Category: climate change

  • Can the world wean itself off petroleum?

    Can the world wean itself off petroleum?

    It has been just six years since the Paris Climate Agreement set a race against time to rein in global heating. But the Earth is sending ever-harsher signals of alarm.

    When the accord was signed, we were on course for global heating of 4°C from the start of the industrial era to the end of this century. Now the figure is around 2.7°C. So something has been achieved, but relative safety comes at no more than 1.5°C.

    There is still a gap between the policies put in place over the past six years and what is needed to achieve that lower figure, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its annual outlook, published in October.

    Yet we know what to do: substitute renewable energy for the power we get from fossil fuels by mid-century; decarbonize industry and adapt land-use to trap carbon in soil and plants; adapt our means of transport and our growing cities to use less energy; and protect marine areas to enhance carbon absorption in oceans.

    “Two parallel and contradictory processes are in play,” wrote environmentalist and author George Monbiot in a Guardian opinion piece on November 3. “At climate summits, governments produce feeble voluntary commitments to limit the production of greenhouse gases. At the same time, almost every state with significant fossil reserves … intends to extract as much as they can.”

    Everything depends, he concluded, on which process prevails.

    Making strides in renewable energy

    Similar tensions are in play at industrial and economic levels. On the plus side, there is now a surprisingly strong backstory in renewable wind and solar energy, particularly solar, and particularly in the United States, the heaviest polluter historically per person, and China, the biggest polluter in absolute quantities of its emissions.

    The energy crisis resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February has prompted policies that will boost clean energy, the IEA added in its World Energy Outlook, which projects trends out to 2030.

    While the crisis has created a temporary upside for coal, in the long run, production of renewable energy will outpace the production of energy derived from fossil fuels, the report said.

    Another positive sign is the nascent hydrogen industry.

    Widely occurring and carbon-free, this gas could decarbonize long-distance travel and industries that are heavy emitters. Producing it without carbon emissions implies using intermittent renewable energy when it is over-abundant, a virtuous circle.

    However, none of this is yet at industrial scale — barring a few hydrogen-powered trains. Not all claims for hydrogen can be borne out, and it is not yet a viable financial concern.

    There is a significant plus on the political front with the election of Luiz Ignácio Lula da Silva as Brazil’s next president. He promises to end the record deforestation of the Amazon under his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, and is to take office in January.

    But there is no slowdown in fossil fuels.

    Yet investment in fossil fuels still dwarfs cash flowing into renewables, even though they offer economic advantages. The United States, for example, has ploughed over $9 trillion into oil and gas projects in Africa since it signed the Paris Agreement, The Guardian found.

    Africa, a continent starved of cash for energy but with vast potential for solar power, is now under pressure — including from international oil companies operating in its national parks — to exploit its fossil fuel resources just to bring electric power to its people.

    The fossil fuel industry’s damage doesn’t end there. There has been drastic under-counting of carbon emissions, a new tracking tool backed by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore has found. Oil and gas companies have underestimated their emissions threefold, Gore said when launching the tool at the United Nations Climate Summit (COP 27) in Egypt this month.

    “For the oil and gas sector it is consistent with their public relations strategy and their lobbying strategy. All of their efforts are designed to buy themselves more time before they stop destroying the future of humanity,” The Guardian quoted Gore as saying.

    Investing in Africa

    Across the world, policies are in place to invest over $2 trillion in clean energy by 2030, half as much again as today, led by the United States and China, but also including the European Union, India, Indonesia and South Korea, according to the IEA.

    In the United States, solar was already becoming the star of the new energy scene, according to an annual report from Berkeley National Labs. The country added 1.25 terrawatts of solar capacity in 2021. That’s more than the installed solar capacity in the entire world, which reached 1 terrawatt in early 2022.

    That was before the Biden Administration enacted the Inflation Reduction Act, which brings extra impetus for the sector. The United States plans to add 2-1/2 times its existing solar and wind capacity every year between now and 2030 and grow its fleet of electric vehicles seven-fold, the IEA said.

    At the same time, Africa is desperate for energy investment.

    To provide access to electricity for its population, the continent would need $25 billion per year, the IEA said in its annual Africa Energy Outlook, published in June. “This is around 1% of global energy investment today, and similar to the cost of building just one large liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal,” it said.

    The continent has 60% of the world’s best solar resources but only 1% of installed solar photovoltaic capacity. This is already the cheapest source of power in many parts of Africa and would outcompete all other energy sources across the continent by 2030, the IEA said.

    The energy watchdog projects that solar, wind, hydropower and geothermal energy would provide over 80% of new power generation capacity in Africa by 2030. No new coal-fired power plants would be built once those now under construction are completed. Half the cost of adding new solar installations out to 2025 could be covered by investments that would otherwise have gone into discontinued coal plants.

    Yet this assessment leaves out the plans for increased oil and natural gas developments on the continent.

    Pressure from energy companies

    A report just published by Rainforest UK and Earth Insight 2022 found that the area of land allocated across Africa for such developments is set to quadruple under existing plans. That report focuses on the Congo Basin, but in East Africa, French oil major TotalEnergies is pushing ahead with a large-scale oil project and trans-continental pipeline in Uganda.

    A first cargo of liquefied natural gas has just left Mozambique after multiple delays caused by an insurgency in the region of the gas field, in a venture involving several oil companies.

    These oil and gas projects would lock the continent into fossil fuels for decades to come and blow a hole in the bid to keep global heating to no more than 1.5°C.

    These energy projects have wide support among African leaders, who contrast the immediacy of such investments and their benefits for their countries with the reluctance of Western nations to put up the finance agreed over a decade ago for energy transitions and preservation of biodiversity.

    African environmentalists question the wisdom of this carbon bomb. But it is hard to dismiss the idea that broken promises by the countries that have caused the climate crisis has driven Africa into the arms of the fossil fuel industry.

    TotalEnergies’ CEO Patrick Pouyanné argues that the world cannot quit fossil fuels before it has alternative sources of energy.

    “The mistake being made now is to think that the solution for the climate is to abandon fossil fuels,” he said in an interview with French TV station LCI on November 17. “The solution is first to build the new decarbonized energies that we need.”

    “If you do both at the same time, what happens?,” Pouyanné said. “Exactly what you reproach us for — prices rise because of the rarity of supply, because the demand for oil is not falling.”

    The monopoly power of fossil fuel firms

    These energy companies have long fought the switch from fossil fuels to renewables.

    Half a century ago, Total concealed a report it had commissioned that clearly explained how burning fossil fuels would cause global heating and the consequences we are seeing today.

    Other oil and gas companies, notably Exxon, acted similarly and responded to their findings by funding climate-denying think tanks and political lobbyists.

    More recently, as the evidence mounted, they turned their attention to lobbying for exemptions, even though the scientific consensus demands that to achieve the 1.5°C limit on warming, there can be no new oil, gas or coal exploration or extraction.

    A record number of fossil fuel lobbyists attended this month’s climate summit in Egypt (see the graphic here).

    Fossil fuels no longer make economic sense.

    The sector is a good example of reality flouting economic theory, which teaches that if a new technology reaches a point where it outcompetes an existing one, the new technology will replace the older one.

    This should be happening with solar versus coal, oil and gas — and indeed is predicted to happen by 2050. Meanwhile, harmful emissions continue to rise.

    Energy markets and the fossil fuel firms themselves do not obey basic economics for the simple reason that they are monopolies with the power to skew conditions in their favor.

    The oil producers’ monopoly, in the form of OPEC, has controlled production to keep prices higher for decades. In the 1990s, the big Western oil companies went through a frenzy of mega-mergers that created today’s top five — Shell, ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips — whose sheer size gives them disproportionate bargaining and lobbying power.

    Now activists are trying to gain support for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty as a way of reining in the root cause of the climate emergency. The initiative was put before the United Nations in September and the COP 27 climate summit in November.

    “Will you be on the right side of history? Will you end this moral and economic madness?” Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate asked global leaders at the summit.

    On that, the jury is still out.

    Landmark deal opens way for loss and damage fund

    It has taken 27 climate summits, but the COP 27 in Egypt finally managed to pull out an agreement to set up a specific fund to aid poor countries hit by damage caused by climate disasters. The deal was approved on November 20 after a marathon negotiating session.

    The proposal had been fought tooth and nail by the rich industrialized countries whose emissions have fostered global heating, stirring resentment among poorer countries who have suffered the most extreme consequences and have the least ability to mitigate the damage. 

    Details will be hammered out over the coming year, and there is as yet no money in the fund. It was nevertheless a major step forward.

    However, the final agreement failed to call for phasing out all fossil fuels and for warming emissions to peak by 2025, both heavily opposed by oil-producing countries, raising fears that the goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C by mid-century will not be achievable.

    Questions to consider:

    1. Where is a major boom in solar energy taking place?
    2. What is Africa’s energy dilemma?
    3. Why do you think fossil fuel majors have so much influence?

     

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  • Should you give equal voice to all perspectives?

    Should you give equal voice to all perspectives?

    Journalists are often told to be objective and to tell both sides of a story. They are taught to seek multiple perspectives. This means that when reporters interview an expert about any given topic, they are encouraged to find another source with a different opinion to make it “fair” and “balanced”. 

    Journalists also know that conflict makes a story more interesting and that gets more eyeballs or ears which allows their news organizations to sell more ads and subscriptions. 

    But research any topic and you will find disagreements among scientists, ecologists, business leaders, politicians and everyday people. In other words you can just about always find conflict. 

    Be careful of this. In homing in on conflict you could create a false balance. That’s when you make two sides seem more equal than they are. 

    The classic example is climate change. One of the reasons why it took so long for governments to recognize the danger of climate change is that for years journalists would balance the many, many scientists warning about carbon levels with the very few scientists who said the problem was overblown. 

    So how can you report multiple perspectives without creating a false sense of balance?

    A few suggestions

    Focus on facts, not opinions. And know the difference. 

    A fact can be verified through data and anecdotes of things that happened and that can also be verified. 

    When sources give you information, ask them: “How do you know that?” and “Do you have evidence to back that up?” 

    Even when they have evidence to back up what they say, question why they take the stand they take, or why they came to the conclusions that they did. It is almost as easy to find evidence to support a position as it is to find conflict in a story. I found myself almost believing that the earth is indeed flat when an advocate of that theory seemed to offer up a pile of convincing evidence. 

    To get the public to not worry about the dangers of tobacco, people from the tobacco industry offered up all kinds of evidence for years. People from the fossil fuels industry can offer up all kinds of evidence that human behavior (like driving petrol-powered cars) doesn’t cause climate change. 

    So it is important when you publish information someone has given you, to explain to your audience how that person benefits or is hurt by the issue. 

    Not all experts are equal.

    When seeking opinions or assessments, do so from people with actual expertise. That’s not the same as a level of education or a fancy title. Don’t be afraid to ask people: “How do you know this?” Someone without a university degree might have lived experience with a problem, while someone with a doctorate might never have experienced what you are reporting on. Politicians are fond of talking about the problems of poor people even though many of them came from privileged backgrounds. 

    Don’t be afraid to challenge people’s statements. Let them know when you find contradictory information. When you challenge people it is not a sign of disrespect. It is a sign that you have carefully listened to what they said, have thought about it and are now questioning it. Disrespect is to take something someone says without really listening or thinking about it. 

    Question data people cite or that you find. A census conducted in 2010 in Nabon, a rural area in Ecuador, found that almost 90% of the population was “poor”. That’s an astounding figure, and if used as data in the media, paints a very particular picture. However, a different study in 2013, conducted by the University of Quenca with the Nabon municipal government at the time, found a significantly different figure — that about 75% of the population reported to be highly satisfied with their lives when assessing “subjective wellbeing”. 

    The difference in figures is due to the indicators used to measure satisfaction. The “subjective wellbeing” survey by the University of Quenca measured people’s control over their lives, satisfaction with their occupation, financial situation, their environmental surroundings, family life, leisure time, spiritual life and food security. The census from 2010, however, looked at housing, access to health and education and monetary income.

    So the language used for measuring life satisfaction was important and that the context of the data — how and why it was collected — can change the meaning of the information. To make sure you don’t misreport data, try to avoid overly relying on just one source of numbers or statistics. Instead, check what other data is out there. 

    Report the reality.

    Your job as a journalist is to present the information in such a way that your audience can recognise what is actually happening and why it’s important. 

    Does what the experts say or what people say about their personal experience go against what you have seen out there yourself? People often exaggerate without even realizing that they are doing so. Our memories are often faulty; we might think we know things that we really don’t. 

    Taking all this into account, it is ultimately up to you, as a journalist, to decide how much balance to give to the multiple perspectives you have gathered. If the experiences and evidence and your observations and common sense all point to a reality, then you will mislead your audience if you balance that out equally with people who offer up what seems to be a different reality. 

    That doesn’t mean that you should silence them or keep them out of the story altogether. Understanding and exploring opposing viewpoints is important so that ultimately people can reach an understanding.

    Without that understanding, consensus isn’t possible. And it is difficult to make progress in a society without consensus.

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  • Students, schools race to save clean energy projects in face of Trump deadline

    Students, schools race to save clean energy projects in face of Trump deadline

    Tanish Doshi was in high school when he pushed the Tucson Unified School District to take on an ambitious plan to reduce its climate footprint. In Oct. 2024, the availability of federal tax credits encouraged the district to adopt the $900 million plan, which involves goals of achieving net-zero emissions and zero waste by 2040, along with adding a climate curriculum to schools.

    Now, access to those funds is disappearing, leaving Tucson and other school systems across the country scrambling to find ways to cover the costs of clean energy projects.

    The Arizona school district, which did not want to impose an economic burden on its low-income population by increasing bonds or taxes, had expected to rely in part on federal dollars provided by the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act, Doshi said. 

    But under HR1, or the “one big, beautiful bill,” passed on July 4, Tucson schools will not be able to receive all of the expected federal funding in time for their upcoming clean energy projects. The law discontinues many clean energy tax credits, including those used by schools for solar power and electric vehicles, created under the IRA. When schools and other tax-exempt organizations receive these credits, they come in the form of a direct cash reimbursement.

    At the same time, Tucson and thousands of districts across the country that were planning to develop solar and wind power projects are now forced to decide between accelerating them to try to meet HR1’s fast-approaching “commence construction” deadline of June 2026, finding other sources of funding or hitting pause on their plans. Tina Cook, energy project manager for Tucson schools, said the district might have to scale back some of its projects unless it could find local sources of funding. 

    “Phasing out the tax credits for wind and solar energy is going to make a huge, huge difference,” said Doshi, 18, now a first-year college student. “It ends a lot of investments in poor and minority communities. You really get rid of any notion of environmental justice that the IRA had advanced.”

    Emma Weber leads a chant at a Colorado state capitol rally in support of “The Green New Deal for Colorado Schools.” Credit: Courtesy of Emma Weber

    The tax credits in the IRA, the largest legislative investment in climate projects in U.S. history, had marked a major opportunity for schools and colleges to reduce their impact on the environment. Educational institutions are significant contributors to climate change: K-12 school infrastructure, for example, releases at least 41 million metric tons of emissions per year, according to a paper from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University. The K-12 school system’s buses — some 480,000 — and meals also produce significant emissions and waste. Clean energy projects supported by the IRA were helping schools not only to limit their climate toll but also to save money on energy costs over the long term and improve student health, advocates said.

    As a result, many students, consultants and sustainability leaders said, they have no plans to abandon clean energy projects. They said they want to keep working to cut emissions, even though that may be more difficult now.

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education. 

    Sara Ross, cofounder of UndauntedK12, which helps school districts green their operations, divided HR1’s fallout on schools into three categories: the good, the bad and the ugly. 

    On the bright side, she said, schools can still get up to 50 percent off for installing ground source heat pumps — those credits will continue — to more efficiently heat and cool schools. The network of pipes in a ground source pump cycles heat from the shallow earth into buildings.

    In the “bad” category, any electric vehicle acquired after Sept. 30 of this year will not be eligible for tax credits — drastically accelerating the IRA’s phase-out timeline by seven years. That applies to electric school buses as well as other district-owned vehicles. Electric vehicle charging stations must be installed by June 30, 2026 at an eligible location to claim a tax credit.*

    EPA’s Clean School Bus Program still exists for two more years and covers two-thirds of the funding for all electric school buses districts acquire in that time. The remaining one-third, however, was to be covered by federal and state tax credits. 

    The expiration of the federal tax credits could cost a district up to $40,000 more per vehicle, estimated Sue Gander, director of the Electric School Bus Initiative run by the nonprofit World Resources Institute. 

    Related: So much for saving the planet. Climate jobs, and many others, evaporate for 2025 grads

    Solar projects will see the most “ugly” effects of HR1, Ross said. 

    Los Angeles Unified School District is planning to build 21 solar projects on roofs, carports and other structures, plus 13 electric vehicle charging sites, as part of an effort to reduce energy costs and achieve 100 percent renewable energy by 2040. The district anticipated receiving around $25 million in federal tax credits to help pay for the $90 million contract, said Christos Chrysiliou, chief eco-sustainability officer for the district. With the tight deadlines imposed by HR1, the district can no longer count on receiving that money. 

    “It’s disappointing,” Chrysiliou said. “It’s nice to be able to have that funding in place to meet the goals and objectives that we have.”

    Emma Weber, at left, trains student leaders at Sunrise Movement’s “summer intensive” in Illinois this year. Credit: Courtesy of Emma Weber

    LAUSD is looking at a small portion of a $9 billion bond measure passed last year, as well as utility rebates, third-party financing and grants from the California Energy Commission, to help make up for some of the gaps in funding.

    Many California State University campuses are in a similar position as they work to install solar to meet the system’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2045, said Lindsey Rowell, CSU’s chief energy, sustainability and transportation officer. 

    Tariffs on solar panel materials from overseas and the early sunsetting of tax credits mean that “the cost of these projects are becoming prohibitive for campuses,” Rowell said. 

    Sweeps of undocumented immigrants in California may also lead to labor shortages that could slow the pace of construction, Rowell added. “Limiting the labor force in any way is only going to result in an increased cost, so those changes are frightening as well,” she said. 

    New Treasury Department guidance, issued Aug. 15, made it much harder for projects to meet  the threshold needed to qualify for the tax credits. Renewable energy projects previously qualified for credits once a developer spent 5 percent of a project’s cost. But the guidelines have been tightened — now, larger projects must pass a “physical work test,” meaning “significant physical labor has begun on a site,” before they can qualify for credits. With the construction commencement deadline looming next June, these will likely leave many projects ineligible for credits.

    “The rules are new, complex [and] not widely understood,” Ross said. “We’re really concerned about schools’ ability to continue to do solar projects and be able to effectively navigate these new rules.” 

    Schools without “fancy legal teams” may struggle to understand how the new tax credit changes in HR1 will affect their finances and future projects, she added.

    Some universities were just starting to understand how the IRA tax credits could help them fund projects. Lily Strehlow, campus sustainability coordinator at the University of Wisconsin, Eau-Claire, said the planning cycle for clean energy projects at the school can take ten years. The university is in the process of adding solar to the roof of a large science building, and depending on the date of completion, the project “might or might not” qualify for the credits, she said. 

    “At this point, everybody’s holding their breath,” said Rick Brown, founder of California-based TerraVerde Energy, a clean energy consultant to schools and agencies. 

    Brown said that none of his company’s projects are in a position where they’re not going to get done, but the company may end up seeing fewer new projects due to a higher cost of equipment. 

    Tim Carter, president of Second Nature, which supports climate work in education, added that colleges and universities are in a broader period of uncertainty, due to larger attacks from the Trump administration, and are not likely to make additional investments at this time: “We’re definitely in a wait and see.”

    Related: A government website teachers rely on is in peril 

    For youth activists, the fallout from HR1 is “disheartening,” Doshi said. 

    Emma and Molly Weber, climate activists since eighth grade, said they are frustrated. The Colorado-based twins, who will start college this fall, helped secure the first “Green New Deal for Schools” resolution in the nation in the Boulder Valley School District. Its goals include working toward a goal of Zero Net Energy by 2050, making school buildings greener, creating pathways to green jobs and expanding climate change education. 

    Emma, far left, and Molly Weber, far right, work with climate leaders from the Boulder Valley School District’s Sunrise Movement to prepare for Colorado’s legislative session. Credit: Courtesy of Emma Weber

    “It feels very demoralizing to see something you’ve been working so hard at get slashed back, especially since I’ve spoken to so many students from all over the country about these clean energy tax credits, being like, ‘These are the things that are available to you, and this is how you can help convince your school board to work on this,’” Emma Weber said.

    The Webers started thinking about other creative ways to pay for the clean energy transition and have settled on advocating for state-level legislation in the form of a climate superfund, where major polluters in a community would be responsible for contributing dollars to sustainability initiatives. 

    Consultants and sustainability coordinators said that they don’t see the demand for renewable energy going away. “Solar is the cheapest form of energy. It makes sense to put it on every rooftop that we can. And that’s true with or without tax credits,” Strehlow said. 

    *Correction: This version of the story includes updated information on the timeline for the expiration of tax credits for electric vehicle charging stations.

    Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at [email protected]. 

    This story about tax credits was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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  • Saying goodbye to our glaciers

    Saying goodbye to our glaciers

    Across the world two billion people — around a quarter of the world’s population — depend on glaciers for water to irrigate fields for agriculture, provide drinking water and to generate electricity.

    But these glaciers are melting before our eyes.

    Consider that 10% of Iceland is covered by glaciers but that is 1% less than a decade ago. That percentage will continue to decrease as the rate of change due to global warming has become dramatic.

    Glaciers are so iconic in Iceland that when one collapses, people hold a funeral. 

    It’s a ceremony created for humans to make people aware about the urgency of global warming. And it’s a poetic way of marking the end of one of nature’s most inspiring creations.

    A land where ice is prized

    The first funeral for a glacier took place in 2019. It was for Okjökull glacier, the smallest glacier in a land that is dominated by ice and snow. 

    Okjökull glacier, popularly known as Ok, was only a modest 15 square kilometres big and had been shrinking for decades. Icelanders regarded diminutive Ok with affection, even making it a character in children’s book. 

    So the emotional impact of watching Ok vanish was felt not only by the locals who had grown up with the glacier, but across Iceland. Icelanders are brought up learning songs and sagas about their spectacular island. The snowpack of their glaciers creates the wild rolling rivers and massive waterfalls throughout the island before the flow tumbles into the stormy North Atlantic.

    Now on the hill which had been covered by Okjökull is a rock with a brass plate with urgent words from Icelandic poet Andri Snær Magnason.

    A LETTER TO THE FUTURE

    Vatnajökull ice cap and parts of Hofsjökull ice cap, Iceland in September 2022. (Credit: Pierre Markuse via Wikimedia Commons)

    Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path.
    This monument is to acknowledge that we know
    what is happening and what needs to be done.
    Only you will know if we did it.

    Ice loss in Iceland

    Tiny Okjökull was nothing compared to the largest glacier in Iceland — and in Europe — the Vatnajökull ice cap.

    Despite its mass, scientists estimate that nine million litres of Vatnajökull’s glacial ice are being turned into water every minute. 

    The lakes and ice lagoons downstream of Vatnajökull, filled by meltwater, are bigger every year as the glacier itself shrinks.

    So should there be funerals for glaciers?

    Sigurdur Arni Thordarson, the pastor of Hallgrímskirkja Church in Iceland thinks so. His church was built to resemble the mountains and glaciers of Iceland and dominates the Reykjavík skyline.

    “For humans, the loss of a glacier is a real loss,” Thordarson said. “People who have a deep understanding and awareness of interconnectedness of life really feel the necessity of expressing the grief.”

    Snow melt in the Alps

    It seems a widespread sentiment. A few months after the ceremony in Iceland, hikers, many dressed in black, gathered on Pizol glacier in the Swiss Alps to listen as a priest gave a funeral service. 

    Another ceremony followed in 2020 for Clark Glacier in Oregon and soon after on a Mexican glacier named Ayoloco by the Aztecs. The Mexican geologists and ecologists who marked the day used the words written by Andri Snær Magnason that commemorate Okjökull.

    Crossing into another culture, Buddhists monks in Nepal held an ‘ice funeral’ in the Himalayas in May 2025 for Yala Glacier which had shrunk by two thirds in the past several decades. Attended by locals and climate scientists they gathered under traditional prayer flags across from the last visible ice. Even Yala’s altitude over 5,000 metres was no protection against deglaciation

    Two granite stones now mark the spot of the ceremony. One with the words of Magnason from Iceland, the other with an inscription from Nepali poet Manjushree Thapa:

    Hallgrimskirkja Church

    Hallgrímskirkja Church in Reykjavík, Iceland. (Credit: Mattias Hill via Wikimedia Commons)

    Yala, where the gods dream high in the mountains, where the cold is divine.
    Dream of life in rock, sediment, and snow, in the pulverizing ofice and earth, in meltwater pools the colour of sky. 
    Dream. Dream of a glacier and the civilizations downstream.

    In all these commemorations, Magnason’s alarm from Iceland have been echoed:

    …We know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you will know if we did it.

    The Third Pole

    The glaciers in the Himalayas are sometimes called the ‘Third Pole’ because they account for the most ice after the Arctic and Antarctica. 

    Around the world glaciers are melting faster than ever recorded but the Himalayas are warming at a higher rate than the global average, up to 65% faster. The Himalaya glaciers feed some of the great rivers of Asia — the Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra and Yangtze rivers which flow through some of the most populated areas on the planet. 

    The consequences of disappearing glaciers are starting to be felt. Mexican climate scientists who attended the Ayoloco ceremony pointed out that “without large ice masses on mountain peaks temperatures will increase.”

    All of our planet was created by massive geologic forces. Those forces are more easily observable in Iceland, being one of the newest land masses to be created on Earth. It is an island nation that was created by volcanoes but sculpted and defined by glaciers. It may be fitting that, in addition to the first glacier funeral ever held, the first Glacier Graveyard was created in 2024, to mark extinct glaciers and provide a reminder of what is at stake. 

    The glaciers remembered were taken from the first Global Glacier Casualty List. Soon after, the United Nations declared 2025 the International Year of Glacier Preservation. Now, all fifteen tombstones carved from ice to mark those vanished glaciers have melted.

     

    Questions to consider: 

    1. Should glaciers, like some rivers which have been granted legal rights, be regarded as living creatures?

    2. Does a ceremony like a funeral provide an inspiration for climate activism?

    3. What natural formations or environmental places are important to you? 

     

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  • Is climate change carcinogenic?

    Is climate change carcinogenic?

    A study in California this year found that cancer patients were much more likely to die from the disease if they breathed in air pollution from wildfires a year after their diagnosis. 

    In 2020, flooding in Spain caused by Storm Gloria forced 118 cancer patients to cancel their radiotherapy treatment. And in 2019, researchers from the University of Michigan found a higher death rate among adult cancer patients who were affected by Hurricane Katrina. 

    It turns out that in many ways, climate change affects our health. We can see this directly when looking at cancer — something that affects one in five people around the world directly, and just about everyone else connected to those people indirectly.

    I know this first hand. Four years ago a close family member was diagnosed with cancer. It made me wonder: What could we have done to prevent it? Was it something they ate? Their amount of exercise? 

    At the time, we were living in South Korea, a country notorious for its heavy air pollution days, and I couldn’t help but wonder if that might have had an impact on the diagnosis. 

    Then, as I watched them go through multiple recurrences of cancer, the question gradually evolved into this: How can you ensure successful cancer treatment? And subsequently, how can you ensure that everyone has access to safe cancer treatment?

    Supply chain disruptions

    It turns out that air pollution isn’t the only problem. Extreme weather events caused by climate change can disrupt supply chains which results in shortages of critical medical supplies.

    In 2017, an intravenous fluid manufacturing company in Puerto Rico, for example, was destroyed by Hurricane Maria. The company was a major supplier of IV fluids for hospitals in the United States and the destruction led to a shortage in essential IV fluids. 

    In an attempt to investigate further, I contacted Dr. Kishan Gupta, a specialist in comprehensive ophthalmology, cornea and external diseases, at the Kaiser Downey Medical Center in California. Over a WhatsApp chat, he told me that Hurricane Maria not only led to major disruptions in eye drop manufacturing but also in IV saline for surgery and intraoperative anesthetics at his hospital. 

    Dr. David Kim, an orthopedic surgeon at the Worcester Medical Center in the U.S. state of Massachusetts, then told me that when IV supplies are disrupted, all surgeries that require such fluids are delayed — anything from hand and hip replacement surgeries to the removal of cancer tumors.

    IV saline and intraoperative anesthetics are crucial for cancer patients, especially IV saline, which helps to dilute toxic fluids and dehydration as a result of chemotherapy.

    Medical needs not met

    Crucially, climate change-induced extreme weather events damage infrastructure, preventing important medical equipment and supplies from reaching destined locations at an appropriate time.

    On the note of promptness, one of cancer’s most threatening characteristics is its fast, uncontrolled growth. In the field of medicine, this means that cancer treatment must be administered at the correct time, with the correct steps. 

    After Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, a 70% cancel rate was observed for brachytherapy, a form of radiation therapy. In Mexico after the 2017 earthquake, cancer surgeries were canceled with a median delay of 22.5 days. 

    During natural disasters, transportation networks and electrical systems break down. This means that people are unable to get to their hospital for treatment, and additionally, treatments like radiation which depend on electricity, can’t be administered.

    The COVID-19 pandemic, while not a climate change-induced event, showed what happens when supply chains break down. Needed supplies of everything from towels to anti-septic solutions became unavailable and as a result, people died.

    Lack of blood donors

    Of course, cancer isn’t the only health concern related to climate change. Rising temperatures and more frequent natural disasters can create favorable conditions for insects such as ticks and mosquitoes that transmit harmful pathogens. 

    Hurricanes, tornados and other extreme weather events also discourage people from traveling and that can cause a consequent lack in blood donations at hospitals, according to Dr. Sung Eun Yang at the Kaiser Panorama City Medical Center in California. “Blood and blood products are a limited precious resource,” Dr Yang said. “Donor turn out may be dependent on the weather. I recall in Boston we had a terrible winter storm with no donor turn out and experienced significant shortages in blood products.”

    In the United States, roughly 25% of blood donations in the United States go to cancer treatments. 

    Furthermore, it turns out that severe heat and humidity can affect medications — how they operate or their very properties. A number of common cancer medications are highly heat-sensitive. This means that as the Earth’ s climate warms, cancer patients who live in hot places will have a more difficult time storing and accessing safe medication, particularly in economically poor areas that can’t invest in energy-consuming storage. But even those in wealthier, cooler countries will be affected if they import products from those regions. 

    Finally, because of climate change, we are also seeing an increase in wildfires due to extreme and sustained drought conditions and wildfires too, ultimately leading to increases in cancer. 

    For instance, cancer is the number one cause of death in the fire fighting industry, accounting for 70% of all deaths.  

    Where there’s smoke, there’s cancer?

    Harvard University researcher Mary Johnson told the publication E&E News this year that potentially harmful chemicals are released every time a structure burns.

    “Plumbing has copper and lead in it,” she stated. “Paint has toxic chemicals. Electronics, plastics have really nasty stuff in them. All these chemicals we don’t think of occurring in a wildland fire are now part of the smoke.”

    So what can we do? 

    In preparation for all potential disasters, hospitals could have a disaster plan to help ensure that patients receive any and all important data during a future disaster. For example, the United States Department of Health and Human services has released a study on the efficacy of electronic health records during disasters. If a storm is forecasted in a region, an electronic emergency chart could be made for each patient. This plan could also come in the form of new infrastructure or mechanisms meant to keep the hospital safe from floods or fires. 

    Patients should also be provided with alternate ways to access healthcare information in order to connect with local healthcare teams, and the American Association of Colleges of Nursing recently added climate change education to the list of required skills for nursing education programs. 

    Finally, past cancer survivors of disasters have suggested that countries like Puerto Rico can be more prepared and adaptable in terms of exploring alternatives like renewable energy, that aren’t as susceptible to power outages from storms. 

    As the climate deteriorates, our responsibility in pushing back against the climate crisis will expand in multiple ways. 

    Our health and the health of the people we love will depend on the health of our planet. That means that it is our responsibility to protect ourselves, our loved ones and all of those currently battling cancer from climate change.

     

    Questions to consider:

    1. What connection is there between climate change and cancer rates?

    2. What can be done to keep people from dying of climate-change related cancer?

    3. What, if anything, can you do to help cool down our planet?

     

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  • Alaska’s Colleges at the Meltdown’s Edge—Just as the Arctic Heats Up

    Alaska’s Colleges at the Meltdown’s Edge—Just as the Arctic Heats Up

    Alaska’s higher-ed story is a preview of the national “College Meltdown,” only starker. The University of Alaska (UA) system—Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Southeast—has endured a decade of enrollment erosion and austerity politics, punctuated by a 2019 budget crisis that forced regents to declare financial exigency and consider consolidations. The immediate trigger was a proposed $130+ million state cut, later converted into a three-year reduction compact; the long tail is a weakened public research engine in the very state where climate change is moving fastest.

    In 2025 the vise tightened again from Washington. UA’s president told regents that more than $50 million in grants had been frozen or canceled under the Trump administration, warning of staff cuts and program impacts if funds failed to materialize. Those freezes were part of a broader chill: federal agencies stepping back from research that even references climate change, just as the Arctic’s transformation accelerates.

    This is not an abstract loss. Alaska is the frontline laboratory of global warming: thawing permafrost, vanishing sea ice, collapsing coastal bluffs. UA’s scientists have documented these trends in successive “Alaska’s Changing Environment” assessments; the 2024 update underscores rapid, measurable shifts across temperature, sea ice, wildfire, hydrology, and ecosystems. When the main public research institution loses people and projects, the United States loses the data and know-how it needs to respond.

    Climate denial collides with national security

    The contradiction at the heart of federal policy is glaring. On one hand, the Trump administration has proposed opening vast swaths of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve to drilling and reversing environmental protections—signaling a bet on fossil expansion in a region already warming at double the global rate. On the other hand, the same administration is curtailing climate and Arctic science, even as military planners warn that the Arctic is becoming a contested theater. You can’t secure what you refuse to measure.

    The security stakes are real. Russia has spent the past decade refurbishing Soviet-era bases, deploying ice-capable vessels, and leveraging energy projects along the Northern Sea Route (NSR). China has declared itself a “near-Arctic” power and partnered with Moscow on patrols and infrastructure. Meanwhile, the U.S. remains short on icebreakers and Arctic domain awareness—even as traffic through high-latitude passages grows more plausible in low-ice summers. Analysts project that a meaningful share of global shipping could shift north by mid-century, and recent reporting shows the region is already a strategic flashpoint.

    That makes UA’s expertise more than a local asset; it’s a pillar of U.S. national security. The University of Alaska Fairbanks hosts the Center for Arctic Security and Resilience (CASR) and degree pathways that fuse climate, emergency management, and security studies—exactly the interdisciplinary skill set defense, Coast Guard, and civil authorities will need as sea lanes open and storms, fires, and thaw-related failures multiply. Undercut these programs, and you undercut America’s ability to see, interpret, and act in the Arctic.

    The costs of disinvestment

    The 2019 state-level cuts did immediate damage—hiring freezes, program reviews, and fears of accreditation changes—but their larger effect was to signal instability to students, faculty, and funders. Austerity invites a spiral: as programs and personnel disappear, grant competitiveness slips; as labs lose continuity, agencies look elsewhere; as uncertainty grows, students choose out-of-state options. UA leadership has tried to reverse course—prioritizing enrollment, retention, and workforce alignment in recent budgets—but it’s difficult to rebuild a research reputation once the pipeline of projects and people is disrupted.

    The 2025 federal freezes amplify that spiral by hitting precisely the projects that matter most: those with “climate” in the title. Researchers report program cancellations and re-scoped solicitations across agencies. That kind of ideological filter doesn’t just reduce funding—it distorts the evidence base that communities, tribal governments, and emergency planners depend on for everything from permafrost-safe housing to coastal relocation plans. It also weakens U.S. credibility in Arctic diplomacy at a time when the Arctic Council is strained and cooperation with Russia is largely stalled.

    Why this matters beyond Alaska

    Think of UA as America’s northern early-warning system. Its glaciologists, sea-ice modelers, fire scientists, and social scientists collect the longitudinal datasets that turn anecdotes into policy-relevant knowledge. Lose continuity, and you lose the ability to detect regime shifts—abrupt ecosystem changes, cascading infrastructure failures from thaw, new navigation windows that alter shipping economics and risk. Those changes feed directly into maritime safety, domain awareness, and the rules-of-the-road that will govern the NSR and other passages.

    Meanwhile, federal moves to expand Arctic drilling create additional operational burdens for emergency response and environmental monitoring—burdens that fall on the same universities being told to do more with less. Opening the door to long-lived oil projects while throttling climate and environmental research is a recipe for higher spill risk, poorer oversight, and costlier disasters.

    A pragmatic way forward

    Three steps could stabilize UA and, by extension, America’s Arctic posture:

    1. Firewall climate science from political interference. Agencies should fund Arctic research on merit, not language policing. Reinstating paused grants and re-issuing climate-related solicitations would immediately restore capacity in labs and field stations.

    2. Treat UA as critical national infrastructure. Just as the U.S. is racing to modernize radar and add icebreakers, it should invest in Arctic science and workforce pipelines at UA—scholarships tied to Coast Guard and NOAA service, ship time for sea-ice and fisheries research, and support for Indigenous knowledge partnerships that improve on-the-ground resilience.

    3. Align energy decisions with security reality. Every new Arctic extraction project increases environmental and emergency-response exposure in a region where capacity is thin. If policymakers proceed, they owe UA and Alaska communities the monitoring, baseline studies, and response investments that only a healthy public research university can sustain.

    The paradox of the College Meltdown is that it hits hardest where public knowledge is most needed. In the Lower 48, that might mean fewer nurses or teachers. In Alaska, it means flying blind in a rapidly changing theater where Russia and China are already maneuvering and where coastlines, sea ice, and permafrost are literally moving under our feet. The University of Alaska is not a nice-to-have. It is how the United States knows what is happening in the Arctic—and how it prepares for what’s next. Weakening it in the name of budget discipline or culture-war messaging is not just shortsighted. It’s a security risk.

    Sources

    • University of Alaska Office of the President, FY2020 budget overview (state veto and reductions).

    • University of Alaska Public Affairs timeline (2019 exigency and consolidation actions).

    • Alaska Department of Administration, Dunleavy–UA three-year compact (2019).

    • Anchorage Daily News, “$50M in grants frozen under Trump administration” (May 28, 2025).

    • The Guardian, “Outcry as Trump withdraws support for research that mentions ‘climate’” (Feb. 21, 2025).

    • UA/ACCAP, Alaska’s Changing Environment 2.0 (2024 update).

    • UAF Center for Arctic Security and Resilience (programs and mission).

    • Empower Alaska: UA Arctic expertise overview.

    • Wall Street Journal, Russia/China Arctic power projection and U.S. capability gaps (Feb. 2025).

    • The Arctic Institute, shipping projections for the Northern Sea Route.

    • Arctic Review on Law and Politics, vulnerabilities and governance challenges on the NSR.

    • The Guardian, rollback of protections in the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska (Aug. 2025).

    • Alaska Public Media, uneven cuts to Arctic research under Trump (Apr. 2025).

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  • The urgent need to facilitate environmental justice learning in HE institutions

    The urgent need to facilitate environmental justice learning in HE institutions

    by Sally Beckenham

    The crises we are facing globally, from climate change and climate change dispossession to drought and food insecurity, are intersecting social and environmental issues, which need to be recognized and addressed accordingly through integrated and holistic measures. This can only be achieved by eschewing the tendency of existing governance and economic systems to silo social and environmental problems, as if they are separate concerns that can be managed – and prioritised – hierarchically. Much of this requires a better understanding of environmental injustice – the ways in which poor, racialised, indigenous and other marginalized communities are overlooked and/or othered in this power hierarchy, such that they must face a disproportionate burden of environmental harm.

    This is happening with disconcerting regularity around the world, often going under the radar but sometimes making headlines, as for example in May this year, when institutionalised environmental racism in the U.S. manifested in the placement of a copper mine on land inhabited by and sacred to the Apache indigenous group (Sherman, 2025). With limited political power to challenge it they are left to face dispossession, loss of livelihood and physical and mental health ill-effects (Morton-Ninomiya et al, 2023). We have seen this making headlines closer to home recently too, with evidence suggesting that toxic air in the UK is killing 500 people a week and most affecting those in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas (Gregory, 2025). An environmental problem (such as air pollution) cannot be disentangled from its social causes and effects. Or to put it another way, violence done to the environment is violence done to a particular group of people.

    A transformative response to our global challenges that re-centres environmental justice will require a paradigm shift in the ways that we govern, construct our societies, build our communities, run our economies, design our technologies and engage with the non-human world. The role of higher education will be critical to even a modest move in this direction. This is because, as they are probably tired of hearing, this generation of students will shape our collective futures, so it matters that they are literate in the deep entanglement of environmental and social justice challenges. Moreover, as Stickney and Skilbeck caution, “it is inconceivable that we will meet drastic carbon reduction targets without massive coordinated efforts, involving policymakers and educators working in concert at all levels of our governments and education systems (Stickney and Skilbeck, 2020).

    In Ruth Irwin’s article ‘Climate Change and Education’ she alerts us to Heidegger’s treatise in Being and Time (1962) that the effectiveness of a tool’s readiness is ‘hidden’ – only revealed when it ceases to function. Climate might be viewed as a heretofore ‘hidden’ tool, in that it affords opportunities for human action; it has “smoothly enabled our existence without conscious consideration” (Irwin, 2019). Yet its dynamic quality is now an overt, striking, looming spectre threatening the existence of all life on earth; the ‘environment’ writ large is revealing itself through ecological and social breakdown, surfacing our essential reliance upon it as natural beings. Thus unless higher education is competent in dealing with the issues of environmental crisis at all of its registers – social, environmental, political and ecological – the institution of education will be unable to fulfil its fundamental task of knowledge transfer for what is a clear public good (Irwin, 2019). Put another way, “HEIs have a responsibility to develop their educational provision in ways that will support the social transformation needed to mitigate the worst effects of the environmental crisis.” (Owens et al, 2023).

    Indeed, HE requires a paradigm shift in itself given that these realities are unfolding alongside widespread scrutiny of higher education institutions; including about decolonising the academy (Jivraj, 2020; Mintz, 2021), free speech on university campuses and how they are preparing students to meet these pressing issues (Woodgates, 2025). To keep pace with these changes and meet such challenges, educators from across disciplines will need to commit to embedding environmental justice education more widely across programme curricula, session design and teaching practices. It must be recognised as a vital – rather than token – component of environmental education. Doing so fully and effectively also requires us to recognise that environmental justice education encompasses not only subject matter but pedagogical practice. This is the case for all academic disciplines – including those that might seem peripheral to the teaching of environmental issues.

    EJE in HE is a developing area of scholarship and field of study that has gathered pace only over the last decade. Much of the research to date has been focused on the US, where studies have shown that environmental justice remains marginal to or excluded from the curricular offerings of most environmental studies programmes – let alone those not directly related to environmental education (Garibay et al, 2016). A report by the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE), which studied the policies of 230 public U.S. HE institutions and 36 state boards of higher education, found that only 6% of institutions with climate change content in their policies referred to climate justice issues and indigenous knowledge practices (MECCE Project & NAAEE, 2023). Other work has shown that STEM education has tended to frame questions around exploitation of natural resources or technological development as disconnected from social and economic inequalities, though this is starting to be challenged (Greenberg et al, 2024).

    Emerging research into EJ in HE encompasses pedagogical approaches (Rabe, 2024; Moore, 2024); classroom and teaching practices (Walsh et al, 2022; Cachelin & Nicolosi, 2022; D’Arcangelis & Sarathy, 2015), the relationship between sustainability and climate justice education (Haluza-DeLay, 2013; Kinol et al, 2023) and curriculum development (Garibay et al, 2016). In identifying what EJE looks like these studies foreground the importance of community-engaged learning (CEL), providing students with the opportunity to learn about a socio-environmental problem from those with lived experience; critical thinking with regards to positionality, power structures and (especially indigenous) knowledge systems, and a deep concern with place. These critical components are crucial because tackling an act or acts of environmental injustice against marginalised populations often cannot be achieved without addressing systemic power imbalances.

    What also links these studies is an acknowledgement of the complexity of EJE. It is a difficult subject and practice to grapple with for several reasons. Firstly, it means exposing students (and educators) to “an onslaught of bad news,” (Cachelin & Nicolosi, 2022) which can elicit feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, so it is little wonder that expressions of anxiety and alarm are growing within these cohorts (Wallace, Greenburg & Clark, 2020) and that needs to be borne in mind. Secondly EJE requires us to find a way to meaningfully connect with philosophical, discursive, historical and practical questions about power, ethics and the relationship between human beings and the natural environment, within the disciplinary parameters of a specific curricula. This means doing difficult work not only to change current systems and processes (Forsythe et al, 2023) but also to make transformative rather than piecemeal efforts. For example, this might mean actively absorbing students into a community partner’s work in an engaged rather than service-learning model, or moving beyond a simple ‘guest lecture’ format to invite more in-depth input into modules or programmes from a community partner.

    This is a challenge that we shouldn’t understate for many academics and institutions already coping with high workloads (Smith, 2023), stress (Kinman et al, 2019) and job insecurity across a beleaguered sector (The Independent, 2024; The Guardian, 2025). Through this emerging EJE scholarship literature, we are starting to see that, “promoting opportunities for HE educators to develop and enact critical and transformative environmental pedagogy… is a complex business mediated by a variety of (personal, material and social) factors. It involves negotiating conflict, and understanding and confronting entrenched structures of power, from the local and institutional to the national and global.” (Owens et al, 2023). 

    A third (though by no means final) challenge in teaching and learning EJ in higher education is in finding and making space for it in a landscape that is strongly oriented towards sustainability education. Although there is certainly overlap – for example to the extent that the liberal logic underpinning the latter also informs distributive justice – sustainability education has different intellectual and ideological origins to EJ scholarship. Both are valuable, but we should be questioning whether we can justify a lack of explicit EJ practice and framing simply because we are already having sustainability conversations, and instead find space for both. It can be easy to (inadvertently) depoliticise environmental education by avoiding the perceived messiness and complexity of justice in favour of the more technocratic and measurable ‘sustainability’ (Haluza-DeLay, 2013).

    My research seeks to develop a better understanding of the state of environmental justice education in the HE landscape, beginning by mapping its development in the UK. This will reveal the extent and means by which EJE is being incorporated across programme curricula, session design and teaching practices in the UK HE context. In doing so we can identify the intersections of EJE with other dominant pedagogies, including sustainability education and solutions-focused approaches. To pursue a provincialising agenda and avoid the parochial perspective that EJE is the preserve of HEIs in the global North, there is also much value in exploring what EJE looks like in HEIs in the global South, and where cross-cultural lessons can be shared. The questions we need to be asking are:

    • How is environmental justice being taught and learnt and where do we go from here?
    • How are educators overcoming the challenges involved in engaging with EJE?
    • What best practices could we champion?

    Sharing methods, strategies and pedagogical approaches for EJE cross-institutionally and cross-culturally will be a step towards helping us build a better collective, collaborative response to the urgency of our intersecting socio-environmental crises.

    Dr Sally Beckenham is Lecturer in Human Geography and Programme Lead and Admissions Tutor for the BA Human Geography & Environment in the Department of Environment & Geography, University of York. She is also Chair of the Teaching Development Pool and member of the Interdisciplinary Global Development Centre (IGDC). She is an interdisciplinary political geographer with degrees in Modern History, International Politics and International Relations, and welcomes collaboration. Email: [email protected] Bluesky: @sallybeckenham.bsky.social.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

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  • This college campus may be literally underwater sooner than you think

    This college campus may be literally underwater sooner than you think

    Stockton University’s Atlantic City campus may be treading water—literally and figuratively. Built in 2018 on a stretch of reclaimed land in the South Inlet neighborhood, the coastal satellite of Stockton University sits just a few hundred feet from the Atlantic Ocean. With scenic views and beachfront access, it was marketed as a fresh vision for higher education: experiential learning by the sea.

    But according to Rutgers University’s Climate Impact Lab and corroborated by NOAA sea level rise projections, that vision may be short-lived. In less than 50 years, large portions of the campus could be underwater—possibly permanently. In fact, with high tide flooding already happening more frequently in Atlantic City and sea levels expected to rise 2 to 5 feet by 2100 depending on emissions, climate change poses an existential threat not just to Stockton’s Atlantic City facilities, but to the broader idea of oceanfront higher education.

    The Science: Rutgers’ Stark Warning

    Rutgers’ 2021 “New Jersey Science and Technical Advisory Panel Report” projected sea level rise in the state could exceed 2.1 feet by 2050 and 5.1 feet by 2100 under high emissions scenarios. Even under moderate mitigation efforts, the sea is projected to rise 1.4 to 3.1 feet by 2070, placing critical infrastructure—including roads, utility networks, and public buildings—at risk. Stockton’s coastal campus is among them.

    A Teachable Crisis

    For students and faculty in environmental science, public policy, and urban planning, Stockton’s Atlantic City campus is both classroom and case study. Professors can point to flooding events just blocks away as real-time lessons in sea level rise, coastal erosion, and infrastructure vulnerability. Students witness firsthand the tension between development and environmental limits.

    Yet these lived experiences also raise ethical questions. Is the university preparing students for the reality of climate displacement—or is it merely weathering the storm until the next round of state funding? Are public institutions being honest about the long-term risks students will face, not just as residents but as debt-burdened alumni?

    In many ways, Stockton’s presence in Atlantic City epitomizes the “climate denial by development” that characterizes so much U.S. urban planning: Build now, mitigate later, and leave tomorrow’s collapse for someone else to manage.

    No Easy Retreat

    Climate adaptation strategies in Atlantic City have been slow-moving, expensive, and often controversial. Proposed solutions—such as sea walls, elevating roads, and managed retreat—require enormous financial and political capital. There’s also no consensus on how to preserve equity in a shrinking, sinking city.

    For Stockton University, retreating from the Atlantic City campus would be politically and financially damaging. The expansion was celebrated with ribbon-cuttings and bipartisan support. Pulling back now would mean acknowledging a costly miscalculation. Yet failing to plan for relocation or phased withdrawal could leave students and taxpayers on the hook for an underwater investment.

    According to the New Jersey Coastal Resilience Plan, Atlantic County—home to Stockton’s main and satellite campuses—is one of the most climate-exposed counties in the state. And Stockton isn’t just sitting in the floodplain; it’s training the very people who will be tasked with managing these emergencies. It has both a responsibility and an opportunity to lead, not just in mitigation but in public reckoning.

    Lessons for Higher Ed

    Stockton is hardly the only university caught between mission and market. Across the U.S., colleges and universities are pouring resources into branding campaigns and capital projects that ignore—or actively obscure—the long-term environmental risks. Climate change is often treated as a course offering, not an existential threat.

    In Universities on Fire, Bryan Alexander outlines how climate change will fundamentally reshape the higher education landscape—from facilities planning to enrollment, from energy consumption to curriculum design. He warns that campuses, particularly those located near coasts or in extreme heat zones, face not just infrastructural threats but institutional crises. Rising waters, wildfires, hurricanes, and population shifts will force universities to rethink their physical footprints, economic models, and public obligations.

    Yet few accreditors or bond-rating agencies have accounted for climate risk in their evaluations. Endowments continue to fund construction in flood-prone areas. Boards of trustees prioritize expansion over retreat. And students, many of whom are first-generation or low-income, are seldom told what climate vulnerability could mean for the real value of their degrees—or the safety of their dormitories.

    As sea levels rise and climate models grow more precise, Stockton’s Atlantic City campus may become a symbol—not just of poor urban planning, but of an education system unprepared for the world it claims to be shaping.

    What Comes Next?

    For now, Stockton continues to expand its Atlantic City footprint, even as new reports suggest that this part of the Jersey Shore may be uninhabitable or cost-prohibitive to protect in a few decades. The university has proposed additional student housing and even a new coastal research center. But each new building reinforces the same flawed logic: that short-term gains outweigh long-term collapse.

    At some point, Stockton University—and many other coastal institutions—will have to decide whether to keep investing in property that’s literally slipping into the sea, or to model the kind of resilience and foresight they claim to teach.

    Because this is not just a sustainability issue. It’s a justice issue. It’s a debt issue. It’s a survival issue.

    And it’s happening now.

    Sources

    Bryan Alexander. Universities on Fire: Higher Education in the Climate Crisis. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023.

    NJ Department of Environmental Protection. Resilient NJ: Statewide Coastal Resilience Plan. 2020.

    Rutgers University. New Jersey Climate Change Resource Center.

    U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Back Bay Study – New Jersey.

    New Jersey Future. “Climate Risks and Infrastructure in Atlantic County.”

    Stockton University. Strategic Plan 2025: Choosing Our Path.

    NOAA. State of High Tide Flooding and Sea Level Rise 2023 Technical Report.

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  • A government climate website teachers rely on is in peril

    A government climate website teachers rely on is in peril

    For the last 15 years, science teacher Jeff Grant has used information on climate change from the federal website Climate.gov to create lesson plans, prepare students for Advanced Placement tests and educate fellow teachers. Now, Grant says, he is “grabbing what [he] can” from the site run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Program Office, amid concerns that the Trump administration is mothballing it as part of a broader effort to undermine climate science and education.

    “It’s just one more thing stifling science education,” said Grant, who teaches at Downers Grove North High School in the Chicago suburbs. 

    Since early May, all 10 editorial contributors to Climate.gov have lost their jobs, and the organization that produces its education resources will soon run out of money. On June 24, the site’s homepage was redirected to NOAA.gov, a change NOAA said was made to comply with an earlier executive order on “restoring gold standard science.” Those steps follow many others the president has made to dismantle federal efforts to fight climate change, which his administration refers to as the “new green scam.”

    Former employees of Climate.gov and other educators say they fear that the site, which will no longer produce new content, could be transformed into a platform for disinformation. 

    “It will make it harder for teachers to do a good job in educating their students about climate change,” said Glenn Branch, deputy director of the nonprofit National Center for Science Education. “Previously, they could rely on the federal government to provide free, up-to-date, accurate resources on climate change that were aimed at helping educators in particular, and they won’t be able to do so if some of these more dire predictions come to pass.”

    Such concerns have some foundation. For example, Covid.gov, which during the Biden administration offered health information and access to Covid-19 tests, has been revamped to promote the controversial theory that the coronavirus was created in a lab. The administration has also moved aggressively to delete from government sites other terms that are currently out of favor, such as references to transgender people that were once on the National Park Service website of the Stonewall National Memorial, honoring a major milestone in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights.

    Kim Doster, director of NOAA’s office of communications, declined to answer specific questions but shared a version of the statement posted on the NOAA website when Climate.gov was transferred. “In compliance with Executive Order 14303, Restoring Gold Standard Science, NOAA is relocating all research products from Climate.gov to NOAA.gov in an effort to centralize and consolidate resources,” it says.  

    Related: Want to read more about how climate change is shaping education? Subscribe to our free newsletter.

    Climate.gov, founded in 2010 to support earth science instruction in schools, had become a go-to site for educators and the general public for news and information about temperature, sea level rise and other indicators of global warming.

    For many educators, it has served a particularly key role. Because its resources are free, they are vital in schools that lack resources and funding, teachers and experts say. 

    Rebecca Lindsey, Climate.gov’s lead editor and writer, was one of several hundred NOAA probationary employees fired in February, then rehired and put on administrative leave, before being terminated again in March. The rest of the content production team — which included a meteorologist, a graphic artist and data visualizers — lost their jobs in mid-May. Only the site’s two web developers still have their jobs. 

    A screenshot of the Sea Level Rise Viewer, an interactive NOAA that’s listed as a resource on Climate.gov, a government climate website. Credit: NOAA Office for Coastal Management

    Lindsey said she worries that the government “intended to keep the site up and use it to spread climate misinformation, because they were keeping the web developers and getting rid of the content team.”

    In addition, the Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network, the official content provider for the education section of the site, has not received the latest installment of its three-year grant and expects its funds to run out in August. 

    “We won’t have funding to provide updates, fix hyperlinks and make sure that new resources are being added, or help teachers manage or address or use the resources,” said Anne Gold, CLEAN’s principal investigator. “It’s going to start deteriorating in quality.” 

    CLEAN, whose website is hosted by Carleton College, is now searching for other sources of money to continue its work, Gold said. 

    With the June 24 change redirecting visitors from Climate.gov to NOAA.gov/climate, the website  for the first time falls under the purview of a political appointee: Doster. Its previous leader, David Herring, is a science writer and educator.

    Melissa Lau, an AP environmental science teacher in Piedmont, Oklahoma, said the relocated site was “really difficult to navigate.”

    As someone who lives in Tornado Alley, Lau said, she frequented CLEAN and NOAA sites to show her students localized, real-time data on storm seasons. She said she is concerned that teachers won’t have time to track down information that was shifted in the website’s move and, as a result, may opt not to teach climate change. 

    The executive order on “restoring gold standard science” that appears to have triggered the shift gives political appointees the authority to decide what science information needs to be modified to align with its tenets. 

    While the disclaimer posted to NOAA.gov seems to imply that Climate.gov did not meet this requirement, educators and researchers said that the site and its CLEAN education resources were the epitome of a gold standard.

    “I want to stress that the reason why CLEAN is considered the gold standard is because we have such high standards for scientific accuracy, classroom readiness and maintenance,” Gold said. “We all know that knowledge is power, and power gives hope. … [Losing funding] is going to be a huge loss to classrooms and to students and the next generation.”

    Related: One state mandates teaching climate change in almost all subjects — even PE

    This is only the latest attack by the Trump administration on education around climate change. This month, the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s website, GlobalChange.gov, was shut down by the administration, after the program was defunded in April. The website once hosted an extensive climate literacy guide, along with all five iterations of the National Climate Assessment — a congressionally required report that informed the public about the effects and risks of climate change, along with local, actionable responses. 

    The Department of Commerce, which oversees NOAA, has cut other federal funding for climate research, including at Princeton University, arguing that these climate grant awards promoted “exaggerated and implausible climate threats, contributing to a phenomenon known as ‘climate anxiety,’ which has increased significantly among America’s youth.” 

    Studies, though, suggest that if young people have a greater understanding of why weather is changing and how to take action, they are less likely to feel anxious. 

    “The more you know [about climate change], the more it’s not a scary monster in the closet,” said Lauren Madden, professor of elementary science education at the College of New Jersey. “It’s a thing you can react to.” She added, “We’re going to have more storms, we’re going to have more fires, we’re going to have more droughts. There are things we can do to help slow this. … I think that quells anxiety, that doesn’t spark it.”

    And climate education has broad public support — about 3 in 4 registered voters say schools should teach children about global warming, according to a 2024 report from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Similarly, 77 percent of Americans regard it as very or somewhat important for elementary and secondary school students to learn about climate change, according to a 2019 study. And all but five states have adopted science standards that incorporate at least some instruction on climate change.

    Yet few teachers have received training on climate change. There is also not much professional development for climate educators, and textbooks tend to downplay the effects of climate change. 

    As a result, many science teachers rely on federal tools and embed them in their curriculum. They are worried that the information will no longer be relevant, or disappear entirely, according to Lori Henrickson, former climate integration specialist for Washington state’s education department. Henrickson, who lost her job this June as the result of state budget cuts, was in charge of integrating climate education across content areas in the state, from language arts to physical education.

    The .gov top-level domain connotes credibility and accessibility, according to Branch: “It is also easier for teachers facing or fearing climate change denial backlash to cite a reliable, free source from the federal government.”

    Related: How Trump is disrupting efforts by schools and colleges to combat climate change

    With Climate.gov’s future uncertain, educators are looking to other resources, like university websites and tools from other countries. 

    “I’m sure there will continue to be tools, and there will be enough people who will be willing to pay to access them,” Madden said. But, she added, “they probably won’t be as comprehensive, and it won’t feel like it’s a democratic process. It’ll feel like: If you or your employer are willing to chip in for it, then you’ll have access.”

    Madden, along with many other educators, frequently used the Environmental Protection Agency’s environmental justice toolkit, but the site was taken down earlier this year. 

    “I feel like with all the federal websites, I’m constantly checking to see what’s still up and what’s not,” Madden said. 

    Bertha Vazquez, education director for the Center of Inquiry, an organization that works to preserve science and critical thinking, said she worried that the disappearance of climate information could leave U.S. students behind. 

    “The future of the American economy is not in oil, the future of the American economy is in solar and wind and geothermal. And if we’re going to keep up with the international economy, we need to go in that direction,” she said. But while the U.S. should be leading the way in scientific discovery, Vazquez said, such work will now be left to other countries.

    Lau said she felt helpless and frustrated about Climate.gov’s shutdown and about the “attack on American science in general.” 

    “I don’t know what to do. I can contact my legislators, but my legislators from my state are not going to be really open to my concerns,” she said. “If students next year are asking me questions about [science research and funding], I have to tell them, ‘I do not know,’ and just have to leave it at that.”

    Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at [email protected].

    This story about the government climate website was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger climate and education newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • High school sleuths search fish guts for clues to plastic pollution

    High school sleuths search fish guts for clues to plastic pollution

    NEW YORK — The fish, glassy-eyed and inert, had been dead for decades. Yet its belly held possible clues to an environmental crisis unfolding in real time.   

    Forceps in hand, Mia Fricano, a high school junior, was about to investigate. She turned over the fish, a bluegill, and slid in a blade, before extracting its gastrointestinal tract. Then, she carried the fish innards to a beaker filled with a solution that would dissolve the biological material, revealing if there were any tiny particles of plastic — known as microplastics — inside.

    Mia and two other high schoolers working alongside her in a lab this spring were part of a program at the American Museum of Natural History designed to give young people hands-on experience in professional science. Called the Science Research Mentoring Program, or SRMP (pronounced “shrimp”), the program enrolls roughly 60 high school juniors and seniors each year who collaborate with scientists on a research project. 

    Mia and her peers were matched with Ryan Thoni, an ichthyologist and curatorial associate in the museum’s division of vertebrate zoology. Thoni’s project to gather information on when and how microplastics began to enter the environment relied on the museum’s vast collection of fish specimens dating from more than a century ago — some 3.2 million in total.

    Concern about the tiny pieces of plastic debris has grown in the last few years, along with early-stage research on the health risks they pose. The particles are found in human blood, breast milk and even the brain — and in animals, including, as it turned out, nearly all the fish in Thoni’s lab.    

    “It was kind of shocking to see just how many we did find,” Mia said later. “We weren’t expecting to find more than two to three per fish but in some fish, we would find over 15.” Specimens from the 1970s or earlier were less likely to contain high levels of microplastic, more than three or so pieces, and fish near urban centers seemed to have more of the plastics, on average, than fish from less populated areas. 

    “It really does make you realize just how much the environment has been affected,” said Mia. “There hasn’t been a lot of research on it yet,” she added. “Our project might be able to help future people who are also doing research on microplastics.”  

    Related: Want to read more about how climate change is shaping education? Subscribe to our free newsletter.

    SRMP, started in 2009, is operating at a time when the federal government is eliminating fellowships and other support for early career scientists, and defunding scientific research broadly. That both amplifies the need for, and complicates the work of, programs like this one, said Amanda Townley, executive director of the nonprofit National Center for Science Education. Over the last 15 years in particular, such programs have played a big role in giving students a chance to do the kind of applied science that is rarely available in K-12 classrooms because of money and time constraints, she said. 

    “Museums, university extensions, sometimes libraries, have really done this tremendous job of creating spaces for high school and younger students to engage with scientists doing science,” said Townley. “Those museums, libraries and universities are all under attack.” She added: “We’re going to see a generational impact.” 

    While the American Museum of Natural History has received some federal government funding, the SRMP program’s money comes from private foundations and individual donors, with additional support from the New York City Council. Students in SRMP participate in a summer institute in August, when they learn basics like how to investigate research questions. Then they spend two afternoons a week during the school year on their projects. 

    Each student receives a stipend, $2,500 over the course of the year. “It’s really important for high school students to know their time is valuable,” said Maria Strangas, the museum’s assistant director of science research experiences. “They are doing something here that is really useful for the researchers; it’s an education program, but they aren’t the only ones who are benefiting.” 

    Students from New York City schools that partner with the museum can apply, as well as those who have participated in programs with the museum in the past. SRMP has also spawned a network of about 30 similar programs across the city, with institutions including Brooklyn College, Bronx River Alliance and many others participating. 

    In the lab on the sixth floor of the museum, Mia, who attends the New York City Museum School, cleaned out a beaker, while Yuki Chen, a senior at Central Park East High School, sat at a metal table, dissecting a pike. Thoni inserted a slide containing material harvested from one of the fish under a microscope, and pointed out a few microplastics, which looked like threads. 

    Ryan Thoni of the American Museum of Natural History, right, with high schoolers Mia Fricano (center) and Freyalise Matasar. Credit: Caroline Preston/The Hechinger Report

    Freyalise Matasar, a junior at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in the Bronx, plucked a white sucker fish from a jar. She said SRMP had altered her career trajectory. Before the program, she was considering studying journalism in college, but her experience this year persuaded her to focus on engineering and data science instead. 

    “I have totally fallen in love with science,” she said. “It’s been an amazing experience to see what professional science looks like — and more than just see it, to be a part of it.”

    Freyalise said she wanted to build those skills in order to help fight climate change, perhaps by working on weather models to predict climate risks and ideally spur people to action. “It’s the biggest problem faced by our generation. It’s inescapable and unignorable, no matter how much people try,” she said. “It’s everyone’s responsibility to do what they can to fight it.”   

    Related: So much for saving the planet. Science careers, and many others, evaporate for class of 2025

    Microplastics contribute to climate change in several ways, including by potentially disrupting oceans’ ability to sequester carbon and by directly emitting greenhouse gases.

    Interest in climate science among young people is growing, even as the federal government tries to zero out funding for it. Other climate-related topics SRMP students explored this year included the climate on exoplanets, the ecology of sea anemones and aquatic wildlife conservation in New York City.

    Sometimes the fish dissections were gross: Mia, who plans to study biology and machine learning in college, sliced into one large fish to find poorly preserved, rotten innards — and a major stink. Sometimes they provided a lesson beyond pollution: Yuki identified a small pickerel inside a larger one. (Pickerels prey even on members of their own species, the students learned.) 

    The scientists in the program, most of whom are postdoctoral fellows, are trained on how to be effective mentors. “Scientists are often not trained in mentorship; it’s something that people pick up organically seeing good or bad examples in their own lives,” said Strangas. “A lot of it comes down to: ‘Think about the impact you want to have, think about the impact you don’t want to have, think about the power dynamic at play, and what this student in front of you wants to get out of it.’”  

    Thoni earned rave reviews from the students, who said he ensured they understood each step of the research process without being patronizing. 

    Thoni’s next steps include working to publish the microplastics research, which could earn the students their first co-authorship in a scientific journal. “Aside from forgetting to put on gloves,” he said in a playful jab at one student, “they can operate this machine on their own. They do science.”

    Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at [email protected]. 

    This story about science careers was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter on climate and education.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

    Source link