Harmful Air Pollution is Getting Worse

Pollutants from Road Transportation and Wildfires on the Rise

Traffic emissions may pollute 1 in 3 Canadian homes. Source: University of Toronto

Transportation, particularly road transportation, accounts for 25% of global CO2 emissions. Transportation is the largest source of U.S. emissions, accounting for 28%, followed by electricity generation and industry.

Need-to-Know: Air Pollution is getting way worse in the U.S.

Transportation is by far the biggest source of harmful air pollution. Nearly half of the people living in the U.S. breathe unhealthy levels of air pollution, according to the latest report by the American Lung Association.

Based on data from counties and cities

What’s truly stunning is that air pollution is getting worse. Some 25 million MORE people are living in areas that received an “F” grade for either ozone or particle pollution compared to previous years. In total, 156 million Americans are exposed to unhealthy air.

“Air pollution is causing kids to have asthma attacks, making people who work outdoors sick, and leading to low birth weight in babies. This year’s report shows the dramatic impact that air pollution has on a growing number of people.”

— Harold Wimmer, President and CEO of the American Lung Association

The growing number and size of wildfires have become an increasing factor in reducing air quality in the U.S., Canada, and many other countries.

Need-to-Know: Air pollution is dangerous to our health

The health impacts are serious and include asthma attacks, heart attacks and strokes, preterm births, and impaired cognitive functioning later in life. Particle pollution can also cause lung cancer.

What can you do?

1. Switch to an EV. (The Lung Association wants you to if you can.)

There is ample evidence that switching to electric vehicles (EVs) provides significant air quality benefits compared to traditional gasoline and diesel vehicles. (EVs are still cleaner even if the source of electricity isn’t.)

We switched from a hybrid vehicle to a used EV nearly a year ago. It’s been a great experience overall, especially never having to go to a stinky gas station and having to deal with the yo-yo pricing dictated by the big oil companies.

We charge the EV at home using an ordinary household outlet. All cars sit around 95% of the day doing nothing. Instead, we put our EV to work recharging itself. It takes 60 seconds to plug it in, and then you walk away and go about your normal day or night.

It’s a shift in mindset: Parking an EV becomes an opportunity to recharge the battery.

Our EV is quiet, fast, cheaper to run, and hasn’t needed any repairs. Regenerative braking helps recharge the battery and stops the car without needing to use the brakes.

Need-to-Know: 'Electric Car Day' means 5 months of free driving

July 16 is the day when a gasoline driver will have spent more on fuel than the average EV driver will for the entire year, according to a UK study

—- An EV Uprising: Electric vehicles to rule the roads

We’d never go back to a gas burner.

2. Find other ways to move around.

Fewer cars overall would be better. Walking and biking are better for air quality and our health. (I ride or walk every day, including getting groceries.)

Trains, buses, and trams are also better than cars. So are two and three-wheeled electric vehicles—bikes, scooters, skateboards, mopeds, motorcycles, trikes, and auto-rickshaws. (For more, see NtK Micromobility: An Urban Transportation Revolution.)

A few Need-to-Knows from previous posts:

EVs are only part of the solution to pollution-free mobility.

Gas cars are 65X more likely to catch fire than an EV.

EV batteries are being recycled.

EV batteries don’t require cobalt anymore

One in four or five cars sold worldwide will be an EV this year

Batteries have a 320,000 kilometer (200,000 miles) average lifespan

EVs are far cheaper to own and operate

Until next time. Be well

Stephen

P.S. Switching to an EV and using alternative ways of getting around not only reduces air pollutants, but it also cuts CO2 emissions, the primary reason why wildfires are getting worse. (See NtK Yes, Climate Change Causes Wildfires.)

Rewild Your Yard

How you can help birds, bees, and butterflies

Credit: Reddit

About 70% of domestic honeybee colonies in the U.S. died out last winter. It’s part of a trend of big honeybee die-offs over the last few years.

Need-to-Know: Silent Spring —Major Losses of Birds, Bees, and Pollinators

Wild bees and other pollinators aren’t doing great either, with at least 40% facing extinction, according to the Intergovernmental Panel for Biodiversity Ecosystem Services (IPBES) pollinator assessment.

Three-quarters of all crop types globally require insect pollination. These crops provide 35% of human food calories. Hence the adage, one in three bites depends on pollinators. ( See previous NtKpost Insects Are Us.)

Bee and pollinator health are being impacted by a combination of pesticides, loss of quality habitat, hotter temperatures, and parasites. There is also new evidence that increasingly ubiquitous LED lighting may be disrupting the circadian rhythms of honey bees and other insects.

It’s a sadly similar story for birds.

A brand new analysis just found that 75% of nearly 500 bird species across North America are declining across their ranges. Over 65% of these birds saw big declines in their numbers.

I’ve certainly noticed the decline of some species. For example, a near total absence of blue jays in my neighborhood. The same thing with wild bees and butterflies.

Three things we can do to help turn these declines around.

1. Stop using pesticides.

They’re not harmless, otherwise they wouldn’t work. And they aren’t selective, hurting both “bad” and “good” insects including pollinators.

Beware: Many annual plants from nurseries/garden centers were grown using seeds treated with neonics, systemic pesticides that make plant leaves and flowers toxic for insects. These are banned in Europe. (I wrote about this for Nat Geo a few years ago. Here’s most of my reporting on neonics.)

2. Rewild your yard.

Turn your lawn, or a part of it, into a pollinator garden with native plant species. Lawns provide little food or habitat for anything and take more work to maintain than a native garden.

You can either dig up your lawn and throw in a mix of native seeds or just let part of your yard go wild on its own. We’ve done both.

Need-to-Know: Countries are setting aside 30% for nature—you can too.

Most countries in the world have committed to protecting 30% of their land and sea for nature. Why not set aside 30% of your yard for nature? That’s what we’ve done in our backyard. While it’s not as pretty as the native gardens in the front yard, lots of bees and birds still visit.

3. Plant native species.

They grow naturally without fertilizers, pesticides, or excessive watering. Even if you live in an apartment, a balcony or window garden box with native plants will get visits from bees and other pollinators.

Credit: Jeff Silva

Need-to-Know: Native gardens are the hottest trend in gardening

Native gardens are increasingly popular. House Beautiful magazine declared "rewilding" the biggest gardening trend of 2024. The article has some great tips, i.e. “Do Less”: just let part of your yard become more naturalized on its own.

"You can help allow the natural rejuvenation of nature with a few small steps. The mindset is that you're gardening with nature, not for nature."

There are lots of resources out there to help you get started. Here’s a couple

• Audubon’s bird-friendly native plant database

• Nature Conservancy guide to native gardens

Until next time. Happy Native Gardening!

Stephen

Clean power will soon produce half of the world's electricity

Fast growing solar power surged 29% in 2024

Source: EMBER

41% of electricity generation globally now comes from clean energy sources—solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear.

Need-to-Know: The world is on its way to getting half of its electricity from clean energy.

The accelerating shift to clean energy is being driven by the rapid growth of low-cost solar and wind, according to Ember’s sixth annual Global Electricity Review.

Eighty countries generated more than 50% of their electricity from clean sources in 2024, including 47 countries that reached more than 75%.

After decades of investment, global solar power capacity reached one Terawatt in 2022. By the end of last year, solar capacity had doubled, reaching two terawatts. (The power capacity of global electricity generation from all sources is just over 10 terawatts.)

Solar generation has maintained its high growth rate, doubling in the last three years, including 29% growth in 2024. Solar has added more new electricity capacity than any other source.

AI, data centres, electric vehicles, and heat pumps are driving up electricity demand. The increasing number and intensity of heat waves are also driving up energy use in cooling and air conditioning.

Need-to-Know: Coal is dying, gas is next

Despite all that, we’re close to a breakthrough: Clean power is set to grow faster than demand, marking the start of a permanent decline in using coal and gas to generate electricity.

In the U.S., wind and solar together generate more electricity than coal. Coal power has been in decline for over a decade, and that will continue simply due to economics.

Solar and wind produced 17% of U.S. electricity in 2024, a bit lower than China’s 18%.

China’s electricity from coal peaked in 2024 and is expected to decline as more wind and solar come online. China has more solar energy than the rest of the world combined.

India is following a similar path, but is a few years behind.

In the developing world, solar power's low cost and fast construction make it the fastest and cheapest way to get electricity to homes and businesses. Pakistan imported 17 gigawatts of solar panels in 2024, double the amount imported the year before. (Canada has a mere 6.1 gigawatts installed after two decades.)

Need-to-Know: Low-cost solar is lighting up the world

Pakistan's households and businesses are fed up with high prices from big power generators and an unreliable grid. A similar solar revolution is happening in Africa and South America.

Virtually all of the solar panels being imported are made in China. As I wrote in a previous post:

Solar manufacturers, mainly in China, are now capable of producing 350 to 500 nuclear-reactor’s worth of cheap solar panels per year (1000 GW to 1500 GW). Yes, per year. (It takes an average of 10 years to build an actual nuclear reactor.)

—1000 Nuclear Reactors: That's how much solar and wind electricity could be plugged in.

With solar replacing coal and gas power generation, we have avoided adding 1.68 billion tons of CO2 into our already overheated atmosphere, according to Ember. That’s a very hopeful development.

Until next time. Be well.

Stephen

Polar Melt Down

Trillions of tons of ice have kept our home comfortable

Need-to-Know: The world’s sea-ice cover has melted to a historic low

The Arctic’s ice cover has dropped to a record low this winter. It was 1.31 million square kilometers (506,000 square miles) below the 1981–2010 average. Arctic sea ice has permanently shrunk by over 60% and continues to decline year on year.

The same thing is happening in Antarctica.

Antarctica’s sea-ice area was stable until about 2016, when it went into a steep decline. By July 2023, 2.77 million sq km of ice were missing compared to normal.

Polar scientists now believe that the Antarctic sea ice has likely shifted into a new regime of unstoppable meltdown, just like the Arctic.

Need-to-Know: We’re losing the Earth’s air conditioners

Arctic sea ice extent at end of winter (April 22, 2025.)

Need-to-Know: The polar regions keep the Earth from overheating.

All that ice and snow reflects the Sun’s energy back into space. However, as vast areas of sea ice melt away, these white landscapes are turning dark blue, allowing the sun to heat up the Arctic and Southern oceans.

The polar regions are now absorbing enormous amounts of solar energy and heating up. The temperature differential between the cold polar regions and the hot tropics, along with the oceans, drives the global weather system.

The sea ice loss and resulting increase in solar-energy absorption at the poles is a planetary-scale regime shift.

Need-to-Know: Weather patterns are already being disrupted.

For example, the polar jet stream is slowing down and meandering, atmospheric blocking events that prolong heatwaves or cold spells are increasing, and the polar vortex is being disrupted more frequently.

Our weather is, and will become, even more extreme. This is our new physical reality.

Depressing right? So, what do you and I do knowing all this?

• I go for lots of walks and enjoy being outside.

• You and I can talk about what we see outside, and how the seasons and the weather are changing.

• We can acknowledge significant changes are underway and that we’re collectively responsible.

• We can consider what these changes mean for our families, children, grandchildren, and future generations.

• You and I can take actions that feel right for each of us. We can reduce our use of cars, join a group, eat less meat, march in a climate protest, run for public office, grow vegetables, naturalize our yards, or any number of other things.

The important thing is to do something. Otherwise, our anxiety and worry about the future will consume us, and that won’t help anyone.

Until next time, be safe.

Is Our Luck Running Out? Part Two.

Oceans failing to protect us from our own heat pollution

The oceans are no longer absorbing as much heat from the atmosphere.

This is a huge deal.

Last time, I discussed how land areas—forests, wetlands, and other ecosystems—are no longer absorbing as much of our carbon pollution as they once did. The result is that more CO2 is ending up in the atmosphere. (See Nature is being less helpful with our carbon pollution.)

The decline in Nature’s CO2-reduction service means our world will get hotter faster.

Sadly, it gets worse.

Need-to-Know: Oceans have kept us from roasting

Besides sucking up a lot of our CO2 pollution, Nature provides another extremely vital service: heat reduction. The oceans absorb more than 90% of the excess heat produced by our CO2 pollution.

Without this, our carbon emissions would have made the world unlivable long ago.

Consider: Instead of the 1.75C rise in temperatures we see today, it would be 15 to 17 degrees C hotter globally than today without the oceans burying 90% of our heat pollution into their dark, cold depths.

Scientists consider anything above 3 degrees C a catastrophic level of warming and 4.0 degrees C civilization ending.

Need-to-Know: Our oceans have kept crocodiles out of the Arctic (so far)

The last time the Earth was anything close to 15 to 17 degrees hotter was 56 million years ago when crocodiles roamed a very tropical Arctic. There was no ice anywhere, and sea levels were 60 meters higher.

Take a moment to think how lucky we’ve been that the oceans have absorbed 90% of heat from our carbon pollution. We should thank the oceans every day for the invaluable services they provide instead of treating them like a trash can.

Sadly, we appear to have angered the ocean gods and triggered a fundamental change.

The amount of heat transferred from the ocean’s surface waters into its depths has rapidly declined over the past two decades, according to a new study in Nature Climate Change.

This oceanic heat-transfer mechanism regulates the global temperature, so yes, this is a very big deal.

The weakening of the ocean’s heat-transfer mechanism is keeping more heat in the upper 200 meters. This explains why sea surface temperatures have reached record highs, why marine heat waves have been more intense and last longer, and why coral reefs are dying.

This also explains why global warming is accelerating.

The number of days sea surface temperatures were above the long-term average. Source: Nature Climate Change. (2025)

Researchers were shocked by the scale of the change. The decline in the ocean’s ability to mitigate global warming will likely accelerate the rise of global temperatures, they concluded.

In other words, this is why things are getting hotter faster and will continue to get hotter faster.

Need-to-Know: Evidence that global warming is accelerating

According to another new study, the rate of warming has increased 50% since 2010, with an astonishing surge of 0.4 degrees C in the last two years. Consider how much energy is needed to heat up the entire surface of the planet 0.4 degrees C in just two years.

The rate of warming had been 0.18 degrees C per decade over the last 50 years. So, more than two decades of heating in just the past two years is an astonishing acceleration.

I don’t like being the bearer of bad news like this, nor do the scientists doing the research. However, I think we have a right to know what’s happening and what we will have to live with in the coming years.

It may be easy to ignore this stuff right now. But you should know these fundamental changes to our life support system are relentless and will never listen to our pleas for mercy or negotiation.

Remember, we’re not powerless in this. We’re the cause of this threat to our civilization. We can choose to save ourselves and fellow creatures.

Need-to-Know: Optimism comes from knowing things could be better

My What Do We Do Now? The challenging case for optimism post from a few weeks ago feels even more relevant today. I wrote:

Optimism in our present moment isn’t about wishful thinking. It’s about possibility and about knowing things could be better.

In knowing things can be better, a realistic optimist doesn’t wait on the sidelines for things to improve but takes steps to make things better.

So, at this moment when everything seems to be going wrong, what can we do?

• Be aware of what’s happening, but don’t get caught up in the chaos and angst.

• Make sure you are going in a positive direction and keeping to your values in the stuff you do and the decisions you make.

• Connect with people, not to complain, but to enjoy each other’s company and find simple ways to work together to better your community.

• Spread simple truths. For example, the cost of clean energy is low, and it keeps falling, making it easier and easier to install more of it.

Until next time. Be well.

Stephen