Our latest coverage of climate change
Analysis of the science, politics and economics of the climate
Climate change affects everything from geopolitics to economies to migration. It shapes cities, life expectancies and wine lists. And because it touches everything The Economist reports on, we examine it from every angle imaginable. Register to receive The Climate Issue, our fortnightly newsletter
The world has to adapt to the climate change it will not avoid
And poor countries will need help to do so
November 1st 2022
“Barren” does not begin to describe Abu Ayman’s small patch of land in southern Iraq. The sun pounds down, sometimes pushing the temperature above 50°C (122°F). Dry earth and withered weeds crackle underfoot. It used to be a palm plantation, but no trees remain—just rows of untopped trunks. Of uneven height and listing at odd angles, they look like ruined columns from some grand old temple, razed by long-forgotten calamity.
Except that the calamity is still unfolding, and Abu Ayman has certainly not forgotten. Twenty years ago, he says, the canopy of palm fronds above was so thick that no direct sunlight reached the baking soil on which he is standing. Farming dates and other fruit earned him a good living, he adds as he snaps a salt-bleached twig off a desiccated shrub. Water from a canal fed by the Shatt al-Arab waterway, which glistens in the glare just a kilometre away, was adequate for his needs.
What to read to understand climate change
Seven texts that explain how the climate is changing—and what to do about it
October 28th 2022
Climate change touches everything. It is reshaping weather systems and coastlines, altering where crops can be grown, which diseases thrive, and how armies fight. Rising temperatures affect geopolitics, migration, ecosystems and the economy. It will remake societies and the world. In November, delegates will flock to Egypt for cop27, this year’s edition of the annual un climate confab. The science, economics and politics of climate change are so legion, complicated and interconnected they can be hard to get a handle on. These six books and one report offer an excellent introduction to the climate crisis.
What We Know About Climate Change. By Kerry Emanuel. MIT Press; 88 pages; $15.95. Blackwells; £11.99
Climate change is likely to increase migration
But three-quarters of such migrants stay within their own country
November 18th 2022
By Rachel Dobbs: Asia news editor, The Economist, Singapore
Every morning scores of buses roll into Dhaka, Bangladesh’s sprawling, sinking capital. Their passengers, laden with bundles, step out into a new life. By one estimate, some 2,000 migrants arrive in the city each day. Almost all come from elsewhere in the country and most have, at least in part, been pushed by the impacts of a changing climate—either because of a sudden disaster, or because environmental shifts have made their livelihoods untenable.
Such scenes will become more common in 2023 and beyond. Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and the Pacific, and South Asia are most affected. The most visible migrants will be those forced from their homes by extreme-weather events exacerbated by rising global temperatures, such as the extraordinary floods in Pakistan in August and September 2022, which displaced 33m people. The natural climate system known as La Niña, which affects rainfall patterns across the world, is thought to have been a contributing factor. In poor countries, the accumulation of catastrophe chips away at resources and makes each successive disaster more damaging.
Why climate change is intimately tied to biodiversity
There is a financial case for investing in biodiversity
December 20th 2022
The natural world is a source of beauty and wonder, but it also provides humans with essential services. Jungles, savannahs and mangroves act as buffers against infectious diseases and storm surges. Forests channel moisture into rivers that irrigate crops, while their roots prevent landslides. At a gathering on Monday in Montreal, 196 governments from around the world pledged to protect and restore 30% or more of the Earth’s water and land by 2030.
Lofty promises about preserving the world’s biodiversity have been made and broken many times before. One step towards avoiding yet more disappointment is to emphasise the close link between preserving biodiversity and the widely held goal of reaching net-zero carbon emissions.
A different way to measure the climate impact of food
Introducing The Economist’s banana index
April 11th 2023
Eating a juicy steak is worse for the environment than frying up some tofu: that much should come as no surprise. Going vegan can dramatically cut the carbon footprint of your diet. But what about the fewer calories, and lower levels of protein, found in most plant-based foods when compared with meat? That makes it hard to compare emissions of meals that are equally nutritious.
To make the relative carbon impact of foods easier to digest, The Economist proposes a banana index (see our interactive chart below). It compares popular foodstuffs on three metrics—weight, calories and protein—indexed to the humble banana, a fruit of middling climate impact and nutritional value.
Leaders | A warming world
The climate issue
Climate change touches everything this newspaper reports on. It must be tackled urgently and clear-headedly
September 19th 2019
From one year to the next, you cannot feel the difference. As the decades stack up, though, the story becomes clear. The stripes on our cover represent the world’s average temperature in every year since the mid-19th century. Dark blue years are cooler and red ones warmer than the average in 1971-2000. The cumulative change jumps out. The world is about 1ºC hotter than when this newspaper was young.
To represent this span of human history as a set of simple stripes may seem reductive. These are years which saw world wars, technological innovation, trade on an unprecedented scale and a staggering creation of wealth. But those complex histories and the simplifying stripes share a common cause. The changing climate of the planet and the remarkable growth in human numbers and riches both stem from the combustion of billions of tonnes of fossil fuel to produce industrial power, electricity, transport, heating and, more recently, computation.
Dott. Alessio Brancaccio, tecnico ambientale Università degli Studi di L’Aquila, ideologo e consulente tecnico movimento ambientalista Ultima Generazione A22 Network e membro attivo della Fondazione Michele Scarponi Onlus
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