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Recent policy progress in the United States shows how populism can help advance climate goals, but at a steep cost. Avoiding setbacks will require curbing protectionist reflexes and harnessing opportunities for global cooperation.
Climate change can have profound impacts on mental health, yet few therapists receive training on how to talk to their clients about this issue. This Comment explores strategies for therapists to best support clients in climate distress.
Following a groundswell of voluntary net-zero targets by companies, regulators are increasingly introducing mandatory rules. If governments can overcome the barriers to rigour, coherence and fairness, such mandatory ‘ground rules’ have the potential to overcome the obstructionism that holds back a just climate transition.
Many cities are developing plans and strategies to achieve net-zero emissions and combat climate change. However, the operational value of residual emissions remains unknown, thus challenging the integrity, transparency and impact of such pledges.
Mitigation and adaptation strategies have historically been, and continue to be, developed separately. The climate is already changing and integration of adaptation and mitigation in policy and practice is now urgently needed.
Ongoing climate change has the potential to reduce people’s direct experiences with nature, leading to or further exacerbating the ‘extinction of experience’. We argue that understanding these impacts is crucial, as the extinction of experience can have adverse consequences for both humans and the natural environment.
Accurate representation of permafrost carbon emissions is crucial for climate projections, yet current Earth system models inadequately represent permafrost carbon. Sustained funding opportunities are needed from government and private sectors for prioritized model development.
Despite the promise of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) to improve food security in South Asia, most CSA practices and technologies have not been widely adopted. We identify the key barriers to CSA adoption in South Asia and suggest strategies to overcome them to increase CSA adoption at scale.
The triple climate inequality crisis, or disparities in contributions, impacts and capacity to act within and between countries, is a central issue in addressing climate change. This Comment advocates for progressive wealth taxation as a viable solution to the finance gap.
Policies and psychological approaches often overemphasize individual agency, overlooking how socioeconomic inequality can constrain access to low-carbon alternatives. We argue that tackling these inequalities is urgent for impactful, equitable behaviour change.
Communal life is characterized by the shared timing of human and environmental events. Climate change is disrupting these timings, creating mismatches in these coordinated temporal patterns and requiring adaptive governance.
Recent criticisms have suggested that future emissions are unlikely to lead to the warmest climate scenario available (SSP5–8.5), which has resulted in the second highest scenario (SSP3–7.0) receiving increased attention. The distinctiveness of SSP3–7.0 has not been well recognized, but it is relevant for the proper interpretation of studies that use this scenario.
If rapid and just transformations to low-carbon societies are to take place, citizens need to obtain the necessary knowledge and skills to critically examine and choose adequate climate policy options. An emphasis on critical climate education research and implementation is therefore required.
Extreme weather event attribution techniques quantify anthropogenic contributions to extreme weather disasters, but recently it was argued they are not yet ready to inform decisions on loss and damage funding. Here, we assert that they can substantially help formulate allocations to impacted vulnerable countries for the most damaging extreme events.
Climate models have evolved from research tools to underpin decision-making across the globe. To provide optimal value for society in the future, the models need to be made operational.
Climate education is seen as a key driver for behavioural change, yet it is usually not continued universally to higher-education level. With the increasing demand from both students and employers, we propose methods that incorporate climate education from multiple disciplines into current curriculums.
Climate emotions permeate student learning and research activities, but their influence is poorly understood and often ignored in higher education. We develop recommendations for instructors, research mentors and institutional leaders to enhance educational and research outcomes for students grappling with challenging climate emotions.
Climate change education is crucial to countries in the Global South due to their contribution and vulnerability to the climate crisis. However, institutionalizing and implementing climate change education is particularly challenging in developing nations, given inadequate motivation and limited capacity.
The global stocktake (GST) could both enable and hamper the inclusion of equity. This Comment outlines why equity is central to the GST and the challenges faced in addressing it, as well as the utility of needs-based assessments for advancing equity within the GST and the climate action generally.
Ice melt processes that take place at the ice–ocean boundary of Greenland and Antarctic glaciers play a pivotal role in their evolution and contribution to sea-level rise, but widespread observations in these regions are lacking. A major observational initiative will be necessary to drastically reduce uncertainties in projections and better prepare society for sea-level rise.