal and natural gas, according to a survey conducted in June 2023.

In a previous Center survey conducted in 2022, nearly the same share of Americans (69%) favored the U.S. taking steps to become carbon neutral by 2050 , a goal outlined by President Joe Biden at the outset of his administration. Carbon neutrality means releasing no more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than is removed.

Nine-in-ten Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say the U.S. should prioritize developing alternative energy sources to address America’s energy supply. Among Republicans and Republican leaners, 42% support developing alternative energy sources, while 58% say the country should prioritize expanding exploration and production of oil, coal and natural gas.

There are important differences by age within the GOP. Two-thirds of Republicans under age 30 (67%) prioritize the development of alternative energy sources. By contrast, 75% of Republicans ages 65 and older prioritize expanding the production of oil, coal and natural gas.

Americans are reluctant to phase out fossil fuels altogether, but younger adults are more open to it. Overall, about three-in-ten adults (31%) say the U.S. should completely phase out oil, coal and natural gas. More than twice as many (68%) say the country should use a mix of energy sources, including fossil fuels and renewables.

While the public is generally reluctant to phase out fossil fuels altogether, younger adults are more supportive of this idea. Among Americans ages 18 to 29, 48% say the U.S. should exclusively use renewables, compared with 52% who say the U.S. should use a mix of energy sources, including fossil fuels.

There are age differences within both political parties on this question. Among Democrats and Democratic leaners, 58% of those ages 18 to 29 favor phasing out fossil fuels entirely, compared with 42% of Democrats 65 and older. Republicans of all age groups back continuing to use a mix of energy sources, including oil, coal and natural gas. However, about three-in-ten (29%) Republicans ages 18 to 29 say the U.S. should phase out fossil fuels altogether, compared with fewer than one-in-ten Republicans 50 and older.

There are multiple potential routes to carbon neutrality in the U.S. All involve major reductions to carbon emissions in sectors such as energy and transportation by increasing the use of things like wind and solar power and electric vehicles. There are also ways to potentially remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it, such as capturing it directly from the air or using trees and algae to facilitate carbon sequestration.

The public supports the federal government incentivizing wind and solar energy production. In many sectors, including energy and transportation, federal incentives and regulations significantly influence investment and development.

Two-thirds of Americans think the federal government should encourage domestic production of wind and solar power. Just 7% say the government should discourage this, while 26% think it should neither encourage nor discourage it.

Views are more mixed on how the federal government should approach other activities that would reduce carbon emissions. On balance, more Americans think the government should encourage than discourage the use of electric vehicles and nuclear power production, though sizable shares say it should not exert an influence either way.

When it comes to oil and gas drilling, Americans’ views are also closely divided: 34% think the government should encourage drilling, while 30% say it should discourage this and 35% say it should do neither. Coal mining is the one activity included in the survey where public sentiment is negative on balance: More say the federal government should discourage than encourage coal mining (39% vs. 21%), while 39% say it should do neither.

Americans see room for multiple actors – including corporations and the federal government – to do more to address the impacts of climate change. Two-thirds of adults say large businesses and corporations are doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change. Far fewer say they are doing about the right amount (21%) or too much (10%).

Majorities also say their state elected officials (58%) and the energy industry (55%) are doing too little to address climate change, according to a March 2023 survey.

In a separate Center survey conducted in June 2023, a similar share of Americans (56%) said the federal government should do more to reduce the effects of global climate change.

When it comes to their own efforts, about half of Americans (51%) think they are doing about the right amount as an individual to help reduce the effects of climate change, according to the March 2023 survey. However, about four-in-ten (43%) say they are doing too little.

Democrats and Republicans have grown further apart over the last decade in their assessments of the threat posed by climate change. Overall, a majority of U.S. adults (54%) describe climate change as a major threat to the country’s well-being. This share is down slightly from 2020 but remains higher than in the early 2010s.

Nearly eight-in-ten Democrats (78%) describe climate change as a major threat to the country’s well-being, up from about six-in-ten (58%) a decade ago. By contrast, about one-in-four Republicans (23%) consider climate change a major threat, a share that’s almost identical to 10 years ago.

Concern over climate change has also risen internationally, as shown by separate Pew Research Center polling across 19 countries in 2022. People in many advanced economies express higher levels of concern than Americans . For instance, 81% of French adults and 73% of Germans describe climate change as a major threat.

Climate change is a lower priority for Americans than other national issues. While a majority of adults view climate change as a major threat, it is a lower priority than issues such as strengthening the economy and reducing health care costs.

Overall, 37% of Americans say addressing climate change should be a top priority for the president and Congress in 2023, and another 34% say it’s an important but lower priority. This ranks climate change 17th out of 21 national issues included in a Center survey from January.

As with views of the threat that climate change poses, there’s a striking contrast between how Republicans and Democrats prioritize the issue. For Democrats, it falls in the top half of priority issues, and 59% call it a top priority. By comparison, among Republicans, it ranks second to last, and just 13% describe it as a top priority.

Our analyses have found that partisan gaps on climate change are often widest on questions – such as this one – that measure the salience or importance of the issue. The gaps are more modest when it comes to some specific climate policies. For example, majorities of Republicans and Democrats alike say they would favor a proposal to provide a tax credit to businesses for developing technologies for carbon capture and storage.

Perceptions of local climate impacts vary by Americans’ political affiliation and whether they believe that climate change is a serious problem. A majority of Americans (61%) say that global climate change is affecting their local community either a great deal or some. About four-in-ten (39%) see little or no impact in their own community.

The perception that the effects of climate change are happening close to home is one factor that could drive public concern and calls for action on the issue. But perceptions are tied more strongly to people’s beliefs about climate change – and their partisan affiliation – than to local conditions.

For example, Americans living in the Pacific region – California, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii and Alaska – are more likely than those in other areas of the country to say that climate change is having a great deal of impact locally. But only Democrats in the Pacific region are more likely to say they are seeing effects of climate change where they live. Republicans in this region are no more likely than Republicans in other areas to say that climate change is affecting their local community.

Our previous surveys show that nearly all Democrats believe climate change is at least a somewhat serious problem, and a large majority believe that humans play a role in it. Republicans are much less likely to hold these beliefs, but views within the GOP do vary significantly by age and ideology. Younger Republicans and those who describe their views as moderate or liberal are much more likely than older and more conservative Republicans to describe climate change as at least a somewhat serious problem and to say human activity plays a role.

Democrats are also more likely than Republicans to report experiencing extreme weather events in their area over the past year – such as intense storms and floods, long periods of hot weather or droughts – and to see these events as connected with climate change.

About three-quarters of Americans support U.S. participation in international efforts to reduce the effects of climate change. Americans offer broad support for international engagement on climate change: 74% say they support U.S. participation in international efforts to reduce the effects of climate change.

Still, there’s little consensus on how current U.S. efforts stack up against those of other large economies. About one-in-three Americans (36%) think the U.S. is doing more than other large economies to reduce the effects of global climate change, while 30% say the U.S. is doing less than other large economies and 32% think it is doing about as much as others. The U.S. is the second-largest carbon dioxide emitter , contributing about 13.5% of the global total.

When asked what they think the right balance of responsibility is, a majority of Americans (56%) say the U.S. should do about as much as other large economies to reduce the effects of climate change, while 27% think it should do more than others.

A previous Center survey found that while Americans favor international cooperation on climate change in general terms, their support has its limits. In January 2022 , 59% of Americans said that the U.S. does not have a responsibility to provide financial assistance to developing countries to help them build renewable energy sources.

In recent years, the UN conference on climate change has grappled with how wealthier nations should assist developing countries in dealing with climate change. The most recent convening in fall 2022, known as COP27, established a “loss and damage” fund for vulnerable countries impacted by climate change.

Note: This is an update of a post originally published April 22, 2022. Here are the questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and its methodology .

• Climate, Energy & Environment
• Environment & Climate
• Partisanship & Issues
• Political Issues

Alec Tyson is an associate director of research at Pew Research Center .

Cary Funk is director of science and society research at Pew Research Center .

Brian Kennedy is a senior researcher focusing on science and society research at Pew Research Center .

How Republicans view climate change and energy issues

How americans view future harms from climate change in their community and around the u.s., americans continue to have doubts about climate scientists’ understanding of climate change, growing share of americans favor more nuclear power, why some americans do not see urgency on climate change, most popular.

1615 L St. NW, Suite 800 Washington, DC 20036 USA (+1) 202-419-4300 | Main (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax (+1) 202-419-4372 |  Media Inquiries

Research Topics

• Age & Generations
• Coronavirus (COVID-19)
• Economy & Work
• Family & Relationships
• Gender & LGBTQ
• Immigration & Migration
• International Affairs
• Internet & Technology
• Methodological Research
• News Habits & Media
• Non-U.S. Governments
• Other Topics
• Politics & Policy
• Race & Ethnicity
• Email Newsletters

ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER  Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of  The Pew Charitable Trusts .

Copyright 2024 Pew Research Center

Responding to the Climate Threat: Essays on Humanity’s Greatest Challenge

A new book co-authored by MIT Joint Program Founding Co-Director Emeritus Henry Jacoby

From the Back Cover

This book demonstrates how robust and evolving science can be relevant to public discourse about climate policy. Fighting climate change is the ultimate societal challenge, and the difficulty is not just in the wrenching adjustments required to cut greenhouse emissions and to respond to change already under way. A second and equally important difficulty is ensuring widespread public understanding of the natural and social science. This understanding is essential for an effective risk management strategy at a planetary scale. The scientific, economic, and policy aspects of climate change are already a challenge to communicate, without factoring in the distractions and deflections from organized programs of misinformation and denial. 

Here, four scholars, each with decades of research on the climate threat, take on the task of explaining our current understanding of the climate threat and what can be done about it, in lay language―importantly, without losing critical  aspects of the natural and social science. In a series of essays, published during the 2020 presidential election, the COVID pandemic, and through the fall of 2021, they explain the essential components of the challenge, countering the forces of distrust of the science and opposition to a vigorous national response.  

Each of the essays provides an opportunity to learn about a particular aspect of climate science and policy within the complex context of current events. The overall volume is more than the sum of its individual articles. Proceeding each essay is an explanation of the context in which it was written, followed by observation of what has happened since its first publication. In addition to its discussion of topical issues in modern climate science, the book also explores science communication to a broad audience. Its authors are not only scientists – they are also teachers, using current events to teach when people are listening. For preserving Earth’s planetary life support system, science and teaching are essential. Advancing both is an unending task.

About the Authors

Gary Yohe is the Huffington Foundation Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies, Emeritus, at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. He served as convening lead author for multiple chapters and the Synthesis Report for the IPCC from 1990 through 2014 and was vice-chair of the Third U.S. National Climate Assessment.

Henry Jacoby is the William F. Pounds Professor of Management, Emeritus, in the MIT Sloan School of Management and former co-director of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, which is focused on the integration of the natural and social sciences and policy analysis in application to the threat of global climate change.

Richard Richels directed climate change research at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). He served as lead author for multiple chapters of the IPCC in the areas of mitigation, impacts and adaptation from 1992 through 2014. He also served on the National Assessment Synthesis Team for the first U.S. National Climate Assessment.

Ben Santer is a climate scientist and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellow. He contributed to all six IPCC reports. He was the lead author of Chapter 8 of the 1995 IPCC report which concluded that “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate”. He is currently a Visiting Researcher at UCLA’s Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science & Engineering.

Access the Book

View the book on the publisher's website  here .

Order the book from Amazon  here . 

Related Posts

E7: an introduction to carbon capture (re-air).

Elaine Liu: Charging ahead

E6: How clean is green hydrogen?

Study: heavy snowfall and rain may contribute to some earthquakes.

MIT Climate News in Your Inbox

Climate Change: Evidence and Causes: Update 2020 (2020)

Chapter: conclusion, c onclusion.

This document explains that there are well-understood physical mechanisms by which changes in the amounts of greenhouse gases cause climate changes. It discusses the evidence that the concentrations of these gases in the atmosphere have increased and are still increasing rapidly, that climate change is occurring, and that most of the recent change is almost certainly due to emissions of greenhouse gases caused by human activities. Further climate change is inevitable; if emissions of greenhouse gases continue unabated, future changes will substantially exceed those that have occurred so far. There remains a range of estimates of the magnitude and regional expression of future change, but increases in the extremes of climate that can adversely affect natural ecosystems and human activities and infrastructure are expected.

Citizens and governments can choose among several options (or a mixture of those options) in response to this information: they can change their pattern of energy production and usage in order to limit emissions of greenhouse gases and hence the magnitude of climate changes; they can wait for changes to occur and accept the losses, damage, and suffering that arise; they can adapt to actual and expected changes as much as possible; or they can seek as yet unproven “geoengineering” solutions to counteract some of the climate changes that would otherwise occur. Each of these options has risks, attractions and costs, and what is actually done may be a mixture of these different options. Different nations and communities will vary in their vulnerability and their capacity to adapt. There is an important debate to be had about choices among these options, to decide what is best for each group or nation, and most importantly for the global population as a whole. The options have to be discussed at a global scale because in many cases those communities that are most vulnerable control few of the emissions, either past or future. Our description of the science of climate change, with both its facts and its uncertainties, is offered as a basis to inform that policy debate.

A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The following individuals served as the primary writing team for the 2014 and 2020 editions of this document:

• Eric Wolff FRS, (UK lead), University of Cambridge
• Inez Fung (NAS, US lead), University of California, Berkeley
• Brian Hoskins FRS, Grantham Institute for Climate Change
• John F.B. Mitchell FRS, UK Met Office
• Tim Palmer FRS, University of Oxford
• Benjamin Santer (NAS), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
• John Shepherd FRS, University of Southampton
• Keith Shine FRS, University of Reading.
• Susan Solomon (NAS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Kevin Trenberth, National Center for Atmospheric Research
• John Walsh, University of Alaska, Fairbanks
• Don Wuebbles, University of Illinois

Staff support for the 2020 revision was provided by Richard Walker, Amanda Purcell, Nancy Huddleston, and Michael Hudson. We offer special thanks to Rebecca Lindsey and NOAA Climate.gov for providing data and figure updates.

The following individuals served as reviewers of the 2014 document in accordance with procedures approved by the Royal Society and the National Academy of Sciences:

• Richard Alley (NAS), Department of Geosciences, Pennsylvania State University
• Alec Broers FRS, Former President of the Royal Academy of Engineering
• Harry Elderfield FRS, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge
• Joanna Haigh FRS, Professor of Atmospheric Physics, Imperial College London
• Isaac Held (NAS), NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
• John Kutzbach (NAS), Center for Climatic Research, University of Wisconsin
• Jerry Meehl, Senior Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research
• John Pendry FRS, Imperial College London
• John Pyle FRS, Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge
• Gavin Schmidt, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
• Emily Shuckburgh, British Antarctic Survey
• Gabrielle Walker, Journalist
• Andrew Watson FRS, University of East Anglia

The Support for the 2014 Edition was provided by NAS Endowment Funds. We offer sincere thanks to the Ralph J. and Carol M. Cicerone Endowment for NAS Missions for supporting the production of this 2020 Edition.

F OR FURTHER READING

For more detailed discussion of the topics addressed in this document (including references to the underlying original research), see:

• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2019: Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate [ https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc ]
• National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), 2019: Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration: A Research Agenda [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25259 ]
• Royal Society, 2018: Greenhouse gas removal [ https://raeng.org.uk/greenhousegasremoval ]
• U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), 2018: Fourth National Climate Assessment Volume II: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States [ https://nca2018.globalchange.gov ]
• IPCC, 2018: Global Warming of 1.5°C [ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15 ]
• USGCRP, 2017: Fourth National Climate Assessment Volume I: Climate Science Special Reports [ https://science2017.globalchange.gov ]
• NASEM, 2016: Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Climate Change [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/21852 ]
• IPCC, 2013: Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) Working Group 1. Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis [ https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1 ]
• NRC, 2013: Abrupt Impacts of Climate Change: Anticipating Surprises [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/18373 ]
• NRC, 2011: Climate Stabilization Targets: Emissions, Concentrations, and Impacts Over Decades to Millennia [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12877 ]
• Royal Society 2010: Climate Change: A Summary of the Science [ https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/publications/2010/climate-change-summary-science ]
• NRC, 2010: America’s Climate Choices: Advancing the Science of Climate Change [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12782 ]

Much of the original data underlying the scientific findings discussed here are available at:

• https://data.ucar.edu/
• https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu
• https://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu
• https://ess-dive.lbl.gov/
• https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/
• https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
• http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu
• http://hahana.soest.hawaii.edu/hot/

Climate change is one of the defining issues of our time. It is now more certain than ever, based on many lines of evidence, that humans are changing Earth's climate. The Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences, with their similar missions to promote the use of science to benefit society and to inform critical policy debates, produced the original Climate Change: Evidence and Causes in 2014. It was written and reviewed by a UK-US team of leading climate scientists. This new edition, prepared by the same author team, has been updated with the most recent climate data and scientific analyses, all of which reinforce our understanding of human-caused climate change.

Scientific information is a vital component for society to make informed decisions about how to reduce the magnitude of climate change and how to adapt to its impacts. This booklet serves as a key reference document for decision makers, policy makers, educators, and others seeking authoritative answers about the current state of climate-change science.

READ FREE ONLINE

Welcome to OpenBook!

You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

Show this book's table of contents , where you can jump to any chapter by name.

...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

Switch between the Original Pages , where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter .

Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

View our suggested citation for this chapter.

Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

Get Email Updates

Do you enjoy reading reports from the Academies online for free ? Sign up for email notifications and we'll let you know about new publications in your areas of interest when they're released.

What Is Climate Change?

Climate change is a long-term change in the average weather patterns that have come to define Earth’s local, regional and global climates. These changes have a broad range of observed effects that are synonymous with the term.

Changes observed in Earth’s climate since the mid-20th century are driven by human activities, particularly fossil fuel burning, which increases heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere, raising Earth’s average surface temperature. Natural processes, which have been overwhelmed by human activities, can also contribute to climate change, including internal variability (e.g., cyclical ocean patterns like El Niño, La Niña and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation) and external forcings (e.g., volcanic activity, changes in the Sun’s energy output , variations in Earth’s orbit ).

Scientists use observations from the ground, air, and space, along with computer models , to monitor and study past, present, and future climate change. Climate data records provide evidence of climate change key indicators, such as global land and ocean temperature increases; rising sea levels; ice loss at Earth’s poles and in mountain glaciers; frequency and severity changes in extreme weather such as hurricanes, heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, floods, and precipitation; and cloud and vegetation cover changes.

“Climate change” and “global warming” are often used interchangeably but have distinct meanings. Similarly, the terms "weather" and "climate" are sometimes confused, though they refer to events with broadly different spatial- and timescales.

What Is Global Warming?

Global warming is the long-term heating of Earth’s surface observed since the pre-industrial period (between 1850 and 1900) due to human activities, primarily fossil fuel burning, which increases heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere. This term is not interchangeable with the term "climate change."

Since the pre-industrial period, human activities are estimated to have increased Earth’s global average temperature by about 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), a number that is currently increasing by more than 0.2 degrees Celsius (0.36 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade. The current warming trend is unequivocally the result of human activity since the 1950s and is proceeding at an unprecedented rate over millennia.

Weather vs. Climate

“if you don’t like the weather in new england, just wait a few minutes.” - mark twain.

Weather refers to atmospheric conditions that occur locally over short periods of time—from minutes to hours or days. Familiar examples include rain, snow, clouds, winds, floods, or thunderstorms.

Climate, on the other hand, refers to the long-term (usually at least 30 years) regional or even global average of temperature, humidity, and rainfall patterns over seasons, years, or decades.

Find Out More: A Guide to NASA’s Global Climate Change Website

This website provides a high-level overview of some of the known causes, effects and indications of global climate change:

Evidence. Brief descriptions of some of the key scientific observations that our planet is undergoing abrupt climate change.

Causes. A concise discussion of the primary climate change causes on our planet.

Effects. A look at some of the likely future effects of climate change, including U.S. regional effects.

Vital Signs. Graphs and animated time series showing real-time climate change data, including atmospheric carbon dioxide, global temperature, sea ice extent, and ice sheet volume.

Earth Minute. This fun video series explains various Earth science topics, including some climate change topics.

Other NASA Resources

Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio. An extensive collection of animated climate change and Earth science visualizations.

Sea Level Change Portal. NASA's portal for an in-depth look at the science behind sea level change.

NASA’s Earth Observatory. Satellite imagery, feature articles and scientific information about our home planet, with a focus on Earth’s climate and environmental change.

Header image is of Apusiaajik Glacier, and was taken near Kulusuk, Greenland, on Aug. 26, 2018, during NASA's Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) field operations. Learn more here . Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Discover More Topics From NASA

Explore Earth Science

Earth Science in Action

Earth Science Data

Facts About Earth

Anticipating Climate Change Across the United States

We evaluate how anticipation and adaptation shape the aggregate and local costs of climate change. We develop a dynamic spatial model of the U.S. economy and its 3,143 counties that features costly forward-looking migration and capital investment decisions. Recent methodological advances that leverage the `Master Equation' representation of the economy make the model tractable. We estimate the county-level impact of severe storms and heat waves over the 20th century on local income, population, and investment. The estimated impact of storms matches that of capital depreciation shocks in the model, while heat waves resemble combined amenity and productivity shocks. We then estimate migration and investment elasticities, as well as the structural damage functions, by matching these reduced-form results in our framework. Our findings show, first, that the impact of climate on capital depreciation magnifies the U.S. aggregate welfare costs of climate change twofold to nearly 5in 2023 under a business-as-usual warming scenario. Second, anticipation of future climate damages amplifies climate-induced worker and investment mobility, as workers and capitalists foresee the slow build-up of climate change. Third, migration reduces substantially the spatial variance in the welfare impact of climate change. Although both anticipation and migration are important for local impacts, their effect on aggregate U.S. losses from climate change is small.

Adrien Bilal gratefully acknowledges support from the Chae Family Economics Research Fund. Esteban Rossi-Hansberg acknowledges support from the Becker-Friedman Institute and the Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

MARC RIS BibTeΧ

Download Citation Data

Conferences

More from nber.

In addition to working papers , the NBER disseminates affiliates’ latest findings through a range of free periodicals — the NBER Reporter , the NBER Digest , the Bulletin on Retirement and Disability , the Bulletin on Health , and the Bulletin on Entrepreneurship  — as well as online conference reports , video lectures , and interviews .

ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

Climate change.

Climate change is a long-term shift in global or regional climate patterns. Often climate change refers specifically to the rise in global temperatures from the mid-20th century to present.

Earth Science, Climatology

Fracking tower

Fracking is a controversial form of drilling that uses high-pressure liquid to create cracks in underground shale to extract natural gas and petroleum. Carbon emissions from fossils fuels like these have been linked to global warming and climate change.

Photograph by Mark Thiessen / National Geographic

Climate is sometimes mistaken for weather. But climate is different from weather because it is measured over a long period of time, whereas weather can change from day to day, or from year to year. The climate of an area includes seasonal temperature and rainfall averages, and wind patterns. Different places have different climates. A desert, for example, is referred to as an arid climate because little water falls, as rain or snow, during the year. Other types of climate include tropical climates, which are hot and humid , and temperate climates, which have warm summers and cooler winters.

Climate change is the long-term alteration of temperature and typical weather patterns in a place. Climate change could refer to a particular location or the planet as a whole. Climate change may cause weather patterns to be less predictable. These unexpected weather patterns can make it difficult to maintain and grow crops in regions that rely on farming because expected temperature and rainfall levels can no longer be relied on. Climate change has also been connected with other damaging weather events such as more frequent and more intense hurricanes, floods, downpours, and winter storms.

In polar regions, the warming global temperatures associated with climate change have meant ice sheets and glaciers are melting at an accelerated rate from season to season. This contributes to sea levels rising in different regions of the planet. Together with expanding ocean waters due to rising temperatures, the resulting rise in sea level has begun to damage coastlines as a result of increased flooding and erosion.

The cause of current climate change is largely human activity, like burning fossil fuels , like natural gas, oil, and coal. Burning these materials releases what are called greenhouse gases into Earth’s atmosphere . There, these gases trap heat from the sun’s rays inside the atmosphere causing Earth’s average temperature to rise. This rise in the planet's temperature is called global warming. The warming of the planet impacts local and regional climates. Throughout Earth's history, climate has continually changed. When occuring naturally, this is a slow process that has taken place over hundreds and thousands of years. The human influenced climate change that is happening now is occuring at a much faster rate.

Media Credits

The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited.

Production Managers

Program specialists, last updated.

October 19, 2023

User Permissions

For information on user permissions, please read our Terms of Service. If you have questions about how to cite anything on our website in your project or classroom presentation, please contact your teacher. They will best know the preferred format. When you reach out to them, you will need the page title, URL, and the date you accessed the resource.

If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. If no button appears, you cannot download or save the media.

Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service .

Interactives

Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. You cannot download interactives.

Related Resources

Climate Change Essay for Students and Children

500+ words climate change essay.

Climate change refers to the change in the environmental conditions of the earth. This happens due to many internal and external factors. The climatic change has become a global concern over the last few decades. Besides, these climatic changes affect life on the earth in various ways. These climatic changes are having various impacts on the ecosystem and ecology. Due to these changes, a number of species of plants and animals have gone extinct.

When Did it Start?

The climate started changing a long time ago due to human activities but we came to know about it in the last century. During the last century, we started noticing the climatic change and its effect on human life. We started researching on climate change and came to know that the earth temperature is rising due to a phenomenon called the greenhouse effect. The warming up of earth surface causes many ozone depletion, affect our agriculture , water supply, transportation, and several other problems.

Reason Of Climate Change

Although there are hundreds of reason for the climatic change we are only going to discuss the natural and manmade (human) reasons.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Natural Reasons

These include volcanic eruption , solar radiation, tectonic plate movement, orbital variations. Due to these activities, the geographical condition of an area become quite harmful for life to survive. Also, these activities raise the temperature of the earth to a great extent causing an imbalance in nature.

Human Reasons

Man due to his need and greed has done many activities that not only harm the environment but himself too. Many plant and animal species go extinct due to human activity. Human activities that harm the climate include deforestation, using fossil fuel , industrial waste , a different type of pollution and many more. All these things damage the climate and ecosystem very badly. And many species of animals and birds got extinct or on a verge of extinction due to hunting.

Effects Of Climatic Change

These climatic changes have a negative impact on the environment. The ocean level is rising, glaciers are melting, CO2 in the air is increasing, forest and wildlife are declining, and water life is also getting disturbed due to climatic changes. Apart from that, it is calculated that if this change keeps on going then many species of plants and animals will get extinct. And there will be a heavy loss to the environment.

What will be Future?

If we do not do anything and things continue to go on like right now then a day in future will come when humans will become extinct from the surface of the earth. But instead of neglecting these problems we start acting on then we can save the earth and our future.

Although humans mistake has caused great damage to the climate and ecosystem. But, it is not late to start again and try to undo what we have done until now to damage the environment. And if every human start contributing to the environment then we can be sure of our existence in the future.

{ “@context”: “https://schema.org”, “@type”: “FAQPage”, “mainEntity”: [ { “@type”: “Question”, “name”: “What is climate change and how it affects humans?”, “acceptedAnswer”: { “@type”: “Answer”, “text”: “Climate change is a phenomenon that happens because of human and natural reasons. And it is one of the most serious problems that not only affect the environment but also human beings. It affects human in several ways but in simple language, we can say that it causes many diseases and disasters that destroy life on earth.” } }, { “@type”: “Question”, “name”: “Can we stop these climatic changes?”, “acceptedAnswer”: { “@type”: “Answer”, “text”: “Yes, we can stop these climatic changes but for that, every one of us has to come forward and has to adapt ways that can reduce and control our bad habits that affect the environment. We have to the initiative and make everyone aware of the climatic changes.” } } ] }

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Which class are you in.

• Travelling Essay
• Picnic Essay
• Our Country Essay
• My Parents Essay
• Essay on Favourite Personality
• Essay on Memorable Day of My Life
• Essay on Knowledge is Power
• Essay on Gurpurab
• Essay on My Favourite Season
• Essay on Types of Sports

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Download the App

Search the United Nations

• What Is Climate Change
• Myth Busters
• Renewable Energy
• Finance & Justice
• Initiatives
• Sustainable Development Goals
• Paris Agreement
• Climate Ambition Summit 2023
• Climate Conferences
• Press Material
• Communications Tips

Causes and Effects of Climate Change

Fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – are by far the largest contributor to global climate change, accounting for over 75 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90 per cent of all carbon dioxide emissions. As greenhouse gas emissions blanket the Earth, they trap the sun’s heat. This leads to global warming and climate change. The world is now warming faster than at any point in recorded history. Warmer temperatures over time are changing weather patterns and disrupting the usual balance of nature. This poses many risks to human beings and all other forms of life on Earth. 

Sacred plant helps forge a climate-friendly future in Paraguay

El Niño and climate crisis raise drought fears in Madagascar

The El Niño climate pattern, a naturally occurring phenomenon, can significantly disrupt global weather systems, but the human-made climate emergency is exacerbating the destructive effects.

“Verified for Climate” champions: Communicating science and solutions

Gustavo Figueirôa, biologist and communications director at SOS Pantanal, and Habiba Abdulrahman, eco-fashion educator, introduce themselves as champions for “Verified for Climate,” a joint initiative of the United Nations and Purpose to stand up to climate disinformation and put an end to the narratives of denialism, doomism, and delay.

Facts and figures

• What is climate change?
• Causes and effects
• Myth busters

Cutting emissions

• Explaining net zero
• High-level expert group on net zero
• Checklists for credibility of net-zero pledges
• Greenwashing
• What you can do

Clean energy

• Renewable energy – key to a safer future
• What is renewable energy
• Five ways to speed up the energy transition
• Why invest in renewable energy
• Clean energy stories
• A just transition

Adapting to climate change

• Climate adaptation
• Early warnings for all
• Youth voices

Financing climate action

• Finance and justice
• Loss and damage
• $100 billion commitment
• Why finance climate action
• Biodiversity
• Human Security

International cooperation

• What are Nationally Determined Contributions
• Acceleration Agenda
• Climate Ambition Summit
• Climate conferences (COPs)
• Youth Advisory Group
• Action initiatives
• Secretary-General’s speeches
• Press material
• Fact sheets
• Communications tips

Russell Millner/Alamy

Defend Our Planet and Most Vulnerable Species

Your donation today will be triple-matched to power NRDC’s next great chapter in protecting our ecosystems and saving imperiled wildlife.

What Are the Effects of Climate Change?

A rapidly warming planet poses an existential threat to all life on earth. Just how bad it gets depends on how quickly we act.

An area flooded by Super Typhoon Noru in the Bulacan Province of the Philippines, September 26, 2022

Rouelle Umali/Xinhua via Getty Images

• Share this page block

Climate change is our planet’s greatest existential threat . If we don’t limit greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, the consequences of rising global temperatures include massive crop and fishery collapse, the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of species, and entire communities becoming uninhabitable. While these outcomes may still be avoidable, climate change is already causing suffering and death. From raging wildfires and supercharged storms, its compounding effects can be felt today, outside our own windows.

Understanding these impacts can help us prepare for what’s here, what’s avoidable, and what’s yet to come, and to better prepare and protect all communities. Even though everyone is or will be affected by climate change, those living in the world’s poorest countries—which have contributed least to the problem—are the most climate-vulnerable. They have the fewest financial resources to respond to crises or adapt, and they’re closely dependent on a healthy, thriving natural world for food and income. Similarly, in the United States, it is most often low-income communities and communities of color that are on the frontlines of climate impacts. And because climate change and rising inequality are interconnected crises, decision makers must take action to combat both—and all of us must fight for climate justice. Here’s what you need to know about what we’re up against.

Effects of climate change on weather

Effects of climate change on the environment, effects of climate change on agriculture, effects of climate change on animals, effects of climate change on humans, future effects of climate change.

As global temperatures climb, widespread shifts in weather systems occur, making events like droughts , hurricanes , and floods more intense and unpredictable. Extreme weather events that may have hit just once in our grandparents’ lifetimes are becoming more common in ours. However, not every place will experience the same effects: Climate change may cause severe drought in one region while making floods more likely in another.

Already, the planet has warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius (1.9 degrees Fahrenheit) since the preindustrial era began 250 years ago, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) . And scientists warn it could reach a worst-case scenario of 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100 if we fail to tackle the causes of climate change —namely, the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas) .

Tokyo during a record-breaking heat wave, August 13, 2020

The Yomiuri Shimbun via AP Images

Higher average temperatures

This change in global average temperature—seemingly small but consequential and climbing—means that, each summer, we are likely to experience increasingly sweltering heat waves. Even local news meteorologists are starting to connect strings of record-breaking days to new long-term trends, which are especially problematic in regions where infrastructure and housing have not been built with intensifying heat in mind. And heat waves aren’t just uncomfortable—they’re the leading cause of weather-related fatalities in the United States.

Longer-lasting droughts

Hotter temperatures increase the rate at which water evaporates from the air, leading to more severe and pervasive droughts . Already, climate change has pushed the American West into a severe “megadrought”—the driest 22-year stretch recorded in at least 1,200 years—shrinking drinking water supplies, withering crops , and making forests more susceptible to insect infestations. Drought can also create a positive feedback loop in which drier soil and less plant cover cause even faster evaporation.

More intense wildfires

This drier, hotter climate also creates conditions that fuel more vicious wildfire seasons—with fires that spread faster and burn longer—putting millions of additional lives and homes at risk. The number of large wildfires doubled between 1984 and 2015 in the western United States. And in California alone, the annual area burned by wildfires increased 500 percent between 1972 and 2018.

Evacuation after Hurricane Harvey in Houston, August 28, 2017

David J. Phillip/AP Photo

Stronger storms

Warmer air also holds more moisture, making tropical cyclones wetter, stronger, and more capable of rapidly intensifying. In the latest report from the IPCC , scientists found that daily rainfall during extreme precipitation events would increase by about 7 percent for each degree Celsius of global warming, increasing the dangers of flooding . The frequency of severe Category 4 and 5 hurricanes is also expected to increase. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey, a devastating Category 4 storm, dumped a record 275 trillion pounds of rain and resulted in dozens of deaths in the Houston area.

From the poles to the tropics, climate change is disrupting ecosystems. Even a seemingly slight shift in temperature can cause dramatic changes that ripple through food webs and the environment.

The lake at Jökulsárlón, a glacial lagoon in Iceland, which has grown because of continued glacial melting

Eskinder Debebe/UN Photo

Melting sea ice

The effects of climate change are most apparent in the world’s coldest regions—the poles. The Arctic is heating up twice as fast as anywhere else on earth, leading to the rapid melting of glaciers and polar ice sheets, where a massive amount of water is stored. As sea ice melts, darker ocean waters that absorb more sunlight become exposed, creating a positive feedback loop that speeds up the melting process. In just 15 years, the Arctic could be entirely ice-free in the summer.

Sea level rise

Scientists predict that melting sea ice and glaciers, as well as the fact that warmer water expands in volume, could cause sea levels to rise as much as 6.6 feet by the end of the century, should we fail to curb emissions. The extent (and pace) of this change would devastate low-lying regions, including island nations and densely populated coastal cities like New York City and Mumbai.

But sea level rise at far lower levels is still costly, dangerous, and disruptive. According to the 2022 Sea Level Rise Technical Report from the National Ocean Service, the United States will see a foot of sea level rise by 2050, which will regularly damage infrastructure, like roads, sewage treatment plants, and even power plants . Beaches that families have grown up visiting may be gone by the end of the century. Sea level rise also harms the environment, as encroaching seawater can both erode coastal ecosystems and invade freshwater inland aquifers, which we rely on for agriculture and drinking water. Saltwater incursion is already reshaping life in nations like Bangladesh , where one-quarter of the lands lie less than 7 feet above sea level.

A waterlogged road, caused by rainstorm and upstream flood discharge, in the Shaoguan, Guangdong Province of China, June 21, 2022

Stringer/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

In addition to coastal flooding caused by sea level rise, climate change influences the factors that result in inland and urban flooding: snowmelt and heavy rain. As global warming continues to both exacerbate sea level rise and extreme weather, our nation’s floodplains are expected to grow by approximately 45 percent by 2100. In 2022, deadly flooding in Pakistan—which inundated as much as a third of the country—resulted from torrential rains mixed with melting glaciers and snow.

Warmer ocean waters and marine heat waves

Oceans are taking the brunt of our climate crisis. Covering more than 70 percent of the planet’s surface, oceans absorb 93 percent of all the heat that’s trapped by greenhouse gases and up to 30 percent of all the carbon dioxide emitted from burning fossil fuels.

Temperature-sensitive fish and other marine life are already changing migration patterns toward cooler and deeper waters to survive, sending food webs and important commercial fisheries into disarray. And the frequency of marine heat waves has increased by more than a third . These spikes have led to mass die-offs of plankton and marine mammals.

To make matters worse, the elevated absorption of carbon dioxide by the ocean leads to its gradual acidification , which alters the fundamental chemical makeup of the water and threatens marine life that has evolved to live in a narrow pH band. Animals like corals, oysters, and mussels will likely feel these effects first, as acidification disrupts the calcification process required to build their shells.

Ecosystem stressors

Land-based ecosystems—from old-growth forests to savannahs to tropical rainforests—are faring no better. Climate change is likely to increase outbreaks of pests, invasive species, and pathogen infections in forests. It’s changing the kinds of vegetation that can thrive in a given region and disrupting the life cycles of wildlife, all of which is changing the composition of ecosystems and making them less resilient to stressors. While ecosystems have the capacity to adapt, many are reaching the hard limits of that natural capacity . More repercussions will follow as temperatures rise.

Climate change appears to be triggering a series of cascading ecological changes that we can neither fully predict nor, once they have enough momentum, fully stop. This ecosystem destabilization may be most apparent when it comes to keystone species that have an outsize- role in holding up an ecosystem’s structure.

Coffee plants destroyed by frost due to extremely low temperatures near Caconde in the São Paulo state of Brazil, August 25, 2021

Jonne Roriz/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Less predictable growing seasons

In a warming world, farming crops is more unpredictable—and livestock, which are sensitive to extreme weather, become harder to raise. Climate change shifts precipitation patterns, causing unpredictable floods and longer-lasting droughts. More frequent and severe hurricanes can devastate an entire season’s worth of crops. Meanwhile, the dynamics of pests, pathogens, and invasive species—all of which are costly for farmers to manage—are also expected to become harder to predict. This is bad news, given that most of the world’s farms are small and family-run. One bad drought or flood could decimate an entire season’s crop or herd. For example, in June 2022, a triple-digit heat wave in Kansas wiped out thousands of cows. While the regenerative agriculture movement is empowering rural communities to make their lands more resilient to climate change, unfortunately, not all communities can equitably access the support services that can help them embrace these more sustainable farming tactics.

Reduced soil health

Healthy soil has good moisture and mineral content and is teeming with bugs, bacteria, fungi, and microbes that in turn contribute to healthy crops. But climate change, particularly extreme heat and changes in precipitation, can degrade soil quality. These impacts are exacerbated in areas where industrial, chemical-dependent monoculture farming has made soil and crops less able to withstand environmental changes.

Food shortages

Ultimately, impacts to our agricultural systems pose a direct threat to the global food supply. And food shortages and price hikes driven by climate change will not affect everyone equally: Wealthier people will continue to have more options for accessing food, while potentially billions of others will be plummeted into food insecurity—adding to the billions that already have moderate or severe difficulty getting enough to eat.

The poison dart frog’s survival is currently threatened by habitat loss and climate change.

Chris Mattison/Minden Pictures

It’s about far more than just the polar bears: Half of all animal species in the world’s most biodiverse places, like the Amazon rainforest and the Galapagos Islands, are at risk of extinction from climate change. And climate change is threatening species that are already suffering from the biodiversity crisis, which is driven primarily by changes in land and ocean use (like converting wild places to farmland) and direct exploitation of species (like overfishing and wildlife trade). With species already in rough shape—more than 500,000 species have insufficient habitat for long-term survival—unchecked climate change is poised to push millions over the edge.

Climate change rapidly and fundamentally alters (or in some cases, destroys) the habitat that wildlife have incrementally adapted to over millennia. This is especially harmful for species’ habitats that are currently under threat from other causes. Ice-dependent mammals like walruses and penguins, for example, won’t fare well as ice sheets shrink. Rapid shifts in ocean temperatures stress the algae that nourishes coral reefs, causing reefs to starve—an increasingly common phenomenon known as coral bleaching . Disappearing wetlands in the Midwest’s Prairie Pothole Region means the loss of watering holes and breeding grounds for millions of migratory birds. (Many species are now struggling to survive, as more than 85 percent of wetlands have been lost since 1700). And sea level rise will inundate or erode away many coastal habitats, where hundreds of species of birds, invertebrates, and other marine species live.

Many species’ behaviors—mating, feeding, migration—are closely tied to subtle seasonal shifts, as in temperature , precipitation level, and foliage. In some cases, changes to the environment are happening quicker than species are able to adapt. When the types and quantity of plant life change across a region, or when certain species bloom or hatch earlier or later than in the past, it impacts food and water supplies and reverberates up food chains.

Wildfire smoke–filled air in Multnomah County, Oregon, September 16, 2020

Motoya Nakamura/Multnomah County Communications, CC BY NC-ND 4.0

Ultimately, the way climate change impacts weather, the environment, animals, and agriculture affects humanity as well. But there’s more. Around the world, our ways of life—from how we get our food to the industries around which our economies are based—have all developed in the context of relatively stable climates. As global warming shakes this foundation, it promises to alter the very fabric of society. At worst, this could lead to widespread famine, disease, war, displacement , injury, and death. For many around the world, this grim forecast is already their reality. In this way, climate change poses an existential threat to all human life.

Human health

Climate change worsens air quality . It increases exposure to hazardous wildfire smoke and ozone smog triggered by warmer conditions, both of which harm our health, particularly for those with pre-existing illnesses like asthma or heart disease.

Insect-borne diseases like malaria and Zika become more prevalent in a warming world as their carriers are able to exist in more regions or thrive for longer seasons. In the past 30 years, the incidence of Lyme disease from ticks has nearly doubled in the United States, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Thousands of people face injury, illness , and death every year from more frequent or more intense extreme weather events. At a 2-degree Celsius rise in global average temperature, an estimated one billion people will face heat stress risk. In the summer of 2022 alone, thousands died in record-shattering heat waves across Europe. Weeks later, dozens were killed by record-breaking urban flooding in the United States and South Korea—and more than 1,500 people perished in the flooding in Pakistan , where resulting stagnant water and unsanitary conditions threaten even more.

The effects of climate change—and the looming threat of what’s yet to come—take a significant toll on mental health too. One 2021 study on climate anxiety, published in the journal Nature , surveyed 10,000 young people from 10 different countries. Forty-five percent of respondents said that their feelings about climate change, varying from anxiety to powerlessness to anger, impacted their daily lives.

A patient with dengue fever, a mosquito-borne disease, in Karachi, Pakistan, where the spread of diseases worsened due to flooding, September 2022

Fareed Khan/AP Photo

Worsening inequity

The climate crisis exacerbates existing inequities. Though wealthy nations, such as the United States, have emitted the lion’s share of historical greenhouse gas emissions, it’s developing countries that may lack the resources to adapt and will now bear the brunt of the climate crisis. In some cases, low-lying island nations—like many in the Pacific —may cease to exist before developed economies make meaningful reductions to their carbon emissions.

Even within wealthier nations, disparities will continue to grow between those rich enough to shield themselves from the realities of climate change and those who cannot. Those with ample resources will not be displaced from their homes by wars over food or water—at least not right away. They will have homes with cool air during heat waves and be able to easily evacuate when a hurricane is headed their way. They will be able to buy increasingly expensive food and access treatment for respiratory illness caused by wildfire smoke. Billions of others can’t—and are paying the highest price for climate pollution they did not produce.

Hurricane Katrina, for example, displaced more than one million people around the Gulf Coast. But in New Orleans , where redlining practices promoted racial and economic segregation, the city’s more affluent areas tended to be located on higher ground—and those residents were able to return and rebuild much faster than others.

Displacement

Climate change will drive displacement due to impacts like food and water scarcities, sea level rise, and economic instability. It’s already happening. The United Nations Global Compact on Refugees recognizes that “climate, environmental degradation and disasters increasingly interact with the drivers of refugee movements.” Again, communities with the fewest resources—including those facing political instability and poverty—will feel the effects first and most devastatingly.

A flood-damaged home in Queens, New York, December 1, 2021

K.C. Wilsey/FEMA

Economic impacts

According to the 2018 National Climate Assessment, unless action is taken, climate change will cost the U.S. economy as much as $500 billion per year by the end of the century. And that doesn’t even include its enormous impacts on human health . Entire local industries—from commercial fishing to tourism to husbandry—are at risk of collapsing, along with the economic support they provide.

Recovering from the destruction wrought by extreme weather like hurricanes, flash floods, and wildfires is also getting more expensive every year. In 2021, the price tag of weather disasters in the United States totaled $145 billion —the third-costliest year on record, including a number of billion-dollar weather events.

The first wave of impacts can already be felt in our communities and seen on the nightly news. The World Health Organization says that in the near future, between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause an additional 250,000 deaths per year from things like malnutrition, insect-borne diseases, and heat stress. And the World Bank estimates that climate change could displace more than 140 million people within their home countries in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America by 2050.

But the degree to which the climate crisis upends our lives depends on whether global leaders decide to chart a different course. If we fail to curb greenhouse gas emissions, scientists predict a catastrophic 4.3 degrees Celsius , (or around 8 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming by the end of the century. What would a world that warm look like? Wars over water. Crowded hospitals to contend with spreading disease. Collapsed fisheries. Dead coral reefs. Even more lethal heat waves. These are just some of the impacts predicted by climate scientists .

Solar panel installation at a floating photovoltaic plant on a lake in Haltern am See, Germany, April 2022

Martin Meissner/AP Photo

Climate mitigation, or our ability to reverse climate change and undo its widespread effects, hinges on the successful enactment of policies that yield deep cuts to carbon pollution, end our dependence on dangerous fossil fuels and the deadly air pollution they generate, and prioritize the people and ecosystems on the frontlines. And these actions must be taken quickly in order to ensure a healthier present day and future. In one of its latest reports, the IPCC presented its most optimistic emissions scenario, in which the world only briefly surpasses 1.5 degrees of warming but sequestration measures cause it to dip back below by 2100. Climate adaptation , a term that refers to coping with climate impacts, is no longer optional ; it’s necessary, particularly for the world’s most vulnerable populations.

By following the urgent warnings of the IPCC and limiting warming, we may be able to avoid passing some of the critical thresholds that, once crossed, can lead to potentially irreversible, catastrophic impacts for the planet, including more warming. These thresholds are known as climate tipping points and refer to when a natural system "tips" into an entirely different state. One example would be Arctic permafrost, which stores carbon like a freezer: As the permafrost melts from warming temperatures, it releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Importantly, climate action is not a binary pass-fail test. Every fraction of a degree of warming that we prevent will reduce human suffering and death, and keep more of the planet’s natural systems intact. The good news is that a wide range of solutions exist to sharply reduce emissions, slow the pace of warming, and protect communities on the frontlines of climate impacts. Climate leaders the world over—those on major political stages as well as grassroots community activists—are offering up alternative models to systems that prioritize polluters over people. Many of these solutions are rooted in ancestral and Indigenous understandings of the natural world and have existed for millennia. Some solutions require major investments into clean, renewable energy and sustainable technologies. To be successful, climate solutions must also address intersecting crises—like poverty, racism, and gender inequality —that compound and drive the causes and impacts of the climate crisis. A combination of human ingenuity and immense political will can help us get there.

This NRDC.org story is available for online republication by news media outlets or nonprofits under these conditions: The writer(s) must be credited with a byline; you must note prominently that the story was originally published by NRDC.org and link to the original; the story cannot be edited (beyond simple things such as grammar); you can’t resell the story in any form or grant republishing rights to other outlets; you can’t republish our material wholesale or automatically—you need to select stories individually; you can’t republish the photos or graphics on our site without specific permission; you should drop us a note to let us know when you’ve used one of our stories.

We need climate action to be a top priority in Washington.

Tell President Biden and Congress to slash climate pollution and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. 

Urge President Biden and Congress to make equitable climate action a top priority in 2024

Related stories.

COP27: The Issues, the Tensions, and the Urgent Need for Unity on Climate

Mutual Aid and Disaster Justice: “We Keep Us Safe”

Climate Change at the Doctor’s Office

When you sign up, you’ll become a member of NRDC’s Activist Network. We will keep you informed with the latest alerts and progress reports.

Yale Environment Review (YER) is a student-run review that provides weekly updates on environmental research findings.

You’re concerned about climate change: do your choices make an impact.

Why have individuals been slow to reduce their carbon footprint even when they have the financial resources and willingness to do so?Many of our assumptions around environmental responsibility fallshort of making immediate and meaningful change. Still, new research guides us with a framework to decide on individual, corporate, and governmental climate action.

By Enar Leferink • May 17, 2024

Akenji, Lewis, Magnus Bengtsson, Viivi Toivio, Michael Lettenmeier, Tina Fawcett, Yael Parag, Yamina Saheb, et al.  1.5–Degree Lifestyles: Towards A Fair Consumption Space for All , 2022.

Heinonen, Jukka, Sarah Olson, Michal Czepkiewicz, Áróra Árnadóttir, and Juudit Ottelin. “Too Much Consumption or Too High Emissions Intensities? Explaining the High Consumption-Based Carbon Footprints in the Nordic Countries.”  Environmental Research Communications  4, no. 12 (December 2022): 125007. https://doi.org/10.1088/2515-7620/aca871 .

Leferink, Enar Kornelius, Jukka Heinonen, Sanna Ala-Mantila, and Áróra Árnadóttir. “Climate Concern Elasticity of Carbon Footprint.”  Environmental Research Communications  5, no. 7 (July 2023): 075003. https://doi.org/10.1088/2515-7620/acda80 .

The  climate movement discourse has shifted  from focusing almost exclusively on individual action to prioritizing systemic remedies at the societal, corporate, and policy levels. Organizations originally placed most of the burden on individuals to reduce pollution. The climate movement now primarily assigns responsibility for climate change to corporations and governments. This shift towards corporate responsibility, for instance, is evident in our discourse around recycling. While organizations once primarily made properly sorting recycling an individual obligation, it is now clear that recycling has minimal impacts on emission reduction, no matter how precise the sorting effort is. Furthermore, even when community members sort their trash, only a fraction is recycled. This trash crisis is a systemic failure, not an individual one. Such shortcomings have increased individual’s frustration with slow progress toward sustainability goals. Even though the  climate movement has started noting  that individual power is only secondary to the economic system, which is the real problem, new research shows that, until the government makes systemic changes, short-term individual action is still vital during the transition phase.

To keep global warming below the 2 °C limit set in the  Paris Agreement , we must considerably reduce the average carbon footprint per individual  by 2030 . However, the obligation to reduce emissions lies primarily among more affluent countries with high per-capita emissions.  Scholars estimate  that if the wealthiest 10% of individuals reduced their carbon footprint by 90%, the poorest half could increase their carbon footprint two or three-fold without exceeding the targets set in the Paris Agreement. Two recent papers published in  Environmental Research Communications  investigate how to reduce the carbon footprint of the wealthiest. The authors in both papers focus on the Nordic countries, which are among the most affluent countries and have a range of high per-capita emissions because they emit multiple times the global average of greenhouse gases. Researchers of both papers set out to identify lifestyle elements that people can alter to reduce average footprints in Nordic countries immediately. The  first paper  is a collaboration of Nordic and Polish researchers led by Jukka Heinonen. This research analyzes the effects of different consumption choices on footprints. They identify that people must institute drastic lifestyle changes simultaneously to reach the Paris Agreement’s goal. 

With the current state of industry and governments, drastic and immediate reductions in consumption are needed from Nordic people to reach a footprint low enough for the Paris Agreement.  Heinonen and his team  show that lifestyles must change in multiple areas simultaneously. For example, it is not enough for someone to sell their car and become vegan. A person would also need to stop flying to reduce their carbon footprint below the Paris Agreement’s limit in carbon footprint. Such substantive requirements to meet reduction goals illustrate that we must fundamentally change our lifestyles to follow the Paris Agreement’s accords. Therefore, if individuals want to keep their core lifestyle characteristics the same, corporations must follow suit and make these lifestyles more sustainable.

Building upon these results, the researchers of the  second paper  investigate whether people who care about the environment pollute less.  The authors found  a noticeable difference in how caring for the environment relates to pollution in different types of consumption. From these findings, we can learn which policy changes are more or less critical in the short term.

The  second paper  suggests that the methodology used by researchers in the past has mistakenly led to the conclusion that income and carbon footprint are substantially related. Intuitively, if you have more income, you generally consume more. This intuition has inspired many scientists to analyze income and carbon footprint relationships. However, the traditional method to calculate this relationship assumes the average emission per dollar spent in a category. Imagine two passengers on the same flight from New York to LA. One paid $200 for their ticket and the other $400. Logically, they have the same carbon footprint from the flight, but the latter would cause twice the emissions according to the old methodology. When you spend money on a good, it is hard to imagine all the steps that went into making it—the materials extracted and altered, energy use and labor, and the cost of transportation. A thoughtful analysis must incorporate each step’s effect without relying too generously on the assumption that expenditure and emissions are inherently related.

Improving upon these traditional methods, the researchers used unique survey data on pro-climate attitudes . They found that people with higher incomes only sometimes pollute much more, and those who care more about the environment have relatively low emissions.  The data shows  that those with 10% higher incomes pollute around 2.2% more, and those with 10% higher concern for climate change pollute about 2.1% less. What’s more, there is a considerable difference between types of consumption. In particular, people with pro-climate attitudes are likely to eat less meat, use less heating, and use more public transportation. Counterintuitively, however, they fly much more. People who are 10% more concerned fly around 27.1% more. But most notably, although those with higher incomes consume more goods and services, people consume the same amount of goods and services no matter how much they care about climate change. Manufacturers may need to drive reduced emissions since those more concerned do not compromise buying goods and services. The results suggest that in other spheres, such as food, heating, and transportation, changes could be driven by personal motivation. Even with the potential for these actions to reduce carbon emissions,  people rarely make these low-carbon choices. Further research must address the knowledge gap between high-reward climate actions and people’s resistance to adopting them. 

These studies show that we must change our lifestyles as much as possible in the short term while working on long-term systemic changes. Better-off individuals must contribute considerably to reducing climate change by changing their behavior. But they also highlight the areas where motivation and income have little (or the opposite) effect, which are the areas policymakers and corporations should focus on. The need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is dire and time-constrained, and the solution requires both behavioral and systemic change. Many of us are idealists, believing that we may save humanity if we “just” change the global economic system. However, until we reach this elusive goal, we must change at least three fronts: policy, business, and lifestyle choices. Governments must enact ambitious, strict green policies that force corporations to alter their operations. And since governmental action is slow, corporations also must take on real corporate responsibility to get a head start. And while those changes are happening, those who are privileged and able must change their lifestyles. To increase motivation for significant change, we must design and implement bottom-up (grassroots) and top-down (governmental regulation) methods to activate lifestyle changes. This research, which decouples the assumption that income (or climate concern) and climate emissions are always correlated, encourages all members of society to consider shifting their behavior—to fly less often, reduce car travel, and eat less meat.

Ultimately, this research calls for individual action and for governments and corporations to be accountable for making measuring changes.  Studies  have made it apparent that human actions have severely increased pollution. It is fair for the humans who have contributed most to pollution to shift their behavior to reduce it. As we await systemic change,  the science  is crystal clear: lifestyle change has a climate impact, so we have a moral responsibility to make decisions that reflect this.

You might like these articles that share the same topics

Distributed energy resources (DERs) are important pathways in the clean energy transition. However, valuing these pathways is challenging. New research examines what value these technologies bring to the grid and how utilities should structure payments for them in the distributed energy system of tomorrow.          

How do trees die from drought? Plant ecophysiologists are studying air bubbles in tree water columns to understand hydraulic failure: in other words, when tree water columns stop working. Their goal is to improve forecasts for tree responses in a changing climate future. Here is a brief summary of how hydraulic failure works and an introduction to three recent papers on the topic.

Countries and companies have set ambitious renewable energy targets, with demand for critical minerals in the energy sector projected to increase six-fold by 2040. To avoid over-dependency on a handful of supplier countries and to achieve ambitious climate targets, there is a need for individual countries to revisit their mining policies and for global organizations to create binding international agreements to manage critical minerals.

If environmental injustice is the issue, then environmental justice must be the goal—and it cannot be achieved without positioning Black, Indigenous, and People of Color as principal authorities on environmental impacts. Through legal frameworks like climate dominance and social science methods like feminist critical participatory action research (CPAR), communities most impacted by systemic environmental injustices are given credence and power as experts to subvert afterlives of colonialism and advocate for environmental justice.

Why young Americans are pushing for climate change to be taught in schools

Laura Barrón-López Laura Barrón-López

Andrew Corkery Andrew Corkery

Leave your feedback

• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-young-americans-are-pushing-for-climate-change-to-be-taught-in-schools

As the planet warms and sea levels rise, eighty-five percent of Generation Z is concerned about climate change, according to a January Marist poll. In response, states like California, Connecticut and New Jersey are teaching kids about climate change in the classroom. Lauren Madden, a professor of elementary science education at the College of New Jersey, joins Laura Barrón-López to discuss.

Read the Full Transcript

Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

Laura Barron-Lopez:

Last month was the warmest April on record and the 11th straight month of record highs around the world. Today, nearly a quarter of people globally live in drought conditions.

And forecasters anticipate this year's Atlantic hurricane season will be the most active on record. All signs that climate change is an accelerating threat to the planet, and young Americans are worried about it.

In fact, 85 percent of generation Z is very or somewhat concerned about climate change, according to a Marist poll from earlier this year. In response, states like California, Connecticut, and New Jersey are now teaching kids about climate change in the classroom. One of the educators at the forefront of this is Lauren Madden, professor of elementary science education at the College of New Jersey. How do you go about incorporating climate change into a classroom curriculum?

Lauren Madden, The College of New Jersey: So in New Jersey, it's a little bit simpler than it is in some other places because we have standards that are required to be taught at all grade levels in all subject areas. So they're really developmentally appropriate and they're good tools for teachers to use to think about ways that they can connect to climate in things they're already doing in the classroom.

Could you give examples of how lessons about climate change may change from, say, first grade to 9th or 10th grade.

Lauren Madden:

Yes, that's really important to be developmentally appropriate, especially when we're talking about working with young children. So in the early years, it's really about understanding what lives around you, what's supposed to be here when things happen seasonally. And some of the differences between weather and climate.

It's not a tough concept for a young child to understand that weather is day to day changes, while climate happens over long periods of time. Whereas by the time we're in 9th or 10th grade, especially if we've built this foundation of weather and climate, and how our weather and climate are changing over time, then we can start to unpack some of the more nuanced mathematical relationships.

Why do you think it's a necessary subject to teach students?

So I think it's really important that we don't lie to children, especially young children. Our children are seeing the effects of climate change in unprecedented ways. They're experiencing changes in their day to day lives that none of us have seen before.

So, for example, last spring here in New Jersey and across the east coast, we experienced dust in the air from Canadian wildfires. And that was something that affected children, all children, their ability to play outside, their ability to go about their day to day life. And we need to be clear with kids and let them know that something is happening. And this isn't just a bunch of surprise things that are going on and scientists know what's going on.

But the other more important piece is that our economy is going to change what the future looks like and what the industries are that will be employing our children in the future will be around climate.

We also spoke with a high school art teacher in New Jersey about the impact of working climate change into her art lessons.

Carolyn McGrath, Hopewell Valley Center High School:

I feel that it's very important for students to know about the realities of the circumstances that they're living through. And as educators, I think we also have an obligation to teach students and guide students through the difficulties of not only understanding this, but also emotionally processing the severity of the situation.

How can teachers like that one, Carolyn McGrath, help students navigate anxiety and stress about climate change?

First of all, we need to be honest with them and we need to be truthful, and we need to let them know that the scientists have really good predictions out there and we have a good sense of what kinds of things are going to be happening into the future.

But I think to ease anxiety, aside from being honest and making sure that our children are well informed, we need to tell them about the types of solutions that exist already and foster their creativity and imagination to help them consider what kinds of solutions can be built in the future. And I think the best way to ease anxiety is to foster positive actions and also thoughts about large scale solutions that they can contribute to as children and in the future.

We've seen pushback in primarily conservative states when it comes to teachings about the history of racism or LGBTQ studies. Does teaching climate change receive similar pushback from some parents, and are those parents seeking to restrict what their kids may be able to learn?

So I understand in many parts of the country there is pushback about teaching about climate change from politicians as well as from some parents. From my experience, I did a research study not too long ago where we surveyed parents in New Jersey, and what they really wanted was tools for helping mitigate student climate anxiety, as well as information that they can make sure they were having a consistent conversation with their children at home and supporting what teachers were doing. But across the country, I don't know that story is necessarily the same.

I mean, in states like Florida, they're seeing rising sea levels and record temperatures. But Governor Ron DeSantis recently signed a bill that deletes most mentions of climate change in state law.

What do you say to educators in states like Florida about how to teach climate change when they may be dealing with elected leaders who reject that it exists?

So I've certainly heard from science educators at national conferences who've been working with teachers in Florida who are personally choosing to learn more about how to integrate climate change into their classrooms. And there's a lot of fear. I was at a conference session where were asked not to take pictures of anything for fear of disclosing who the teachers were. I think teachers are our nation's greatest asset, and they are naturally innovators and creative people.

So I know many teachers in Florida are doing things like talking about climate solutions without calling them climate solutions, talking about green innovation and things like that. But we owe it to children, especially children who are facing sea level rise, droughts, extreme heat, to know what it is that's happening around them and also to know what some of the things are they can do to mitigate those changes.

Professor Lauren Madden, thank you so much for your time.

Listen to this Segment

Watch the Full Episode

Laura Barrón-López is the White House Correspondent for the PBS NewsHour, where she covers the Biden administration for the nightly news broadcast. She is also a CNN political analyst.

Andrew Corkery is a national affairs producer at PBS News Weekend.

Support Provided By: Learn more

More Ways to Watch

• PBS iPhone App
• PBS iPad App

Educate your inbox

Subscribe to Here’s the Deal, our politics newsletter for analysis you won’t find anywhere else.

Thank you. Please check your inbox to confirm.

• CBSE Class 10th
• CBSE Class 12th
• UP Board 10th
• UP Board 12th
• Bihar Board 10th
• Bihar Board 12th
• Top Schools in India
• Top Schools in Delhi
• Top Schools in Mumbai
• Top Schools in Chennai
• Top Schools in Hyderabad
• Top Schools in Kolkata
• Top Schools in Pune
• Top Schools in Bangalore

Products & Resources

• JEE Main Knockout April
• Free Sample Papers
• Free Ebooks
• NCERT Notes
• NCERT Syllabus
• NCERT Books
• RD Sharma Solutions
• Navodaya Vidyalaya Admission 2024-25
• NCERT Solutions
• NCERT Solutions for Class 12
• NCERT Solutions for Class 11
• NCERT solutions for Class 10
• NCERT solutions for Class 9
• NCERT solutions for Class 8
• NCERT Solutions for Class 7
• JEE Main 2024
• MHT CET 2024
• JEE Advanced 2024
• BITSAT 2024
• View All Engineering Exams
• Colleges Accepting B.Tech Applications
• Top Engineering Colleges in India
• Engineering Colleges in India
• Engineering Colleges in Tamil Nadu
• Engineering Colleges Accepting JEE Main
• Top IITs in India
• Top NITs in India
• Top IIITs in India
• JEE Main College Predictor
• JEE Main Rank Predictor
• MHT CET College Predictor
• AP EAMCET College Predictor
• GATE College Predictor
• KCET College Predictor
• JEE Advanced College Predictor
• View All College Predictors
• JEE Main Question Paper
• JEE Main Cutoff
• JEE Main Advanced Admit Card
• JEE Advanced Admit Card 2024
• Download E-Books and Sample Papers
• Compare Colleges
• B.Tech College Applications
• KCET Result
• MAH MBA CET Exam
• View All Management Exams

Colleges & Courses

• MBA College Admissions
• MBA Colleges in India
• Top IIMs Colleges in India
• Top Online MBA Colleges in India
• MBA Colleges Accepting XAT Score
• BBA Colleges in India
• XAT College Predictor 2024
• SNAP College Predictor
• NMAT College Predictor
• MAT College Predictor 2024
• CMAT College Predictor 2024
• CAT Percentile Predictor 2023
• CAT 2023 College Predictor
• CMAT 2024 Admit Card
• TS ICET 2024 Hall Ticket
• CMAT Result 2024
• MAH MBA CET Cutoff 2024
• Download Helpful Ebooks
• List of Popular Branches
• QnA - Get answers to your doubts
• IIM Fees Structure
• AIIMS Nursing
• Top Medical Colleges in India
• Top Medical Colleges in India accepting NEET Score
• Medical Colleges accepting NEET
• List of Medical Colleges in India
• List of AIIMS Colleges In India
• Medical Colleges in Maharashtra
• Medical Colleges in India Accepting NEET PG
• NEET College Predictor
• NEET PG College Predictor
• NEET MDS College Predictor
• NEET Rank Predictor
• DNB PDCET College Predictor
• NEET Admit Card 2024
• NEET PG Application Form 2024
• NEET Cut off
• NEET Online Preparation
• Download Helpful E-books
• Colleges Accepting Admissions
• Top Law Colleges in India
• Law College Accepting CLAT Score
• List of Law Colleges in India
• Top Law Colleges in Delhi
• Top NLUs Colleges in India
• Top Law Colleges in Chandigarh
• Top Law Collages in Lucknow

Predictors & E-Books

• CLAT College Predictor
• MHCET Law ( 5 Year L.L.B) College Predictor
• AILET College Predictor
• Sample Papers
• Compare Law Collages
• Careers360 Youtube Channel
• CLAT Syllabus 2025
• CLAT Previous Year Question Paper
• NID DAT Exam
• Pearl Academy Exam

Predictors & Articles

• NIFT College Predictor
• UCEED College Predictor
• NID DAT College Predictor
• NID DAT Syllabus 2025
• NID DAT 2025
• Design Colleges in India
• Top NIFT Colleges in India
• Fashion Design Colleges in India
• Top Interior Design Colleges in India
• Top Graphic Designing Colleges in India
• Fashion Design Colleges in Delhi
• Fashion Design Colleges in Mumbai
• Top Interior Design Colleges in Bangalore
• NIFT Result 2024
• NIFT Fees Structure
• NIFT Syllabus 2025
• Free Design E-books
• List of Branches
• Careers360 Youtube channel
• IPU CET BJMC
• JMI Mass Communication Entrance Exam
• IIMC Entrance Exam
• Media & Journalism colleges in Delhi
• Media & Journalism colleges in Bangalore
• Media & Journalism colleges in Mumbai
• List of Media & Journalism Colleges in India
• CA Intermediate
• CA Foundation
• CS Executive
• CS Professional
• Difference between CA and CS
• Difference between CA and CMA
• CA Full form
• CMA Full form
• CS Full form
• CA Salary In India

Top Courses & Careers

• Bachelor of Commerce (B.Com)
• Master of Commerce (M.Com)
• Company Secretary
• Cost Accountant
• Charted Accountant
• Credit Manager
• Financial Advisor
• Top Commerce Colleges in India
• Top Government Commerce Colleges in India
• Top Private Commerce Colleges in India
• Top M.Com Colleges in Mumbai
• Top B.Com Colleges in India
• IT Colleges in Tamil Nadu
• IT Colleges in Uttar Pradesh
• MCA Colleges in India
• BCA Colleges in India

Quick Links

• Information Technology Courses
• Programming Courses
• Web Development Courses
• Data Analytics Courses
• Big Data Analytics Courses
• RUHS Pharmacy Admission Test
• Top Pharmacy Colleges in India
• Pharmacy Colleges in Pune
• Pharmacy Colleges in Mumbai
• Colleges Accepting GPAT Score
• Pharmacy Colleges in Lucknow
• List of Pharmacy Colleges in Nagpur
• GPAT Result
• GPAT 2024 Admit Card
• GPAT Question Papers
• NCHMCT JEE 2024
• Mah BHMCT CET
• Top Hotel Management Colleges in Delhi
• Top Hotel Management Colleges in Hyderabad
• Top Hotel Management Colleges in Mumbai
• Top Hotel Management Colleges in Tamil Nadu
• Top Hotel Management Colleges in Maharashtra
• B.Sc Hotel Management
• Hotel Management
• Diploma in Hotel Management and Catering Technology

Diploma Colleges

• Top Diploma Colleges in Maharashtra
• UPSC IAS 2024
• SSC CGL 2024
• IBPS RRB 2024
• Previous Year Sample Papers
• Free Competition E-books
• Sarkari Result
• QnA- Get your doubts answered
• UPSC Previous Year Sample Papers
• CTET Previous Year Sample Papers
• SBI Clerk Previous Year Sample Papers
• NDA Previous Year Sample Papers

Upcoming Events

• NDA Application Form 2024
• UPSC IAS Application Form 2024
• CDS Application Form 2024
• CTET Admit card 2024
• HP TET Result 2023
• SSC GD Constable Admit Card 2024
• UPTET Notification 2024
• SBI Clerk Result 2024

Other Exams

• SSC CHSL 2024
• UP PCS 2024
• UGC NET 2024
• RRB NTPC 2024
• IBPS PO 2024
• IBPS Clerk 2024
• IBPS SO 2024
• Top University in USA
• Top University in Canada
• Top University in Ireland
• Top Universities in UK
• Top Universities in Australia
• Best MBA Colleges in Abroad
• Business Management Studies Colleges

Top Countries

• Study in USA
• Study in UK
• Study in Canada
• Study in Australia
• Study in Ireland
• Study in Germany
• Study in China
• Study in Europe

Student Visas

• Student Visa Canada
• Student Visa UK
• Student Visa USA
• Student Visa Australia
• Student Visa Germany
• Student Visa New Zealand
• Student Visa Ireland
• CUET PG 2024
• IGNOU B.Ed Admission 2024
• DU Admission 2024
• UP B.Ed JEE 2024
• LPU NEST 2024
• IIT JAM 2024
• IGNOU Online Admission 2024
• Universities in India
• Top Universities in India 2024
• Top Colleges in India
• Top Universities in Uttar Pradesh 2024
• Top Universities in Bihar
• Top Universities in Madhya Pradesh 2024
• Top Universities in Tamil Nadu 2024
• Central Universities in India
• CUET Exam City Intimation Slip 2024
• IGNOU Date Sheet
• CUET Mock Test 2024
• CUET Admit card 2024
• CUET PG Syllabus 2024
• CUET Participating Universities 2024
• CUET Previous Year Question Paper
• CUET Syllabus 2024 for Science Students
• E-Books and Sample Papers
• CUET Exam Pattern 2024
• CUET Exam Date 2024
• CUET Cut Off 2024
• CUET Exam Analysis 2024
• IGNOU Exam Form 2024
• CUET 2024 Exam Live
• CUET Answer Key 2024

Engineering Preparation

• Knockout JEE Main 2024
• Test Series JEE Main 2024
• JEE Main 2024 Rank Booster

Medical Preparation

• Knockout NEET 2024
• Test Series NEET 2024
• Rank Booster NEET 2024

Online Courses

• JEE Main One Month Course
• NEET One Month Course
• IBSAT Free Mock Tests
• IIT JEE Foundation Course
• Knockout BITSAT 2024
• Career Guidance Tool

Top Streams

• IT & Software Certification Courses
• Engineering and Architecture Certification Courses
• Programming And Development Certification Courses
• Business and Management Certification Courses
• Marketing Certification Courses
• Health and Fitness Certification Courses
• Design Certification Courses

Specializations

• Digital Marketing Certification Courses
• Cyber Security Certification Courses
• Artificial Intelligence Certification Courses
• Business Analytics Certification Courses
• Data Science Certification Courses
• Cloud Computing Certification Courses
• Machine Learning Certification Courses
• View All Certification Courses
• UG Degree Courses
• PG Degree Courses
• Short Term Courses
• Free Courses
• Online Degrees and Diplomas
• Compare Courses

Top Providers

• Coursera Courses
• Udemy Courses
• Edx Courses
• Swayam Courses
• upGrad Courses
• Simplilearn Courses
• Great Learning Courses

Essay on Climate Change

Climate Change Essay - The globe is growing increasingly sensitive to climate change. It is currently a serious worldwide concern. The term "Climate Change" describes changes to the earth's climate. It explains the atmospheric changes that have occurred across time, spanning from decades to millions of years. Here are some sample essays on climate change.

100 Words Essay on Climate Change

200 words essay on climate change, 500 words essay on climate change.

The climatic conditions on Earth are changing due to climate change. Several internal and external variables, such as solar radiation, variations in the Earth's orbit, volcanic eruptions, plate tectonics, etc., are to blame for this.

There are strategies for climate change reduction. If not implemented, the weather might get worse, there might be water scarcity, there could be lower agricultural output, and it might affect people's ability to make a living. In order to breathe clean air and drink pure water, you must concentrate on limiting human activity. These are the simple measures that may be taken to safeguard the environment and its resources.

The climate of the Earth has changed significantly over time. While some of these changes were brought on by natural events like volcanic eruptions, floods, forest fires, etc., many of the changes were brought on by human activity. The burning of fossil fuels, domesticating livestock, and other human activities produce a significant quantity of greenhouse gases. This results in an increase of greenhouse effect and global warming which are the major causes for climate change.

Reasons of Climate Change

Some of the reasons of climate change are:

Deforestation

Excessive use of fossil fuels

Water and soil pollution

Plastic and other non biodegradable waste

Wildlife and nature extinction

Consequences of Climate Change

All kinds of life on earth will be affected by climate change if it continues to change at the same pace. The earth's temperature will increase, the monsoon patterns will shift, the sea level will rise, and there will be more frequent storms, volcano eruptions, and other natural calamities. The earth's biological and ecological equilibrium will be disturbed. Humans won't be able to access clean water or air to breathe when the environment becomes contaminated. The end of life on this earth is imminent. To reduce the issue of climate change, we need to bring social awareness along with strict measures to protect and preserve the natural environment.

A shift in the world's climatic pattern is referred to as climate change. Over the centuries, the climate pattern of our planet has undergone modifications. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has significantly grown.

When Did Climate Change Begin

It is possible to see signs of climate change as early as the beginning of the industrial revolution. The pace at which the manufacturers produced things on a large scale required a significant amount of raw materials. Since the raw materials being transformed into finished products now have such huge potential for profit, these business models have spread quickly over the world. Hazardous substances and chemicals build up in the environment as a result of company emissions and waste disposal.

Although climate change is a natural occurrence, it is evident that human activity is turning into the primary cause of the current climate change situation. The major cause is the growing population. Natural resources are utilised more and more as a result of the population's fast growth placing a heavy burden on the available resources. Over time, as more and more products and services are created, pollution will eventually increase.

Causes of Climate Change

There are a number of factors that have contributed towards weather change in the past and continue to do so. Let us look at a few:

Solar Radiation |The climate of earth is determined by how quickly the sun's energy is absorbed and distributed throughout space. This energy is transmitted throughout the world by the winds, ocean currents etc which affects the climatic conditions of the world. Changes in solar intensity have an effect on the world's climate.

Deforestation | The atmosphere's carbon dioxide is stored by trees. As a result of their destruction, carbon dioxide builds up more quickly since there are no trees to absorb it. Additionally, trees release the carbon they stored when we burn them.

Agriculture | Many kinds of greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere by growing crops and raising livestock. Animals, for instance, create methane, a greenhouse gas that is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The nitrous oxide used in fertilisers is roughly 300 times more strong than carbon dioxide.

How to Prevent Climate Change

We need to look out for drastic steps to stop climate change since it is affecting the resources and life on our planet. We can stop climate change if the right solutions are put in place. Here are some strategies for reducing climate change:

Raising public awareness of climate change

Prohibiting tree-cutting and deforestation.

Ensure the surroundings are clean.

Refrain from using chemical fertilisers.

Water and other natural resource waste should be reduced.

Protect the animals and plants.

Purchase energy-efficient goods and equipment.

Increase the number of trees in the neighbourhood and its surroundings.

Follow the law and safeguard the environment's resources.

Reduce the amount of energy you use.

During the last few decades especially, climate change has grown to be of concern. Global concern has been raised over changes in the Earth's climatic pattern. The causes of climate change are numerous, as well as the effects of it and it is our responsibility as inhabitants of this planet to look after its well being and leave it in a better condition for future generations.

Applications for Admissions are open.

Aakash iACST Scholarship Test 2024

Get up to 90% scholarship on NEET, JEE & Foundation courses

ALLEN Digital Scholarship Admission Test (ADSAT)

Register FREE for ALLEN Digital Scholarship Admission Test (ADSAT)

JEE Main Important Physics formulas

As per latest 2024 syllabus. Physics formulas, equations, & laws of class 11 & 12th chapters

PW JEE Coaching

Enrol in PW Vidyapeeth center for JEE coaching

PW NEET Coaching

Enrol in PW Vidyapeeth center for NEET coaching

JEE Main Important Chemistry formulas

As per latest 2024 syllabus. Chemistry formulas, equations, & laws of class 11 & 12th chapters

Download Careers360 App's

Regular exam updates, QnA, Predictors, College Applications & E-books now on your Mobile

Certifications

We Appeared in

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Lesson of the Day

Explore 7 Climate Change Solutions

In this lesson, students will use a jigsaw activity to learn about some of the most effective strategies and technologies that can help head off the worst effects of global warming.

By Natalie Proulx

Lesson Overview

Earlier this summer, a report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , a body of scientists convened by the United Nations, found that some devastating impacts of global warming were unavoidable. But there is still a short window to stop things from getting even worse.

This report will be central at COP26 , the international climate summit where about 20,000 heads of state, diplomats and activists are meeting in person this week to set new targets for cutting emissions from coal, oil and gas that are heating the planet.

In this lesson, you will learn about seven ways we can slow down climate change and head off some of its most catastrophic consequences while we still have time. Using a jigsaw activity , you’ll become an expert in one of these strategies or technologies and share what you learn with your classmates. Then, you will develop your own climate plan and consider ways you can make a difference based on your new knowledge.

What do you know about the ways the world can slow climate change? Start by making a list of strategies, technologies or policies that could help solve the climate crisis.

Which of your ideas do you think could have the biggest impact on climate change? Circle what you think might be the top three.

Now, test your knowledge by taking this 2017 interactive quiz:

How Much Do You Know About Solving Global Warming?

A new book presents 100 potential solutions. Can you figure out which ones are top ranked?

After you’ve finished, reflect on your own in writing or in discussion with a partner:

What solutions to climate change did you learn about that you didn’t know before?

Were you surprised by any of the answers in the quiz? If so, which ones and why?

What questions do you still have about solving climate change?

Jigsaw Activity

As you learned in the warm-up, there are many possible ways to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. Below we’ve rounded up seven of the most effective solutions, many of which you may have been introduced to in the quiz above.

In this jigsaw activity, you’ll become an expert in one of the climate solutions listed below and then present what you learned to your classmates. Teachers may assign a student or small group to each topic, or allow them to choose. Students, read at least one of the linked articles on your topic; you can also use that article as a jumping-off point for more research.

Climate Change Solutions

Renewable energy: Scientists agree that to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change, countries must immediately move away from dirty energy sources like coal, oil and gas, and instead turn to renewable energy sources like wind, solar or nuclear power. Read about the potent possibilities of one of these producers, offshore wind farms , and see how they operate .

Refrigerants: It’s not the most exciting solution to climate change, but it is one of the most effective. Read about how making refrigerants, like air-conditioners, more efficient could eliminate a full degree Celsius of warming by 2100.

Transportation: Across the globe, governments are focused on limiting one of the world’s biggest sources of pollution: gasoline-powered cars. Read about the promises and challenges of electric vehicles or about how countries are rethinking their transit systems .

Methane emissions: You hear a lot about the need to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but what about its dangerous cousin, methane? Read about ideas to halt methane emissions and why doing so could be powerful in the short-term fight against climate change.

Agriculture: Efforts to limit global warming often target fossil fuels, but cutting greenhouse gases from food production is urgent, too, research says. Read about four fixes to earth’s food supply that could go a long way.

Nature conservation: Scientists agree that reversing biodiversity loss is a crucial way to slow climate change. Read about how protecting and restoring nature can help cool the planet or about how Indigenous communities could lead the way .

Carbon capture: Eliminating emissions alone may not be enough to avoid some of the worst effects of climate change, so some companies are investing in technology that sucks carbon dioxide out of the air. Learn more about so-called engineered carbon removal .

Questions to Consider

As you read about your climate solution, respond to the questions below. You can record your answers in this graphic organizer (PDF).

1. What is the solution? How does it work?

2. What problem related to climate change does this strategy address?

3. What effect could it have on global warming?

4. Compared with other ways to mitigate climate change, how effective is this one? Why?

5. What are the limitations of this solution?

6. What are some of the challenges or risks (political, social, economic or technical) of this idea?

7. What further questions do you have about this strategy?

When you’ve finished, you’ll meet in “teaching groups” with at least one expert in each of the other climate solutions. Share what you know about your topic with your classmates and record what you learn from them in your graphic organizer .

Going Further

Option 1: Develop a climate plan.

Scientists say that in order to prevent the average global temperature from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, the threshold beyond which the dangers of global warming grow immensely, we will need to enact all of the solutions you learned about — and more. However, the reality is that countries won’t be able to right away. They will have to consider which can have the biggest or fastest impact on climate change, which are the most cost-effective and which are the most politically and socially feasible.

Imagine you have been asked to come up with a plan to address climate change. If you were in charge, which of these seven solutions would you prioritize and why? You might start by ranking the solutions you learned about from the most effective or urgent to the least.

Then, write a proposal for your plan that responds to the following questions:

What top three solutions are priorities? That is, which do you think are the most urgent to tackle right away and the most effective at slowing global warming?

Explain your decisions. According to your research — the articles you read and the quiz you took in the beginning of the lesson — why should these solutions take precedence?

How might you incentivize companies and citizens to embrace these changes? For some ideas, you might read more about the climate policies countries around the world have adopted to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Option 2: Take action.

Thinking about climate change solutions on such a big scale can be overwhelming, but there are things you can do in your own life and in your community to make a difference. Choose one of the activities below to take action on, or come up with one of your own:

Share climate solutions via media. Often, the news media focuses more on climate change problems than solutions. Counteract this narrative by creating something for publication related to one or more of the solutions you learned about. For example, you could submit a letter to the editor , write an article for your school newspaper, enter a piece in one of our upcoming student contests or create an infographic to share on social media .

Make changes in your own life. How can you make good climate choices related to one or more of the topics you learned about? For example, you could eat less meat, take public transportation or turn off your air-conditioner. Write a plan, explaining what you will do (or what you are already doing) and how it could help mitigate climate change, according to the research.

Join a movement. This guest essay urges people to focus on systems, not themselves. What groups could you get involved with that are working toward some of the solutions you learned about? Identify at least one group, either local, national or international, and one way you could support it. Or, if you’re old enough to vote, consider a local, state or federal politician you would like to support based on his or her climate policies.

Want more Lessons of the Day? You can find them all here .

Natalie Proulx joined The Learning Network as a staff editor in 2017 after working as an English language arts teacher and curriculum writer. More about Natalie Proulx

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• My Account Login
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• Open access
• Published: 08 May 2024

The importance of distinguishing climate science from climate activism

• Ulf Büntgen   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3821-0818 1 , 2 , 3  

npj Climate Action volume  3 , Article number:  36 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

28k Accesses

885 Altmetric

Metrics details

I am concerned by climate scientists becoming climate activists, because scholars should not have a priori interests in the outcome of their studies. Likewise, I am worried about activists who pretend to be scientists, as this can be a misleading form of instrumentalization.

Background and motivation

It comes as no surprise that the slow production of scientific knowledge by an ever-growing international and interdisciplinary community of climate change researchers is not feasible to track the accelerating pace of cultural, political and economic perceptions of, and actions to the many threats anthropogenic global warming is likely to pose on natural and societal systems at different spatiotemporal scales. Recognition of a decoupling between “normal” and “post-normal” science is not new 1 , with the latter often being described as a legitimation of the plurality of knowledge in policy debates that became a liberating insight for many 2 . Characteristic for the yet unfolding phenomenon is an intermingling of science and policy 3 , in which political decisions are believed to be without any alternative (because they are scientifically predefined) and large parts of the scientific community accept a subordinate role to society (because there is an apparent moral obligation) 4 .

Motivated by the continuous inability of an international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to tackle global warming, despite an alarming recent rise in surface temperatures and associated hydroclimatic extremes 5 , I argue that quasi-religious belief in, rather than the understanding of the complex causes and consequences of climate and environmental changes undermines academic principles. I recommend that climate science and climate activism should be separated conceptually and practically, and the latter should not be confused with science communication and public engagement.

Climate science and climate activism

While this Comment is not a critique of climate activism per se, I am foremost concerned by an increasing number of climate scientists becoming climate activists, because scholars should not have a priori interests in the outcome of their studies. Like in any academic case, the quest for objectivity must also account for all aspects of global climate change research. While I have no problem with scholars taking public positions on climate issues, I see potential conflicts when scholars use information selectively or over-attribute problems to anthropogenic warming, and thus politicise climate and environmental change. Without self-critique and a diversity of viewpoints, scientists will ultimately harm the credibility of their research and possibly cause a wider public, political and economic backlash.

Likewise, I am worried about activists who pretend to be scientists, as this can be a misleading form of instrumentalization. In fact, there is just a thin line between the use and misuse of scientific certainty and uncertainty, and there is evidence for strategic and selective communication of scientific information for climate action 6 . (Non-)specialist activists often adopt scientific arguments as a source of moral legitimation for their movements 6 , which can be radical and destructive rather than rational and constructive. Unrestricted faith in scientific knowledge is, however, problematic because science is neither entitled to absolute truth nor ethical authority 7 . The notion of science to be explanatory rather than exploratory is a naïve overestimation that can fuel the complex field of global climate change to become a dogmatic ersatz religion for the wider public. It is also utterly irrational if activists ask to “follow the science” if there is no single direction. Again, even a clear-cut case like anthropogenically-induced global climate change does not justify the deviation from long-lasting scientific standards, which have distinguished the academic world from socio-economic and political spheres.

The role of recent global warming

Moreover, I find it misleading when prominent organisations, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its latest summary for policymakers 5 , tend to overstate scientific understanding of the rate of recent anthropogenic warming relative to the range of past natural temperature variability over 2000 and even 125,000 years 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 . The quality and quantity of available climate proxy records are merely too low to allow for a robust comparison of the observed annual temperature extremes in the 21st century against reconstructed long-term climate means of the Holocene and before. Like all science, climate science is tentative and fallible 7 . This universal caveat emphasises the need for more research to reliably contextualise anthropogenic warming and better understand the sensitivity of the Earth’s climate system at different spatiotemporal scales 12 . Along these lines, I agree that the IPCC would benefit from a stronger involvement in economic research 13 , 14 , and that its neutral reports should inform but not prescribe climate policy 3 , 15 .

Furthermore, I cannot exclude that the ongoing pseudo-scientific chase for record-breaking heatwaves and associated hydroclimatic extremes distracts from scientifically guided international achievements of important long-term goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate global warming 16 . It is therefore only a bitter irony that the partial failure of COP28 coincided with the warmest year on record 17 , 18 , 19 . The temporal overshoot of 2023 now challenges the Paris Agreement to keep global warming well below 2 °C 20 . The IPCC’s special report 21 on exactly this scientifically questionable climate target 20 can be understood as a useful example of science communication that fostered a wide range of climate action 22 . The unprecedented recent temperature rise that follows increasing greenhouse gas concentrations 23 and has been amplified by an ongoing El Niño event 24 is likely to continue in 2024. This unparallel warming, however, has the unpleasant potential to trigger a dangerous zeitgeist of resignation and disregard—If it happened once, why shouldn’t it happen twice?

A way forward

In essence, I suggest that an ever-growing commingling of climate science, climate activism, climate communication and climate policy, whereby scientific insights are adopted to promote pre-determined positions, not only creates confusion among politicians, stakeholders and the wider public, but also diminishes academic credibility. Blurring boundaries between science and activism has the potential to harm movements of environmentalism and climate protection, as well as the much-needed international consent for sustainable growth and a global energy transition. If unbound climate activism results in widespread panic or indifference, people may think that it is either too late for action or that action does not matter. This argument is not in disagreement with the idea that mass mobilisation as an effective social response to climate change is only possible if society is experiencing sustained levels of risk 25 . Nevertheless, I would argue that motivations are more helpful than restrictions, at least in the long run. My criticism of an uncontrolled amalgamation of climate scientists and climate activists should not be understood as a general critique of climate activism, for which there are many constructive ways 26 , especially when accepting that climate mitigation and adaptation are both desirable options, and that non-action can be an important part of activism.

In conclusion, and as a way forward, I recommend that a neutral science should remain unbiased and avoid any form of selection, over-attribution and reductionism that would reflect a type of activism. Policymakers should continue seeking and considering nuanced information from an increasingly complex media landscape of overlapping academic, economic and public interests. Advice from a diversity of researchers and institutions beyond the IPCC and other large-scale organisations that assess the state of knowledge in specific scientific fields should include critical investigations of clear-cut cases, such as anthropogenic climate change. A successful, international climate agenda, including both climate mitigation and adaptation, requires reliable reporting of detailed and trustworthy certainties and uncertainties, whereas any form of scientism and exaggeration will be counterproductive.

Funtowicz, S. O. & Ravetz, J. R. Three types of risk assessment: a methodological analysis. In Risk Analysis in the Private Sector (eds. Whipple, C. & Covello, V. T.) 831–848 (Plenum Press, New York, 1885).

Ravetz, J. & Funtowicz, S. Post-normal science—an insight now maturing. Futures 31 , 641–646 (1999).

Google Scholar  

Storch, H.von & Krauß, W. Die Klimafalle. Die gefährliche Nähe von Politik und Klimaforschung. Hanser: Munich. Raumforsch. Raumord. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13147-014-0273-z (2013).

von Storch, H. COVID-19 und menschgemachter Klimawandel als postnormale wissenschaftliche Objekte. Naturwiss. Rundsch. 74 , 132–136 (2021).

IPCC. Summary for policymakers. In Climate Change 2021: the Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (eds. Masson-Delmotte, V. P. et al.) 3–32 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2021).

Sofdorf, A. & Burgi, V. Listen to the science!”—the role of scientific knowledge for the Fridays for Future movement. Front. Comm. 7 , 983929 (2022).

Article   Google Scholar  

Popper, K. Natural selection and the emergence of mind. Dialectica 32 , 339–355 (1978).

Esper, J. & Büntgen, U. The future of paleoclimate. Clim. Res. 83 , 57–59 (2021).

Anchukaitis, K. J. & Smerdon, J. E. Progress and uncertainties in global and hemispheric temperature reconstructions of the common era. Quat. Sci. Rev. 286 , 107537 (2022).

Essell, H. et al. A frequency-optimised temperature record for the Holocene. Environ. Res. Lett. 18 , 114022 (2023).

Esper, J., Schulz, P. & Büntgen, U. Is recent warming exceeding the range of natural variability of the past 125,000 years. Atmosphere 15 , 405 (2024).

Sherwood, S. C. et al. An assessment of Earth’s climate sensitivity using multiple lines of evidence. Rev. Geophys. 58 , e2019RG000678 (2020).

Article   CAS   Google Scholar  

Noy, I. Economists are not engaged enough with the IPCC. Clim. Action 2 , 23 (2023).

William D. Nordhaus, W. D. (eds) The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World (Yale University Press, 2013).

Pryck, De, K & Hulme, M. (eds) A Critical Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge University Press, 2023).

Hansen, J. E. et al. Global warming in the pipeline. Oxford Open Clim. Change 3 , kgad008 (2023).

Editorial Hoping for better. Nat. Clim. Change 14 , 1 (2024).

Voosen, P. The hottest year was even hotter than expected. Science 383 , 134 (2024).

Copernicus. 2023 Global Climate highlights . https://climate.copernicus.eu/ (2024).

Knutti, R., Rogelj, J., Sedláček, J. & Fischer, E. M. A scientific critique of the two-degree climate change target. Nat. Geosci. 9 , 13–18 (2016).

IPCC. Summary for policymakers. In Global Warming of 1.5   °C. An IPCC Special Report on the Impacts of Global Warming of 1.5   °C Above Pre-industrial Levels and Related Global Greenhouse Gas Emission Pathways, in the Context of Strengthening the Global Response to the Threat of Climate Change, Sustainable Development, and Efforts to Eradicate Poverty (eds. Masson-Delmotte, V. et al.) 3–24 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2018).

Doran, R., Ogunbode, C. A., Böhm, G. & Gregersen, T. Exposure to and learning from the IPCC special report on 1.5 °C global warming, and public support for climate protests and mitigation policies. npj Clim. Action 2 , 11 (2024).

Friedlingstein, P. et al. Global carbon budget 2023. Earth Syst. Sci. Data 15 , 5301–5369 (2023).

van Oldenborgh, G. J. et al. Defining El Niño indices in a warming climate. Environ. Res. Lett. 16 , 044003 (2021).

Fisher, D. R. AnthroShift in a warming world. npj Clim. Action 1 , 9 (2022).

Joshi, N., Agrawal, S., Ambury, H. & Parida, D. Advancing neighbourhood climate action: opportunities, challenges and way ahead. npj Clim. Action 3 , 7 (2024).

Download references

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), Bielefeld, Germany, the Czech Science Foundation (# 23-08049S; Hydro8), the ERC Advanced Grant (# 882727; Monostar) and the ERC Synergy Grant (# 101118880; Synergy-Plague).

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

Ulf Büntgen

Global Change Research Institute (CzechGlobe), Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno, Czech Republic

Department of Geography, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

U.B. conceived the study and wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ulf Büntgen .

Ethics declarations

Competing interests.

The author declares no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Büntgen, U. The importance of distinguishing climate science from climate activism. npj Clim. Action 3 , 36 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44168-024-00126-0

Download citation

Received : 11 March 2024

Accepted : 13 April 2024

Published : 08 May 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s44168-024-00126-0

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Devastating wildfires, brutal heat, intense hurricanes, and extreme flooding. As a result of climate change , we’ve seen an increase in the frequency, severity, and intensity of hazardous weather across the United States. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates that between 2018 and 2022, the United States experienced 90 disasters with losses exceeding $1 billion each and total costs exceeding $621 billion; a 48 percent increase in the number of disasters per year; and a 37 percent increase in costs from the preceding decade. So far, 2023 is proving to be the costliest year yet when it comes to weather disasters. 1 Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters, 2023, NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information.

About the authors

This article is a collaborative effort by Zach Bruick, Munya Muvezwa, Kirtiman Pathak, Daniel Stephens , Shelley Stewart , and Alexis Trittipo , representing views from the McKinsey Institute for Black Economic Mobility and McKinsey’s Sustainability Practice.

Impacts of climate change—such as property value damage, loss of labor productivity, health problems due to prolonged exposure to heat or lack of clean water and air, and temporary or permanent displacement when a residence becomes uninhabitable—can put the prospect of Black socioeconomic mobility  in the United States at greater risk. Black populations are particularly vulnerable to physical-hazard exposure, since they are concentrated in areas especially susceptible to extreme weather. As people and businesses attempt to adjust to a low-carbon economy, they must also further contend with second-order transition risks—such as the loss of jobs in impacted industries—resulting from market changes.

Our research methodology

Our analysis assessing the physical risks of climate change on Black populations in the United States draws from the expertise of McKinsey Climate Analytics, climate modeling from leading public and private firms, and socioeconomic data from the US Census Bureau’s 2020 American Community Survey.

The climate hazard analyses were conducted by McKinsey Climate Analytics, which is McKinsey’s sustainability solution for climate modeling led by experienced and credentialed climate scientists and meteorologists. The analysis for this study examined four climate hazards with particular relevance to Black communities: wildfires, extreme heat, hurricanes, and flooding. For wildfire risk, we crafted risk zones based on the number of high-fire-risk days (leveraging the Fire Weather Index, with a climate model ensemble based on data from the Climatology Lab MACA CMIP5 data set), elevation (NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission), and land cover (European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative). For extreme heat, we used heat stress projections from the Woodwell Climate Research Center. For hurricanes, we used climate-conditioned hurricane simulations from WindRiskTech, which account for how warming oceans and atmospheres may affect hurricane intensity and frequency. Flooding data was sourced from the World Resources Institute’s Aqueduct floods model.

For our analysis of the Southeastern region of the United States, we examined data from the above-mentioned sources for the following states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. We conducted census tract analyses by merging demographic features (primarily focusing on population composition by race but also looking at household wealth and median household income) with current and forward-looking views of climate hazards. Future projections of climate risk use a 20-year average centered on 2050, using the RCP 8.5 scenario, which is aligned to a global mean temperature rise of approximately 2°C over pre-industrial levels. (RCP stands for “representative concentration pathway.” Four RCP scenarios were developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to assess the impacts of various emission pathways on the climate system. RCP 8.5 has the highest emission concentrations across the four scenarios in the RCP framework.) For each climate hazard, a relevant metric was chosen to classify areas at high or low risk. For wildfires, the metric used was living in a high-risk fire zone; for extreme heat, the total number of working hours potentially lost due to heat stress; for hurricanes, the 1-in-100-year likelihood of sustained wind speed exceeding 74 mph; and for flooding, the 1-in-100-year likelihood of flood depth exceeding a half inch.

For our urban analysis examples, we selected Baltimore and New Orleans based on their diverse populations, history of redlining and segregation, and geographic locations with a susceptibility to flooding. Our mapping data comes from the University of Richmond’s Mapping Inequality project, the definitive academic resource for data and research related to historical redlining in the United States.

Maps are a key diagnostic tool for assessing the impacts of climate change. In the following maps, we examine how extreme weather events and chronic climate changes may affect the prospect of Black socioeconomic mobility as the world continues to grow warmer. We look at the distribution of the Black population mapped against physical climate risk in the whole of the United States, regionally in several Southeastern states, and in two metropolitan areas with a history of segregation and redlining (see sidebar, “Our research methodology”). Given the deep impacts of climate change, it will be critical to help communities adapt and build resilience.

As the effects of climate change become more evident each year, we all have the opportunity to play a critical role in ensuring an inclusive response to climate change, both through equitable adaptation to climate hazards and to a just climate transition, by addressing the disproportionate impact on Black communities.

In order to manage the primary and second-order risks for Black communities created by climate change, among many approaches , both the public and private sectors can begin by considering the following:

• broad education around both the impacts of climate on communities and the implications of climate risk on intergenerational wealth transfer, such as the effects on housing, an asset class heavily impacted by physical hazards
• community leader engagement from Black communities as states plan for climate adaptation and transition to a lower carbon economy
• financial inclusion of Black communities as stores, banks, and factories reorient their footprints and their operations to address climate risks
• equitable access to finance and opportunities to integrate Black entrepreneurs in innovation hubs supporting a transition to a green economy

Climate change may create significant physical risks for Black populations in the United States, but it could create opportunities to address existing racial gaps, too. A concerted effort at understanding the impact of climate risk for Black workers, business owners, consumers, savers, and residents can help the private and public sectors identify racial gaps, allow for timely adaptation to build resilience against physical risks, and enable equitable access to climate finance opportunities.

Zach Bruick is a research science expert in McKinsey’s Denver office, Munya Muvezwa is a partner in the Charlotte office, Kirtiman Pathak is a senior expert in the Stamford office, Daniel Stephens is a senior partner in the Washington, DC, office, Shelley Stewart is a senior partner in the New York office, where Alexis Trittipo is a partner.

The authors wish to thank Kelly Kochanski, Noma Moyo, Xiaohan Wang, and the McKinsey Climate Analytics team for their contributions to this article.

This article was edited by Christine Y. Chen, a senior editor in the Denver office.

This interactive experience is a collaborative effort led by McKinsey Global Publishing, with contributions from Vicki Brown, Nayomi Chibana, Stephen Landau, Janet Michaud, Diane Rice, Jonathon Rivait, Dana Sand, Katie Shearer, and Jessica Wang.

Explore a career with us

Related articles.

A guide to impact investing in Black economic mobility

The economic state of Black America: What is and what could be

A $300 billion opportunity: Serving the emerging Black American consumer

How climate change is raising the risks of another pandemic

Evidence is mounting that human disruptions to natural ecosystems are raising risks of disease spread, according to a new study.

As humans degrade Earth’s environment, we have created a world in which diseases may be increasingly apt to fester and multiply.

Infection-spreading creatures such as mosquitoes and ticks are thriving on a planet warmed by a blanket of fossil fuel emissions. When pollution, hunting or development push rare organisms to extinction, parasites proliferate because they have evolved to target the most abundant species.

And then there are the harms caused when humans introduce nonnative plants and animals or chemicals such as herbicides and fungicides to fragile ecosystems. That exacerbates losses in biodiversity that leave surviving populations more vulnerable to illness, according to research published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Researchers said the study is the first to look at the ways such a variety of environmental problems can compound disease risks. It combined hundreds of studies and thousands of observations of all kinds of creatures — humans and other mammals, fish, reptiles, amphibians, worms and arthropods — and all kinds of pathogens, such as viruses, bacteria and fungi.

The analysis reinforced the findings of many of those inquiries: that a hotter world of ravaged ecosystems is one that is more hospitable to many parasites, and less so to humans and other life.

The connection appeared with all types of infections and their hosts, suggesting that as the planet continues to warm and humans continue to disrupt nature, increases in disease spread “will be consistent and widespread,” said Jason Rohr, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Notre Dame and one of the study’s authors. The link was just as clear with humans as it was with wildlife and plants, he added.

“That is despite all the efforts we’re making to control and prevent diseases,” Rohr said.

And if diseases become more rampant in the animal world, that could mean the likelihood of “spillover” events exposing humans to new pathogens — the likely origin of covid-19 , and a feared outcome of the ongoing spread of H5N1 bird flu — also will increase, the study suggests.

“It could mean that by modifying the environment, we increase the risks of future pandemics, ” Rohr said.

As grim as the findings appear, they underscore that actions to protect the planet can also serve to improve health, researchers said.

“This adds to a very long list of reasons we should be rapidly moving away from fossil fuels and trying to mitigate the impacts of climate change,” said Felicia Keesing, a professor at Bard College who was not involved in the study but whose research focuses on biodiversity and disease risks.

The study used observations of disease outcomes involving a wide variety of parasites infecting a spectrum of hosts around the world. The observations also included information about a range of human influences on the environment: biodiversity changes, chemical pollution, climate change, habitat loss or change, and introduction of nonnative species.

Biodiversity has a natural gradient across the planet, with the greatest numbers of species found closest to the equator and at moderate elevations. The researchers gauged the effect of human-caused biodiversity loss on diseases by comparing the observations of infections around the world to average disease prevalence at varying levels of biodiversity across that natural gradient. In nature, reductions in biodiversity are associated with reductions in disease.

But when humans cause losses in biodiversity, diseases increase. The researchers found that levels of disease and mortality in environments affected by human-caused biodiversity losses were nearly nine times worse than disease outcomes expected under Earth’s natural biodiversity gradient. Rohr said that is probably because the loss of rarer creatures means pathogens have an easier time finding the more abundant species they have evolved to use as hosts.

The researchers also found that climate change and the introduction of nonnative species have significant links to worsened disease spread, though not as strong as the effect of biodiversity losses.

The analysis found one variable of human influence that actually decreased disease risks: habitat losses. Rohr said the researchers believe that is largely a function of urbanization: Cities tend to have better sanitation and health infrastructure, and they are simply home to fewer natural organisms, he said.

Skylar Hopkins, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University who was not involved in the research, cautioned against applying the findings too broadly. Analyses such as this one are composed of a selection of completed studies but cannot represent a truly random sample of pathogens and infections, she said. Not all parasites are “bad,” she added, and one also cannot assume that repairing lost biodiversity will undo an increase in disease.

The research published Wednesday builds on past findings that link disease spread with specific global changes.

For example, it is known that extreme heat and precipitation tied to human-caused climate change have allowed malaria cases to rise , and could drive them to surge even more dramatically in the decades ahead . Biodiversity losses are known to contribute to spillover of diseases such as covid-19, HIV/AIDS, Ebola and severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.

But the researchers wrote that more needs to be learned about how humans’ many influences on the environment might be building upon each other.

“For example, climate change and chemical pollution can cause habitat loss and change, which in turn can cause biodiversity loss and facilitate species introductions,” the researchers wrote. New studies will need to examine whether those factors, in combination, serve to add, subtract or even multiply risks of disease spread.

The fingerprints of climate change are all over a budget navigating an economy in transition

Analysis The fingerprints of climate change are all over a budget navigating an economy in transition

If budgets are the government's attempt to chart the course for the next few years, what can this one teach us about how climate change is leaving its mark, and how the government is looking to tackle it? 

Climate is already costing the budget

It's difficult to measure just how much climate change has already cost the federal budget, but there are some key figures to look at.

The most obvious one is how much we already spend on disaster recovery payments.

"Climate change and global climate action will have profound impacts on the economy, reshaping Australia's industry mix and requiring effective mitigation and adaptation to manage climate impacts like more severe bushfires and floods," the 2024-25 budget read.

When Jim Chalmers became federal treasurer after Labor's 2022 election win, he asked Treasury to do something that had been abandoned a decade before under Tony Abbott — model the economic impacts of climate change .

Treasury has done this in its 2023 Intergenerational Report, and what it found wasn't pretty.

Assuming global action on climate change was limited to only 3 degrees, the government would fork out roughly $130 billion in payments over the next four decades.

This budget shows we're shelling out $7.3 billion in recovery payments for natural disasters that have already hit the country in the past few years. That’s up $3.9 billion since last December, and shows the scale of costs that will increase as the planet warms further.

These costs dwarf the policies in the budget devoted to reducing the impact of natural disasters. 

There's $138.7 million over four years for disaster preparedness, including $35 million to bolster the national aerial firefighting fleet, and $26.8 million for disaster response resources. And $450 million partnering with the US on a satellite program to gather data on natural disasters, climate change, and agricultural production.

Preparing for the end of the fossil fuel era 

While it's full of figures and tables, the budget also is an opportunity for the government to draw attention to things it thinks are important. And this year it highlighted an unexpected boon from record fossil fuel profits. 

"Strong corporate profits, including from iron ore and coal prices in late 2023 and the very early part of 2024 exceeding those assumed in MYEFO and robust demand, contribute to an upgraded company tax outlook," the papers say.

But it is also warning that we can't keep relying on these profits in the future.

"Australia's exports will be increasingly comprised of low carbon products. Over 97 per cent of Australia's trading partners have set net zero targets," the papers say.

Grattan Institute Energy and Climate Deputy Director Alison Reeve says Australia needs to be ready for this drop.

"As the world commits to net zero and coal, oil and gas start to decline, there should be less tax revenue coming into the government as well and that also has an effect on the budget," she said.

"Even though we might be seeing record high prices at the moment, and therefore record high revenue for governments, the overall trend is going to be downwards."

While fossil fuels like coal will see a dramatic decline, the Intergenerational report lays out how Australia is in a good position to benefit from the increased demand for the critical minerals required for the transition.

It's also important to put fossil fuel contributions to the budget into context.

Fossil fuel companies and miners are quick to tout their role in contributing to the budget button line, and after the budget, the gas industry released figures saying it contributed  $12.7 billion in company tax.

That's compared to more than $326 billion in this budget coming directly from regular Australians paying income tax, and another $87 billion from GST which we all contribute to.

These figures, which make up the bulk of budget revenue, are under threat from a heating world.

"As shown in the 2023 Intergenerational Report (IGR), rising temperatures are expected to result in reductions in labour productivity and hours worked, particularly for employees who work outdoors, such as in agriculture, construction and manufacturing," the budget papers state.

"Agricultural yields are expected to decline with climate change. The increased frequency and severity of natural disasters will also lead to reductions in output through disruptions to economic activity and destruction of property and infrastructure."

Alison Reeve says Australians have avoided having a proper conversation about this.

"We need to stop pretending that this whole transition is possible without anybody having to pay anything, because that is simply not true," she said.

"The sooner that we face up to that and start talking about what is fair about those costs, and who should bear them, rather than pretending that everybody can be a winner, I think the better off will be."

How to tackle the transition

Warwick McKibbin, a distinguished Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the ANU, is an expert in looking at the costs of a climate transition and the most effective ways to address it.

He measures the economic impacts of climate change and what sort of policies give you the biggest reduction in emissions for the least cost, and his modelling has been used by the Treasury.

The two best ways to reduce emissions according to McKibbin's work are a price on carbon and abolishing fossil fuel subsidies.

On both fronts, there's not much evidence in the budget the government is looking to take this approach.

Properly pricing carbon in Australia has become a politically toxic topic after the Coalition revoked the carbon tax when it came to power in 2013.

For McKibbin the lack of bipartisan support highlights how short-term political goals create problems in addressing longer-term issues like climate change.

"In the end, it's a long-term problem that needs long-term political foresight and wisdom and bipartisanship and that's the reality."

A future made in Australia?

Bowing to this political reality, the government has instead followed the lead of countries like the US, Korea, and is planning big investments in the industries and technologies that will power the post-fossil fuel world.

The transition away from fossil fuels has entered a new stage where countries like China and the US are locked in increasingly fierce competition over who can dominate this space.

The centrepiece of this year's budget, and the likely foundation of the federal government's next election strategy, is its 'Future Made in Australia' policy.

Economist Mariana Mazzucato is a prominent proponent of the strategy and wrote glowingly about the policy in the Australian Financial Review on Monday.

"Climate and growth are not a trade-off. Renewable energy sources like solar and wind have proven to be the most economical forms of power in Australia. Recent additions of renewable energy to the grid have been instrumental in reducing wholesale power prices – a benefit that is beginning to reflect in lower retail power prices for households.

"Continuing reliance on outdated, high-pollution energy sources not only drains household finances, but exacerbates the climate crises that impose growing costs on the Australian public.

"And most importantly for the economic argument, green industries could be worth more than $10 trillion globally by 2050. Countries that get in there first will have important first-mover advantages."

There is money in the budget to directly support the growth of industries like solar and battery manufacturing, but it also unveiled two tax incentives.

One for processing and refining critical minerals, the materials the world needs to build the transition, and another for green hydrogen production – to replace fossil fuel gas.

In plain terms, it means businesses in these industries can claim back an extra 10 per cent of their costs, which will help their technologies make money quicker.

Alison Reeve says tax incentives need to encourage new activity and facilities that are viable long term.

"I understand from talking to the treasury officials in the lock-up that the tax break is just 10 per cent of your operating costs and it's available to existing facilities, not just new ones," Reeve said.

"And the risk with that is it just means that companies that are already there and already producing will get a tax break for doing nothing."

"They don't have to increase their production, they may not be a competitive facility now.

She also said there needed to be an exit plan so that companies weren't reliant on the incentives for too long.

Jim Chalmers addressed this in his speech to the press club, saying there is an 'off-ramp' on these credits.

"For example, when it comes to the hydrogen production tax credit, that ends in 2039-40," he said.

"That's how we don't saddle the budget forever with these really important production tax credits.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has been quick to criticise the tax incentives.

"Those projects should be able to stand alone and we support them but not with taxpayers' money," Dutton said.

Fossil fuel subsidies

But both he and the government have been quiet on the idea of removing fossil fuel subsidies in the budget, something the World Trade Organization (WTO), The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) have called for an end to.

Warwick McKibbin says the government would be better off removing the existing subsidies for fossil fuels.

"We showed years ago, decades ago that if you reduce subsidies to fossil fuels, you can get decarbonisation with economic activity increasing, because you're getting rid of all these inefficient activities," McKibbin said.

There were no new large-scale subsidies for fossil fuels in this budget, but the fuel tax credit scheme alone, where businesses get a rebate on the diesel they use, will cost the budget $10 billion this year, and $44 billion over the next four years.

The government's hydrogen and mineral tax incentives are expected to cost $13.7 billion over more than a decade.

McKibbin said it can be difficult to measure the amount going to the industry in subsidies as a lot of it is hidden, but he believes state and federal governments pay out more than they get back on fossil fuels.

"If you look at what we get out of gas production in Australia versus what Dubai, or the United Arab Emirates get, I mean, we get a fraction of the revenue.

"Not only does it cost the taxpayer, but it moves resources from other parts of the economy into those sectors. And so you're wasting not just the dollar amount. It's also the opportunity cost of where that money might have gone."

Arm's length decision making

Both Reeve and McKibbin say investment decisions need to happen at arm's length from politicians, and on this front, the government appears to be listening.

It's giving the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), which is independently run, the responsibility of administering many of the projects, worth billions of dollars.

"You may find cases where it's worth the government doing something because there's a market failure, or there's some reason that the private sector won't take the risk, you can make that case," McKibbin said.

"The person who decides that should not be a politician, it should not be a political party, it should not be a bureaucrat whose job it is to make the minister happy.

"It should be a completely independent agency, whose job it is, is to save taxpayers money and increase productivity in the country."

While Reeve was supportive of ARENA's new bolstered role, she says it's a big change to what's a relatively small body.

"The size of the stuff they've been given to administer is orders of magnitude larger than what they've had before," she said.

"You need to make sure that the governance of that organisation and the scrutiny and the oversight and everything are appropriate.

"That you're not leaving them with the arrangements that were come up with in 2013 when they had a much smaller budget."

What's at stake

Mr Chalmers says, personally, the success of this budget is based on "making life a little bit easier", but it's also a plan to guide the country through a time of huge change.

"I like to think about how the world is changing and how we make Australia the big winner out of that change," he said.

"That's what the Future Made in Australia package is all about, but that's what really in one way or another, all of our policies are about."

Whether or not this approach will pay off will take years to be seen. But the need to act cannot be questioned – there are no winners in a world that fails to address the impacts of climate change.

And with the race to dominate the post-fossil fuel industries now a source of intense competition between the world's largest economies, Australia's economic future is on the line as well.

• X (formerly Twitter)

Related Stories

'irreversible, catastrophic impacts': un warns humanity must act now to survive.

• Business, Economics and Finance
• Climate Change
• Disasters and Hazards
• Environmental Management
• Environmental Policy
• Extreme Weather Events
• Federal Government
• Government and Politics
• Sustainable Living

Governor should sign bill to protect trees and protect ourselves

An aerial view of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil’s Rondonia state. Credit: Getty Images/Bloomberg Creative

This guest essay reflects the views of Robert Sweeney, a Lindenhurst resident and board member of Environmental Advocates NY who served in the Assembly for 27 years, the last seven as chairman of the Committee on Environmental Conservation.

As the effects of climate change and deforestation ravage the planet, New York has the chance to play a key role in creating clean air, filtering water, sustaining wildlife, and regulating agricultural cycles that we depend on for stability and health.

How? By enacting the TREES Act. The bill, which recently passed both the State Senate and the Assembly, expands the focus beyond planting new trees to protecting existing ones from being cut down, optimizing the irreplaceable benefits that old-growth forests, particularly tropical ones, provide for biodiversity and carbon sequestration everywhere.

Even better, these measures come at no cost to New York families. We can save the rainforest and create opportunities for local businesses, and it won’t cost consumers a dime. That’s a win-win-win.

During her State of the State address in January, Gov. Kathy Hochul promised to plant 25 million trees by 2033 to help mitigate the risks of climate change. It's a notable step but falls short of New York's broader climate strategy, which suggests a goal of 680 million trees by 2040 to keep rising emissions in check. This stark difference in numbers raises an important question: Are we doing enough?

If we look at the numbers globally, likely not. Millions of acres of tropical forests, vital carbon sinks and biodiversity hot spots are lost annually, often cleared for agriculture by multinational corporations. The TREES Act would ensure that New York State is no longer part of this problem by purchasing only forest-safe products and rewarding companies that employ sustainable forest practices, which most New York-based agricultural businesses largely do already.

From our Editorial Board, get inside the local, city and state political scenes.

By clicking Sign up, you agree to our privacy policy .

The TREES Act mimics measures already enacted by the European Union. Since New York would be the first state to employ these standards, New York businesses would have a leg up on meeting requirements for access to EU markets. This is a critical part of proactive and protective regulation. Implementing these standards would prevent the disconnect that often arises across government stakeholders, creating mixed market signals, delaying crucial progress, and inflating the costs of action in avoidable ways.

Aligning all branches of New York’s government in this environmental endeavor is critical. Global meat giant JBS was recently caught lying to New York consumers about cutting its carbon footprint while actually increasing it. While Attorney General Letitia James’ litigation revealed these bad-faith actors and actions, the TREES Act could have helped prevent it.

In addition, the push by State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli and New York City Comptroller Brad Lander for shareholder resolutions to adopt and enforce stronger deforestation policies demonstrates that New York political leaders understand that it is far more costly to destroy global forests as natural barriers to runaway climate change than to preserve them.

Last year, a different version of the TREES Act passed both houses with strong bipartisan majorities and overwhelming support from a wide range of public stakeholders. Hochul vetoed it, concerned about the burden on businesses. The updated bill responds to Hochul’s concerns, giving state vendors a longer ramp-up, ensuring they have clear guidance about how to comply, and providing short-term exemptions.

It’s time to sign the TREES Act. New Yorkers deserve the chance to help shape the global economy, to be a leader in mitigating climate change and protecting biodiversity. Gov. Hochul can lead that charge.

Unlimited Digital Access Only 25¢ for 5 months

Climate change helping drive an increase in large wildfires in the US

J oyce Blankenship, an 83-year-old grandmother of four , died inside her home in February when a single brush fire exploded in size in just 24 hours, racing across the landscape , burning her home and others in Stinnett, Texas.

Fueled by 50 to 60 mph winds and dry grasses, the fire grew so fast that it surrounded the truck of Cindy Owen , 44, where she was working more than 40 miles east of Blankenship's home. Owen was burned and died of her injuries two days later. 

Called the Smokehouse Creek fire , it burned across 850,000 acres in the Texas Panhandle in about 48 hours, torching more than 100 homes and killing thousands of cattle as firefighters from throughout the region battled to save homes and lives.

Start the day smarter. Get all the news you need in your inbox each morning.

It would be safer for firefighters, communities and property if such infernos were rare, but experts say these massive fires are growing even bigger and more dangerous.

“We can expect to see larger wildfires in the future,” said Seth McGinnis, associate scientist at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.

Such huge fires, whether ignited by natural or human causes, are fanned by factors including the expansion of suburbia into wildlands, land management and firefighting challenges and climate change, McGinnis and others said. 

Though the 10-year average number of wildfires in the nation each year dropped by about 20% over the past 20 years, the average number of acres burned is up by nearly 50%, according to statistics from the National Interagency Fire Center.

Just as the rain and snow in a passing cold front ultimately helped cool the Smokehouse Fire, the size of a wildfire is related to the duration of fire weather, McGinnis said. “Climate change is projected to increase the amount of time when high fire conditions prevail in the U.S.” 

The time is coming for a reckoning and more support of firefighting, said Michele Steinberg, wildfire division director at the National Fire Protection Association.

“People aren't even facing what's reality right this moment in terms of wildfire,” Steinberg said “There’s so much denial.” 

Smokehouse Creek Fire one of the biggest in history

Anytime a large blaze makes headlines, people tend to compare the fire with those of the past, but the world of fire statistics is “wacky and murky,” said Stephen Pyne, an emeritus professor at Arizona State University and author of several books on fire history. Quantifying fires that happened more than a century ago can be "a slippery concept," Pyne said.

Using information provided by Pyne and Birgitte Messerschmidt, director of research at the fire protection association, USA TODAY put together a list of the known wildfires or wildfire complexes (groups of fires) with an estimated size of at least 500,000 acres dating back to 1825. The list came from historical documents, state agency lists, the National Interagency Fire Center and the Western Fire Chiefs Association.

Among all those fire complexes in history, the Smokehouse Creek Fire ranks eighth-largest overall at 1,058,482 acres. On a list that includes only fires of at least 500,000 acres since the 1960s, when accuracy started to increase as foresters began measuring burned areas by aircraft, the Smokehouse Creek fire is the largest single fire. Only the Taylor Complex Fire in Alaska in 2004 was larger, at 1.3 million acres.

Nearly half the biggest wildfires occurred in Alaska, including seven in just the past 21 years. 

Climate change is causing concern 

"Climate change is leading to larger and more severe wildfires in the western United States," the latest National Climate Assessment reported last year. These fires have “significant public health, socioeconomic, and ecological implications for the nation.”

Warmer temperatures create the kind of conditions that make fire behaviors more dangerous, the assessment said. 

A 2016 study led by John Abatzoglou at the University of California, Merced concluded human-caused climate change "doubled the cumulative forest fire area since 1984" in the western U.S. In other research, Abatzoglou documented trends in warming overnight temperatures in the Pacific Northwest.

Fire scientists are working to tease apart the factors influencing large fires to learn more about the role of climate change, land management and other human influences, McGinnis said. He points out that while climate change is "almost certainly a factor,” human activity is responsible for a lot of fire ignitions.

McGinnis is part of a National Science Foundation University of Washington-based research team studying the effects of climate change and how simultaneous large wildfires might affect firefighting.

The research team includes these findings:  

• Most of the western U.S. is projected to see the numbers of simultaneous fires of at 1,000 acres and greater that historically occurred once every 10 years happening once every five years or even more frequently.
• The median number of large fires occurring simultaneously from July to September was about three times higher in 2010-2019 than it was in 1984-1993.
• In Alaska, the average number of large fires during peak fire activity months almost doubled in 2002-2019 compared with 1984-2001.

Jon Keeley, a senior research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said it’s important to remember climate change isn’t solely to blame for the increase in large fires.

“It’s much more complex than that,” Keeley said. As the historical lists show, there have been large fires during droughts of the past."

In California, population growth, increasing fire ignitions and the Santa Ana winds are bigger factors in wildfires, Keeley said, and don’t appear to be affected by climate change right now. Climate change is likely to be a bigger driver in the northern part of the state rather than the southern, he said.

Preparing for wildfires

Just because a fire is big doesn’t mean it’s bad, said the fire protection association's Steinberg. Big fires historically have been a natural function, to clean the forest floor, put nutrients back into the soil and promote wildflower blooming, all part of healthy ecosystems adapted to fire over thousands of years. Indigenous peoples also used fire to maintain healthy habitats. 

The problem arises when houses are in the way.

“When we talk about the rise of wildfire disasters, by that I mean homes and neighborhoods being obliterated by fire,” Steinberg said. "We’ve got fire on the landscape and then we’ve got all this built environment, frankly, in the way, and it’s largely not designed to withstand anything like the impacts we’re seeing.”

On top of those concerns, Steinberg said, fire departments are concerned about their ability to safely fight the large, dangerous blazes, especially in a disaster as in Texas when several large wildfires all pop up in the same region at the same time.

Every five years, the association surveys firefighters about the needs of the 26,000 or so fire departments across the nation. Many are largely staffed by volunteers, and Steinberg said about two-thirds say they lack training or personal protective equipment and gear to fight fires safely and successfully.

“That’s a terrifying proportion, that we’re putting the firefighters lives on the line,” she said. “There’s a very huge lack of recognition of that problem, and it’s only going to continue.”

Dinah Voyles Pulver covers climate and the environment for USA TODAY. Reach her at [email protected] or @dinahvp.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Climate change helping drive an increase in large wildfires in the US