Anthropocene Magazine

As the world’s capacity for plundering the ocean for food grows, our ability to know what level of fishing is sustainable isn’t keeping pace. Officials in charge of preventing overfishing are often relying on excessively rosy forecasts of the health of a particular fish population, increasing the danger that permitted fishing levels are too high, scientists reported last week in the journal https://lnkd.in/gEmNn9gf

Much of the concern about the loss of the world’s pollinators revolves around the declining numbers of bees, butterflies and other insects. But what if a big part of the problem is that the bugs we do have are flying blind? Insects often rely on odors wafting through the air to home in on their favorite flowers from kilometers away. https://lnkd.in/gy8tWJQ2

Investments in green energy can help optimize investment portfolios and ‘hedge’ against volatile markets, according to a new study. Investors try to avoid financial losses by diversifying their portfolios with investments that follow different trends. https://lnkd.in/gNxVF5rQ

IDEA WATCH David and The Upcycled Garbage Truck David Beckham’s $500,000 electric Jaguar conversion could unleash a carbon-free Goliath—the kind that picks up your trash By Julie Halpert When soccer lengend David Beckham wanted a wedding present for his son Brooklyn, he turned to Lunaz, an upcycling company based next to the Formula 1 racetrack in Silverstone, UK. https://lnkd.in/g4tExK_B

Researchers have come up with a wide variety of strategies to get people to adopt more climate-friendly behaviors. But studies evaluating their effectiveness have generally been piecemeal, looking at the effect of individual strategies on individual climate-friendly behaviors. And differences in experimental design make it difficult to compare results across studies. https://lnkd.in/eYZQ6tTN

Urban farmers markets epitomize an environmentally-conscious lifestyle—home-grown vegetables, paper bags, the occasional beetle in your organic raspberries. Surely nothing could be better for the climate than buying food grown literally just around the corner? But conventional agriculture is now immensely efficient, and operates at a scale that makes pea-patch spuds look like very small potatoes. https://lnkd.in/gjjRrQ2D

If we changed the world’s consumption patterns to focus more on plants and less on meat, we could reduce global emissions by almost 20%, a new study shows.  Crucially, this reduction would be driven by changes in the way the world’s wealthiest eat. https://lnkd.in/gKnNCyA5

Herbicides have become a key agricultural ingredient for our globalized food systems, but they also create a catch-22. While on the one hand they tackle weeds, they simultaneously weaken the soil quality and organic material that crops need to thrive. Ironically, like the weeds themselves, this threatens yields. https://lnkd.in/gBF8giN5

The world is making slow strides in cutting greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector and transportation. But some industries are stubbornly difficult to decarbonize. Researchers from the University of Leeds now show that 85 percent of these industrial emissions could be cut using available and relatively mature technologies. https://lnkd.in/gnfu8FXU

Climate-skeptical statements start to seem more persuasive after just one repetition, even to the people most concerned about climate change, according to a new study. “We are more likely to believe things we heard before, even if we only heard them once,” says study team member Norbert Schwarz, co-director of the USC Dornsife Mind & Society Center at the University of Southern California in Los https://lnkd.in/gq_VrZEj