The Very Good and Very Bad News on Climate

Here’s the good news: Green energy is getting better and cheaper, faster than we had ever dared hope.

This next sentence was unimaginable even a few years ago: In April, the energy think tank Ember found that all of the new electricity demand around the world in 2025 was met with green power. That is wild.

But here is the bad news: Climate change is accelerating. We’re discovering new ways that the climate system is more fragile, more sensitive to emissions, than we previously had thought...

Ezra Klein, Bill McKibben

https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000011018052/the-very-good-and-very-bad-news-on-climate.html?smid=url-share&smid=nytcore-ios-share

Not the End of the World:

How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet

 It’s become common to tell kids that they’re going to die from climate change. We are constantly bombarded by doomsday headlines that tell us the soil won’t be able to support crops, fish will vanish from our oceans, and that we should reconsider having children.

But in this bold, radically hopeful book, data scientist Hannah Ritchie argues that if we zoom out, a very different picture emerges. In fact, the data shows we’ve made so much progress on these problems that we could be on track to achieve true sustainability for the first time in human history. Did you know that: 

• Carbon emissions per capita are actually down 
• Deforestation peaked back in the 1980s 
• The air we breathe now is vastly improved from centuries ago 
• And more people died from natural disasters a hundred years ago? 

Packed with the latest research, practical guidance, and enlightening graphics, this book will make you rethink almost everything you’ve been told about the environment. Not the End of the World will give you the tools to understand our current crisis and make lifestyle changes that actually have an impact. Hannah cuts through the noise by outlining what works, what doesn’t, and what we urgently need to focus on so we can leave a sustainable planet for future generations.      

https://a.co/d/0481wIZ3

ocean matters

“What's hard is getting people to understand why the ocean matters to them. If the ocean dried up tomorrow, life would also dry up,” Earle said. “They should know that every breath they take, every drop of water they drink … the ocean is touching them. You should treat the ocean as if your life depends on it — because it does.” —Sylvia Earle

https://www.goodgoodgood.co/goodnewspaper

(the water edition, summer ‘26)

Reimagine Environmentalism-joy over despair

“…In moments of despair, I always come back to the words of Robin Wall Kimmerer, who reflects that ‘even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the Earth gives me daily and I must return the gift’. An absence of joy is an act of violence on the Earth itself; it is to ignore the beauty that the world offers us every day, without fail, and despite destruction. Accessing and enacting joyful rage is a rebellion against not only the material impacts of environmental breakdown, but also the mindsets and worldviews that give rise to it. Seeing joyful rage as a way to connect to the living world requires us to be able to not only identify and fight for the systems we want to end, but also imagine those that we want to create.“ https://open.substack.com/pub/princetonuniversitypress/p/reimagine-environmentalism?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

The Tiny Solar Panel That Could Change America

… Plug-in solar demonstrates one version of the coming changes: With its small size, it makes balcony and backyard power production possible. But it’s only one messenger of many from that new world. As batteries continue to develop, larger and larger amounts of energy will be stored at ever-smaller sizes and scales, and that will enable innovations and technologies we cannot yet imagine — technologies that will change our world as much as the sextant, the bicycle or the jet engine. Some new zero-carbon energy technologies are already at the cusp of widespread deployment or at least technological feasibility: enhanced geothermal, space-based solar, mined hydrogen, new forms of nuclear fission and even nuclear fusion.

Balcony solar will play one small role in that drama. It is cheap and modular and an affable addition to the energy system. And it may yet teach Americans the importance of adding new energy generation, recruiting ever more Americans to the head-spinning potential of the new technologies that stretches out before us — should we only wish to change.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/14/opinion/solar-panels-balcony-backyard-plugin.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures

This might fit in nicely with the cli-fi theme… https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BPX5GWP8?ref_=NDP&nodl=0 I think you might like this book: What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson

Why Scientists Retired the Dire Climate Scenario Used for Over a Decade

“…It’s good news that we can drop the highest-emissions scenario,” said Dr. Rogelj. “But the other side is that we’re also finding that the risks for lower levels of warming are often worse than we thought.”

For example, at 2 degrees Celsius of warming, the world could lose most of its coral reefs, and an additional 410 million people in urban areas could face water scarcity because of severe drought, according to a recent U.N. climate assessment. At 3 degrees, global flood damages could increased threefold without adaptation, while more than one-quarter of known plant and animal species on land could face a high risk of extinction...

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/26/climate/emissions-worst-case-scenario-rcp.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share