Cabot Institute for the Environment blog

Naturalists and life scientists have long debated how insect-eating bats navigate their dark world. Sarun T/Shutterstock Human disturbance is rapidly changing the nature of the nocturnal world. Intensive farming, suburban spread, artificially lit cities, and continuously busy road systems mean daytime species are becoming increasingly active throughout the night. Ecologists suggest that the majority of land animals are either nocturnal or active across both the day and night. Recent research has also shown that the night is warming considerably faster than the day. The stifling night-time heat experienced across Europe this summer is indicative of this, placing nocturnal animals under even greater stress. The transforming night adds new sensory pressures concerning finding food, a mate, and navigating a world permeated by artificial illumination. Environmental change is severely threatening the ability of nocturnal animals to coexist wi...

In a packed auditorium in Liverpool, Labour leader Keir Starmer stood at a plinth emblazoned with the words “A Fairer, Greener Future”. It was the key theme of this year’s party conference and is evident in Starmer’s landmark policy announcement: the creation of a new publicly-owned energy company, Great British Energy. The company would effectively be a start-up to grow British renewables . So while Great British Energy is not nationalisation of the electricity sector (or of any one energy company), it would represent a new and different sort of organisation positioned to fund new projects while working to remove the hurdles faced by new wind and solar projects. This follows calls from various organisations for a new way of generating and providing electricity. For many, the scale of action needed to both reach net zero and address energy poverty is incompatible with the current model of doing things, which focuses on paying shareholders and avoiding riskier investments. L...

The environmental cost of childbearing is central to climate ethics debates. MJTH/Shutterstock Whether residents of high-income countries are morally obliged to have fewer children is a growing debate in climate ethics. Due to the high anticipated carbon impact of future population growth, some climate ethicists express support for non-coercive population engineering policies such as reduced child tax credits. This debate has attracted widespread public attention , making family planning a key issue in climate change prevention. Much of the debate is underpinned by one influential US study published in 2009 from Oregon State University. The premise of the study is that a person is responsible for the carbon emissions of their descendants, weighted by their relatedness. A grandparent is responsible for one quarter of each of their grandchildren’s emissions, and so on. By having a child, a cycle of continued procreation over many gener...

SpeedKingz/Shutterstock People in the UK might be tempted to keep their heating turned off to offset the large increases in energy bills this winter. A recent YouGov poll , revealed that 21% of respondents would not turn their heating on until at least November. Could the health of these people be endangered? Before COVID, an average of 25,000 extra deaths occurred between December and March compared with any other four-month period of the year . Even if COVID did not exist, the cost of living crisis could result in the toll from the coming winter being worse than usual. The Marmot review (a report investigating the effects of cold homes and fuel poverty) estimated that 21.5% of all excess winter deaths could be attributed to the coldest 25% of homes in the UK population. This would suggest that 5,000 extra deaths occur in winter because people live in cold homes. But this does not mean the cold homes cause the deaths. People who live in...

Households are facing an unprecedented energy crisis, and the most vulnerable will suffer the most. Solarisys/Shutterstock With UK households facing a dire energy crisis, there has been no shortage of advice from politicians, experts and journalists about how to save energy. Not all of this advice has been good. Former prime minister Boris Johnson suggested that buying a new kettle for £20 could save households £10 a year on electricity bills – a comment that was criticised for being unhelpful as well as wildly out of touch with the everyday struggles of Britons. Prompting similar criticisms, former Conservative MP Edwina Currie said that rather than catastrophising about the 80% increase in the price of energy in October , we should be lining our radiators with tinfoil to save energy. Some advice, like that provided by Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis and the Energy Savings Trust , can be useful or even obvious. Switching off applian...

Following a very successful three-day conference recently, I wanted to write a few words to extol the virtues of a hybrid meeting done really well.  Lots of people at the moment are enthusing wildly about getting back to in-person meetings and general socialising, but not all of us are quite so excited about this return to the old world. If this makes me a miserable old git, then so be it. The meeting in question was a Galileo Conference, entitled 'The warm Pliocene: Bridging the geological data and modelling communities' and held virtually and in-person at the University of Leeds from 24-26 August 2022.  It was sponsored by the NERC UK Integrated Ocean Drilling Programme, Past Global Changes (PAGES) and the European Geosciences Union (EGU), and was run by an organising committee led by Dr Aisling Dolan and Dr Heather Ford (from the University of Leeds and Queen Mary University of London, respectively).  The conference website can be seen at https://www.egu-galileo.eu/gc1...

Flying is responsible for around 5% of human-induced climate change. Wichudapa/Shutterstock Commercial aviation has become a cornerstone of our economy and society. It allows us to rapidly transport goods and people across the globe, facilitates over a third of all global trade by value, and supports 87.7 million jobs worldwide. However, the 80-tonne flying machines we see hurtling through our skies at near supersonic speeds also carry some serious environmental baggage. My team’s recent review paper highlights some promising solutions the aviation industry could put in place now to reduce the harm flying does to our planet. Simply changing the routes we fly could hold the key to drastic reductions in climate impact. Modern aeroplanes burn kerosene to generate the forward propulsion needed to overcome drag and produce lift. Kerosene is a fossil fuel with excellent energy density, providing lots of energy per kilogram burnt. But when it ...