COVID-19

May 10, 2021

Tea-growing areas to be badly hit if global heating intensifies

Fiona Harvey

Thomas Mukoya/Reuters

Agricultural Impacts, Climate Change, COVID-19

Your morning cup of tea may never taste the same again if global heating increases and the climate crisis intensifies, according to research. Some of the world’s biggest tea-growing areas will be among the worst hit by extreme weather, and their yields are likely to be vastly reduced in the coming decades if climate breakdown continues at its current pace.

April 13, 2021

Intelligence forecast sees a post-coronavirus world upended by climate change and splintering societies

Shane Harrisorld

COVID-19

U.S. intelligence officials have little comfort to offer a pandemic-weary planet about where the world is heading in the next 20 years. Short answer: It looks pretty bleak.

April 5, 2021

Vietnam Fights Climate Change With COVID Strategy

James Borton

Climate Change, COVID-19, Economic Impacts, risk factor

In what was expected to be an uphill battle, Vietnam’s containment of the COVID-19 crisis has left little time for recognition on the world stage. While decisive central government response successfully beat back the pandemic’s viral challenges, authorities are now facing the real and present dangers of climate change. The moment provides an opportunity and imperative to explore renewable energy for less carbon-intensive growth.

February 6, 2021

Climate change “may have played a key role” in coronavirus pandemic, study says

JEFF BERARDELLI

NG HAN GUAN / AP

Climate Change, COVID-19, Disease

Human-caused climate change “may have played a key role” in the coronavirus pandemic. That’s the conclusion of a new study which examined how changes in climate have transformed the forests of Southeast Asia, resulting in an explosion of bat species in the region.

January 25, 2021

Helping poorest tackle climate crisis will boost global growth, says IMF head

Fiona Harvey

Mike Theiler/Reuters

Climate Change, COVID-19, Decision-making, Equity

Helping the most vulnerable people to cope with the climate crisis can boost the global economy during the Covid crisis and governments should make this a priority, said Kristalina Georgieva, head of the International Monetary Fund.

January 20, 2021

Climate change will be sudden and cataclysmic. We need to act fast

Peter Giger

REUTERS/Hannah McKay

Climate Change, COVID-19, Decision-making

The speed and scale of the response to COVID-19 by governments, businesses and individuals seems to provide hope that we can react to the climate change crisis in a similarly decisive manner – but history tells us that humans do not react to slow-moving and distant threats. Our evolution has selected the “fight or flight” instinct to deal with environmental change, so rather like the metaphor of the frog in boiling water, we tend to react too little and too late to gradual change.

January 1, 2021

The science stories likely to make headlines in 2021

Science News Staff

PATRICK T. FALLON/BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES

Climate Narratives, Climate Change, COVID-19, Future, Scientists, uncertainty

As biomedical scientists continue to battle the deadly pandemic this year to help the world return to normalcy, researchers across the disciplines still aim to hit big milestones or launch new projects despite the challenges brought by COVID-19. European scientists will also have to contend with the aftermath of Brexit. Many U.S. scientists, in contrast, have a more hopeful political outlook, with some likely to play an invigorated role in tackling another global crisis, climate change, after President-elect Joe Biden, who has vowed to make it a top priority, is sworn in this month. In this article, Science’s news staff forecasts areas of research and policy we expect to make headlines this year, from protecting the high seas’ biodiversity to probing how ancient humans interacted.

December 19, 2020

Seeing the COVID-19 Pandemic from Space

Abigail Seadler

NASA and Planet Lab

Climate Change, COVID-19

Economic and social shutdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have led to noticeable changes in Earth’s environment, at least for the short term. NASA researchers are using satellite and ground-based observations to track these impacts on our air, land, water, and climate.

December 10, 2020

UNEP: Net-zero pledges provide an ‘opening’ to close growing emissions ‘gap’

Zeke Hausfather

Hans Blossey / Alamy Stock Photo

Climate Action, COVID-19, Emissions reduction targets, Net Zero, Paris Agreement

The recent net-zero pledges by major emitting countries and the potential for a “green recovery” from the Covid-19 pandemic “presents the opening” for the world to close the growing “gap” between existing commitments and what is needed to limit global warming to meet the Paris Agreement goals.

December 10, 2020

How Climate Change Is Ushering in a New Pandemic Era

Jeff Goodell

Illustration by Jason Holley for Rolling Stone

Climate Change, COVID-19, Ecological Impacts, Future, Health Impacts, risk factor

Covid-19 likely emerged from the wilds near southern China, then found residence in horseshoe bats before making the jump to humans. The virus, as of this writing, has infected 63 million people and caused 1.5 million deaths around the world. The global economic impact of the pandemic was estimated at $8 trillion to $16 trillion in July 2020 — it may be $16 trillion in the U.S. alone by the fourth quarter of 2021 (assuming vaccines are effective at controlling it by then). The amount of human suffering this tiny microbe has caused is incalculable: lost loved ones, vanished jobs, broken families, and lingering sickness from a virus that will eventually retreat but will never disappear.

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