Humans cause 96% of wildfires that threaten homes in the U.S.
Debris burning, power line sparks, smoking, fireworks, and other incendiary pursuits have doubled the length of the fire season—compared to lightning-caused fires
Sep 2020 15
Sarah DeWeerdt
Sarah DeWeerdt is a Seattle-based freelance science journalist specializing in biology, medicine, and the environment. In addition to Anthropocene, her work has appeared in Nature, Newsweek, Nautilus, Spectrum, and many other publications. Find her on Twitter at @DeWeerdt_Sarah.
Sep 2020 8
Humans’ construction footprint in the ocean quantified for the first time
Ocean sprawl covers more than 30,000 square kilometers of the sea floor—larger than the area of some coastal habitats, including mangroves and seagrass beds.
Sep 2020 1
Researchers find new ways to calculate carbon prices and climate liability
They argue the new methods are more in line with real-world concerns
Aug 2020 25
Ditching fossil fuels has little impact on portfolio performance, no matter the investment strategy
Now the bad news: taxing fossil fuel profits probably won’t pay for the green energy transition
Aug 2020 18
People are pretty bad at balancing their personal carbon budgets
They might go to a lot of trouble to make changes that have a marginal impact at best
Aug 2020 13
As the climate changes, what changes people’s minds?
How far has opinion moved from climate-change denial toward acceptance and, ultimately, action?
Aug 2020 11
Post-coronavirus economic recovery policies could make or break the effort to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees
Investing an additional 1.2% of global GDP in climate-friendly technology as part of recovery would slash emissions by half in 2030
Aug 2020 4
An unexpected casualty of climate change: the human past
Archaeologists think of artifacts buried underground as safely preserved. That might not be the case much longer.
Jul 2020 28
Why does climate denial still receive more news coverage than climate action?
It's not always clear who and what drives the public discourse about climate change
Jul 2020 21
Carbon pricing isn’t just blowing smoke
The largest study on the topic to date demonstrates that the higher a country’s carbon price, the more it reduces emissions.
