The main driver of climate change is the greenhouse effect – when certain gases in the Earth’s atmosphere trap the sun’s heat and cause global warming.
Richard Drury/Getty Images
A new international report on climate change finds rapid changes could cut emissions from transportation by 80% to 90%. Three behavior change trends could bring big improvements.
A pilot plant near the Salton Sea in California pairs lithium extraction with geothermal energy production.
Michael McKibben
Lithium is essential for batteries that power electric vehicles and store energy from solar and wind farms. A new U.S. source could provide 10 times more lithium than the country uses today.
Several countries, including Bangladesh, are facing increasing flooding as sea levels rise.
AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu
The damage from storms, droughts and sea level rise is in the news almost daily. Some money is flowing to help poor countries, but what isn’t clear is how much impact the funds are having.
In January 2015, a three-day rain displaced nearly quarter of a million people, devastated 64,000 hectares of land, and killed several hundred people in Malawi.
Ashley Cooper/Getty Images
The financial outcome of COP26 is a glass half full, but it’s not far from a failure.
Permaculture practitioners manage their gardens or farms in ways inspired by the sustainability and resilience of healthy natural ecosystems.
simonkr/E+ via Getty Images
Permaculture – a mashup of ‘permanent’ and ‘culture’ – is a way of doing agriculture that’s inspired by the resilience and biodiversity of healthy natural ecosystems.
Coastal communities in Vietnam are struggling to adapt to rising sea levels.
Jon Fitton/Shutterstock
New Zealand has announced a more ambitious pledge to cut emissions, but the commitment relies on buying credits from offshore. There is no system for doing this yet, or for ensuring genuine cuts.
Climate jargon can feel overwhelming.
Illustration by Dennis Lan/USC
Five aspects need attention if African governments are to be able to mitigate, adapt to and manage climate change in the coming critical decade.
Workers wait to enter a Tyson Foods pork processing plant in Logansport, Indiana. The plant had been closed after nearly 900 employees tested positive for the coronavirus.
AP Photo/Michael Conroy
Being able to identify communities that are susceptible to the pandemic ahead of time would allow officials to target public health interventions to slow the spread of the infection and avoid deaths.
President Donald Trump and other federal and state officials tour a mobile home and RV park on Nov. 17, 2018 in the wake of the Camp Fire.
Paul Kitagaki Jr./The Sacramento Bee via AP, Pool
Forest management is not a cure-all for wildfires, although it can help reduce the chances of massive burns. Making this happen will require broad collaborative efforts and more money.
The right questions and planning can help universities to mitigate risk.
Shutterstock
Risk has to do with uncertainty; people struggle to conceptualise and manage that which they’re unsure about. This is true in the higher education sector, too.
Will talk of adapting to climate change be less polarizing politically? Faced with rising seas, Miami is adapting by raising its roads.
AP Photo/Lynne Sladky
T. Reed Miller, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
In response to disasters like Superstorm Sandy, engineers are developing new building codes and tools to calculate the value of upgrades. National policy should encourage builders to use these tools.
National Guard soldiers inspect homes in Rockaway Park, Queens, New York, after Superstorm Sandy, 2012.
Spc. Zane Craig, PA National Guard/Flickr
As Atlantic hurricane season opens on June 1, eastern U.S. cities can prepare by updating laws, codes and ordinances that hamper rebuilding after storms.
While green business is commendable, canola-fuelled elevators will not save us from climate change.
monique/Flickr
Without a functional international climate policy, and a set of Australian policies that look set to be repealed, it might seem that business offers the greatest hope for mitigating climate change. Business…
There are limits to the amount of carbon dioxide plantations can absorb.
David Clarke
Australia’s agriculture and forestry - land-based abatement - can make a valuable contribution to lowering Australia’s greenhouse emissions. The scale of contribution has been widely discussed. But the…
The latest emissions data from the International Energy Agency suggest that our current methods for dealing with climate change have not worked. This means we will have to adapt to climate change, for…
Professor of Public Policy, Psychology and Behavioral Science, USC Sol Price School of Public Policy, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences