Climate denial in orbit

Figs that turn CO2 into stone, how the U.S. is moving backwards on climate, and taking the fight to court

New research reveals that three East African fig tree species have the unusual ability to create and store calcium carbonate—sequestering carbon by essentially turning into stone in their branches, trunk, root systems, and even their leaves. This occurs through the oxalate carbonate pathway. When the trees decay, the calcium oxalate crystals stay behind in the soil. The crystals are a more stable form of carbon than organic carbon, so they will stay sequestered there for longer.

“We’ve known about the oxalate carbonate pathway for some time, but its potential for sequestering carbon hasn’t been fully considered,” said Dr. Mike Rowley from the University of Zurich. “If we’re planting trees for agroforestry and their ability to store CO2 as organic carbon while producing food, we could choose trees that provide an additional benefit by sequestering inorganic carbon also, in the form of calcium carbonate.”

Nature-based climate solutions offer a great way to tackle climate change. Many of them also help with a host of other challenges, from urban heat to biodiversity loss, and it seems like we’re always discovering new ways nature can help us out.

In this case, growing fruit can sequester carbon. Isn’t that amazing?

Photo from NASA/Bridget Caswell

In the U.S., where I live, federal policies, programs and resources that have been helping to reduce carbon emissions, accelerate the clean energy transition, and provide the information people need to ensure they are resilient and prepared for dangerous climate impacts continue to be unraveled. Here’s a rundown of recent setbacks.

In 2009, the U.S. government issued an “endangerment finding” that greenhouse gas emissions pose a threat to human health and welfare (which they do!). This enabled the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate these emissions under the Clean Air Act. But recently, the EPA proposed to rescind this key scientific finding. To justify the rollback, the Dept. of Energy put out a report written by a secretly-convened group of climate dismissives that was full of false claims – and even one false reference, which as climate scientist Gavin Schmidt points out here, is usually a dead giveaway that they used ChatGPT to write it! – that climate change does not affect our health.

Next, the U.S. Energy Secretary announced that the administration is “revising” past National Climate Assessments (NCA) after removing the originals from government websites and claiming the reports “weren’t fair in broad-based assessments of climate change.” I am a four-time author of these congressionally mandated, exhaustively peer-reviewed reports, and can tell you that this assertion is absolutely false. After the IPCC, the NCA is the most comprehensive climate report in the world: reviewed by 12 federal agencies, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public. The authors are required to respond to all comments received, even ones that contradict the science, and all comments and responses are public. Any attempt to go back and edit these reports will decrease their reliability and credibility, particularly if the edits are made for political rather than scientific reasons and are not subject to the same review process as the original reports.

Then, NASA has been told to end two satellite missions that monitor carbon dioxide and plant growth globally. These missions were designed to provide information about atmospheric carbon dioxide, but, as a bonus, their instruments also measure a specific wavelength of light plants give out during photosynthesis, resulting in highly detailed maps of plant growth across the planet. Data from these satellites – known as the Orbiting Carbon Observatories – is used widely by scientists, farmers, and even oil and gas companies, and they have plenty of life left in them. Putting these systems into orbit cost some $750 million, whereas maintaining them both each year costs $15 million. “Just from an economic standpoint, it makes no economic sense to terminate NASA missions that are returning incredibly valuable data,” David Crisp, a now-retired NASA scientist who designed the instruments the OCO missions use, told NPR.

Letting a satellite burn up, rewriting trusted science, and blocking pollution rules that protect our health put us at even more risk, at a time when climate is changing faster than any time in human history, and we’re the cause. Our future depends on having more information, not less, so we can make choices that keep us safe.

As I often say, a hurricane doesn’t ask your politics before it destroys your home. Caring about this issue isn’t about being red, blue, or green. It’s about being human — and that’s all of us.

One of the most powerful ways we can take climate action — and one of my top six things we can do, in fact — is by holding politicians accountable. But what does that really mean?

Sometimes it means voting. Sometimes it means calling or writing your representatives at every level: city, county, state, province, and country. Sometimes it means submitting comments. You can submit on the DOE report here before Sept 2, and on the rollback of the endangerment finding here, before Sept 15.

And increasingly, it also means taking this fight to the courts.

All around the world, people are using the legal system to push for climate accountability. In the U.S., young people in Montana successfully argued that their constitutional rights were being violated by fossil fuel-friendly policies. Right now, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Environmental Defense Fund are suing the U.S. government over the DOE report I mentioned above.

In the Netherlands, citizens won a case forcing the government — and even Shell — to cut emissions. In Switzerland, an enterprising lawyer named Cordelia Bähr secured a historic ruling for her elderly Swiss clients last year when the European Court of Human Rights declared that inadequate climate action by a government violates fundamental human rights to protection from the “serious adverse effects of climate change on lives, health, well-being and quality of life.” And similar lawsuits are underway everywhere from Germany to Brazil to the Philippines.

These cases are already making history, and you can follow them through ClimateCaseChart.com, a public, searchable database of climate litigation maintained by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. It’s an incredible tool for seeing how ordinary people are standing up to demand that leaders and corporations take responsibility.

By reading, sharing, and talking about these cases, you help build public awareness and political pressure. Because when enough of us speak up, we make it clear: climate action isn’t optional — it’s expected.

Holding politicians accountable means using every tool at our disposal. And the courts? They’re becoming one of the most powerful tools we’ve got.