Published

2 years ago

April 25, 2024

Alice Rush

Adam Welz’s The End of Eden is an extraordinary document of a planet under stress. Taking a deep dive into the scientific history of our planet, Welz brings the research into the moment by exploring how species around the world are being forever altered or eliminated, in ways that few people are aware.

“Humans have been performing an uncontrolled experiment on this fragile, life-giving cocoon,” Welz writes in the book’s introduction, referring to Earth as a “tarnished Eden.”

Welz writes about places he’s traveled to, as well as ones he extensively researched, including the Mojave Desert, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, the Galapagos Islands, New Jersey’s Pine Barrens, and areas close to his home in Cape Town, South Africa.

Welz looks mostly at microclimates and how “these intimate ecological breakups and breakdowns are of no less consequence than the so-called natural disasters.” It’s an exploration of the science of phenomena like thermal heat and CO2, and a painfully real one, considering how plagues, extreme weather, migration, fire and other events have affected the delicate ecological balance of Earth and mammals like the white-throated woodrat, honeycreepers in Hawaii, and land tortoises, among others.

But Welz sees hopeful adaptations as well. “Some species will colonize habitats, areas, and communities that they have never lived in before,” he says. “Climate change is scrambling natural communities and creating new combinations of species — new ecosystems — almost everywhere we look.”

EcoWatch spoke with Welz from his home in South Africa, where he’s busy working on a book about the history and future of nature conservation.

The level of research in the book is stunning. What was the challenge in putting that all together?

I’m constantly picking up stories and bits of information, just kind of filing them away. The book could have been way longer, but I picked the stories that I liked the most, that I thought best described or best illustrated the phenomena that I’m trying to get at.

Which is what? What might be the overall theme of The End of Eden?

What the problem that this book is trying to solve is that when you read about climate breakdown in general in the media, nearly all of it is focused on humans — what does it mean for us. Very little is focused on millions of other species that happen to share the planet with us. I picked particular species, I’ve told their stories, and I’ve sort of almost built them as characters. And once you understand the why a little more, I’m hoping you’ll be able to take the story I’ve just told you and realize as a reader that this is the same kind of thing that’s happening to species in lots of other places.

Would you say the eight chapters describe the eight major stressors on the climate?

No, it’s very hard to say that. I would just say that these are themes that made sense to me. Each chapter looks at this particular kind of phenomenon, and it tries to explore it and explain it through these examples of these different species. For example, I have a chapter on fertile air, which is how the increase in concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is driving the woodification of savannas around the world. They’re turning into essentially low-grade forests in large parts of the world. And that’s, I think, something very few people have thought about, you know, CO2 fertilization.

You write about the Key deer in Key West. How is that an example of the kind of research you did?

They’ve evolved to become these very cute mini-deer, but they’re absolutely dependent on freshwater resources on these small coral islands that make up the Keys. And these freshwater resources are, as sea level rises, becoming saltier and saltier. And with the hurricanes getting more intense and storm surges now washing right up over these islands, we’re looking at the end of the Key deer. Some of the projections are that within decades, well before 2100, the Florida Keys will not have any suitable habitat for the Key deer anymore. And again, it’s an example of how close to the edge a lot of species actually are.

I try and illustrate in some of these stories that these tiny little incremental shifts in maximum and minimum temperatures, or the length of a season just by a couple of days here and there, can actually have these massive effects on species, and then in turn have massive effects on ecosystems and affect large, large areas. I think that the key thing is to be aware of the impact.

You visited the Kosciuszko National Park after the massive Dunns Road fire there in 2020. You wrote, “I was stunned by what I saw. A dense mass of thousands, millions, of dead trees filled the landscape from horizon to horizon. The forest was the brown of dead wood and the black of charcoal. It smelled of ash and burned oil. I had never seen a place so thoroughly and extensively burned.” What impression did that make on you?

I’ve seen a lot of fires in my life. I’m used to fires, and like I say in the book, fires don’t scare me. They’re totally normal in loads of ecosystems. I was absolutely shocked by what I saw in the sense that I had never seen an area that large that had been so thoroughly burned. The forest floor in most places was completely bare. The fire had been so hot that it burned right through all the organic matter, it had been burned out of the soil. Everything was just like dead sand underneath these dead trees.

A single fire, instead of being just a sort of a phase in that forest’s life, just deletes the forest, and it’s then replaced by a scrubland or a grassland or something. You have this massive shift in the nature of that ecosystem essentially overnight. And to see it on the scale that I saw in Australia — I really felt, like I say in the book, I felt like I was seeing the future. It’s like, all right, this is where we’re going, folks. This is a whole different thing. This is something brand new.

On a more personal level, you have a fish tank with some endangered catfish from Peru. It’s a very small thing, but how does that help?

Both of these species have had nearly all their riverine habitat in Peru destroyed by illegal gold mining, and there’s a tiny handful of people around the world that keep these fish. Conservation’s not all about these multi-million dollar projects to save huge animals like rhinos and what have you from extinction.

^{Author Adam Welz points to his fish tank with endangered catfish from Peru.}

Some of the book’s research really points to some unalterable changes in species. How does one avoid that kind of psychological climate change dread?

I get people saying to me, I’m scared to read your book because I might get depressed or something. It’s like, well, yeah, that happens to me. And I think, you know, well, this is what’s going on, folks. And you can either pretend it isn’t there or you can deal with it. And if it changes you, if it marks you, well, that’s what it’s going to do, because this is what’s happening. And that’s actually okay, even though it is difficult.

There’s all sorts of things that are just truly bleak and there are solutions, but the political opposition to those solutions at the moment is ferocious. And if we are really going to do something substantial about climate breakdown and the extinction crisis, it’s going to be a fight. There are very strong entrenched interests who want to carry on with fossil fuels and want to carry on with rampant destruction of ecosystems, because they’re making a lot of money out of it. It’s got to be a fight. It’s not going to solve itself. It’s not going to be because people have the right ideas. You know, if any change is going to come, it will be through action.

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The post ‘It’s Got to Be a Fight’: Author Adam Welz on Surviving Climate Breakdown and Saving Species of a ‘Tarnished Eden’ appeared first on EcoWatch.

https://www.ecowatch.com/adam-welz-the-end-of-eden-interview-ecowatch.html

Green Living

Sustainability In Your Ear: Schneider Electric’s Steve Wilhite Maps the Renewable Energy Transition

Published

1 day ago

March 30, 2026

Alice Rush

The global energy system is changing in two big ways: it is moving from centralized fossil-fuel generation to distributed renewables, and it is becoming more digital in how energy is measured, traded, and optimized. Steve Wilhite, Executive Vice President of Advisory Services at Schneider Electric, works at the intersection of these complementary yet challenging transitions. Schneider supports more than 40% of the Fortune 500 with energy procurement and sustainability strategies, managing over $50 billion in annual energy spending. His experience shows something that pledges and press releases often miss: the biggest challenge for corporate sustainability is not money, technology, or political will. The real issue is the gap between ambition and the ability to deliver. Companies are making Science-Based Targets commitments faster than they are building the infrastructure to meet them. Scope one and two emissions are being managed better, but scope three emissions, which come from a company’s supply chain, still present a systems problem that no single company can solve alone. Schneider’s zero-carbon supplier program suggests what it takes to close this gap. When the company started its own effort to cut emissions from its top 1,000 suppliers by 50% in five years, all 1,000 signed up within two weeks. However, about 84% of them did not fully understand what they had agreed to. Achieving success meant creating measurement tools, education programs, and action plans to help the whole ecosystem, not just individual companies.

Executive Vice President of Advisory Services at Schneider Electric, is our guest on *Sustainability In Your Ear*.

This critical conversation explores how renewable energy is bought, including the difference between physical and virtual power purchase agreements. Steve also explains why the Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) market became more complex as it grew, and why 10% fewer renewable deals closed in 2025 compared to 2024, as tech companies used up available clean energy. He also addresses a key question in clean energy: is AI helping the environment overall, or do its energy needs still outweigh its efficiency benefits? Schneider processes over a million energy invoices each month, and about 50,000 of them had issues that took 10 to 15 business days to resolve. Now, a team of AI systems can handle these in seconds. Accurate energy consumption and billing data directly affect emissions reporting, energy efficiency, and money-saving market decisions. He describes Schnieder’s approach as “frugal AI”: using the right-sized models for each task, running them on clean energy, and choosing simple solutions over complex ones. Looking ahead, electrification is building a global digital energy network in which every meter and adjustment contributes to a new system independent of central plants. As intelligence spreads, power can shift to consumers, communities, and businesses. Schneider is enabling this shift by building a mesh grid in which each point both produces and consumes energy, coordinated by AI. These changes fundamentally reshape the global energy landscape. The central question: will we intentionally build this new, distributed system, or will we repeat centralized patterns digitally?

To learn more about Schneider Electric’s sustainability efforts, visit se.com.

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Interview Transcript

The post Sustainability In Your Ear: Schneider Electric’s Steve Wilhite Maps the Renewable Energy Transition appeared first on Earth911.

https://earth911.com/podcast/sustainability-in-your-ear-schneider-electrics-steve-wilhite-maps-the-renewable-energy-transition/

Green Living

The West Is Burning Before Summer Even Starts, and It’s No Accident

Published

1 day ago

March 30, 2026

Alice Rush

Nevada just shattered its March statewide high temperature record by 6 degrees, which is a ‘72 miles per hour in a school zone’ kind of margin. And it happened during the hottest 11-year stretch in 176 years of recorded temperature tracking.

A mid-March heat wave in the American West pushed temperatures in Laughlin, Nevada, to 106°F, far above the previous March record of 100°F. The fact that this happened in March is alarming, especially since it coincided with a near-total collapse of the region’s snowpack. This sets the stage for an early and possibly severe wildfire season. The heat also fits a troubling trend confirmed by the World Meteorological Organization last week: 2015 through 2025 have been the 11 warmest years ever recorded on Earth.

Usually, temperature records are broken by small amounts. What happened in Nevada last month was very different. Some places broke monthly high temperature records by as much as 8 degrees. Reno had seven days above 80°F in March, compared to the previous record of just two days. “It’s not just that we broke monthly records,” said Nevada State Climatologist Baker Perry, “but it’s by how much we broke the monthly records, and not just in one place.”

A Snow Drought That Wasn’t in the Forecast

The heat wave didn’t hit a typical winter landscape. Nevada was already experiencing what Perry calls an unprecedented snow drought. Even though winter precipitation was close to normal and there were big storms in mid-February, warm, moist air arrived soon after. This caused what the National Weather Service called the second-highest single-day snowmelt ever recorded in the eastern Sierra, only surpassed by flooding in 1997.

Normally, snow melts slowly through April and May, but this year it happened all at once in late February and early March. SNOTEL monitoring stations across Nevada show the impact clearly: 70% of sites in northern and central Nevada now report zero inches of snowpack. That’s not just low—it’s gone. The incidence of drought is closely correlated with rising atmospheric CO2 levels recorded at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, which is threatened with defunding by the Trump Administration.

Atmospheric CO2 levels from 2021 to 2026. Source: N.O.A.A.

What worries scientists most is the combination of these events. “To have these two unprecedented, exceptional events happening at once is a combination that is particularly concerning,” Perry said.

What This Means for Fire Season

Wildfire risk isn’t only about heat. It depends on the sequence of conditions leading up to fire season, and this year’s setup is especially dangerous.

The snowmelt and early rains caused plants to grow weeks ahead of schedule. This early growth creates lots of fine fuels. As these plants dry out over the spring—now with less moisture from snowpack—they become the kindling that can fuel fast-moving fires.

Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District Division Chief August Isernhagen said the early green-up could lead to conditions we haven’t seen before as fire season approaches. He urged people to be even more careful than in recent drought years.

“The majority of our starts, and nearly all of our catastrophic fires are human caused,” Isernhagen said in a statement from the University of Nevada, Reno.

Mountain forests face another challenge. Dawn Johnson, Warning Coordination Meteorologist at the NWS in Reno, explained that losing snowpack this early means heavy timber can become drought-stressed much sooner than usual, turning it into a fire hazard months earlier than normal. A cooler storm pattern expected in early April might bring some relief, but experts warn it may be too little, too late to make a real difference.

Eleven Years. No Exceptions.

The Nevada heat wave wasn’t an isolated event. It happened during the longest stretch of global heat ever recorded.

The WMO’s State of the Global Climate 2025 report, released on March 23, confirmed that every year from 2015 to 2025 is among the hottest ever recorded. Depending on the data, 2025 was either the second- or third-warmest year since records began, with temperatures about 1.43°C above pre-industrial levels. Atmospheric CO₂ reached its highest level in 2 million years, and ocean temperatures set a new record for the ninth year in a row.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres put the streak in stark terms: “When history repeats itself eleven times, it is no longer a coincidence. It is a call to act.”

The report also introduced a new measure called Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI). This tracks the difference between the energy the planet receives from the sun and the energy it sends back into space. In 2025, EEI was at its highest since records began in 1960. Surface temperatures, which get most of the attention, only show about 1% of the planet’s extra heat. Over 91% is absorbed by the oceans, which have taken in the equivalent of about 18 times the world’s total annual energy use each year for the past 20 years. EEI gives a clearer picture, showing that the planet is becoming more out of balance.

“In 2025, heatwaves, wildfires, drought, tropical cyclones, storms and flooding caused thousands of deaths, impacted millions of people and caused billions in economic losses,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo. She added that the changes driven by human activities “will have harmful repercussions for hundreds — and potentially thousands — of years.”

What’s happening in the Western U.S. matches the WMO’s global findings perfectly. The report highlighted major glacier loss in 2025 along North America’s Pacific coast. These events aren’t separate—they’re both signs of the same warming trend, just showing up in different ways and times.

“We seem to be entering this new era where temperatures will be significantly higher than what they were ten years ago,” said climate scientist Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick of Australian National University. She explained that the changes of the past three years can only be explained by climate change.

What About the Cold in the East?

This is where things get both surprising and important.

If you live in the Northeast, Midwest, or Southeast, 2025 might not seem like a record-warm year. Some parts of the eastern U.S. have had cold snaps and severe winter weather that made national news. So how does that fit with 11 straight years of record global heat?

This actually makes sense in climate science. Climate change doesn’t warm every place at the same time. Instead, it disrupts atmospheric patterns like the polar vortex, which usually keeps cold air over the Arctic. As the Arctic warms much faster than the rest of the planet—about four times the global average, according to NOAA—the polar vortex weakens and shifts, letting cold air move into areas that don’t usually get it.

In other words, the same forces causing record heat in Nevada are also behind the unusual cold in the eastern U.S. These aren’t opposites—they’re both results of a destabilized climate system. Weather feels local, but our climate is shared. When the West is hot in March and the East is cold, both are signs of the same disrupted system.

What You Can Do

If you live in the West, check current wildfire risk conditions through the National Interagency Fire Center and understand your local evacuation routes and readiness steps before fire season peaks.
Lower the risk of starting fires. Most wildfires are caused by people, so be extra careful during high-risk times. Don’t have campfires during bans, avoid dragging chains on your vehicle or trailer, and make sure your equipment doesn’t create sparks.
Support climate policy at both the state and federal levels. Reach out to your Congressional representatives. The WMO data shows the trend is clear. The decisions we make now will shape how severe fire seasons are in the future.
Cut your home’s carbon footprint by using energy efficiently, choosing cleaner transportation, and making changes to your diet. One person’s actions won’t solve the global problem, but when many people make changes, it can have a real impact on emissions.
If you live in the eastern U.S., don’t let cold winters make you ignore climate data. Pay attention to what’s happening across the country—the same atmosphere connects us all.

Earth911 Inspiration: The First Step To Sustainability

Published

4 days ago

March 27, 2026

Alice Rush

Today’s inspiration and photo come from Earth911’s Mitch Ratcliffe: “The first step to sustainability is seeing that there is no boundary between you and nature.” This early morning shot of Waughop Lake in Western Washington caught ground fog between a cloudy sky and a perfect reflection in the water below. There is no difference between us and nature, except for the artificial ones we create by imagining boundaries. When we see this essential connection and reverse the artificial disconnections created over millennia, people can imagine a future where we all thrive with a regenerated ecosystem.

Post and share Earth911 posters to help people think of the planet first, every day. Click the poster to get a larger image.