Kavya Gopal

Regeneration and global responsibility in India: This week I’ve been holding the heat waves in South Asia close in my heart as millions of people face temperatures of more than 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Social scientist Dr. Chandni Singh astutely points out “you cannot adapt your way out of this heat”. While Indians are rising to the challenge with regeneration—in the regenerative agriculture of the Darjeeling tea estates, in the restoration of the Sundarban mangrove forest, and in the plans to double renewable capacity by 2030—historically (and presently) high emitting countries need to feel that the heat wave is their problem too, and act in accordance.

 Tim Treuer

Good news for Iceland’s lost forests: I just have a short, sweet, palette-cleansing video this week about an effort to bring back Iceland's lost forests. Beyond the need for more trees on Iceland, the video is a great lesson on incorporating storytelling, data, and even a touch of humor into an organization's call for action (I especially enjoyed the inclusion of the joke I heard there back in 2005: What do you do if you get lost in an Icelandic forest? Stand up!). And as a restoration ecologist, I very much appreciated their dedication to using native species, even at the cost of earning fewer carbon credits.

 Milica Koscica

Free public transit programs on the rise: I was excited to learn that more cities are experimenting with offering free public transit as a way to increase equity and help reduce pollution and carbon emissions. In addition to Genoa (Italy), Kansas City (MO) and Richmond (VA), Salt Lake City (UT) recently paused fare collection during a month-long pilot and found that ridership rose by 16% during weekdays and up to 58% on the weekends. While increased access and ridership are important, they are only part of a comprehensive climate solution that should also include service and network expansion and converting general traffic lanes to dedicated public transit.

 Paul Hawken

Breakthrough air DNA testing helps find & protect species: As species die-out continues unabated on both land and sea, there are some wonderful techniques and initiatives afoot to reverse it. Hard to “save” a species if you don’t know where it is or the ecosystems it resides in. This article in Nature describes how to detect animals that may be rare or otherwise hidden by sampling DNA in the air. Invented by Kristine Bohmann of the University of Copenhagen, the sampler can detect the presence of creatures nearly 200 meters away. Hard to imagine where this can take us as the technology is refined and improved. Imagine sampling the air around your home or farm and getting a print out of the thousands of species in your immediate environs. “Meet the neighbors” takes on a whole new meaning. I can’t wait!

 Juliana Birnbaum

From conflict to climate action: Could the war in Ukraine bring about a turning point in the global response to the climate crisis? The European Union aims to end its dependence on Russian oil and gas by 2030 by curbing consumption and through measures including the installation of heat pumps, boosting building efficiency, and tripling its solar and wind energy production.  And in the U.S. the Biden administration plans to retrofit hundreds of thousands of homes in low-income neighborhoods to improve energy efficiency, reduce emissions and cut expenses for struggling households.

 Courtney White

The growing complexity of fighting fire with fire: New Mexicans are enduring the second largest fire in our state’s history. The fire has devastated Hispanic rural communities that have been living sustainably on the land for centuries. Here is a poignant op-ed by a friend of mine. The fire was partially triggered by a prescribed fire set by the U.S. Forest Service that got away. In a tragic irony, the Forest Service was trying to reduce forest fuel load to prevent big fires. It demonstrates the challenge and the urgency we face in managing our land under climate change.

 Amy Boyer

Saving water with solar panels: A different Project Nexus is piloting adding over a mile of solar panels over irrigation canals near Merced, CA, thus reducing evaporation and keeping the panels cooler and more efficient. Going large-scale could save billions of gallons of water per year and meet a large chunk of CA's 2030 energy goals.

 Robert Denney

California sets a renewable energy record: For two minutes on Saturday, April 30th, California ran almost entirely on renewable energy. Specifically, the percentage of the statewide load serviced by renewables was sustained at 99.87%, up from a previous record of 97.58% met earlier in April. This was due in large part to the increased reliance on renewables in California in recent years, but the record was also the consequence of ideal weather conditions (sunny, windy, and not too hot to need air conditioning). The event was an important milestone toward the state’s goal to run on 100% clean energy by 2045.

 Claire Inciong Krummenacher

Rozenweig wins World Food Prize: This week, climatologist and former farmer Cynthia Rosenzweig won the World Food Prize for her decades-long research on predicting the impact of climate change on global food systems and her leadership in partnering with countries around the world to ease the impact.  In an interview with NPR, Rosenzweig discusses the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project's new approaches to climate crisis research, how she copes with eco-anxiety, and her plans for the prize money.

 Emily Jensen

Proving heat pumps can handle winter: It was great to see this myth-busting piece on heat pumps from Grist that focuses on how far the technology has come, especially in colder weather. As the initially-skeptical owner of one of the 117 million heat pumps installed last year, I'm happy to report it kept our space cozy through (unusually frequent) winter snowstorms here in Portland.

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