• step by step guide to having a conversation about climate change. the foundation for environmental education held a panel at cop26 today about the power of communication networks. learn about communication networks, why they’re so important, and how to start a conversation about climate change yourself!

• five facts from nasa to help you understand sea ice. changes in sea ice play a key part in the global climate and have great effects on the ocean.

• five big ideas to address the climate crisis and inequality in cities. another panel held today covers urban inequality in the fight for global climate justice. we have a ways to go, but so much is already being done to combat the disproportionate effects of climate change. read about what’s happening in nairobi, kenya; london; rosario, argentina; monterrey, mexico; and ahmedabad, india.

check back tomorrow for more info on what is being explored at cop26 — and good reads to keep you informed!

one focal area that others might miss is the interdependence of the big three crises of our time: not just the climate crisis, but also the biodiversity crisis and the crisis of inequality. the reason to watch for these big-3 interactions is that all three crises are rapidly coming to a head and solutions to one can easily harm progress in the other two. yet, we have the opportunity to kill three crises with one stone when we find the right combination of approaches. 

my interest in solving these crises stems from my background as a field biologist. i have witnessed how climate change is affecting biodiversity, not only in remote places like the north slope of alaska, but also here in my backyard in connecticut. my research has detailed how each increase in global temperature will likely make these changes worse and could lead to permanent extinctions. moreover, we can demonstrate that biodiversity losses directly affect human health, economy, and culture, and therefore our needs are inseparable from those of nature. 

i’ll be looking for these win-win-win solutions at cop26 that can address all three crises, and i’ll be deeply skeptical of solutions that do not. for example, restoring or protecting natural forests when done in concert with the needs of local people can capture carbon, maintain biodiversity, and protect local livelihoods and cultures simultaneously. but even this solution can cause harm when done without paying attention to local ecosystems and people.

at cop26, we have a chance to turn things around and make meaningful progress toward limiting climate change and preventing its worst effects. i hope that the students that we bring to the summit will not only advocate for that progress, but become the leaders that make it happen.

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about the author:

mark c. urban is an award-winning scientist, the arden chair and professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the university of connecticut, founder and director of the center of biological risk, and global expert on climate change impacts on nature and evolutionary ecology.

to head off the threat of overgrowth, the global community has turned to solutions like birth control and family planning to help fast-growing populations slow their birth rates and assuage our sustainability fears. but when you look at who ends up carrying out our efforts to reach demographic sustainability, it seems that the growing countries of the global south are being unfairly saddled with a burden that is not theirs.

lowering birth rates in countries simply because they have high birth rates is not the fast track to a sustainable future because it ignores the major global inequalities in resource usage and environmental impact. wealthy, highly developed countries tend to encourage unsustainable choices at every turn, so even while their growth rates shrink, their harm to the earth and to future sustainability grows.

if carbon dioxide emissions per capita are used as the measure of impact on the planet, one person in the united states has the same impact as 46 people in bangladesh or 67 people in afghanistan. so while these countries may be growing very rapidly, the people in those countries are not to blame if we one day overwhelm the planet – the blame lies with the countries and people who are doing the most to harm the earth. we must focus our efforts on massive changes in consumption and production patterns, not on population growth.

family planning can be an effective tool of development when it is done in a way that benefits individuals. access to family planning has been found to give women more control over their lives by allowing them to make decisions that had previously been left up to their husbands, families, communities, and governments. it allows women to take more control over their educations, health, employment, and bank accounts and gives families opportunities to develop and grow in ways beside population.

but the benefits of family planning must be considered in the context of the global community’s ultimate goal: not just to improve the lives of individuals but to slow down population growth and improve our overall chances at survival. racialized, poor populations are not the primary perpetrators using our resources too quickly or destroying our planet through carbon emissions and plastic pollution, yet it has become their responsibility to reverse trends that they didn’t create.

many of our narratives around family planning are based in dehumanization, with the women of the global south viewed primarily as producers of children and not as people. global institutions celebrate dramatic drops in birth rate as development successes, but what is left unsaid speaks volumes: lowering the population growth of developing countries is helping us survive on this planet. the jump to a disturbing conclusion from this is a short one, as reducing the fertility of certain populations in the name of the greater good is clearly eugenics.

reducing birth rate in the 20th century was not about choice but control. institutions like the united nations and the international planned parenthood federation (ippf) have dark histories of participating in eugenic activities. for instance, the united nations population fund contributed to the fujimori sterilization campaign in peru in the 1990s, during which 100,000 women, mostly indigenous and rural, were forced to be sterilized. governments themselves are often perpetrators of eugenics, as was the case in 1976 when the government of india – supported by the american government – sterilized 6.2 million men against their will.

dramatic cases like these may seem like blemishes on an otherwise fair and successful global movement for demographic sustainability, but they are really indications that racism and classism are deeply embedded in our conceptions of population and development. in his controversial book fatal misconception: the struggle to control world population, matthew connelly writes that family planning can create and encourage racial divides and victimize vulnerable populations.

“even now, long after the demise of population control as an organized movement, fear of the fertility and mobility of particular groups continues to spark ethnic strife,” connelly writes.

the potential still exists for family planning to be an equitable and empowering tool for sustainability if utilized differently. this requires looking at populations and communities on an individualized basis at the local level, rather than the global, and identifying what specific environmental and socioeconomic problems they face. family planning may not be able to mitigate global climate change, but it can help communities adapt to their changing ecological conditions and enhance their abilities to survive and prosper on the small scale.

demographic sustainability in the future may not mean protecting the environment from populations, but protecting populations from the changing environment. hopefully, the future of sustainable development will prioritize the rights of individuals over the shrinking of the human population. it is the reduction of harmful activities that will save the planet, not the reduction of numbers.

eating healthy isn’t fair or equal.

when i was in 8^th grade i decided to change my life. i joined the club lacrosse team and became conscious of the foods i put into my body. by the time my junior year in high school began, i had lost more than 50 pounds.

since then, what i eat is a big part of my life. i think before i eat and focus on foods that are healthy and fresh. but not everyone in the united states lives with that luxury: 26 million americans can’t be picky about what they eat. they live in food deserts.

losing weight is already an incredibly hard task, even in the best of circumstances. imagine living in a city with no access to a car, low income and no supermarkets within more than a mile of your home. or, picture yourself living in a rural area with no access to a car, low income and no supermarkets within more than 10 miles from home. some may not even realize they live in a food desert, but will still feel the effects.

obesity is already a problem in america, but it’s an even bigger problem to those living in food deserts. they’re 11 percent to 19 percent more likely to be obese. in a culture that piles on pressure to be thin, it definitely isn’t an equal battle to healthy living.

i can’t imagine how much more difficult my struggle toward weight loss would have been with the added challenge of finding the healthy food necessary to lose weight.

it’s crucial to raise awareness of this hardship facing so many americans in their daily lives. before we make that quick judgment or comment on someone’s weight, think about what challenges they may be against. how can we promote a culture surrounding healthy bodies without making access to the resources necessary to achieve that end available to all?

take it from me: losing weight is a long and challenging process. not having easy healthy food increases that challenge exponentially.