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Yale Climate Connections

About two hours north of New York City, amid the lush forests and babbling brooks of the Catskill Mountains, sits a new housing development - where every home is designed to avoid the use of fossil fuels.

Hale: “The whole approach is about reducing emissions from the built environment.”

Greg Hale is one of the founders of the development, called the Catskill Project.

He says the homes are designed to maximize efficiency. They’re tightly insulated with triple-glazed windows to prevent heat loss.

And each comes with a ventilation system that brings in fresh air and pushes stale air out. In winter, it captures heat from the exhaust and uses it to help warm the incoming air.

Hale: “So that your heating equipment doesn’t need to work as hard to reach the same internal temperature.”

So the homes need very little energy for ...

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Yale Climate Connections

Aleknagik is a small, remote community at the head of the Wood River on the banks of Lake Aleknagik in southwest Alaska.

Most residents live on the lake’s north shore, which used to be inaccessible by regional roads.

To get to the south shore and towns beyond, people crossed the water by boat in the summer. And in winter, they’d cross the frozen lake by snowmobile or ATV.

But city administrator Kay Andrews says crossing by water can be treacherous. And as the climate warms, residents cannot depend on thick ice all winter long.

Andrews: “We were once able to say, 'OK, we know that we can cross our lake by Thanksgiving.’ … But today, we’re lucky if it freezes by Christmas to cross now.”

So the city secured government funding to build a bridge across the river. It opened in 2015, and people can now travel safely year-round ...

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Yale Climate Connections

The city of Tucson wants to get more people out of their gas-guzzling cars and onto the bus.

Luna: “The more you take public transit, the more you contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which that’s what heats our city and the planet.”

Fátima Luna is Tucson’s Chief Resilience Officer.

She says to encourage people to take the bus, rides are currently free. Fare-free rides started during the COVID-19 pandemic and will continue for another year. Tucson officials hope to make the change permanent if funding allows.

But Luna says affordability is only part of the puzzle.

Luna: “You also need to make it comfortable to be waiting at the bus stops.”

Summers in Tucson are scorching. But fewer than half of local bus stops have a shelter, so waiting for a ride can be unpleasant, especially in low-income parts of the ...

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Yale Climate Connections

Across parts of the Midwest, corn and soybean fields stretch as far as the eye can see.

Crop harvests have increased over decades as technology and farming practices have boosted yields.

But that productivity growth is likely to slow as the climate warms.

Todey: “We know that - looking at what the climate models say - corn and soybeans are going to be tougher to grow in the future.”

Dennis Todey directs the USDA Midwest Climate Hub. He says heavy rain and periods of drought are both growing more common and can damage crops.

And temperatures higher than about 90 degrees Fahrenheit can inhibit corn growth, so as heat waves become more intense, yields could suffer.

Todey coleads IMPACT2, a USDA-funded project run by Purdue University. It’s helping farmers in Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana learn how climate change may ...

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Yale Climate Connections

In Los Angeles, a class on camping has also prepared participants to survive weather disasters, which are becoming more common as the climate warms.

Tim Jones, an outdoor educator, says many of the skills used while camping can help people stay safe during emergencies.

Jones: “During a disaster, you may find yourself in a situation that emulates being in a campout - there’s no electricity, there’s no lighting.”

Jones teamed up with the nonprofit Climate Resolve and Listos California to teach two camping 101 and emergency preparedness classes at a park.

The classes were free and taught in both English and Spanish to around 100 participants in total.

Attendees learned camping and survival skills like how to pitch a tent, cook meals at a campsite, and filter water.

Jones: “Roughing it doesn’t have to be rough. … We’re ...

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Yale Climate Connections

For decades, apartment buildings stood along the banks of Briar Creek in Charlotte, North Carolina. Over the years, the buildings flooded over and over.

So about 15 years ago, hundreds of units were purchased and torn down as part of a flood plain buyout program.

In their place, wetland habitat was restored. Now when it rains, the plants and rich soils help soak up water, reducing the risk of floods.

Garin Bulger of the Center for Urban Policy Research at Rutgers University analyzed this and other buyout programs across the country.

Bulger: “If you have a proactive municipality or a buyout program, they will combine properties, they will turn that into some sort of proactive green space for your community.”

But he says converting bought-out properties into natural areas requires planning and resources. Otherwise, some ...

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Yale Climate Connections

To reduce global warming carbon pollution in the atmosphere, there’s growing interest in paying farmers to increase the carbon that’s absorbed by plants and stored in the soil.

For example, farmers might grow perennial grasses with long roots that can lock carbon in the ground.

Tautges: “But if we’re paying out all this money and we’re not getting real-world increases in soil carbon storage because we’re not measuring it and monitoring it properly, then that’s a whole lot of wasted money, and we’re not achieving our goal.”

Nicole Tautges is with the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute in Wisconsin.

She says some strategies for increasing soil carbon are more effective than others, so it’s critical to monitor the real-world changes - and to do so accurately.

Tautges: “So that is to say, if ...

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Yale Climate Connections

Forest fires can race through dry vegetation and trees, leaving behind a desolate landscape.

Fairfax: “Everything around you is burnt to a crisp … and the forests are really silent. … All the animals are gone. All the birds are gone.”

Emily Fairfax is a geographer at the University of Minnesota, who studies how beavers - yes, beavers - can help reduce the damage caused by wildfires.

By building dams and digging channels, beavers create wetlands that support moist vegetation.

This water can prevent the land from drying out during a drought and stifle any wildfires that try to burn through.

Fairfax: “The beaver wetland comes into view and it’s a completely different situation. It’s suddenly very loud. You hear birds calling, you hear amphibians calling, you hear the fish jumping and the water splashing, you hear the beavers ...

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Yale Climate Connections

Mangroves are trees and shrubs that grow in thick groves right along the ocean’s edge, often with a tangle of roots and branches that weave in and out of the water.

During a storm, these roots and branches can help calm choppy waves and reduce the risk of flood damage farther inland.

So as climate change creates more extreme weather, mangrove thickets can help protect coastal communities from increasingly intense storms.

Mangroves can also help reduce global warming.

That’s because mangroves grow very quickly. And as they grow, they absorb a lot of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store the carbon in their roots, leaves, and branches.

Over time, that carbon-rich plant material accumulates in the ground around the mangroves. In such a soggy, oxygen-poor environment, it breaks down extremely slowly, so the carbon can ...

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Yale Climate Connections

As the climate warms, increasingly intense storms and fires threaten people’s homes and safety. Rising seas are flooding coastal communities. And extreme heat waves are causing illness and death.

Thinking about these dangers can be overwhelming.

Davenport: “Any kind of emotional response is completely natural - sadness, grief, fear, anger, rage.”

Leslie Davenport is a licensed therapist and a climate psychology educator. She says it can help to connect with others and get involved in climate action.

Davenport: “Being part of the solution is psychologically empowering.”

And for people already working on climate change, taking time to process their feelings and reset when needed can help them sustain their commitment.

Davenport: “Oftentimes, people do one or the other. If they’re activists but don’t attend ...

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Yale Climate Connections

In shallows off the Virginia coast, thick meadows of bright green and spindly plants called eelgrass sway in the waves.

Bieri: “It’s kind of like the forests of the underwater world, you know, it provides structure and habitat, refuge, food, a place to raise young, a place for juvenile fish, soft-shell crabs to seek refuge.”

Jill Bieri is with the Nature Conservancy’s Virginia Coast Reserve, a 75-mile-long protected area along the coastline.

In the 1930s, disease and hurricanes wiped out Virginia’s eelgrass.

But by the late 1990s, a small patch of eelgrass had started growing again, so conservationists began planting more.

In addition to providing habitat, eelgrass helps reduce coastal erosion by stabilizing seafloor sediment.

And it also pulls planet-warming carbon pollution out of the ...

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Yale Climate Connections

Seattle residents are accustomed to wearing rain jackets and sweatshirts year-round.

Binder: “Living in the Seattle region in western Washington, there’s a tendency to think that heat is a problem everywhere else but here. We typically have very mild summers.”

But Lara Whitely Binder, the climate preparedness program manager for King County, says very hot days are getting more common as the climate warms.

And unlike in Phoenix or Miami where heat is the norm, many people in Seattle lack air conditioning. So they have a hard time escaping the heat.

A devastating heat wave in 2021 killed more than 30 people in King County, which includes Seattle. It drove home the danger of extreme heat and the need to prepare.

So the county is developing an extreme heat strategy.

She says it will identify ways to protect people ...

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Yale Climate Connections

In a low-income neighborhood of Minneapolis, dozens of households will soon buy solar energy produced on the roof of North High School - the local public school.

Staples: “We’re really excited about it because not only do you have the ability to say, 'Hey, I’m subscribing to community solar,’ but 'I’m subscribing to the North High Project.’”

Jamez Staples is CEO of Renewable Energy Partners, a solar developer in North Minneapolis. He grew up in the area and graduated from North High. And he’s passionate about increasing access to solar in his community.

His company helped develop the North High Community solar garden, which is going live this summer. A portion of the energy it generates will go to the school. The city will purchase another portion, and the rest will be available for residential subscribers.

Staples: “We shared ...

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Yale Climate Connections

One of the world’s biggest sources of planet-warming carbon pollution is concrete.

In large part, that’s because cement, which binds the concrete together, is made by heating rocks like limestone more than 1,000 degrees.

This chemical reaction releases carbon dioxide, and the production process uses a lot of energy, much of which comes from fossil fuels.

Jang: “We know that concrete is such a carbon-intense industry.”

Mariane Jang works on sustainability with the New York State Office of General Services.

She says to reduce emissions from concrete, producers can replace some of the cement with industrial waste like slag and fly ash or other alternative ingredients.

To encourage the use of this lower-emissions concrete, New York State recently passed new regulations.

Starting next year, concrete used in large ...

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Yale Climate Connections

On Sunny Day Farms near Palmer, Kansas, Lucinda Stuenkel raises cattle and grows wheat, soybeans, and other commodity crops.

But during times when no cash crop is growing, her fields do not lie fallow.

Stuenkel: “We try to have something green and growing in there all year round.”

For example, after harvesting winter wheat, Stuenkel seeds spring oats and peas, which grow as a cover crop. She lets her cows graze on that nutritious forage.

So she says cover crops benefit her cows, and they’re good for her soil because their roots help build up organic material, which allows the soil to absorb and retain more moisture.

Stuenkel: “My soil now can hold four more inches of rain than it did 20 years ago … and so I can have healthier plants that grow a couple weeks longer than everybody else’s around us because they still ...

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Yale Climate Connections

In the East Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis, residents live just down the street from an asphalt mixing plant and an iron foundry. And for decades, they struggled with arsenic contamination from a former pesticide manufacturer.

Ortiz: “We know that historically, there has been certain communities that are bearing the brunt of pollution, leading to increased health, environmental and economic and social inequities.”

Carolina Ortiz is with Communities Organizing Latine Power and Action. The Minnesota-based nonprofit helped push the state to pass a cumulative impacts law, which will take effect in 2026.

Ortiz: “We were third in the nation to pass cumulative impacts. New York and New Jersey were first.”

The law requires that when issuing operating permits, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency must consider more than the ...

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Yale Climate Connections

Young children are especially vulnerable to the harmful impacts of climate change.

Many suffer from asthma that’s worsened by wildfire smoke and air pollution from coal, oil, or gas. Others face mental health challenges after experiencing a weather disaster.

So Claudia Benitez-Nelson, a climate scientist at the University of South Carolina, says it’s important to implement policies that help protect kids.

Benitez-Nelson: “We cannot abdicate our responsibilities to our children, to future generations.”

Benitez-Nelson is one of the authors of the U.S. Early Years Climate Action Plan, a report from the Aspen Institute and Capita, a think tank.

It suggests numerous possible government actions.

For example, state governments could implement policies that help child care programs prepare for extreme weather. Local ...

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Yale Climate Connections

In 2021, Hurricane Ida destroyed nearly all the homes in the Pointe-au-Chien Tribal community in coastal Louisiana.

Dardar: “It was like a war zone because there were no more leaves on the trees … and everything was torn up, houses all torn up.”

That’s resident Theresa Dardar. Her community is surrounded by wetlands that are eroding and sinking - partly because of levee construction, canal dredging, and sea-level rise.

This makes the homes there highly vulnerable to increasingly intense storms.

But residents are determined to remain on their ancestral land.

Dardar: “You pull out a tree and you let the roots dry up, and it dies. We feel that that’s what would happen to us. Our spirit would die if we were to be removed from our land.”

So they plan to rebuild and make their homes more resilient to extreme weather - for ...

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Yale Climate Connections

The Pérez Art Museum Miami sits alongside Florida’s Biscayne Bay, where sea levels are rising fast.

Sirmans: “Our whole location is defined by its relationship to the water.”

So museum director Franklin Sirmans says the museum can help get people thinking about the changing climate.

On the building’s facade, a neon sculpture spells out, “Climate change is real.”

And this summer, the museum is hosting an exhibit with dozens of artworks that celebrate the beauty of the Earth and mourn how it’s changed.

One painting shows a mother and child juxtaposed against a dilapidated house on stilts, surrounded by floodwater. A photograph shows an underwater view of a woman treading water, almost fully submerged.

The exhibit started at a museum in North Carolina. But Sirmans says the imagery resonates strongly with people in ...

The Microsoft co-founder, who is in London for a three-day climate tech conference, spoke with Bloomberg Green for a wide-ranging interview covering topics from artificial intelligence to the US election.

Bill Gates

Businesses hate uncertainty, and if Donald Trump is elected US president later this year, they will have to deal with a lot of it, says Bill Gates. That’s among a few things top of mind for the co-founder of Microsoft Corp., who is in London this week for a three-day conference.