What separates a good leader from the merely adequate? The question stalks the business section of bookshops and motivates no end of teeth-grindingly-awful podcasts. In the latest addition to this canon, Tony Blair’s new book draws some lessons on leadership from his decade as prime minister of the UK. His …
Read More »Project 2025 Would Drastically Cut Support for Carbon Removal
Over the past few years, the United States has become the go-to location for companies seeking to suck carbon dioxide out of the sky. There are a handful of demonstration-scale direct air capture (DAC) plants dotted across the globe, but the facilities planned in Louisiana and Texas are of a …
Read More »The World’s Largest Fungus Collection May Unlock the Mysteries of Carbon Capture
It’s hard to miss the headliners at Kew Gardens. The botanical collection in London is home to towering redwoods and giant Amazonian water lilies capable of holding up a small child. Each spring, its huge greenhouses pop with the Technicolor displays of multiple orchid species. But for the really good …
Read More »The Paradox That's Supercharging Climate Change
No good deed goes unpunished—and that includes trying to slow climate change. By cutting greenhouse gas emissions, humanity will spew out fewer planet-cooling aerosols—small particles of pollution that act like tiny umbrellas to bounce some of the sun’s energy back into space. “Even more important than this direct reflection effect, …
Read More »Here Comes the Flood of Plug-In Hybrids
Last week, the Biden administration made it official: American cars are really going electric. The US Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule, long in the works, that will require automakers selling in the United States to dramatically boost the number of battery-powered vehicles sold this decade, putting a serious dent …
Read More »What Would Happen if Every American Got a Heat Pump
One of the most powerful weapons you can wield to fight climate change is … an appliance. A heat pump is a fully electric device that transfers warmth from outdoor air into a building, then reverses in the summer to act like an air conditioning unit. It’s much more efficient …
Read More »Ocean Temperatures Keep Shattering Records—and Stunning Scientists
For nearly a year now, a bizarre heating event has been unfolding across the world’s oceans. In March 2023, global sea surface temperatures started shattering record daily highs, and have stayed that way since. You can see 2023 in the orange line below, the other gray lines being previous years. …
Read More »The Feds Just Bet Even Bigger on American-Made Heat Pumps
While everyone’s been focused on accelerating the adoption of electric vehicles to cut carbon emissions, a technological hero has been rapidly ascending under the radar: the heat pump. Instead of burning natural gas or coal to produce heat, this fully electric device extracts warmth from outdoor air—even when it’s freezing …
Read More »Global Emissions Could Peak Sooner Than You Think
Every November, the Global Carbon Project publishes the year’s global CO2 emissions. It’s never good news. At a time when the world needs to be reducing emissions, the numbers continue to climb. However, while emissions have been moving in the wrong direction, many of the underpinning economic forces that drive …
Read More »The Surprising Things That Helped Make 2023 the Hottest Year Ever
Following a summer and autumn of planetary extremes—the hottest September by a wide margin, supercharged hurricanes, self-perpetuating heat domes—scientists have now declared 2023 the warmest year on record. Today the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its 2023 report, finding that last year was 1.35 degrees Celsius above the …
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