Eric Maugendre

Study: methane gas emissions would be reduced by about 20 % in ten years if stopping bovine livestock. A climate policy could be to generalize the current practice of turning male calves into steers. doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

In 2024, out of nowhere, Manu got a call from an organisation called Value Network Ventures. They wanted to pay her Rs 2,000 per acre to do exactly what she said she’d been doing all along. Turns out, wetting and drying paddy fields can cut down methane emissions. the-ken.com/story/google...

The Indigenous Desert Alliance, a network of 885 rangers, have helped restore biodiversity to 140 million hectares of land over the past four years using the practice of cultural burning. This year they have been nominated for an Earthshot Prize. CEO Sam Murray joins me on the podcast this week:

1/ There’s an instructive debate underway in the open review pages of @egu.eu journal Ocean Science. It’s about whether we can tell if the #AMOC is already on a trajectory towards collapse. What I think it really teaches is how scientists judge evidence, & why that differs from assessing risk. 🧵

If mitigation-related utterances at COPs by rich country coalitions actually meant equitable action, they would be on the hook first. But equity is a concept held in disdain, allowing wealthiest emitters the platform to speak about mitigation without facing the consequences of what equity means

5/ Methane. The scenarios have methane emissions falling fast this decade. They are still rising. Weber et al. (2026b) find that without methane cuts, net zero CO2 by 2050 still gives nearly 2°C, & 1.5°C is off the table either way. Correct all 4 assumptions & the true gap's much wider than drawn😬

"The findings suggest several mechanisms may activate a doom loop between #climate change and sovereign debt."

El Niño drought hits Central America's Dry Corridor again.

From city councils to Congress, there’s a growing desire to tax AI, but policymakers don’t always know their options. My new paper outlines 34 ways to tax AI across data centers, chips, data, AI products, automation & general tax reforms. vanderbiltpolicyaccelerator.substack.com/p/ai-isnt-pa...

Just a reminder that tar sands are the dirtiest, most carbon-intensive oil on Earth, & that tar sands extraction is the most destructive project on Earth, which has turned a New York state-sized chunk of Alberta's boreal forest into Mordor. Spills are devastating. Burning this hell-glop is worse.

Amazon floodplain forests are vanishing, with a third of historical wetland loss occurring between 2015 and 2024. A new study shows clear boundaries save habitats: recognized Indigenous lands converted just 0.2%, while unmonitored public lands face heavy deforestation. Shanna Hanbury reports.

In August the feds tried to strike the case, but a judge ruled against them. We'll be getting our day in court sometime in 2027 environmentaldefence.ca/2026/09/21/c...

'El Niño is already affecting several parts of Asia, with prolonged dry conditions fueling fires across forests and plantations in Indonesia’s Borneo and South Sumatra regions… Experts said years of deforestation & peatland drainage have made Indonesia more vulnerable to fires during dry periods.'

A monoculture plantation of 'native' ash, totally wiped out by dieback. There's a high probability something similar will happen to the 7% or so of Ireland covered in Sitka. And for nature, climate and people, that wouldn't even be a bad thing. We REALLY need to rethink national forestry policy.

El Niño has only created the preconditions, says Matei, the fires are mostly man-made. "Many farmers are using the extreme drought to clear forests in a targeted manner and to open up new areas for palm oil plantations." 11/

"Chinese policymakers unleashed new entrants and rapidly scaled clean-tech manufacturing, while EU and American policymakers mostly worked with incumbents (which enabled the latter to slow the pace of change)"

"The freedom expressed by the combination of fossil fuels and anti-vaccination points to the desire for a sovereign body and property that is not accountable to, nor dependent upon, others." Cara Daggett (2022) in "Petro-masculinity and the politics of climate refusal" autonomy.work/portfolio/pe...

Taking too much water from rivers can destroy wildlife habitat, as Nick Measham of Wildfish describes: "Depleted & polluted, rivers that were once abundant in fish, invertebrates, mammals & birds turn into a line of fetid pools that eventually dry out completely." share.google/YYtRXJ0PqozF...

Reducing plant diversity in grasslands here is called pasture improvement.

When I spoke with former USAID employee Lindsey Moore, she told me one of the biggest indicators of success in conservation projects was longterm investment in the local communities, and ongoing care. I wrote about how whatever you do in life, you have to keep showing up for it, year after year.

#Indigenous children across the globe experiencing large climate-related health impacts ranging from malnutrition and infectious diseases through to impacts on mental health, cultural wellbeing, and problems before birth www.thekids.org.au/news--events... @futurechildhealth.bsky.social

"The health of Indigenous lands and their ability to store vast quantities of #carbon stem from the stewardship of the people who inhabit them." "Respondents from a wide range of countries […] mentioned using community monitoring or patrols to protect their land." via @josephvlee.bsky.social

A lot of research focuses on how global change alters "typical" environmental states. But what is happening to the variability of those states? Published today at @jgrbiogeo.bsky.social! 🎉 One of my favorite postdoc projects agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

One of the biggest barriers to dealing with any social/interpersonal problem is confusing a behavior problem (what people do) for a knowledge problem. Knowledge problems are more straightforward to solve. So everyone redefines the problem as that. Plus it helps the well-educated feel superior.

Sources of TFA include: - PFAS-containing pesticides used on crops - F-gases used in refrigeration, air conditioning + datacentre cooling systems - pharmaceutical pollution - the breakdown of other forms of PFAS Alternatives already exist for most of these uses.

El Niño: Ten Things You Need to Know Includes forecasts of floods & droughts, why this El Niño is a 'Godzilla', and why this is not a good time for another hit to global food security And why the biggest problem with El Niño is that we've already superheated the land & seas by burning fossil fuels