At the end of 2020, the U.K government approved planting trees in over 100 acres of a northern England peat bog. Peat bogs, areas where plants have been decaying over thousands of years into soil that traps their carbon, can store twice as much carbon dioxide as forests. When the trees were planted in northern England, they effectively dried out the soil, causing carbon to be released from the bogs and ending the project before it was ever finished.
In 2020, biologists Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs decided to extend their annual six-month stay in Costa Rica for ecological research due to COVID-19 restrictions. With extra time on their hands, they reflected on the declining insect population caused by the “heterogeneous blanket” of climate change. While their primary field of research is not climate change, the toll it takes on ecosystems was hard to ignore. The biologists noticed that rising temperatures led to disturbances in the insect population, affecting food webs from the bottom up.
Feb. 4, 2021
New Zealand climate advisers are encouraging steep cuts in carbon emissions to align with the 1.5 C global warming limit.
Exxon Mobil, one of the world's largest international oil and gas companies, invested $3 billion in carbon capture.
General Motors announced a phase-out of petroleum-powered cars and trucks, promising to sell only zero-emission vehicles by 2035. The company has also set goals for carbon neutrality by 2040.
Due to long-standing environmental injustices, Chicago’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout plan put polluted communities last, which left poorer communities of color among the last to receive the vaccine.
U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order that strongly encourages the federal government to exclusively purchase zero-emission vehicles.
A U.S. research institution that studies the impact of climate change in the Arctic has announced that it will be significantly enhancing efforts to connect the science it funds with the communities that live in the region.
Greenland’s glacier retreat is accelerating as a result of warming seas in response to climate change.
Human pollution has been found deep in the world’s oceans. Read about it here.
The tropical rain belt, also known as the Intertropical Convergence Zone, contains equatorial areas considered the warmest in the world. The belt is a meeting point for trade winds from the planet’s Northern and Southern hemispheres, which bring in humidity and precipitation. The rain belt oscillates annually from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern Hemisphere tropics in movement with the sun.
The Biden administration recently delivered a major victory for environmental protection by reinstating the Northern Bering Sea Climate Resilience Area. The protected area off the coast of Alaska was originally designated in a 2016 executive order issued by the Obama administration. The designation was then revoked in the early weeks of Trump’s presidency. The NBSCRA was restored as part of Biden’s first executive order, the Executive Order on Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis.
