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Background:Housing is an important environmental influence on population health, and there is growing evidence of health effects from indoor environment characteristics such as low indoor temperatures. However, there is relatively little research, and thus little firm guidance, on the cost-effectiveness of public policies to retrospectively improve the standards of houses. The purpose of this study was to value the health, energy and environmental benefits of retrofitting insulation, through assessing a number of forms of possible benefit: a reduced number of visits to GPs, hospitalisations, days off school, days off work, energy savings and CO2 savings.Methods:All these metrics are used in a cluster randomised trial—the “Housing, Insulation and Health Study”—of retrofitting insulation in 1350 houses, in which at least one person had symptoms of respiratory disease, in predominantly low-income communities in New Zealand.Results:Valuing the health gains, and energy and CO2 emissions savings, suggests that total benefits in “present value” (discounted) terms are one and a half to two times the magnitude of the cost of retrofitting insulation.Conclusion:This study points to the need to consider as wide a range of benefits as possible, including health and environmental benefits, when assessing the value for money of an intervention to improve housing quality. From an environmental, energy and health perspective, the value for money of improving housing quality by retrofitting insulation is compelling.

To predict how society and political systems might actually respond to warming, upgrade integrated assessment models. To predict how society and political systems might actually respond to warming, upgrade integrated assessment models.

Advice to the Biden administration as it seeks to account for mounting losses from storms, wildfires and other climate impacts. Advice to the Biden administration as it seeks to account for mounting losses from storms, wildfires and other climate impacts.

To model dietary changes required to shift the UK population to diets that meet dietary recommendations for health, have lower greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) and are affordable for different income groups. Linear programming was used to create diets that meet dietary requirements for health and reduced GHGE (57 and 80 % targets) by income quintile, taking account of food budgets and foods currently purchased, thereby keeping dietary change to a minimum.Setting/ParticipantsNutrient composition, GHGE and price data were mapped to 101 food groups in household food purchase data (UK Living Cost and Food Survey (2013), 5144 households). Current diets of all income quintiles had similar total GHGE, but the source of GHGE differed by types of meat and amount of fruit and vegetables. It was possible to create diets with a 57 % reduction in GHGE that met dietary and cost restraints in all income groups. In the optimised diets, the food sources of GHGE differed by income group due to the cost and keeping the level of deviation from current diets to a minimum. Broadly, the changes needed were similar across all groups; reducing animal-based products and increasing plant-based foods but varied by specific foods. Healthy and lower-GHGE diets could be created in all income quintiles but tailoring changes to income groups to minimise deviation may make dietary changes more achievable. Specific attention must be given to make interventions and policies appropriate for all income groups.

The unprecedented climate change influenced by elevated concentrations of CO2 has compelled the research world to focus on CO2 sequestration. Although existing natural and anthropogenic CO2 sinks have proven valuable, their ability to further assimilate CO2 is now questioned. Thus, we highlight here the importance of biological sequestration methods as alternate and viable routes for mitigating climate change while simultaneously synthesizing value-added products that could sustainably fuel the circular bioeconomy. Four conceptual models for CO2 biosequestration and the synthesis of biobased products, as well as an integrated CO2 biorefinery model, are proposed. Optimizing and implementing this biorefinery model might overcome the limitations of existing sequestration methods and could help realign the carbon balance. Conceptualized biobased CO2 sequestration models yield high-value biobased products and platform chemicals. The imbalanced carbon flux in the environmental matrix can be rebalanced by adopting biological sequestration methods. CO2-based high-value bioproducts can fuel our vision of a circular bioeconomy. An integrated hybrid biorefinery model in which carbon flows in a closed loop might prove to be a sustainable and promising research direction. Probing the potential of diverse microbial taxa, including both photosynthetic and nonphotosynthetic organisms, to assimilate CO2 through different metabolic pathways might help to maintain ecologically friendly carbon footprints.

The South Pacific convergence zone is a region of high precipitation spanning a vast swath of the Pacific Ocean that can shift northwards and become longitudinally oriented; such extreme zonal events have severe weather and climatic impacts and are predicted to become more frequent under greenhouse warming conditions. Storm clouds over the South Pacific The South Pacific convergence zone (SPCZ) is a region of high precipitation spanning a vast swath of the Pacific Ocean. Strong El Niño events tend to shift the SPCZ northwards and compress it longitudinally — a condition referred to as a zonal SPCZ event. Wenju Cai et al . delve into the extensive archives of general circulation models and discover that increases in greenhouse gases are projected to enhance equatorial Pacific warming. In turn, and in spite of disagreement about the future of El Nio events, this warming leads to an increased frequency of zonal SPCZs. Such an increase would mean a rise in the frequency of extreme weather events across the South Pacific. The South Pacific convergence zone (SPCZ) is the Southern Hemisphere’s most expansive and persistent rain band, extending from the equatorial western Pacific Ocean southeastward towards French Polynesia 1 , 2 . Owing to its strong rainfall gradient, a small displacement in the position of the SPCZ causes drastic changes to hydroclimatic conditions and the frequency of extreme weather events—such as droughts, floods and tropical cyclones—experienced by vulnerable island countries in the region 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 . The SPCZ position varies from its climatological mean location with the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), moving a few degrees northward during moderate El Niño events and southward during La Niña events 2 , 5 , 6 . During strong El Niño events, however, the SPCZ undergoes an extreme swing—by up to ten degrees of latitude toward the Equator—and collapses to a more zonally oriented structure 5 with commensurately severe weather impacts 5 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 . Understanding changes in the characteristics of the SPCZ in a changing climate is therefore of broad scientific and socioeconomic interest. Here we present climate modelling evidence for a near doubling in the occurrences of zonal SPCZ events between the periods 1891–1990 and 1991–2090 in response to greenhouse warming, even in the absence of a consensus on how ENSO will change 12 , 13 , 14 . We estimate the increase in zonal SPCZ events from an aggregation of the climate models in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phases 3 and 5 (CMIP3 15 and CMIP5) multi-model database that are able to simulate such events. The change is caused by a projected enhanced equatorial warming in the Pacific 16 and may lead to more frequent occurrences of extreme events across the Pacific island nations most affected by zonal SPCZ events.

On 16 July 2021, China officially launched its national carbon emissions trading market, which has since become the largest market in the world in terms of coverage of greenhouse gas emissions and plays an important role in combating global climate change. This study selects the national carbon emissions trading price data from July 16, 2021 to August 31, 2024, which records the price fluctuation characteristics in the early stage of the market (covering only the stage of the electric power industry), which not only provides a historical reference for the subsequent inclusion of the industry, but also provides an important basis for evaluating the effectiveness of the market construction and the optimization of the policy. At the same time, the VEC model is used to study the dynamic relationship between the national carbon emission trading price and key variables, including energy prices, macroeconomic conditions, the development of the power industry, international carbon prices, carbon emissions from the power industry, and the trading volume of national carbon emission quotas. The results show that there is a long-term equilibrium relationship between the national carbon trading price and the variables, which provides a scientific basis for setting a reasonable fluctuation range of the carbon price. Furthermore, impulse response and variance decomposition analyses were conducted to evaluate the short-term dynamic effects of each variable on the national carbon emission trading price. The results reveal that the trading volume of national carbon emission quotas and the development of the power industry exert significant influence on the national carbon emission trading price. In addition, the carbon emissions of the electric power industry have a positive impact on the national carbon emissions trading price in the short-term situation, and in the long-term situation, they have a negative impact. This provides a parameter calibration basis for the expansion of the industry and a reference for policy making, which is important for the construction of the national carbon emission trading market with international influence. The marginal contributions of this study are:(1) forming a new combination of variables for a comprehensive analysis of the national carbon emissions trading market; (2) the empirical results uncover new insights into the dynamics of the national carbon price; and (3) providing empirical evidence for improving the institutional system of the national carbon emissions trading market.

The health co-benefits of CO 2 mitigation can provide a strong incentive for climate policy through reductions in air pollutant emissions that occur when targeting shared sources. However, reducing air pollutant emissions may also have an important co-harm, as the aerosols they form produce net cooling overall. Nevertheless, aerosol impacts have not been fully incorporated into cost-benefit modeling that estimates how much the world should optimally mitigate. Here we find that when both co-benefits and co-harms are taken fully into account, optimal climate policy results in immediate net benefits globally, overturning previous findings from cost-benefit models that omit these effects. The global health benefits from climate policy could reach trillions of dollars annually, but will importantly depend on the air quality policies that nations adopt independently of climate change. Depending on how society values better health, economically optimal levels of mitigation may be consistent with a target of 2 °C or lower. Aerosol impacts have not been comprehensively considered in the cost-benefit integrated assessment models that are widely used to analyze climate policy. Here the authors account for these impacts and find that the health co-benefits from improved air quality outweigh the co-harms from increased near-term warming, and that optimal climate policy results in immediate net benefits globally.

Starting at least in the 1970s, empirical work suggested that demographic (population) and economic (affluence) forces are the key drivers of anthropogenic stress on the environment. We evaluate the extent to which politics attenuates the effects of economic and demographic factors on environmental outcomes by examining variation in CO ₂ emissions across US states and within states over time. We find that demographic and economic forces can in part be offset by politics supportive of the environment—increases in emissions over time are lower in states that elect legislators with strong environmental records.