Anthropocene Magazine

Food accounts for a third of humanity’s greenhouse emissions. And sure enough, the most carbon-gushing foods are also the ones that tend to be the worst for our health, such as meats and dairy. So what if we tried taxing that carbon, to nudge people toward higher-plant diets that are healthier for people and planet alike?

A new study in Nature Food explores how these food emissions taxes could be applied to countries around the world with different levels of wealth and greenhouse emissions. It shows how they could be tweaked to manage the delicate interplay between food prices, poverty, hunger, and health—while still cutting billions of tons of annual emissions.

Economists have estimated that growing populations and increasing meat consumption worldwide could cause the environmental footprint of our food—including greenhouse emissions—to balloon by 50 to 90 percent by 2050. This has spurred recommendations that humanity shift its diet, toward fewer animals and more plants.

Emissions taxes paid by consumers buying foods are one way to encourage a shift away from meats, dairy, eggs, and sugars. But questions remain about how those taxes can be applied fairly to countries around the world—given that wealthier nations have more ability to pay them, and that many of these same nations also contributed disproportionately to rising greenhouse gases in the first place.

In the new study, researchers used economic, trade, and public health models to predict how well different types of taxes would curb greenhouse emissions—and also, how they would impact food prices and human health around the world.

 

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They compared two tax scenarios. In one, emissions are priced the same worldwide, at a constant cost of USD$ 185 per metric ton of CO2 equivalent (tCO2eq). In this system, wealthy countries would still pay more taxes, because their food systems emit more tons of CO2. In the other system, the cost-per-ton of emissions is scaled up or down, based on each country’s wealth—thereby further increasing the taxes paid by consumers in wealthy countries (to as much as $969 per tCO2eq), while reducing those paid by lower-wealth countries (to as little as $21 per tCO2eq). The researchers compared these two scenarios both with and without a second provision, in which governments would also subsidize fruits and vegetables to further lower the prices that consumers pay for these low-carbon foods.

Their results suggest that taxes based on a fixed-price-per-ton would reduce food-related emissions most sharply—by up to 18.7 percent, or about 2.6 billion tCO2eq worldwide each year. But such taxes would likely worsen overall health in some countries such as India, Bangladesh, and Vietnam—even after accounting for reductions in heart disease and diabetes—because they might make food less affordable to some people, compromising nutrition.

The authors found that adjusting the price-per-ton of emissions based on national wealth would lessen this problem. And subsidizing the cost of fruits and vegetables would further decrease it. Together these two tweaks slightly reduced the emissions that were prevented—but they were still predicted to cut worldwide food emissions by 17 percent, or about 2.3 billion tCO2eq per year.

The authors recommended that these efforts to reduce the negative impacts on the poor could be further explored, with detailed studies of poverty in individual countries, and potentially by excluding some critical sustenance foods such as fish or rice from the taxes in some countries.

Bouyssou, et al. “Food emissions taxes can deliver health and environmental benefits with limited leakage.” Nature Food, 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

Compostable plastics are touted as a greener alternative to conventional petroleum-based plastics that can linger in the environment for centuries. But there’s a catch. Degradable plastics only break down in the right conditions typically found in a composting facility. The tons of compostable plastic that ends up in oceans can still float around for decades and threaten marine life and ecosystems.

Researchers have found a way for plastics to break down much faster in the ocean. They embedded tiny amounts of plastic-degrading enzymes in compostable polyester plastics. The enzyme-containing polyesters completely degraded in a relatively short time period even in microbe-scarce environments.

The method works at all depths from coastal waters to the deep open sea, the researchers report in the journal Nature.

There are many types of biodegradable plastics in commercial use today. These plastics are designed to decompose completely by microorganisms at certain temperatures and humidities. Those conditions are found in industrial composting facilities and with more care in backyard compost settings. But out in cold ocean water, biodegradable plastics can persist for a long time.

The research team from Japan took four types of compostable plastic—PBS, PBSA, PCL, and PBAT—and melted them. The heat of the melt would destroy plastic-degrading enzymes. So the researchers made freeze-dried forms of Candida antarctica lipase B and Humicola insolens cutinase enzymes. They added the enzymes to the melts at very low concentrations ranging from 0.1–3% by weight.

 

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Then the researchers shaped the materials into films and microbeads. After sealing the samples in a polyethylene meshes, they placed the meshes at various locations off the coast of Tokyo, ranging in water depths from 2–6 m to 5,503 m. They monitored the samples over periods ranging from one month to 18 months.

At 757 m, PBS, PBSA and PCL films containing 3% cutinase nearly completely disappeared within five months. Films of those three plastics containing only 0.1 wt% cutinase lost 27.4%, 100% and 85.5% of their mass, respectively, in 1 month. But PBAT was more resistant, losing just over 12% under the same conditions.

Enzyme-free samples barely degraded. And enzyme-containing plastics also showed moderate biodegradation on the cold floor of the deepest test site. Meanwhile, microbeads embedded with 0.1 wt% cutinase formed visible pores and cracks within 2 weeks in coastal seawater.

“These results demonstrate enzyme embedding as a material-level strategy to enhance the environmental degradability of the compostable polyesters…across diverse marine environments without compromising their mechanical properties,” the researchers write.

Source: QiuYuan Huang et al. Enzyme-embedded polyesters for accelerated biodegradation in the deep sea. Nature, 2026.

©Anthropocene Magazine

People are drowning in eco-friendly swag—cloth tote bags, reusable water bottles, recycled notebooks, sustainable hotel toiletries, and on and on—distributed by organizations and companies eager to demonstrate their environmental bona fides.

What might be even more sustainable than manufacturing and distributing all these eco-friendly products is to just…stop. The trouble is that consumers have trouble giving brands credit for such restraint, a quirk of human psychology that researchers dub “sustainable additive bias” in a new paper.

“Companies that genuinely try to take eco-friendly actions, such as reducing packaging or promotional giveaways, are often not rewarded,” says study team member Linda Lemarié, associate professor of marketing at Audencia Business School in France. “What we don’t see is hard to take into consideration, and reduction leaves nothing visible, even though it’s often the best strategy from an environmental standpoint.”

In the paper, Lemarié and her colleagues conducted nine different studies to demonstrate how this bias works—and what companies can do about it.

The studies included a field experiment in which hotel guests rated the sustainability of the room they had stayed in, a lab experiment in which business school students chose gifts to hand out to trade show attendees, and seven online investigations in which a total of more than 2,900 participants were asked to evaluate complimentary hotel toiletries, hair care sets, music festival welcome bags, and other collections of products.

Overall, the studies show that consumers see businesses as more sustainable when they provide more eco-friendly items rather than when they remove unnecessary ones—even though subtracting can lead to lower waste and a smaller footprint.

 

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“We were first surprised by the robustness and consistency of the effect across different contexts and with different metrics,” Lemarié says.

For example, study participants judged a hotel room stocked with a large selection of eco-friendly toiletries as more sustainable than a room with a more modest set of eco-friendly products. They also judged a limited-edition tea box to which eco-friendly tea filters had been added as more sustainable than one from which they had been removed.

“Then we were also surprised by the bias’s resistance to knowledge,” Lemarié says. When items weren’t labeled as being environmentally friendly, participants identified bundles with more items as being less sustainable than those with fewer. “This means that people do indeed correctly associate ‘addition with ‘less environmentally friendly.’”

But when the question of sustainability comes into play, people seem to use visible components as indicators of companies’ effort. The more items, the more effort, and the more effort, the more sustainability—at least, according to our imperfect brains.

Several of the experiments suggest sustainable additive bias can be counteracted when companies prioritize highly recognizable items as sustainability signals (that is, a refillable water bottle counts more than biodegradable glitter). One hints that explaining when items have been removed for environmental reasons might help, too.

But accomplishing this in the real world could be tricky, Lemarié says. “The question our research leaves open is how to effectively demonstrate, without appearing hypocritical or making people skeptical, that reducing elements of a product offering, and thus offering less, is a genuine effort in favor of the environment.”

Source: Lemarié L. et al. “The more, the better? The sustainable additive bias.” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine. AI-generated.

Search any grocery store for protein-rich food that’s good for both you and the planet, and you’re buffeted by certified labels claiming organic-grown, ocean-friendly, low-carbon, fair trade, free range, or other shining attributes. These well-meaning labels can obscure serious tradeoffs—for example healthy tree nuts that minimize greenhouse emissions while guzzling scarce water, or organic meats and cheeses that spew water pollution or planet-warming gases. A health tech scientist has proposed a new solution to this problem, in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems.

The paper sketches a new rating system for high-protein foods that encompasses multiple dimensions of environmental, health, and human impacts—calculating simple overall scores that can be compared across a variety of plant- and animal-derived foods. “The goal is not necessarily to create another front-of-package label, but to foster a new literacy” that enables better-informed decision-making, writes Chris Macdonald of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

Maintaining sufficient dietary protein is a major concern when it comes to reconciling modern agriculture with future climate change. Scientists have spent years searching for new, non-meat protein sources, ranging from marigold flowers to fungi to alternative cropping schemes. But currently available non-meat foods are also high in protein, and Macdonald has found that misunderstandings about protein content are a major factor preventing people from choosing these planet-friendly foods over meats and dairy.

 

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In his latest research, Macdonald is trying to provide people with information that is accurate, comprehensive, and simple, so they can make good choices on dietary proteins. He mined scientific data on the environmental impacts and nutrient contents of various foods to develop two simple ratings. A Planet Score, ranging from 0 to 16, includes measures of greenhouse emissions, water pollution, water use, and land use per hundred grams of protein. A separate People Score, ranging from 0 to 24, includes measures of cholesterol, saturated fat, sodium, essential amino acids, commercial availability, and affordability. The Planet and People scores are then combined into an overall Better Proteins Institute (BPI) score.

When Macdonald applied the system to 20 foods (10 animal and 10 plant), tofu, chia seeds, beans, and quinoa had the highest scores (30 to 36), while cheddar, mozzarella, lamb chops, and beef steak had the lowest scores (13 to 16). The highest-scoring animal foods were chicken breast and tuna, ranking 7th and 8th out of 20, based largely on their affordability, low saturated fats, low land use, and moderate greenhouse emissions. Walnuts and brazil nuts were the lowest-scoring plant foods, ranking 11th and 12th out of 20, due to their high prices, saturated fats, and water use.

Macdonald views this as a starting point, which he hopes to improve over time. Affordability and commercial availability, for example, were determined within the U.K. for this study—but they will vary substantially between regions. Future versions may also contain additional factors such as fair trade, ethical treatment of workers, or animal treatment.

Macdonald. “What are the best sources of protein? Introducing the BPI score.” Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 2026.

image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

With fuel prices sky-high, the need for fuels from non-petroleum sources has taken on a new urgency. And researchers at Worchester Polytechnic Institute say they might have just the alternative source we need for low-carbon and low-cost fuel: bamboo.

Bamboo could power trains, planes, and automobiles for as little as $2.75 per gasoline-gallon equivalent at mature commercial scale, the researchers calculate. The fuel would emit greenhouse gas emissions 26 times lower than conventional diesel fuel. What’s more, bamboo promises to be a more sustainable biofuel feedstock than conventional ones like corn and sugarcane.

Bamboo is a grass, and one of the fastest-growing plants on Earth. Some species growing several dozen inches in a day. Because of this fast growth rate, the US could make as much fuel from bamboo as it makes ethanol from corn while using about 13% as much land. The WPI researchers published their results in the journal Sustainable Energy & Fuels.

“I think this research is especially timely and important because fuel prices are high and the transportation sector produces more greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. than any other,” said chemical engineering professor Michael Timko in a press release. “Bamboo would use different land than we are using for food production, so there is no food versus fuel trade-off. Farmers win, consumers win.”

 

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Timko and colleagues evaluated bamboo for biofuel production using a process called hydrothermal liquefaction. In the process, wet biomass or organic wastes are subjected to high heat and pressure. Polymer chains in the mass breaks down to form a biocrude oil. The oil can then be converted to other liquid fuel products.

The researchers heated wet bamboo pulp to 300°C for 10 minutes. The process converted about 36% of its mass into biocrude.

Unlike corn or sugarcane, which are the main plants used to make biofuels today, bamboo wouldn’t compete with agricultural land and doesn’t need much water or energy to grow. And compared with other perennial grasses that are also being considered for biofuel, it has very low ash content—less than 1% by weight—so the fuel-making process generates minimal waste.

”Bamboo may eventually offer industry a way to generate low-carbon liquid fuels at scale,” Timko said.

Source: Timothy M. Woodard et al. Bamboo as a cost-effective feedstock for production of low carbon transportation fuels. Sustainable Energy & Fuels, 2026.

Image: Based on photo by Ranurte/UnSplash. ©Anthropocene Magazine

First, the good news: The world might be a lot closer than we think to an international goal of protecting 30% of land by 2030.

The bad news: It’s probably not all the right land.

The nations of the world have placed protections on roughly 27% of the planet’s land masses, far more than the 19% previously thought, according to research recently published in Nature.  

There has been much hand wringing among conservation-minded folks that countries were woefully behind on land protection pledges made in 2022 to shield 30% of Earth’s land and 30% of the ocean from development as part of an update to the Convention on Biological Diversity, the main international agreement aimed at the current extinction crisis.

But “our analysis suggests that much more of the land is in some type of conservation area than currently recognized,” said lead author Helen O’Neill, a postdoctoral researcher at the United Kingdom’s Institute of Zoology, London.

The official tally tracking protected lands is a database at the Protected Planet website, a collaboration between the United Nations and the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

While this is the authoritative source, it’s incomplete.  Some protected land hasn’t been registered there by countries. And it doesn’t include significant acreage that falls into a kind of gray area – land that isn’t formally protected chiefly for wildlife, but where regulations provide many of the same benefits. Known as “other effective area-based conservation measures” or OECMs, this might include land protected as sacred by Indigenous groups or managed to improve water quality.

O’Neill and 35 other scientists from across the globe set out to tally this overlooked land to create a more complete picture. To reduce the massive effort required to scrutinize the status of every piece of land on the planet, the researcher selected pieces totaling 10% of all the world’s land masses. That included terrain scattered across the world and covering major types of ecosystems, from the Rocky Mountains in Montana to the Amazonian jungle to the desert of the Arabian Peninsula.

 

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For each piece of land, they added up how much was listed as protected under the global database, as well as national records and conservation areas where regulations and management practices made them good candidates for being OECMs.

The scientists used the results to create a computer model that estimated how this pattern would apply to the entire world. The result was the encouraging estimate that 26.8% of all land is protected, at least on paper.

But that doesn’t mean conservationists can cruise across the 2030 finish line with their arms raised. Because the research also revealed troubling holes in where these lands are being conserved.

Of the 173 different ecological regions scientists have mapped around the world, fewer than 100 have greater than 17% of their land protected, the scientists estimated. Regions that are primarily ice and rock – polar and alpine landscapes – are significantly overrepresented in the catalog of protected areas. That’s not a big surprise, since those regions are often less attractive for human settlement or exploitation by farming or other activities. By contrast, deserts, woodlands, grasslands and temperate forests all fall below the 30% target.

Then there is the question of whether land that’s conserved on paper is really being protected.

The new research points to the potential gains that can be made, particularly with the recognition of the conservation potential of these OECMs. But “conserving 30% of land and seas is not sufficient on its own,” said Heather Bingham, a co-author who heads the Protected Planet Initiative. “The target also calls for these areas to be managed effectively for positive biodiversity outcomes, and to be placed where they will have the greatest impact on biodiversity.”

O’Neill, et. al. “Global conservation area coverage substantially exceeds current estimates.” Nature. Oct. 14, 2026.

Image: Based on tjhunt/iStock.com. ©Anthropocene Magazine

Researchers in Spain have shown that a modular tire in which tread and casing are designed as separate pieces stays together while in use, provided that it’s properly inflated.

“This is an encouraging step toward a more sustainable tire architecture, where the worn tread could potentially be replaced while the main tire structure is reused,” says study team member Farshad Afshari, a PhD researcher at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) and Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM)..

A modular automobile tire could be easier to recycle compared to conventional ones, which require time- and labor-intensive separation of rubber treads and sidewalls from steel belts and bead cores. It would also use materials more efficiently, since there would be less material to replace at any given time.

A modular tire could also be better for the environment. Conventional rubber tires are a prominent source of microplastic pollution because tiny rubber particles degrade due to friction and enter the air and waterways. But the modular design could open up the possibility of making each component of the tire from safer and more easily recyclable materials.

It’s a compelling idea in theory, but would the components of a modular tire actually stay together in practice?

Afshari and his collaborators built a scaled-down prototype of their ECOTIRE modular tire concept, in which tread and casing are mechanically interlocked through a series of bumps and hollows like the two halves of a waffle iron.

They tested the tire on a custom-built rolling test rig in the lab to see how the tire would fare while varying parameters such as load, turning radius, inflation pressure, and slip. This last component is a source of mechanical stress induced by driving conditions such as braking and cornering.

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:Researchers devise a unique upcycling use for old tires: Producing drinking water.

 

“Our research shows that a tire with a replaceable tread can maintain a stable mechanical connection during rolling, even under demanding slip conditions, without relying on adhesives or permanent bonding,” Afshari says.

“One particularly interesting observation was how strongly inflation pressure influenced the stability of the connection,” he adds. At normal inflation pressure, the tire’s components stayed together under all conditions tested. But at half the normal pressure, the tread and casing could separate, especially under a combination of high load, tight rolling radius, and greater slip conditions.

The researchers tested the tire for over 12,000 revolutions, equivalent to more than 7 kilometers. At the end of the experiment there was no indication of wear and tear on the tread or the rest of the tire—promising albeit preliminary evidence of the tire’s durability.

In the prototype, both tread and casing are made from silicone rubber, but the researchers anticipate using a different material in eventual manufactured tires.

“The next major steps include developing full-scale prototypes using materials representative of commercial tires and evaluating their performance under more realistic driving conditions,” Afshari reports. “This would involve braking and traction forces, transient maneuvers, temperature variations, road irregularities, and long-term fatigue and wear.” Head-to-head tests with conventional tires will be another key milestone further down the road.

Source: García-Pozuelo D. et al. “Measurement of rolling stability and slip angle effects on a modular ECOTIRE.” Measurement 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine.

Vegetable farms and solar farms both need lots of sunlight and open space. But how do we divide our limited lands between these two priorities? One elegant solution is to put crops and solar panels on the same land—and share the broad spectrum of incoming sunlight between them.

A new study in Cell Reports Physical Science does this with photovoltaic cells that are semi-transparent: They capture some wavelengths of sunlight to make electricity, while letting the wavelengths most critical to photosynthesis pass through and reach the plants below. The new study suggests that broccoli can be grown in the magenta shade of these solar panels—without sacrificing the harvest.

Agrivoltaic schemes—putting plants and solar on the same land – could help us avoid clearing more land for human use. Climate studies suggest that this might work especially well across a wide sunbathed swath of the United States, from Texas up to Nebraska and west to California. Devoting just one percent of U.S. farmland to agrivoltaics could cover up to 20 percent of the nation’s electricity needs.

But traditional photovoltaic panels are opaque—and by shading plants, they can reduce crop yields. So engineers are trying to create new photovoltaic cells that divide the spectrum of sunlight between plants and electricity generation—similar to how governments segment different frequency bands for television, radio, cell phones, and other uses.

A 2020 study looked at panels that allow red wavelengths, critical for photosynthesis, to pass through—while harvesting green and blue wavelengths to make electricity. Basil grown under these panels produced similar yields, while spinach yields decreased. But the researchers estimated that by selling both electricity and crops, farmers growing spinach could generate 35 percent more income from the same land.

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:New study compares growing corn for energy to solar production. It’s no contest.

 

In the newest study, scientists evaluated a different kind of semi-transparent panel that lets most red and some blue wavelengths pass through—casting a magenta light on the plants—while converting much of the rest to electricity.

Broccoli cultivated under them grew more slowly, requiring an additional 25 days for harvest, but produced roughly the same yield. Meanwhile, these magenta sunscreens improved the microclimate below, reducing the “vapor pressure deficit”—a measure of when plants need to halt photosynthesis to avoid excessive water loss. This may have improved the plants’ efficiency in converting sunlight into plant biomass, which increased by 2.8- to 4.5-fold compared to unshaded plants.

The shaded plants’ levels of macronutrients such as calcium, magnesium, and phosphorus were either higher than or similar to unshaded plants, while levels of some micronutrients such as iron, copper, and zinc were slightly lower.

This was only a preliminary study. Future studies should look at larger plots, farmed across multiple seasons, and in different locations with varying climate and sunlight. It suggests that for now, the future of agrivoltaics might be best seen through rose-colored glasses.

Lu et al. “Evaluating land productivity with semi-transparent colored CdTe thin-film PV and broccoli cultivation in agrivoltaic systems.” Cell Reports Physical Science, 2026.

Image: Broccoli growing beneath semi-transparent, colored solar panels at the experimental site at Kärrbo Prästgård farm in Sweden. ©Silvia Ma Lu

Data centers have become a major flashpoint as midterm elections near in the United States. Besides their intensive energy use, they are drawing public ire for use of freshwater for to cool data centers.

But researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have an idea that could alleviate the stress on local freshwater resources. They propose using waste water from the oil and gas industry. Today’s desalination technologies could clean up dirty and salty water to produce clean-enough water for data center cooling needs, the team shows in a paper published in the journal Water Research.

“We’re not waiting for a futuristic technology to come along and solve this problem for us,” said mechanical engineering professor Vaibhav Bahadur in a press release. “We can solve parts of this problem with the technology we already have; there’s just a cost to it.”

Data centers underpin our modern digital economy. But they are highly energy-intensive. Their power needs are “equivalent to the electrical power draw of 1000 US households going into a computing unit the size of a bookshelf,” the team writes in the paper.

The heat this generates requires immense amounts of water for cooling. Data centers can consume millions of gallons of water a day. Meanwhile, the Permian Basin in West Texas produces about 8 billion gallons of waste water per day during oil and gas extraction. And “right now this water is transported over long distances and injected underground,” Bahadur said.

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:Scientists made an ultra-black wool. And it turns saltwater into drinking water

 

So why not put this water to cooling use at data centers? Besides the quantity, the quality of the water is also important. Freshwater needs to have less than 500 parts per million of dissolved solids.

The UT Austin team looked at how data centers could produce such relatively clean water using desalination. And they analyzed how desalination treatment choice influences cost and environmental impact.

They modeled the cost and energy trade-offs of treating various saline water sources, from mildly brackish groundwater to the much saltier water produced during oil and gas drilling. And they focused on two leading desalination technologies. One, called reverse osmosis, pushes water through membranes that block salt and impurities. The other is a heat-driven process, where water is evaporated, leaving impurities behind, and then the clean vapor is condensed and collected.

The team evaluated three data center deployment case studies. The model captured the “combined effect of cooling technique, local saline water conditions, geographic water stress, and brine disposal strategy on water availability,” they write.

Their results show that a project in Longview, Texas, which uses brackish groundwater treated via reverse osmosis came out with the lowest local water-stress score of the three. But the finding is much more general. Even the most energy-intensive desalination option consumed a fraction of a data center’s total energy demand.

Source: Vishnu Sree Shanthanu Katakam et al. System-scale design and analysis of desalination systems for meeting water needs of data centers. Water Research, 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

As coral reefs around the world are battered by heat waves and disease, one possible answer is building a sort of cyborg reef—part artificial, part natural.

Scientists are now seeing promising results as they test sculpted stone blocks that offer protective niches for tiny new corals, bacteria-filled coatings that release chemical signals attracting coral larvae, and even recordings of a kind of “reef music”—the sounds emitted by a health reef.

Yes, much like the sounds of a jazz band might lure people into a bar, apparently the pops and purrs emitted by snapping shrimp and damselfish can entice free-floating coral larvae to attach themselves to a nearby rock and start growing. You can hear the reef sounds here, and the damselfish sound here.

“When these drifting organisms detect a lot of sound from a reef, it signals to them that this is a good place to settle,” said Aaron Thode, a researcher at the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and lead author of the paper, which just appeared in Communications Biology.

Thode and fellow scientists at UCSD and the University of Hawai’i are studying how to build partially synthetic reefs under a project funded by the U.S. Department of Defense’s DARPA program, known for unusual “long-shot” research with an eye toward possible military applications. In this case, such reefs might help protect coastal infrastructure such as military bases, much as natural reefs act as wave breaks.

In 2024, the scientists deployed several experimental strategies in a bay on the Hawai’ian island of O’ahu. On a sandy patch of seafloor in roughly 5 meters of water, they set up an underwater speaker that played sounds recorded from a healthy nearby reef. At different distances from the speaker they placed 10-centimeter-tall hardened clay cones with deep, spiraling fissures that resembled decorative blobs of frosting atop a cupcake. They also placed cinderblocks at different locations, some of them coated in the special bacterial film.

Over the course of two weeks around the time of the new moon in July 2024, when the Hawaiian stony rice coral spawns by releasing clouds of sperm and eggs into the water, the scientists monitored the behavior of larval coral as well as larval and adult fish, to see if the artificial furniture and mood music could lure them to take root.

The results revealed that the tiny coral larvae do, in fact, have preferences about where they will settle down to start growing into the bone-like formations that we think of as “coral.”

 

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The clay cones proved quite popular, as did the bacteria-coated cinderblocks. The plain cinderblocks, by contrast, were a dud. Not a single larvae settled on them.

The sound of a healthy reef also seemed to be attractive. Larvae settled on surfaces closer to the speakers at twice the rate of surfaces more than 18 meters from the speaker—approximately the distance when the sounds become inaudible.

“The acoustics help, and with the living biofilm, it’s a lot better,” said Thode. “When combined with structures that had crevices, acoustic enrichment worked very well for the coral larvae settlement.”

The researchers note that attraction to the sound might not be the only explanation for the results. It’s possible there was just an unusual pattern of “hotspots” in the coral settlement during this one-time study. Or the greater presence of fish larvae, which earlier research showed were drawn to the music, somehow attracted the coral larvae.

While a single experiment isn’t the final word, the results are promising enough that researchers are planning to deploy some of these technologies in a 50-meter-long hybrid reef to be installed next to the island late this year or next year.

The findings bring “us closer to the vision of hybrid reefs, a new class of living coastal infrastructure that combines engineering and biology,” said Daniel Wangpraseurt, a UCSD scientist who is the university’s lead researcher on the DARPA project.

Perhaps they should experiment with other soundtracks that might lure marine creatures to the party. My vote is for “Under the Sea”, the Calypso-style song from the Disney movie The Little Mermaid.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography · New moon coral reef sounds

 

 Thode, et. al. “In situ enhancement of coral larval settlement using acoustic enrichment, engineered habitats and living materials.” Communications Biology. Oct. 8, 2026.

Boulais, et. al. “Autonomous cameras reveal larval reef fish responses to acoustic enrichment and lunar phase.” Scientific Reports. June 26, 2026.

Sculpture and photo ©Jason deCaires Taylor

Where should I live? What car should I drive? What should I have for dinner? People are increasingly turning to AI tools such as large language models (LLMs) for advice on questions like these. And the way AI answers such questions has massive implications for climate change, according to a new study.

“Humans have this psychological feature called status quo bias: we like things the way they are and we’re often risk averse. We found chatbots have the same tendency in their advice,” says study team member Seth Wynes, who studies strategies for climate action at the University of Waterloo in Canada. “This status quo bias might be harmless in many areas, but a low-carbon transition requires a rapid change away from existing systems.”

Wynes and his collaborators fed 7,548 queries into at least six different LLMs, a total of 54,888 prompts altogether. Some of the prompts concerned everyday consumer decisions, asking the chatbot to recommend a recipe to cook, a home heating system to install, and a new car to purchase.

Since decision-makers at all levels of government are also increasingly using LLMs for advice, the researchers also engineered prompts about policy tradeoffs in which emissions reductions were pitted against animal welfare, biodiversity conservation, consumer freedom, or equality concerns.

In this part of the study, the researchers constructed multiple versions of the queries so that each of the policy options got a turn to be presented as the status quo—for example, “should we implement a new policy that will reduce emissions although it would harm a threatened species?” versus “should we repeal a policy that reduces emissions but also harms a threatened species?”

When presented with a policy tradeoff, the LLMs were on average 7.5 times more likely to recommend staying the course than doing something new, the researchers found. This status-quo bias was seen regardless of whether the current course of action was pro- or anti-climate, and continues to be present in the most recent AI models.

 

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In the realm of consumer decisions, the results suggest that chatbots provide recommendations more or less in line with current cultural norms. Of the recipes suggested by the LLMs, 36% were vegetarian and 4% were vegan. (Meatless recipes generally have a lower carbon footprint.) Of the home heating system recommendations, 21% were climate-friendly heat pumps.

“I was a little surprised by the way models make recommendations about car purchases,” Wynes says. “Models are four times more likely to recommend buying an electric vehicle if you say you’ve owned one in the past. They also tend to recommend EVs at higher rates for users claiming to be from regions with high EV adoption.”

Exactly why these patterns occur is not clear. Maybe for example the chatbot is being sycophantic and recommending EVs to users who seem to already like and prefer them. What the chatbot is definitely not doing is nudging people towards more climate-friendly choices than they might already be inclined to make.

“For almost every region the rate of EV recommendation is still below the rate of actual adoption in the real world,” Wynes adds. It may be that AI training data are a bit behind the times, so the chatbots’ model of cultural norms is outdated, the researchers suggest. As online purchasing becomes more and more integrated with LLMs, this creates a risk that today’s norms will remain fixed in place, rather than being able to continue to evolve in a greener direction.

Since status-quo bias can be beneficial in some contexts, the researchers do not advocate purging it from LLMs. Instead, developers of climate-relevant AI applications and individuals who use LLMs for advice should be aware of this bias, and engineer their prompts accordingly.

Source: Wynes S. et al. “Large language models exhibit status quo bias in climate-relevant advice.” Environmental Research Communications 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine.

The fertilizers that feed humanity are made in huge pressure cookers, heated to 450°C (840°F), in factories that gush an estimated 450 million metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year. But what if tomorrow’s fertilizers were grown—nourished with sunlight and air—instead of cooked into existence?

A new study published in NPJ Sustainable Agriculture demonstrates how purple bacteria—normally found in estuaries, bays, ponds, and lake—could be grown in vats of water, smooshed into dry powder, and sprinkled on fields to increase yields. If successful, this approach could also alleviate other environmental harms caused by synthetic nitrogen fertilizers.

Overuse of these fertilizers has acidified farm soils—ironically, making them less productive. Fertilizers that flow into lakes, rivers, and bays spur algal blooms that deplete the oxygen in the water, killing fish and damaging ecosystems. And every year, millions of tons of these nitrogen compounds return to the atmosphere as nitrous oxide (N2O), a greenhouse gas 298 times as potent as carbon dioxide.

Farmers have tried to replace these synthetic fertilizers with natural materials like manure or hay, but those contain less nitrogen, making them less useful in many cases.

Researchers at the Kyoto University in Japan have experimented with another potential fertilizer—a ‘marine purple non-sulfur photosynthetic bacterium called Rhodovulum sulfidophilum, that is common in coastal waters, rivers, and lakes. Because it absorbs CO2 as it grows, people have investigated it as a possible source for biofuels. But as it grows, it also does something else that’s extremely valuable: it fixes nitrogen from the air, turning it into proteins and other biomolecules, without the need for industrial pressure-cooking.

 

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In 2024, the team reported that in greenhouse experiments, lysed, dried, and powdered R sulfidophilum improved the growth Japanese mustard spinach (komatsuna) just as well as synthetic fertilizers.

By 2025, these researchers developed a method for growing large amounts of R sulfidophilum inexpensively, in vats of diluted sea water—making it potentially feasible for use as a mass-produced fertilizer.

In their newest study, they’ve tested the effects of R sulfidophilum fertilizer—or purple-PB (processed biomass)—in fields where broccoli was farmed for two years. The purple-PB fertilizer boosted the yield of these plants as effectively as synthetic fertilizers. It also increased the plants’ nitrogen content (a surrogate for protein content) just as well as synthetic fertilizers.

Lab experiments, meanwhile, showed that purple-PB released its nitrogen into the soil more gradually than synthetic fertilizers. And as expected, this slower release helped reduce the amount of planet-warming N2O seeping into the air; in the first 6 days after fertilizing, N2O flux decreased by 15 to 73 percent compared to synthetic fertilizers.

It is said that the Green Revolution—which included the synthetic fertilizers—made it possible for farmers to feed the planet’s growing population. And now a Purple Revolution might make help to make our agriculture sustainable.

Shruthi, et al. “Effects of marine purple bacteria fertilizer on mineralization, nitrous oxide emissions and broccoli yield.” NPJ Sustainable Agriculture, 2026.

image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

 

Researchers have given wallpapers a purpose beyond aesthetics. In a new paper published in the journal Advanced Energy Materials, a team of engineers from Binghamton University reports a wall-mounted panel that can convert humidity in indoor air into electrical power.

The concept could lead to a solution for generating electricity while controlling indoor humidity, said electrical and computer engineer Seokheun Choi in a press release. “We put a lot of energy into HVAC systems to remove moisture from the air, but if we use this concept, we could reduce or control moisture levels while also generating electricity.”

Small sensors and electronic devices abound in our modern homes and offices. These gadgets consume power ranging from microwatts to milliwatts. Instead of running them on disposable batteries that are made from fraught metals, researchers have been creating power generators that harvest energy from the ambient environment.

Many teams have made devices that harvest energy from human motion, artificial plants that tap into wind flow and raindrops, as well as wood-based generators that convert water flow into electricity. The Binghamton team considered moist-electric generators, which harvest moisture from air and turn it into electric current.

“All previous moist-electric generator devices are for outdoor humidity, because there is a lot of moisture out there that is an excellent energy resource,” Choi said. But the problem with harvesting outdoor humidity is that moisture levels change continuously because of extreme sunlight or weather, he added. So outdoor energy harvesters typically generate very small amounts of power.

 

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Inside homes and buildings however, air typically maintains constant humidity levels between 30–60%. Activities like respiration, cooking and bathing generate added moisture. And, as the team writes in the paper, “wallpaper, with its large continuously exposed surface area and seamless architectural integration, is the most compelling platform to realize” indoor moist-energy generators.

Drawing on Choi’s previously work on papertronics, the researchers the researchers created a new paper-based MEG device. The system is designed to absorb moisture at the periphery and siphon it to the center, where it evaporates. This creates unidirectional moisture transport on a single paper sheet, which results in an electric current flow.

The wallpaper consists of 2 x 2 cm squares of paper. Each has glycerol at the edges to capture moisture from the air. A polymer structure in the intermediate area draws water inward through its small pores. Meanwhile, a wax-treated central region repels liquid water but allows vapor to escape through its tiny pores. All the wiring is on the back of the wallpaper.

For now, the power output is small. A 35-square array produced enough power to run a humidity sensor for about 15 minutes. A much larger 1,596-unit array can run a wireless keyboard with the help of a charge-storing device, while reducing indoor humidity from 38% to 32%, “transforming passive wall surfaces into self-powered, climate-responsive interfaces,” the team writes.

Source: Guangya Yuan, Yang Gao, Seokheun Choi. Moist-Electric Wallpaper With Engineered Unidirectional Moisture Transport for Indoor Energy Harvesting and Humidity Management. Advanced Energy Materials, 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

Coyotes, it seems, prefer the roar of the garbage truck to the call of the wild.

While pigeons, rats and cockroaches might be more emblematic city-dwelling wildlife, coyotes have shown an aptitude for urban living. In just the last year they’ve made the news for taking up residence in such places as West Hollywood, Chicago and suburban Miami. Their presence near cities is so routine that it takes something unusual to generate headlines.

Much as humans pack together in cities, it turns out coyotes inhabit at least one urban area at roughly 9 times the density they do in the wild, according to research in Washington state published recently in the journal Environmental Research: Ecology.

“That might surprise people who think of coyotes as afraid of humans, but I think it just shows how ideal the urban setting is for coyotes,” said Laura Prugh, a University of Washington wildlife ecologist who led the new research.

This isn’t the first time scientists have noted that cities boast higher concentrations of coyotes, nor is the phenomenon confined just to these canines. Other research has found that raccoons, red foxes and (improbably) leopards live in cities at densities five times that of their counterparts in the countryside.

But in the case of coyotes, much of the evidence is incomplete, without the scientific rigor that could get at just how coyote life varies between paved streets and remote forest.

To get a more accurate comparison, Prugh and her collaborators tracked coyotes through their scat. In 2021, they repeatedly scoured 34 green spaces in Seattle, such as parks and cemeteries, for feces left behind by coyotes. They did the same in forests and open country in a mountainous north central part of the state, some 120 miles away from Seattle.

 

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All told, they gathered more than 800 samples. Genetic analysis told them the scat came from 48 different Seattle coyotes and 213 wildland coyotes.

While that might make it seem like there were more coyotes in the wild, that’s not adjusting for the size of the locations where they looked for scat. Relying on statistical techniques commonly used to estimate wildlife population demographics, the scientists found that urban coyotes were, in fact, much more closely packed together.

There are a host of reasons why coyotes might thrive more in a city. They are much less likely to encounter animals that prey on them, such as wolves, bears and mountain lions. Among radio-collared wolves in the wildland  study area, 3 were killed by cougars and one by a black bear. Coyote pups were also killed by wolves.

While cars present a danger on city streets, armed humans bent on killing coyotes in rural areas might well be more lethal than any vehicles. Of the 47 collared wildland coyotes whose deaths could be confirmed, slightly more than half were killed by hunters or trappers. A single coyote was killed by a vehicle.

Then, there’s the urban smorgasbord of food. Between overflowing trash cans, fast-food burgers dropped in the gutter and ubiquitous urban bunny rabbits, Seattle coyotes have a far more diverse, and potentially much more abundant, food supply. The same research group found that coyote scat in Seattle contained genetic matches for more than twice as many species or groups of species than their wild counterparts±64 to 27.

Despite these results, coyotes appear conflicted about urban life. While there are more of them per square mile, the scientists found that when you compared different parts of Seattle, the places with the highest coyote density were the ones with the fewest people. They’re drawn to much of what the city offers, just not the humans that built it.

So how should we react to the idea that coyotes appear to thrive more in cities than in the wild? Perhaps acceptance or resignation are best. It’s repeatedly been shown that the animals defy efforts to control their numbers, said Prugh. We might just need to add them to the pantheon of urban animals.

“Whether there are too many or too few coyotes is sort of a societal question, but ultimately our answer might not matter,” said Prugh. “Coyotes are here to stay in cities, and it is up to us to learn how to live with them.”

Prugh, et. al. “Urbanization increases coyote density 9-fold in Washington state despite negative effects of human density within Seattle, USA.” Environmental Research: Ecology. Sept. 10, 2026.

Image: ©Robert McGouey/Alamy

Solar farms in desert areas could reduce dust pollution in cities downwind, according to a new Chinese study. The findings reveal unexpected synergies between renewable energy development and cleaner air, suggesting that solar’s air quality benefits go beyond reduced pollution from fossil fuel burning.

During springtime in the Gobi Desert, strong winds pick up desert dust and transport it hundreds of kilometers to the east and southeast to some of China’s largest urban centers. As China cleans up its air quality by reducing fossil fuel use, dust is becoming a larger proportion of remaining air pollution, and one that is harder to address.

Solar development in the Gobi Desert—where 42 solar farms cover a total of more than 13,000 square kilometers—is already improving downwind air quality, with the potential for even greater future benefits, the new analysis suggests.

Scientists already suspected that solar farms could help dampen dust pollution, but no one had yet conducted a quantitative analysis using true-to-life assumptions incorporating all of the possible mechanisms that regulate desert dust emissions.

In the new study, a combination of satellite observations and computer modeling reveals that existing solar farms reduce springtime dust emissions from the Gobi Desert by 352,400 metric tons per month.

 

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Several mechanisms contribute to this effect. Arrays of solar panels increase the roughness of the terrain, slowing wind speed near the ground so that the wind picks up less dust. The solar panels also stabilize the soil itself, in part by increasing vegetation cover.

Solar farms also act as windbreaks, shifting local wind patterns and resulting in less dust blown downwind—an estimated 131,400 metric tons less dust each month.

China aims to reach net-zero carbon emissions by the 2060, a target that would require increasing the area covered by solar farms in the Gobi Desert by eleven-fold. With 140,000 square kilometers of the desert covered by solar panels, dust emissions from the Gobi Desert would fall by 12% and transport downwind by 21% compared to a scenario without solar farms, the researchers calculated. That’s an order of magnitude greater benefit than today’s solar farms yield.

What’s more, climate change is likely to make dust pollution worse by increasing wind speeds.Without the additional solar farms, springtime dust emissions form the Gobi Desert are likely to increase by 13%, and downwind transport by 27%. So the dampening effect of solar farms is likely to be even more sorely needed in the future.

Less dust in the air would be especially noticeable in big cities downwind. With future solar development, average springtime concentrations of larger dust particles could fall across northern China by about 14%.

In turn, those improvements would bump most of China’s northern cities up a tier in the World Health Organization’s air quality rating system. What’s more, both today and under future solar development, solar panels would have their greatest effect on days when dust pollution is at its worst, underlining the unexpected contribution of solar energy to respiratory health, the researchers say.

Source: Hao Y. et al. “Dust Pollution Mitigation by Solar Farm Deployment in Northern China.” Geophysical Research Letters 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine (AI-generated)