Nature Emojis, Wildfires, Plastics Treaty News, and More!

Hey climate heroes! Welcome to The Climate Roundup, where we round up the change, er the news about climate and the environment. As part of the Gen E community, we thank you for making climate action part of everyday life. (Reading this newsletter counts!)

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In Pop Culture:

🙋‍♀️ Have you ever felt limited by the selection of environmentally-themed emojis? Join the club! And check out this fun interactive article inspired by a study done to highlight the many missing nature emojis. You’ll learn about biology and the emoji gatekeepers, while having fun all at the same time.

Getting Down To Climate Business:

👩‍🚒 A new annual study analyzing global wildfire activity looks at how human-caused climate change is affecting wildfire season. Wildfire seasons are longer, more intense, and burning more ground, which releases more planet-warming emissions into the atmosphere. Last season, Canada’s boreal forests released 9 times more carbon than its long term average. The forests that are burning are part of our natural system for removing CO2 from the air. If they are destroyed, they can’t do that job, and we end up with more atmospheric carbon, which further warms the planet. This is one of those sad climate feedback loops, where one thing worsens, causing another to worsen, causing the first to worsen more, and so on. The solution is always the same: drastically cut human-controlled emissions as fast as possible to lessen the long term effects of climate change.

🧋 Later this year our world is set to agree upon a UN global treaty on plastic, similar to the Paris Agreement for climate change. Well, a positive development happened this week, as the U.S. announced it has changed its position regarding annual limits on the amount of new plastic that countries can produce. Now, our country is in favor of the limits, plus they support eliminating the harmful chemicals used in plastic production. We’ll keep you updated on this. A phase down of plastic production is right up there in importance with drawing down greenhouse gases.

🌳 Trees in hot weather are doing something weird: they’re dropping limbs for no apparent reason, while being seemingly healthy. Scientists don’t know why, but the working theory is that they are self-pruning to help deal with hotter temps.

🦆 Another nasty side effect of global warming is that bacteria thrives in it. And as the places we like to go to cool off get warmer, like lakes, they are increasingly dealing with toxic and harmful bacteria outbreaks that cause human health issues. Not to mention it spoils an intended good time when you can’t go in the water. Several beach and lake closures have been reported this year in Florida, Massachussets, and California because of climate-fueled algae and bacteria. Startups are trying to solve the problem with ideas like pumping oxygen into lake water, which disallows phosphorus to fuel bacteria growth, but it has yet to scale.

🙅‍♂️ Just Don’t Do It: Nike’s private jet use doesn’t align with its climate pledges, ProPublica finds.

E On Demand

🚲 There are hybrid cars, so why not hybrid bikes? For commuters in cities, biking to work can be a great option, especially if your city has dedicated bike lanes. But e-bikes are expensive and unnecessarily over the top. Enter CLIP, a contraption you clip onto your regular bike to make it electric when you need it. Sounds like the perfect solution for keeping the pure simplicity of a bike, but with the option to add an extra boost for when you don’t want to arrive sweaty.