A new study from a team of international scientists has uncovered that nitrous oxide emissions, one of the most potent greenhouse gases, have risen continuously over a 40-year period.

The report, published in Earth System Science Data, found that nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions increased by 40% from 1980 to 2020, reaching around 3 million metric tons per year. 

According to the report, nitrous oxide emissions had the fastest growth rate in 2020 and 2021 since 1980, when tracking became more reliable. In 2020 alone, nitrous oxide emissions reached around 10 million metric tons, with 8 million metric tons attributed to agriculture, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego reported.

The warming effects of one pound of nitrous oxide are about 265 times the warming effects from the same amount of carbon dioxide, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reported. While nitrous oxide emissions have been rising, the report noted that the amount of nitrous oxide emissions released from natural sources has been mostly steady, meaning the increase could be heavily attributed to human activities.

Even after 2020, nitrous oxide emissions remain unchecked, with a nearly 25% increase in 2022 compared to pre-industrial levels.

“Nitrous oxide emissions from human activities must decline in order to limit global temperature rise to 2°C as established by the Paris Agreement,” Hanqin Tian, lead author of the report and the Schiller Institute Professor of Global Sustainability at Boston College, said in a press release. “Reducing N2O emissions is the only solution since at this point no technologies exist that can remove N2O from the atmosphere.” 

The report found some progress toward curbing these emissions, although more actions are needed, the authors said. Nitrous oxide emissions in Europe have been declining by 31% since the 1930s. While China has been the No. 1 emitter of nitrous oxides since 2010, according to the report, the country has seen the rate of these emissions slow down since the mid-2010s. Following China and rounding out the top 10 emitters are India, U.S., Brazil, Russia, Pakistan, Australia, Indonesia, Turkey and Canada.

In the U.S., agriculture is a major contributor of nitrous oxides, but emissions from industrial activities have declined. Globally, agriculture contributed to about 74% of all nitrous oxide emissions over the past 10 years, the report found.

“While there have been some successful nitrogen reduction initiatives in different regions, we found an acceleration in the rate of N2O accumulation in the atmosphere in this decade,” said Josep Canadell, executive director at the Global Carbon Project and a research scientist at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. “The growth rates of atmospheric N2O in 2020 and 2021 were higher than any previous observed year and more than 30 percent higher than the average rate of increase in the previous decade.”  

Because nitrous oxide emissions have been reaching record highs in the past few years, the report authors have recommended frequent assessments as well as improvements to agricultural practices, such as limiting the use of nitrogen fertilizers to slow emissions. They also noted that there needs to be better recordings of the sources of these emissions as well as nitrous oxide sinks.

The post Nitrous Oxide Emissions Increased 40% From 1980 to 2020, Accelerating Climate Change, Study Finds appeared first on EcoWatch.

Diamonds are diamonds wherever they come from, right? Depends on whether you’re asking a jeweler,…

The post Guest Opinion: The Environmental Impact of Lab-Grown Diamonds appeared first on Earth911.

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between IPR and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.

Earlier this month, Laurie Stanek shoveled hay to a group of young black-and-white Holstein cows, just a few among the roughly 200 cattle on her family dairy farm. Located in northern Michigan’s Antrim County, she has worked there for almost 50 years now. 

The farm day starts early. 

“We’re out here at 5 o’clock every morning to get started feeding the babies,” she said.

But there are some additional chores for farmers in Michigan, now that avian influenza, or bird flu, has made the jump to cattle. 

New state requirements include limiting the number of visitors and increasing disinfection practices like cleaning boots and vehicles. Michigan also has prohibited poultry or lactating cows from being shown at events like fairs. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has required that lactating cows moving across state lines receive a negative test result on bird flu. 

“We are conscious that the threat is there, and we wouldn’t let just anybody come in,” Stanek said, referring to the state requirement to limit visitors. 

With outbreaks of bird flu in dairy cattle across the country, health officials are emphasizing biosecurity — that is, efforts to prevent the introduction and spread of disease. 

Researchers are still working to understand how climate change is affecting the spread of the bird flu. But, as Grist has previously reported, H5N1 has spread outside its typical seasons as migratory patterns have changed. And research has shown that generally, climate change could join a host of other factors in making the transmission of viruses between species more likely — something called “viral spillover.” 

“We are in a place where the threat of emerging pathogens is much greater than ever before. So therefore, the need for biosecurity is even more significant than it has ever been before,” said Suresh Kuchipudi, a professor and chair of the infectious diseases and microbiology department at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Public Health. 

Some, like Kuchipudi, say scaling up biosecurity operations can help the agricultural sector become more resilient to climate change. But it’s just one part of the complicated process of responding to the spread of viruses like the bird flu.

This strain of avian influenza is called H5N1, and it’s highly pathogenic, meaning it’s deadly for poultry. First detected in the 1990s, it has surged over the last several years, spreading to birds and mammals across the world. 

The spread to cattle is new. 

“I’m a virologist by training, and my other virologist buddies and I all have to admit: None of us saw this coming,” said Kim Dodd, the director of the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at Michigan State University. Animals like foxes can contract the flu when they eat an infected carcass. But cattle don’t eat meat. 

“We didn’t expect to find [highly pathogenic] avian influenza in dairy cattle, and to find that it amplifies so well, and that we have so much virus in the milk,” Dodd said. “And so that’s really a big part of trying to understand, you know, what do we do about that to be able to help control the outbreak.”

The first confirmed case in cattle was reported in Texas earlier this year, and 11 more states have confirmed cases of the bird flu in dairy herds. 

Michigan has reported the most cases in the country. As of Wednesday, the state had confirmed 25 instances of the flu in herds. It also has 2 of the 3 confirmed cases of the disease in people — the other was a dairy worker in Texas. 

In May, state officials declared the flu an “extraordinary emergency,” calling it a threat to animal health, human health, trade and the economy. 

Officials and researchers have said Michigan’s high case count is an example of robust testing in response to the outbreak. Overall, the response to the bird flu outbreak in cattle has been somewhat rocky. States have pushed back against federal efforts to address the virus, and public health experts have raised concerns about the lack of testing and warned that the true reach is likely greater that official counts.

Those involved in Michigan’s response have said part of its response is collaboration with farmers. “That takes two sides,” said Dodd. “It takes the people who are looking and the people who are testing, but it also requires that the people who own the animals are opening their doors and allowing testing to occur.”

H5N1 causes a reduction in cows’ milk production, among other symptoms. It can devastate the poultry industry; since it was detected in commercial flocks in the United States in 2022, it has led to the deaths of close to 100 million farmed birds. 

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have maintained that the danger to the public is relatively low. But dairy workers are now more at risk of exposure to the bird flu as they work with cows; the virus appears to be spreading largely through milk. 

“We want to make sure that we’re limiting the further spread of the virus, so that we’re continuing to protect human health, and we don’t have so much virus in the environment that could potentially mutate and affect humans in a different way,” said Tim Boring, the director of the state Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.

One of the ways the state is doing that is by urging farms to follow biosecurity measures. These are pretty low tech — like wearing protective gear and disinfecting equipment. How effective they are comes down to compliance. 

“I’m sure they’re serious. I’m sure they’re not fooling around. It’s their livelihood, their investments,” said Jean-Pierre Vaillancourt, a professor of veterinary medicine at the University of Montreal. But “if they’re not sharing data, and they’re not doing good surveillance to figure out who’s where and what and all that, we already have a big problem.”

Climate change coincides with the spread of certain diseases, as animals interact with one another in new settings. While biosecurity may play a role in prevention or response, it likely won’t stop the next pandemic, Vaillancourt said. He argues that we should actually be looking at disease from a regional perspective.  

“What can we do to minimize the spread between sites?” he said. “That requires data sharing.”

That’s where industry and institutions often fall short. Farms that have outbreaks can face stigma and lose money, and farm workers that test positive can deal with health and economic issues. Worker advocacy groups have also voiced concerns that testing isn’t reaching those on the front lines. 

Some public health experts say the surge of bird flu in cattle is an opportunity to hone that response and protect animal and human life in the process.  

“The fact is, [governments] need to learn how to get this right when the stakes are lower, because there are less forgiving bird flu viruses than this one,” said Amesh Adalja, a scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

The agricultural industry will have to be part of any response to infectious diseases as the climate changes. Humans often interact with animals in agricultural settings. Preventing and responding to viruses also requires establishing trust with farmers. 

“This is going to be part of how you think about building resilience, is that you kind of have this integrated approach,” Adalja said.

That approach is known as One Health, which many involved in public health have pointed to as a framework that acknowledges the connection between people, animals and the environment and seeks to address issues like disease in a holistic way. 

Wildlife surveillance systems and vaccine programs can help track and control viruses like the bird flu. 

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And the dairy industry can learn something from those working with pigs, Vaillancourt said. An effort called the Morrison Swine Health Monitoring Project has involved farmers and the industry in keeping track of disease in pigs.

The big picture, he said, is that everyone involved in livestock needs to think about stopping the spread of disease. Say a farmer needs to move some cows.

“How do we move them?” he said. “Which roads are we going to use to minimize contaminating a site on our way. How do we clean and disinfect the vehicles when we go from one site to another site?”

A few efforts have been pushed forward as the virus has spread. The federal government announced that it would spend $824 million in emergency funding on its response, and the USDA just launched a voluntary pilot program to test cow milk in bulk.

And agricultural officials in Michigan say more safety measures on farms could become a bigger part of the state’s approach to climate change.

“Improving biosecurity in new ways that we hadn’t previously considered, I think, will increasingly be a component of robust climate resiliency actions,” said Boring, the director of the state agriculture department. “So we’re seeing a little bit of that in real time here with our response to H5N1 here in the state.”

And back in Antrim County, Laurie Stanek said dealing with animal sickness is just part of running a farm; they’re paying attention to the new rules and doing what they’ve always done.

“A lot of it’s just good herdsmanship — just common sense,” she said. “You keep your animals healthy so they in turn give you a healthy product.”

That, she said, is what their livelihood depends on. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In Michigan: Climate change, bird flu, and dairy cows — and why ‘none of us saw this coming’ on Jun 13, 2024.

A reservoir is many things: a source of drinking water, a playground for swimmers, a refuge for migrating birds. But if you ask solar-power enthusiasts, a reservoir is also not realizing its full potential. That open water could be covered with buoyant panels, a burgeoning technology known as floating photovoltaics, aka “floatovoltaics.” They could simultaneously gather energy from the sun and shade the water, reducing evaporation — an especially welcome bonus where droughts are getting worse. 

Now, scientists have crunched the numbers and found that if humans deployed floatovoltaics in a fraction of lakes and reservoirs around the world — covering just 10 percent of the surface area of each — the systems could collectively generate four times the amount of power the United Kingdom uses in a year. The effectiveness of so-called FPVs would vary from country to country, but their research found that some could theoretically supply all their electricity this way, including Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Papua New Guinea. 

“The countries around the world that we saw gain the most from these FPVs were these low-latitude, tropical countries that did not have a high energy demand in the first place,” said Iestyn Woolway, an Earth system scientist at Bangor University and lead author of a new paper describing the findings in the journal Nature Water. “It meant that if only a small percentage of their lakes — this 10 percent — was covered by FPVs, it could be enough to fuel the energy demand of the entire country.”

For developing countries, floatovoltaics could be especially powerful as a means of generating clean electricity. Instead of building out more planet-warming infrastructure running on fossil fuels, like gas-fired power plants, fledgling economies could run panels on land and water, in addition to other renewables like wind and hydropower. With solar power comes autonomy: Utilities don’t have to rely on shipments of fossil fuels, but can tap into the abundant power of the sun.

Floatovoltaic solar panels — which have been proliferating globally, from California to France to Taiwan — are the same ones found on a rooftop. “It’s the same electrical system, same panels, same inverters,” said Chris Bartle, director of sales and marketing at Ciel and Terre USA, which is deploying floatovoltaic systems. “We’re just providing a structure that floats to mount that electrical system.” The solar rafts are anchored either to the bottom of the water body or to the shore, or both, to keep them from wandering.

In many ways, solar panels and bodies of water can benefit one another. Photovoltaics get less efficient the hotter they get, so having them floating on a lake or reservoir helps cool them off. “Because of the cooling effect, we see increased efficiency of the systems,” said Sika Gadzanku, a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado, who studies floatovoltaics but wasn’t involved in the new research. Returning the favor, the panels provide shading, reducing evaporation. If floatovoltaics are spread across a reservoir, that could mean more water would be available for drinking.

If a reservoir is equipped with a dam for hydroelectric generation, the floatovoltaics could hook into that existing transmission infrastructure. (Countries like Kenya, for instance, are building out more of this hydroelectric infrastructure already.) That could save local governments money because they wouldn’t need to string new transmission lines from the floatovoltaics to the nearest city. In the event of a drought, when water levels drop too low to generate hydropower, the panels could still operate as backup power. 

To do their new modeling, Woolway and his colleagues began with over a million lakes and reservoirs around the world big enough and deep enough for floatovoltaics. Then they whittled those down based on critical qualities. For one, the body of water couldn’t dry up, beaching the panels, or freeze over for more than six months a year, entombing the panels in ice and damaging them. The lake couldn’t be protected by law, either, like as a natural refuge. And the site had to be near a human population that could use the generated power. 

A remote lake, by contrast, would require long transmission lines to connect a faraway city to the floatovoltaics. This doesn’t necessarily rule out the technology for more remote communities of people living near an otherwise suitable lake. In fact, floatovoltaics could be particularly potent there as a way to provide clean energy. These cases just weren’t included in the scope of this modeling.

Regardless, all those characteristics considered, the team ended up with 68,000 feasible locations in 163 countries. They found that on average, countries could meet 16 percent of their energy demand with floatovoltaics, but some places could generate a lot more. In Bolivia, for instance, floatovoltaics could provide up to 87 percent of national electricity demand, and in Tonga, they could meet 92 percent. The potential is much lower in the United States, however, meeting just 4 percent of energy demand — even though the country has a plethora of large lakes and reservoirs, overall energy usage is extremely high. In less sunny climes, like northern Europe, the effectiveness of floatovoltaics drops, but Finland could still satisfy 17 percent of its electricity demand with floating panels. 

“The regions or the countries that we saw had the highest potential had these two critical variables, in that they were close to the equator, or were at high elevations, so they received high amounts of incoming solar radiation,” Woolway said. “And secondly, they had large water bodies.” 

Covering 10 percent of a 100-square-mile lake, for instance, would end up with a lot more solar panels than covering the same percentage of a 10-square-mile lake. “We considered 10 percent to be a reasonable surface area coverage without having a devastating impact on the ecology and the biodiversity,” Woolway said. “If you were to cover the surface 90 percent with solar panels, there would be no light going into the water itself.”

This is where the new science of floatovoltaics gets tricky, as there’s still little data on the potential environmental and social downsides of these floating systems. Scientists are investigating, for example, whether the floats might leach harmful chemicals or microplastics into the water. 

And keep in mind that these ecosystems are solar-powered, too: Light fuels the growth of aquatic vegetation, which feeds all kinds of other organisms. If a floatovoltaic system cuts off too much of that light, it might reduce the food supply, and hinder plants’ ability to produce oxygen. “You’re changing light penetration, and that’s the most fundamental physical variable for an aquatic ecosystem,” said Rafael Almeida, a freshwater ecosystem scientist at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, who studies floatovoltaics but wasn’t involved in the new study. “If you don’t have enough light, and you’re reducing oxygen concentrations in that system, and that may cascade through the food web, potentially impacting fish.” At the same time, early research suggests that the panels can counter the growth of harmful algal blooms that make water dangerous for people to drink.

Scientists are still trying to figure out what amount of coverage can still produce enough power to justify the monetary cost of deploying floatovoltaics, while not incurring ecological costs. Each body of water is its own unique universe of chemical and biological interactions, so the same coverage on two different lakes might have dramatically different effects. “Would 10 percent be enough to cascade into system-wide changes?” asks Almeida. “These are things that we really don’t know.”

Researchers also need more data on how effective the panels are at reducing evaporation, and therefore how much water a given system might actually save. “What we are yet to fully understand is that so many of the existing floating solar systems that have tried to collect data on this have been smaller,” Gadzanku said. “So it is more: How do potential evaporation savings scale as you build larger systems?” 

Humans rely on bodies of water in many ways other than for drinking. Subsistence fishers rely on them for food. And owners of lakefront properties might bristle if they think floating solar panels would cut their property values. 

Still, Almeida says, this new research identifies where floatovoltaics might work, and how much energy they might provide given local conditions. “I think that now what we need,” said Almeida, “is understanding — out of these suitable sites — which ones are really the low-hanging fruits.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Coming soon to a lake near you: Floating solar panels on Jun 13, 2024.

Many power tools use batteries to run instead of corded electricity or the muscle of…

The post Recycling Mystery: Rechargeable Tool Batteries appeared first on Earth911.

An international team of scientists say efforts to protect the ozone layer have been a “huge global success,” with damaging atmospheric gases declining more quickly than expected.

According to the new study, the total amount of chlorine — which depletes the ozone — in all hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) peaked in 2021, five years earlier than the most recent predictions.

“This has been a huge global success. We’re seeing that things are going in the right direction,” said Dr. Luke Western, lead author of the study and a Marie Curie Research Fellow at University of Bristol’s School of Chemistry, as The Guardian reported.

The reduction in HCFCs is largely due to the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which introduced controls on the usage and production of ozone-depleting substances. HCFCs were once common in the manufacturing of hundreds of products, from refrigerators and packaging to aerosol sprays and foams.

Lowering the amount of HCFCs — which are also greenhouse gases — should help lessen global heating, a press release from University of Bristol said.

Developed to replace chlorofluorocarbons — banned globally since 2010 — production and usage of HCFCs is still in the process of being phased out.

“The results are very encouraging. They underscore the great importance of establishing and sticking to international protocols,” Western said in the press release. “Without the Montreal Protocol, this success would not have been possible, so it’s a resounding endorsement of multilateral commitments to combat stratospheric ozone depletion, with additional benefits in tackling human-induced climate change.”

HCFC emissions fell less than one percent between 2021 and 2023, but are still moving in the right direction.

“Their production is currently being phased out globally, with a completion date slated for 2040. In turn these HCFCs are being replaced by non-ozone depleting hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and other compounds. By enforcing strict controls and promoting the adoption of ozone-friendly alternatives, the protocol has successfully curbed the release and levels of HCFCs into the atmosphere,” Western said.

Highly precise measurements of these substances are gathered at atmospheric observatories worldwide by the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) and the Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment.

“We use highly sensitive measurement techniques and thorough protocols to ensure the reliability of these observations,” said Dr. Martin Vollmer, co-author of the study and an atmospheric scientist with the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, in the press release.

The study, “A decrease in radiative forcing and equivalent effective chlorine from hydrochlorofluorocarbons,” was published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

“This study highlights the critical need to be vigilant and proactive in our environmental monitoring, ensuring other controlled ozone depleting and greenhouse gases follow a similar trend which will help to protect the planet for future generations,” said Dr. Isaac Vimont, study co-author and NOAA research scientist, in the press release.

The post Efforts to Protect Ozone Layer a ‘Huge Global Success,’ Scientists Say appeared first on EcoWatch.

In a new report, the nonprofit As You Sow has found that of 147 companies with recyclability targets, only 22 are on track to meet their goals. In total, the report reviewed 225 companies and their progress toward plastic-related goals, with about half of companies receiving an “F” score.

The 2024 Plastic Promises Scorecard has revealed a gap between the plastic waste reduction goals that companies set and the actual actions they are making toward meeting those goals. The report evaluated companies on a total score based on their ambitions and their actions toward goals related to six pillars: recyclability, reduction, recycled content, recovery, reusable and extended producer responsibility. Ambitions counted toward 30% of the total score, while the actual actions companies were taking made up 70% of the final score.

“Plastic Promises Scorecard uses a first-of-its-kind scoring system to evaluate not just what companies say they will do to act on the plastics crisis, but what they have actually accomplished,” Venky Kini, data lead and report partner, said in a press release. “We are pleased to present this tool for companies to evaluate their progress against their peers and identify opportunities for new action and ambition.” 

As Grist reported, even though many companies have goals to reduce their plastics, they are often using more plastic. According to the report, about 100 companies have pledges to use less virgin plastic, but rather than reducing their reliance on plastic, they have plans to swap virgin plastics for recycled plastics.

The findings showed that most of the companies in the report had targets to incorporate recycled content, but the same companies weren’t investing in recycling infrastructure to collect old packaging and recycle it. Only nine of the 225 companies had even set goals to create zero-waste packaging that could be reused or recycled indefinitely, rather than becoming waste.

According to a 2020 report titled Breaking the Plastic Wave, which was cited in the Plastic Promises Scorecard, existing plastic waste reduction pledges by companies and governments are far short of what is needed to prevent plastic pollution from building up in the environment. Breaking the Plastic Wave revealed that if companies and governments met their existing pledges, it would reduce the flow of plastic reaching the oceans by only 7% by 2040. Already, ocean plastic pollution is expected to triple by 2040 without interventions, reaching 29 million metric tons per year.

The latest Plastic Promises Scorecard did show some hope, though. It found that more companies were supportive of producer responsibility legislation, and As You Sow shared in a press release that shareholders for multiple companies, including Hershey and Amazon, were supportive of more sustainable packaging initiatives.

“Companies can use the recommendations and scoring methodology in the Plastic Promises Scorecard to prepare for a future where plastic packaging pollution is no longer an acceptable part of doing business,” said Kelly McBee, lead author of the report and circular economy manager at As You Sow. “This report is designed to be actionable and transparent, giving companies the tools and solutions they need to create a circular economy for plastic.”

The post Only 22 Companies Out of 147 Are on Track to Meet Their Plastic Waste Reduction Targets, Report Finds appeared first on EcoWatch.

Hey there, fam. Today’s spotlight story is a collaboration with The Green Fix, a Europe-focused climate newsletter managed by Cass Hebron. Cass and I have been following each other’s work for a while now, and we teamed up to bring you this story about the world’s first master’s program in degrowth.

The spotlight

In 2018, one of Spain’s top-ranked universities, which trains its graduates for careers in everything from neuroscience and biomedicine to government and economics, launched a first-of-its-kind master’s program in a more nascent and explicitly nontraditional field: a degree in degrowth.

Degrowth is a movement that calls for intentionally scaling down overdeveloped economies, like those in the U.S. and Europe, focusing instead on citizens’ well-being, ecological sustainability, and providing for basic needs without extracting every last resource. The idea has been gaining momentum, particularly in Europe where it originated, and its proponents argue it offers the best path to a lifestyle that is compatible with addressing climate change — one that respects the planet’s limits and avoids unnecessary emissions by simply producing and consuming less.

The master’s program and a separate online master’s in degrowth that was started in 2021 have now seen hundreds of graduates. But what does it mean to train people for a career in disrupting the whole idea of careers? And what happens when graduates of a program designed to reimagine the system have to find their place within that system?

Big questions, but ever since we at Looking Forward and The Green Fix first learned about this unique degree program, we’ve been wanting to find out what it’s really like to study degrowth — and what happens afterward.

A meetup of degrowth master’s students, from both the in-person and online programs, in June 2022 in Can Masdeu, an occupied social center in Barcelona. Jana Kenkel

The university is called the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, or Autonomous University of Barcelona, which is a way of saying a university not controlled by the government. And the degree is technically in political ecology, degrowth, and environmental justice. In other words, studying sustainable alternatives to the modern economic system.

One of the masterminds behind the program is Giorgos Kallis, a prominent researcher and advocate in the field of degrowth. Kallis, an academic with a warm and approachable air, describes his research as “un-disciplinary,” in the sense that it has spanned many topics, from droughts and water policies to ecological economics. It was his work on water management that led him to question the paradigm of continuous and necessary growth.

He became a professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 2010 and, along with colleagues at the Research & Degrowth association, launched a summer school program in degrowth. “There were many people who would come for the summer school and they would say, ‘We wish there was also a full master’s,’” Kallis said. At the same time, there were plenty of researchers in the field who were eager to teach.

Students at the master’s program in Barcelona take theoretical classes in degrowth, environmental justice, and alternative economics and governance structures, and also receive practical training in skills like group facilitation, how to run a social justice campaign, and how to set up a cooperative. All backgrounds are welcomed, but the program tends to attract radically minded students — “at least in terms of the need for transformation in order to confront climate change,” Kallis said. Around two-thirds of the students who attend the in-person program are from Europe. The online program, which is solely focused on theory, tends to reach a more diverse mix.

Kallis and his colleagues also designed the in-person program specifically to prepare students for the job market. It offers career development with three main paths in mind: policy and advocacy work; work in the social and cooperative economy; and research.

“I mean, we don’t mind someone working in the private sector and bringing these ideas wherever they want,” he said. But it tends not to attract the kind of person who’s interested in climbing the corporate ladder, so to speak.

A class on group facilitation techniques in October 2022, with students from the in-person master’s program. Jana Kenkel

France-based graduate Adélaide Cadioux had been jumping between jobs for years before enrolling in the Barcelona program. “I was feeling very dissatisfied with the way that companies were working. My values were seemingly constantly misaligning with people’s needs for profit.” She found the program by pure chance while searching on the university website, and described it as a moment of revelation. “I was like, ‘I need to quit my job and do that master’s.’”

There, she said, “I found people who understand what it feels like to constantly feel like you don’t fit in and your values are not represented in whatever job you’re going for.” Many of the students there shared her desire to find an alternative to traditional capitalist ways of working. “There’s also a form of radical acceptance,” she said. “It’s normal that you feel like this. Let’s work together on something else.”

Valerie Costa, a recent graduate from the U.S., was feeling burned out after working in the nonprofit and social good sectors for around two decades. “I wasn’t even really actively wanting to be a grad student,” she said, “but I was like, ‘Oh, wow. I could take a year and really think about everything I’ve been working on, but in a deeper way.’”

Recent Belgian graduate Emilie de Bassompierre had already encountered the concept of degrowth in their previous studies and was looking for a way to put it into practice. “I had teachers who were very keen on studying critiques of capitalism,” they said. “My studies helped me gain an understanding of not only how that system came to be from a historical perspective, but also, if we want alternatives, what are the elements of the system that we have to think of dismantling?”

Post-graduation, de Bassompierre is facing down the reality of balancing their values with their need to pay the rent — and how to make use of having the privilege of being able to prioritize their values for at least a while; a privilege many other students share. “It’s already been a few years that I’m aware that whatever I want to do, it’s not going to be something that brings me a lot of money,” de Bassompierre said. Following graduation, they are pursuing an internship in climate justice at a European nongovernmental organization. After that, they are considering a future in either advocacy or academia. But the most important thing, they said, is that they can pursue a life that makes them happy — and they don’t anticipate working full time forever.

“Before, I was always looking at what I ‘should’ do or what was the ethical, moral thing to do. But that can lead you to burning out. I think it’s possible to deconstruct the idea that we have to define ourselves through our work,” de Bassompierre said. “I want to have free time for activism and independent projects.”

Cadioux and Costa are also weighing how degrowth fits into their future plans. Cadioux is still searching for a job. “If something comes along the lines of what I want … I [would] find ways to amp up my activism or give back to the community, where it just feels like a sort of equal relationship between what you take from capitalism and what you give back to your community,” she said.

For Costa, incorporating degrowth principles and advocacy into her work has been challenging in other ways. After graduating, she returned to the U.S., where the concept is still fairly novel. “I’m not gonna walk down the street with a degrowth flag,” she said. She added that, from a policy perspective, the U.S. lacks the kind of social safety net that is a prerequisite to effective and equitable degrowth. “I’m not going to campaign for austerity,” she said. “What I do want is more livable communities for people. I want people to be more connected with each other. I want better services and supports in place, better housing.”

After completing the program, her activism has remained focused on resistance, with an element of community-building as well. She co-founded a Seattle-based network called Troublemakers that weaves those two things together. “For me, the degrowth program really illuminated the absolute critical importance of community and connection,” she said.

While he believes that this specialized training in degrowth and political ecology is valuable, and was previously missing from the academic landscape, Giorgos Kallis also recognizes that studying degrowth may be something of a hard sell when job hunting. “Would the ministry contract someone who has studied how to degrow the economy, when no one wants to degrow it?” he said.

Still, at least two alumni of the master’s program have gone on to be assistants to members of the European Parliament, Kallis noted. Others have organized an annual festival that brings together LGBTQ+ rights with elements of degrowth. And others are working as activists, teachers, nonprofit leaders, and more.

Kallis believes that there is value in studying the principles of degrowth whether or not students go on to find their lifelong path in bringing it to fruition. “I want to think that increasingly there will be demand for out-of-the-box thinking,” he said. “And I also want to think that, degrowth or not degrowth, our students are getting good training in fundamental theories, models, ecological economics, political ecology. So even if they don’t work on degrowth per se — but they work on some other framework or transition or climate mitigation — they have the skills to be critical and good thinkers.”

For Angela Huston, who, like many other graduates of the online program, is mid-career and less willing than some of the in-person students to spend several years just pondering how to change the system, this was exactly the point.

Huston had been working in public services and international development in Italy for 10 years before doing the virtual master’s. She said she valued how the program forced her to question the cultural expectations to make money and be financially comfortable. “I was super-radical hardcore in my university days,” she said. “And then, I think over time, I started to conform more with the world. And that’s part of the reason I’ve gone back to degrowth. We need more of this radical thinking that’s not trying to align with and appease current systems.”

Given the urgency of the climate crisis and how challenging it is to change the current economic system in the timeframe needed, Huston said she is open to working with for-profit companies, where she can influence their climate-transition strategies from inside and help mitigate their climate impacts.

Applications for the seventh cohort of the Barcelona program are now open. The program was restructured this year, based on feedback from students and faculty, to include things like a stronger focus on activism skills and more intersectional frameworks, such as feminism and decolonization.

The coordinators of both the online and in-person degrees are currently focused on making them more accessible to people from different backgrounds, especially those from outside Europe and the U.S. They are also working to more actively steward the network of alumni, and are looking toward an alumni conference next year.

And as for the graduates who are still trying to figure out what their degrowth studies mean for their path out in the current working world? “I don’t think that it’s because we studied degrowth that now we’re lost,” de Bassompierre said. “It’s more the opposite: figuring out how to work toward the world we want to see.”

— Cass Hebron and Claire Elise Thompson

More exposure

• Read: about the types of changes Gen Z students are demanding of business schools — including a greater focus on how to address climate change (Financial Times)
• Listen: to a podcast interview with degrowth scholar and UAB professor Jason Hickel (Upstream)
• Read: a Q&A with Kohei Saito, a Marxist scholar whose book on degrowth became a bestseller in Japan (Grist)
• Subscribe: to The Green Fix, a European climate newsletter and our publishing partner on today’s story

A parting shot

While Valerie Costa noted that she wouldn’t necessarily march down a street in the U.S. with a degrowth sign, that sight is much more commonplace in Europe. Here’s a photo from a Fridays for Future protest just last month in Munich ahead of the European elections.

IMAGE CREDITS

Vision: Grist

Spotlight: Jana Kenkel

Parting shot: picture alliance / Getty Images

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What can you do with a degree in degrowth? on Jun 12, 2024.