At the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG), a team of scientists just published an interactive map that explores what all five boroughs of New York City looked like 400 years agoand you can search for your own block.
The map, called the Welikia Project, was made by the NYBGs Urban Conservation team. It takes the city block by block, uncovering the history of flora, fauna, and Indigenous people that once lived in each area before it became an urban environment. The name welikia is borrowed from the Lenape people, who lived in whats now New York City for 8,000 to 10,000 years before European settlers; it means my good home.
Viewers can use the tool to look at almost any area in the five boroughsincluding Grand Central, Yankee Stadium, and individual streetsto see what kinds of trees might have grown there, whether the area was host to any particular species of animals, and how Indigenous people may have used the lands resources.
The project was spearheaded by Eric Sanderson, a historical ecologist and vice president of urban conservation strategy at NYBG who has studied New Yorks ecology for over two decades. Sanderson says the map has a range of uses, from helping New Yorkers feel more connected to their city to offering new insights to city planners and urban flood prevention experts.
[Screenshot: welikia.org]
A decades-long project
Sanderson has been studying the historical ecology of NYC since the early aughts, after moving to the city in 1998 to work at the Wildlife Conservation Society. His years-long deep dive began while browsing through used books at The Strand: He came across a book full of historical maps of New York City. One particular mapthe British headquarters during the American Revolutionshowed Manhattan when it was a fledgling city at the very southern tip of the island.
The rest of the map was hills, streams, wetlands, and beachesnot what we normally think of when we think of New York City,” Sanderson says. “So I georeferenced that map, and I started to think about how the streams and the wetlands and the beaches related to the modern geography of the city today.
That initial spark of curiosity ultimately became the 2009 bestselling book Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City, which reconstructed the flora and fauna that once made up Manhattan. The book went on to become an exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York, a National Geographic cover, and a TED Talk.
After that, I was kind of looking to go back to my conservation work, Sanderson says. And yet, people kept asking me: Aren’t you going to do Brooklyn? or, Don’t you live in the Bronx? or, Have you ever been to Staten Island? So I started pulling together pieces of information, doing more reading, and looking at historical maps. Eventually that led to [the Welikia Project].
[Screenshot: welikia.org]
The Welikia Project
Currently, Sanderson is working on another book called The Welikia Atlas and Gazetteer: A Guide to New York Citys Indigenous Landscape, slated for release in 2026, that maps the historical ecology of all five New York City boroughs. In the meantime, he and his team at NYBG have spent the past year and a half assembling the Welikia Project website, which compiles all of Sandersons new research into an easy-to-parse interactive map.
Sourcing the historical map data to build a recreation of early New York presented a host of challenges. Whereas Sanderson had the British headquarters map as a touchstone for his Mannahatta work, he says this larger project was much more piecemeal.
When we moved to the scope of the whole city, there was no one map that was very early and showed me all [the things I was looking for], Sanderson says. We spent a large part of the project just going to map archives, like the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, and the British Library in England, as well as many others.
In all, Sandersons team georeferenced more than 600 maps from the late 18th century to the late 19th century, analyzing hundreds of puzzle pieces to assemble an overarching view of the city pre-urbanization. Using this influx of data, they then built a digital map by layers, creating one layer illustrating all of the streams, another for the topography, another for the marshes, and so on until the bigger picture began to take shape.
Another branch of the project entailed sifting through biological data, as well as plant and animal surveys, to understand the flora and fauna that would have inhabited the region 400 years ago. Then, Sandersons team used a kind of prediction tool called a Muir web to take both the topographical data and the biological data and produce an estimate of what the habitat most likely looked like on every NYC block.
According to the map, Grand Central Station was once home to white wood aster plants and green frogs; Staten Island Mall hosted red-backed salamanders; and Yankee Stadium was a low salt marsh community inhabited by eastern gray squirrels and passenger pigeons.
Future applications
Sanderson says the Welikia Project could be used for a number of practical applications, from helping landscape architects understand the native environment to giving urban planners a better sense of the citys makeup. Currently, he’s working on a follow-up study to assist in urban flood planning.
According to a recent study from the Regional Plan Association, as many as 82,000 housing units in and around New York City could be lost due to flooding by 2040, and that could double to 160,000 by 2070. Sanderson plans to map all of the places that were historically aquatic ecosystemslike streams, wetlands, and beachesin order to produce more accurate predictions of future flood patterns.
For the everyday New Yorker, Sanderson hopes that the Welikia Project provides a chance to better understand the landscape that serves as their home.
What I really want people to do is to zoom into their block where they live, and to see that it was a forest or a wetland, and to think about what that means for them, Sanderson says. For some people, I think that’s a testimony to how much the world has changed over the last 400 years. One of my colleagues said, somewhere between Mannahatta and Manhattan is the story of every place on Earth. In some ways, that is the case.
In our fast, interconnected world, the success of organizations depends not only on sound strategy and technical ability, but on the strength of the human dynamics behind everything. Humans need emotional intelligence to work together successfully. Its the social lubricant that helps individuals operate more effectively in adverse situations and also helps members of teams understand each other better and work more cohesively as a unit.
The key components of emotional intelligence are self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. These all factor into helping individuals overcome and navigate social complexities and build strong relationships with diverse groups of people, which facilitates stronger collaboration in the workplace.
Emotional intelligence complements and supports cognitive intelligence, enabling team members to work together more smoothly and cooperatively. Its what allows team members to build trust and cohesion, without which even the smartest, most skilled teams will struggle to be effective. I delve into this in Emotional Intelligence Game Changers: 101 Simple Ways to Win at Work + Life.
Here are five emotional intelligence game changers that influence a teams performance.
Enhanced communication
Without effective communication, all teams will struggle to build and maintain momentum. Emotional intelligence helps teams build clarity, openness, and the ability to work with varying ideas from individual team members without divisiveness and conflict.
By building two-way open communication, team members can focus on their tasks without getting bogged down in misunderstandings and one-upmanship. Team members can freely share their ideas without fear of being judged or misunderstood. Emotional intelligence is the catalyst for psychological safety in teams, according to Debbie Muno, who is the managing director of Genos North America.
Building trust and camaraderie
Teams work best when members feel a sense of deep connection with each other. It makes them identify and feel pride for being part of the group. Instead of competing with one another, members support and help strengthen each others skills and abilities.
This leads to mutual respect and feelings. Emotional intelligence breaks down barriers and supports team members in reaching a place where they feel this way. Expressing feelings in the right place and time and encouraging others to express themselves leads to authentic, trusted communications and team cohesion, Muno says.
Increased engagement and motivation
Emotional intelligence is crucial in helping team members build enthusiasm and interdependence with each other. When team members feel a sense of pride for what they achieve, they have the drive to achieve beyond their present level, building increasing momentum. This builds a strong understanding of and belief in the ability of the team to rise above and overcome challenges.
Preventing and resolving conflict
Differences and conflict are inevitable in any group setting where there are diverse viewpoints and personalities. But if members of the team possess a high level of emotional intelligence, theyre better equipped to navigate past all the ego-driven issues and look for solutions.
This requires transparency, open dialogue, and a focus on solutions instead of getting hung up on personal power struggles. If everyone on the team knows how to actively listen, theyre more likely to have empathy and respect for viewpoints that differ from their own. They also know how to make other team members feel heard and respected, even if they dont end up implementing their ideas. Emotionally intelligent teams are also more likely to move past issues at hand; as they do so, their respect for each other increases, solidifying the belief that they can resolve disagreements positively.
Improved resilience and adaptability
In a rapidly changing workplace environment, being adaptable and flexible is crucial for success. Responding effectively in stressful situations enables team members to engage and communicate with each other productively, Muno says.
Teams that are highly emotionally intelligent are confident in their ability to adapt and change rapidly to new situations and environments that arise. Theyve proven their ability to overcome personality issues and bruised egos that are damaging to a teams effectiveness, so they can focus their attention and energy on the task at hand. And rather than engaging in one-upmanship that occurs in a dysfunctional team, they know how to get the best out of one another to maximize support and collaboration.
After a years-long renovation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art has just reopened its 40,000-square-foot Michael C. Rockefeller Wing. At the heart of the project is a stunning feature thats gone largely unrecognized since the 80s.
The wing redesign was spearheaded by architect Kulapat Yantrasast and his team at the firm WHY architecture, whose clients include the Musée du Louvre, The Getty, and Harvard Libraries. The Met tasked WHY with fully reimagining a wing that contains three gallery collections focusing on the arts of Africa, the ancient Americas, and Oceaniaaround 1,800 total works of art.
The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing was originally built in 1982 and is home to an architectural feature thats a piece of art in itself: an approximately 200-foot-long, 80-foot-tall sloped glass wall with expansive views into Central Park. But for more than 20 years, the shades on the wall have been drawn to protect artwork from light damage, leaving the space shrouded in darkness.
Through WHYs redesign, the glass wall has been uncovered and the three collections have a brand new layout, showcasing the buildings beauty and flooding its galleries with natural light.
[Photo: Bridgit Beyer/courtesy The
Metropolitan Museum of Art]
‘No architect today would put a giant glass facade on the south side of a museum’
According to Brian Butterfield, design director at WHY, the gigantic sloped glass wall is especially striking because its a feature that no architect today would ever put on the south side of a museum.
When dealing with valuable artwork, anything thats rendered with pigment, made of wood, or fashioned from another delicate material can be photosensitive, meaning sun exposure can lead to damage over time. Whats worse, the former layout of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing placed wooden and pigmented works from the Oceania collection close to the glass wall, making it potentially even more hazardous to raise the walls shades.
Still, when WHY took on the project, nearly everyone involved ultimately agreed that the glass wall was an essential part of the space.
The Met sits in Central Park, and the Landmarks Preservation Commission as well as the Central Park Conservancy were in agreement that the sloped glass wall should be replaced, if not directly in kind, then in a way that didn’t change the architectural expression too much, Butterfield says.
[Photo: Bridgit Beyer/courtesy The
Metropolitan Museum of Art]
Pulling back the shades
Alongside the design and engineering firm Arup Group, WHY set about experimenting with ways to not only preserve the wall, but also make it a truly functional feature of the wing. One advantage that todays designers have over those of the 80s, Butterfield says, is advances in glass technology.
The glass of 40 years ago is not the glass of today, Butterfield says. Today, you can have double or triple glazing, and you can have inner layers with different films and frits and gas fills, all of which protect art by reducing visible daylight, eliminating all infrared light, and eliminating all ultraviolet light.
Glazing, films, frits (a kind of glass powder), and gas fills are all various ways to alter the properties of glass to give a more filtering effectand all of them have been employed on the new custom sloped wall. To maximize the spaces natural light while keeping its artwork safe, the wall is now formatted in a gradient thats not apparent to the naked eye.
At floor level, where no art is displayed, the glass is fully translucent. As the panels move upward, though, they become increasingly filtered to block any harsh rays. The wall is designed to keep the window fully exposed throughout the day; shades only deploy if light levels exceed a safe maximum.
[Photo: Bridgit Beyer/courtesy The
Metropolitan Museum of Art]
Instead of them just being 100% down for the last 20 years, maybe they’ll only be deployed 20% of the time throughout the calendar year, so that the majority of time visitors are in the gallery, they can experience that connection to Central Park, Butterfield says.
To further safeguard the wings art, the WHY team reconfigured its layout so that light-sensitive works, like those in the Oceania collection, are arranged in carefully placed alcoves hidden from the sun, while hardier metal and stone pieces are closer to the glass wall. This shift is just one of several changes that the designers made to transform the gallery space from a cramped, easy-to-miss area of the Met into a bright, well-paced wing that would encourage viewers to slow down and appreciate its works.
[Photo: Bridgit Beyer/courtesy The
Metropolitan Museum of Art]
From drab to ‘airy and light’
The Michael C. Rockefeller Wings three galleries include the Arts of Africa, which surveys visual traditions across sub-Saharan Africa; the Arts of Oceania, which includes monumental works from New Guinea and surrounding island archipelagoes; and the Arts of the Ancient Americas, which focuses on arts of Latin American prior to American invasions after 1492. The rightful ownership of some works in the wing, including several Indigenous works donated to the American gallery, remains a subject of debate.
Several elements of the wings former design were due for an update. In its previous configuration, the three galleries were arranged in distinct parallel bars, making each feel separate from the others. Walkways that cut directly through the African and Oceanic spaces allowed viewers to walk straight through the wing without taking a closer look at its work. Combined with the relative lack of natural light from the shaded glass wall, Butterfield says there was a bit of a dated 80s feel to some of the galleries.
It felt dark, it felt drab, Butterfield says. The African galleries were designated in yellows and browns, the Oceania galleries were in bluesit felt very reductive in its presentation.
To address those concerns, WHY completely shifted the flow of the space. Now, a central walkway moves diagonally through the wing, taking viewers on a path that brings them in close contact with each of the three gallery spaces. The walkway itself is the Oceanic collection, imagined as a kind of connective ocean between the adjacent Africa and the Ancient Americas collections. Each of the three sections has a toned-down color story, with warm white and plaster accents in the African collection, limestone in the Americas, and frosted glass in the Oceanic area.
It was both a poetic move to have the diagonal cut through, to separate the three galleries, but to also allow for meaningful overlap and cross-cultural dialogue between them, Butterfield says. There’s a lot of visual transparency between the three collections, but the diagonal allows us to really control the actual pedestrian connections between the three collections.
Overhead, a series of arched baffles give the wing a striking vault shape. Everywhere viewers look, theres a sightline into Central Park. Butterfield says the details, taken together, give an airy, light, contemporary feel.
We were doing everything we could to really push forward the practice of lighting in a museum, so these objects really sing, Butterfield says.
Drones are increasingly part of modern warfare.
The aircraft, often equipped with explosives, have been deployed by both sides in Russia’s war on Ukraine. They’ve been part of recent skirmishes between India and Pakistan. And they’ve been used by Haitian government forces in the ongoing conflict with gangs around Port-au-Prince.
And to take down drones before they do damage, armed forces around the world and their military contractors have developed technologies to jam or hack drone control signals, zap them with lasers, or fry them with microwaves. But in this literal arms race, where combat drone developers will inevitably try to come up with ways to make their devices impervious to each new attack, an Austin-based startup called Allen Control Systems argues that the best defense might be one that relies on basic ballistics.
“We had the idea that we would use a cheap bullet to basically shoot these drones out of the sky,” says ACS President Steve Simoni, because “the drones of the future would be impervious to these [other] attacks.”
ACS has developed a robotic gun system called Bullfrog that uses AI and computer vision to detect drones and precisely fire at them. It’s inspired by the human-controlled Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station (CROWS) guns that the U.S. military already mounts on vehicles and ships. The Bullfrog is based around existing gun technology and uses ordinary bullets, like the standard NATO 7.62x51mm round, which makes it easy and cost-effective to load. But while the existing guns have troops use a joystick to aim the gun and fire at targets, humans often aren’t fast enough to take down a quick-moving drone, let alone a swarm of them.
[Photo: Courtesy of Allen Control Systems]
“A human using a joystick isn’t good enough to do that,” says Simoni, who started his career as a naval officer before cofounding Bbot, a restaurant software and robotics startup acquired by Doordash. “So we basically redesigned that existing system from the ground up using a bunch of novel techniques in AI.”
The Bullfrog uses a set of cameras to detect and precisely locate drones, letting it fire what Simoni calls “a very precise sniper shot” at the fast-moving aircraft. Traditionally, attack drones have generally emphasized speed, flying quickly at targets like truck convoys to attackgenerally moving predictably enough for the AI to easily target. But even if attackers adapt to have drones move more erratically, Simoni says ACS should still be able to fire more quickly than they can evade.
“Bullets travel very fast,” he says. “From the time we see it to [the time we] shoot, there’s not many places a drone can really move in that time period.”
[Photo: Courtesy of Allen Control Systems]
The system, which ACS successfully demonstrated in a U.S. Army test earlier this year, where it took down all of seven target drones, still typically relies on a human in the loop. That is, when a vehicle is being attacked by drones, someone will look at a screen showing the incoming aircraft and select specific targets. But the AI and its cameras do the actual tracking and ballistics calculations necessary to accurately fire the gun and eliminate the drones.
Variants may also be able to handle scenarios where there’s a bigger swarm of drones than humans can practically target, but humans would still set the “rules of engagement,” like defining a field of view where the AI is allowed to target oncoming drones or specific safety requirements, Simoni says. In general, ACS’s software also lets users define areas where they don’t want bullets to be aimed for safety’s sake.
In demonstrations and tests, the company often fires at off-the-shelf drones from normal retail stores, or specific target drones provided by the military, which naturally restricts outside drones on its bases. As new drones evolve, ACS can also make virtual models of them, giving the AI practice recognizing and firing at them in a simulated environment. Using technology like Unreal Engine, the video game development tool, the company can create renderings of the drones in a variety of weather conditions and scenery, all without needing to fire any actual bullets or destroy any physical drones. The same approach can also teach the AI to distinguish other types of flying things, like birds and planes.
And while Russian and Ukrainian forces have already begun to circumvent drone jamming technoogy by replacing radio communications with long, thin fiber optic cables, and microwave attacks can be disrupted by adding conductive material to the right places on the drone, Simoni believes it’s just not physically feasible to build a drone that can reliably withstand bullets and still be light enough to nimbly fly.
“There’s not enough armor you could put on a drone to stop a bullet like that,” he says. An effectively armored drone would simply be too heavy.
The gun systems, on the other hand, are designed to be lightweight at about 200 pounds, and easy to bolt onto existing military vehicles and connect to vehicle power sources. Simoni says he envisions the system will be practical for both the U.S. and allies with smaller vehicles, where the guns can be mounted on a truck bed.
[Photo: Courtesy of Allen Control Systems]
And while they can be used as “last lines of defense” for stationary targets like bases or power stations, Simoni says the Bullfrog is currently most practical for vehicles, thanks to its current range of about a kilometer.
“That’s a little too close for comfort for a base,” he says. “They want to probably engage the drones further out if they could.”
The technology also isn’t ideal for civilian use cases like protecting stadiums and events, where bullets aren’t the safest technology to stop errant drones, Simoni says. Alternatives like net guns might be a better solution there, he suggests.
ACS’s systems are slated for more military testing this year, demonstrating compatibility with a variety of military vehicles, with an eye toward battlefield deployment in early 2026. The company in March announced a $30 million Series A led by Craft Ventures along with existing investors Inspired Capital and Rally Ventures. Without revealing exact potential pricing, the company predicts its technology can lower the “cost per kill” to just a few dollars per drone.
Simoni says the company aims to help the military prepare for a future where machines, not humans, do the bulk of fighting.
“The future of conventional warfare is mostly going to be robots shooting at other robots,” he says. “It is far too dangerous to be out there, so I don’t think there’s going to be a lot of human engagement.”
Honolulu’s coastal Ala Moana Boulevard is a critical road in the Hawaiian capital, but it’s also a major hindrance. With six lanes of fast-moving traffic and few easily accessible crossing points, it’s effectively a hurdle between the city and its main public space, Ala Moana Park, and the broad beach there. Now, a stunning new pedestrian bridge has opened to make it easier to cross that rushing road.
Winding its way from the edge of downtown Honolulu over the highway to a boat harbor and the corner of Ala Moana Park, the pedestrian bridge is an elegant piece of urban infrastructure, accented by artwork and connected to a series of paths cutting through a lush tropical landscape. It’s part of Victoria Ward Park, a two-phase publicly accessible open space connected to Ward Village, the 60-acre mixed use development that aims to redefine the urban realm in this part of the city.
Developed by Howard Hughes, Ward Village is a blank slate development on former warehouse land that will add, over the course of decades, more than 5,000 units of housing, nearly 1 million square feet of retail, and more than three acres of public greenspace. Several condo buildings are fully occupied and many future condos are already pre-sold, representing more than $6 billion in revenue, according to Howard Hughes’ 2024 annual report. Beyond its Honolulu project, the company made more than $1.75 billion in revenue in 2024, according to Pitchbook.
[Photo: courtesy Ward Village]
Building a bridge to downtown
Greenspace, primarily in the form of Victoria Ward Park, is a key part of the company’s strategy for luring residents and businesses, and turning Ward Village into a new model for urban development in Honolulu.
“A goal for Ward Village is to make the overall neighborhood significantly more walkable, comfortable, and safe,” says Doug Johnstone, president of the Hawaii region for Howard Hughes. Born and raised in Honolulu, Johnstone says that while the city is full of world-class amenities, its urban realm can sometimes be lacking. “It’s inherently a little disjointed and difficult to get around,” Johnstone says.
[Photo: courtesy Ward Village]
That’s why the Ward Village developmentestimated to cost several billion dollars over a planned implementation period that runs through the 2030sset aside the space for the park, and spent a considerable amount of time coordinating with state and local officials to get the pedestrian bridge built. Costing a total of $17.8 million, the bridge is technically a project of the state’s Department of Transportation. It was mostly funded by a federal grant, and Howard Hughes helped pay for the 20% portion of the budget required from local sources, donating land, funding the bridge design and providing environmental documentation.
“There’s a lot of folks wearing different hats that are trying to see it through, and making sure also it’s done well aesthetically and experience-wise,” Johnstone says. “It’s complementary to what we’re doing in Ward Village, but also something Honolulu can be proud of.”
[Photo: courtesy Ward Village]
Ocean-to-inland
Making the bridge possible is the existence of Victoria Ward Park, which was designed by Vita Planning and Landscape Architecture. The first phase of the park covers 1.4 acres from the edge of Ala Moana Boulevard inland, and is now open. The second phase, covering roughly 2 acres higher inland and more nestled in the Ward Village development, will finish construction later this year.
This ocean-to-inland connection became a guiding concept for the Honolulu park’s design, according to Don Vita, founder of Vita Planning and Landscape Architecture. “Going back and forth from the ocean up to the mountains is a very important cultural orientation in Hawaii and that’s exactly what we did with the configuration and the location of the park,” he says.
In the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, Justin Bibb was living in a tight, one-bedroom apartment in Cleveland, Ohio. He couldnt open his windows because his home was an old office building converted to residential unitsnot exactly conducive to physical and mental well-being in the middle of a global crisis. So he sought refuge elsewhere: a large green space, down near the lakefront, where he could stroll.
Unfortunately, Bibb said, thats not the case for many of our residents in the city of Cleveland.
A native of Cleveland, Bibb was elected the 58th mayor of the city in 2021. Immediately after taking office, he took inspiration from the 15-minute city concept of urban design, an idea that envisions people reaching their daily necessitieswork, grocery stores, pharmacieswithin 15 minutes by walking, biking, or taking public transit. That reduces dependence on cars, and also slashes carbon emissions and air pollution. In Cleveland, Bibbs goal is to put all residents within a 10-minute walk of a green space by the year 2045, by converting abandoned lots to parks and other efforts.
Cleveland is far from alone in its quest to adapt to a warming climate. As American cities have grown in size and population and gotten hotter, theynot the federal governmenthave become crucibles for climate action: Cities are electrifying their public transportation, forcing builders to make structures more energy efficient, and encouraging rooftop solar. Together with ambitious state governments, hundreds of cities large and small are pursuing climate action plansdocuments that lay out how they will reduce emissions and adapt to extreme weatherwith or without support from the feds. Clevelands plan, for instance, calls for all its commercial and residential buildings to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
For local leaders, climate action has grown all the more urgent since the Trump administration has been boosting fossil fuels and threatening to sue states to roll back environmental regulations. Last month, Republicans in the House passed a budget bill that would end nearly all the clean energy tax credits from the Biden administrations signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act. Because Donald Trump is in the White House again, its going to be up to mayors and governors to really enact and sustain the momentum around addressing climate change at the local level, said Bibb, who formerly chaired Climate Mayors, a bipartisan group of nearly 350 mayors.
City leaders can move much faster than federal agencies, and are more in-tune with what their people actually want, experts said. Theyre on the ground and theyre hearing from their residents every day, so they have a really good sense of what the priorities are, said Kate Johnson, regional director for North America at C40 Cities, a global network of nearly 100 mayors fighting climate change. You see climate action really grounded in the types of things that are going to help people.
Shifting from a reliance on fossil fuels to clean energy isnt just about reducing a citys carbon emissions, but about creating jobs and saving moneya tangible argument that mayors can make to their people. Bibb said a pilot program in Cleveland that helped low- to moderate-income households get access to free solar panels ended up reducing their utility bills by 60%. The biggest concern for Americans right now isnt climate change, Bibb added. Its the cost of living, and so we have to marry these two things together, he said. I think mayors are in a very unique position to do that.
To further reduce costs and emissions, cities like Seattle and Washington, D.C. are scrambling to better insulate structures, especially affordable housing, by installing double-paned windows and better insulation. In Boston last year, the city government started an Equitable Emissions Investment Fund, which awards money for projects that make buildings more efficient or add solar panels to their roofs. We are in a climate where energy efficiency remains the number one thing that we can do, said Oliver Sellers-Garcia, commissioner of the environment and Green New Deal director in the Boston government. And there are so many other comfort and health benefits from being in an efficient, all-electric environment.
To that end, cities are deploying loads of heat pumps, hyper-efficient appliances that warm and cool a space. New York City, for instance, is spending $70 million to install 30,000 of the appliances in its public housing. The ultimate goal is to have as many heat pumps as possible running in energy-efficient homesalong with replacing gas stoves with induction rangesand drawing electricity from renewables.
Metropolises like Los Angeles and Pittsburgh are creating new green spaces, which reduce urban temperatures and soak up rainwater to prevent flooding. A park is a prime example of multisolving: one intervention that fixes a bunch of problems at once. Another is deploying electric vehicle chargers in underserved neighborhoods, as Cleveland is doing, and making their use free for residents. This encourages the adoption of those vehicles, which reduces carbon emissions and air pollution. That, in turn, improves public health in those neighborhoods, which tend to have a higher burden of pollution than richer areas.
Elizabeth Sawin, director of the Multisolving Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, said that these efforts will be more important than ever as the Trump administration cuts funding for health programs. If health care for poor children is going to be depletedwith, say, Medicaid under threatcities cant totally fix that, Sawin said. But if they can get cleaner air in cities, they can at least have fewer kids who are struggling from asthma attacks and other respiratory illnesses.
All this workbuilding parks, installing solar panels, weatherizing buildingscreates jobs, both within a city and in surrounding rural areas. Construction workers commute in, while urban farms tap rural growers for their expertise. And as a city gets more of its power from renewables, it can benefit counties far away: The largest solar facility east of the Mississippi River just came online in downstate Illinois, providing so much electricity to Chicago that the citys 400 municipal buildings now run entirely on renewable power. The economic benefits and the jobs arent just necessarily accruing to the citieswhich might be seen as big blue cities, Johnson said. Theyre buying their electric school buses from factories in West Virginia, and theyre building solar and wind projects in rural areas.
So cities arent just preparing themselves for a warmer future, but helping accelerate a transition to renewables and spreading economic benefits across the American landscape. We as elected officials have to do a better job of articulating how this important part of public policy is connected to the everyday lived experience, Bibb said. Unfortunately, my party has done a bad job of that. But I think as mayors, we are well positioned to make that case at the local level.
Matt Simon, Grist
This article originally appeared in Grist, a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Sign up for its newsletter here.
For many, the most challenging part of job hunting in 2025 isn’t the competition; it’s the silence. People are applying to more jobs than ever but hearing back less. When a response doesn’t come, it’s easy to feel defeated. You may even begin to suspect that the job was never real in the first placeand in some cases thats true.
In new LinkedIn research, nearly half of job seekers said that not hearing back when they apply to a job is a top pain point in their search, and most said the application process feels unclear.
More than half of applicants reported hearing back from less than 5% of jobs they applied to, and 69% said the process lacks transparency. It’s not surprising, then, that the majority of job seekers are feeling stuck. When responses are rare, candidates increasingly question whether the jobs theyre applying to are even real.
That’s where the term ghost jobs comes in. This expression has been growing in prominence in recent years, and we are seeing an increase in mentions of ghosting across LinkedIn as well.
Ghost jobs are job listings that some companies post with no intention of hiring. More than a third of job seekers say ghost jobs are a major pain point. While ghost jobs are essentially fake job listings, weve seen job seekers assume the number of ghost jobs is growing because theyre not hearing back from the companies they are applying to. In reality, its not that straightforward, and part of what’s driving this perception is silence. When job seekers apply and never hear back, it’s easy to assume theyve submitted to a ghost job.
In todays competitive market, its harder than ever for job seekers to tell what’s real, what’s active, and where time is best spent. But there are ways to decipher whether a job is real and improve your chances of landing the right role.
Apply with more confidence
First, make sure youre doing your due diligence when it comes to vetting a job listing. Beware of any job posting that appears too good to be true, text messages offering job interviews, or listings that require payment up front.
These are clues that the job may not be what it seems. At LinkedIn, weve recently added new hiring insights offering new details on job listings, such as a companys typical response time and whether a job post is verified, so you can apply knowing information about the company or job poster has been confirmed.
Build a trusted network
One effective way to avoid silence in the job search is by leveraging referrals and recommendations from your network. When someone in your network refers you for a position, it can elevate your application.
In a LinkedIn consumer survey from March, 93% of hiring managers said referrals are important because they come with a trusted recommendation. If you have a first- or second-degree connection at a company youre interested in, dont be afraid to reach out and ask if they can refer you for an open position.
Share what youre looking for
You can also try posting proactively about what sort of opportunities youre open to. Close to a third of professionals shared that posting to their network about what theyre looking for in a new role was helpful in making new connections or receiving introductions.
Ghost jobs make the process harder, but there are ways to protect your time and focus on what’s real. Keep going. The right role is out there. And we are rooting for you.
When Dustin Mulvaney teaches a class in environmental law at a California university, he always asks a simple question: Whos heard of the Inflation Reduction Act? Over the last three years, he says, only around 10 students out of hundreds have raised their hands.
His students aren’t alone. When the IRA passed in 2022, it was the largest climate investment in American history. But while climate nerds may know the law well, most people know little about what it includes. In one survey last year, only 10% of Americans who said climate change was a very important issue to them had heard much about what the Biden administration had done to try to tackle it. Another survey found that around a quarter of voters had never heard of the IRA at all.
I consider myself to be a highly engaged voter, says Britton Taylor, a brand strategist with more than two decades of experience working with big brands. I take in tons of political media. And whatever Democrats did to message this or talk about climate, even I didn’t see it. Or if they did do stuff, nothing resonated with me.
The laws climate ideas are broadly popularmost people support extended tax credits for electric cars, incentives for American solar panel factories, and a slew of other programs designed to slash U.S. emissions 40% by 2030. Most Americans are also worried about climate change and how its affecting their lives, from extreme weather to home insurance rates. But the IRA was a marketing failure. Now its on the chopping block, as the Senate considers a bill that would eliminate or phase out almost all of itdespite the fact that it has benefitted red states and districts the most.
The problems started with the name
The bill was originally called Build Back Betternot a particularly creative name, since it had been used multiple times in the past after disasters like Hurricane Sandy. But it captured the basic idea: as the country recovered from the pandemic, the right policies could help the economy recover while also cutting pollution and improving workers rights.
Then came Joe Manchin, the West Virginia senator whose vote was necessary for the bill to pass. Manchin wanted a name focused on inflation. The audience we were marketing to was a single man, says Holly Burke, vice president of communications for the nonprofit Evergreen Action. The bill was renamed the Inflation Reduction Act.
US President Joe Biden signs the Inflation Reduction Act into law. From left, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.VA), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), and Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL). [Photo: Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post/Getty Images]
Critics said the name was misleading. Manchin was right that voters cared about inflation, but the bill hadnt been designed to directly address it. Models from the Congressional Budget Office and Penn Wharton projected that it would have little short-term impact on inflation. And while it would help reduce the price of energy and could help with inflation over time, the name didnt really reflect what the bill was about.
It also set up the wrong conversation, some critics say. The Inflation Reduction Act was, as a name, possibly one of the silliest self-owns I can recall, says Anat Shenker-Osorio, a progressive strategist who does public opinion research and message testing. It basically forced Democratic politicians to run around for an entire cycle saying inflation, inflation, inflation. The point was inflation reduction. But people dont listen to details, and youre literally saying the word inflation over and over again, thereby reminding them of their pain point.
Inflation did decrease, largely driven by other factors like Federal Reserve interest rate hikes, and the easing of pandemic-related supply chain disruption. But people couldnt see those impacts in their own lives. Americans struggle with math, and many of them dont understand inflation to be a rate of change, says Shenker-Osorio. So when theyre told inflation is reduced and prices are not reduced, they say, I dont know what youre talking about. I go to the grocery store every week. Theres no inflation reduction.’ So, theres a disconnect.
Voters tend to trust Republicans more on economic issues, whether or not thats justified. So Democrats may have been better served by framing the bill around something other than the economy, Shenker-Osorio says.
If, for illustration, they had named this the God Bless America bill or We Love America Act,’ suddenly were having a conversation about what does it mean to love America, to do right by America? That allows you to talk about things like ensuring we have clean, renewable energy and that the places you loved to go with your grandparents as a kid will be the places you take your grandkids in the future. What you have to do is figure out, what is my brand advantage? What is the conversation where voters trust me most, regard me most highly?
It also didnt help that the acronym IRA already had multiple associations, including retirement accounts and the Irish Republican Army. When the bill first passed, I Googled something about it, and all I got was information about the Troubles in Ireland, says Burke. I was like, I could have seen that coming. (And while laws often dont have catchy names, IRA is particularly dull.)
Other laws have been rebranded after passing. The Affordable Care Act, for example, became widely known as Obamacare. (The name was initially used pejoratively, though the Obama administration eventually embraced it.) But no one attempted to find a different way to talk about the IRA.
The complexity didnt help
The law, at 273 pages long, isnt easy to concisely describe. There are at least 21 different tax provisions for clean energy alone, for example. It also goes beyond energy and climate to include things like lowering the cost of medicine.
Some of the programs also take time to roll out, making the direct benefits to voters harder to communicate. The tax credits for consumers were also omewhat hard to marketyou probably don’t think about getting a discount on an efficient water heater until your current water heater breaks. And if you do eventually buy an appliance and get a tax credit, you might not realize where it came from. It also might not be obvious that a particular factory opened in your town because of the law.
You have to connect a lot of dots to get from we passed this tax incentive, that had this additional bonus credit that incentivized companies to invest in your community, and create that job, Burke says. Thats a lot of leaps to make for an average voter who does not care about tax credits.
A graphic explaining the Inflation Reduction Act, released by the White House in 2023. [Image: Biden White House]
Theres a lesson, she argues, for different policy design. Thats not to say that we shouldnt do abstract, wonky policies that make real impacts on peoples lives, she says. But if you want to have a politically durable victory, I think making sure that youre incorporating things that are really understandable to the general public, and theres a clear line from point A to point B: the government did this thing, and heres how it supported my community.
Some programs like this were in the original bill but eliminated, she says. For example, there was a clean energy performance standard that would have required utilities across the country to get to 80% clean energy by 2030. That’s “a more clear cut and intuitive way to understand how the Biden admin was delivering on climate than something with a fuzzier impact like ‘hundreds of billions in investments into clean energy,'” she says. “Both of those policies are good, to be clear, but saying we’re getting our entire grid to 80% clean electricity is a more immediately understandable impact.”
Boring stats don’t sell ideas
The Biden administration and supporters often focused on abstract statistics, like the fact that the IRA could create or support more than a million jobs nationwide. Those types of messages dont really land. The more conceptual and distant it is, the worse it does, says John Marshall, a marketing executive who left the corporate world to launch Potential Energy Coalition, a nonprofit focused on climate. The more local and human it is, the better it does.
Creativity was also often missing in the messaging, which was typically driven by political consultants rather than creatives. I thought about this a lot as someone who works in the more traditional advertising and branding world, as opposed to someone who’s anchored in the political space, says Taylor, the brand strategist. I feel like Democrats have fallen into a rut in terms of the way that they message . . . Like, we have to explain stuff to people. Its just boring and it does not resonate with people, especially young people.
Being boring comes at a steep cost, as marketing studies have proven. When youre dull, its both ineffective and expensive, Taylor says. In the political context, being dull is extremely perilous for the Democrats, if you think about what’s at stake in terms of our democracy and our republic. You end up having to spend a lot more in media dollars in order to achieve the same amount of effectiveness than you would have with more compelling campaigns.
There are exceptions. Potential Energy Coalition, for example, ran an ad for clean school buses that features a grimy bus driver handing out cigarettes to childrennot boring. But Taylor argues that the Democratic Party would do better if it worked with a wide swath of experienced marketers.
“There’s been this firewall between the creative community and the political community,” he says. “I really wish that firewall would come down, because I think there’s so many people in the world of advertising that would love to help. Every brief that I get from brands now is, how do you make a dent in culture? Or how do you get talked about? It’s all about generating fame for your brand like press, earned media. That’s what we’re good at, or at least the really talented people in advertising. And I wish more of those people could get back in the political world.”
Climate wasn’t the focus
Most messaging about the IRA focused on economic benefits, rather than climate. The economic benefits are significant, to be clear. The tax credits for consumers, for example, help pay for appliances that can slash energy bills. “I think part of the conversation that we collectively should be having right now is, what are the best ways to reduce energy costs for American families?” says Ari Matusiak, co-founder and CEO of the nonprofit Rewiring America. “An obvious way to do that is by people having more efficient machines in their homes that use less energy and deliver better performance. And that’s exactly what these tax credits are helping to pay for.”
Surveys showed that Americans were worried about daily costs. That’s obviously a very real concern. Still, that doesn’t mean that the dominant messaging should have necessarily been about inflation or the high cost of living, says Shenker-Osorio. “You have to decide what the conversation is going to be about,” she says.
Climate change ranks lower when people are forced to compare it with the economy. Still, Americans do care about climate impacts, and they respond to strong messages about it. “We’ve done hundreds and hundreds of tests on this,” says Marshall from Potential Energy Coalition. “There is a latent, easily [activated] concern in the minds of almost all citizens that something is wrong with the planet and that we should be addressing it. That is a concern that touches people of all political persuasions. And so when you message the fact that we need to stop that from happening, it is very motivating.”
The dire threat to the planet is really the main reason for people to support clean energy. “It’s a pretty major reasonit’s actually bigger than the other things,” Marshall says. “And so we are chickening out of our big ‘why.'”
As Potential Energy Coalition tests different messages, the most effective are about the direct consequences of climate change on people’s lives. “The messaging needs to move from morality to materiality,” he says. “It sholdn’t be something one does because of my particular values. It should be something that one gets behind because it materially affects their lives . . . how it’s affecting your life, your kids, your farm, your insurance costs.” In the group’s testing, the least effective messages were promises of economic benefit.
How much does marketing matter for policy?
Even if most Americans don’t know the details of what’s in the IRA, the incentives have been popular. “We’ve seen massive uptake of the various programs,” says Matusiak. Taxpayers claimed more than $8 billion in credits on their 2023 returnsmore than twice what the government had projected. Millions of people have used a tool that Rewiring America created to help households calculate how much they could save through tax credits and rebates. Companies invested hundreds of billions in new factories to make electric cars, solar panels, and other clean energy tech (though billions in planned investments have now been cancelled since Trump changed the direction of federal policy). The majority of the investment in clean manufacturing went to red states, despite the fact that no Republican voted for the legislation.
If the IRA’s initiatives had stayed in place as long as they were intended to10 yearsit wouldn’t matter so much whether most people knew that they existed. If you found out about a tax credit through a contractor, or TurboTax, and didn’t know where it originated, you’d still be able to use it. But if voters still aren’t making the connection between the programs and how they benefit their own lives, they probably won’t feel motivated to advocate for them now that they’re under threat. And name recognition isn’t enough on its owneven Medicare is at risk in the current version of the budget bill. But arguably, better marketing could have helped.
The biggest hurdle in marketing something like the IRA or another climate policy isn’t the exact message, Marshall says. Even though some messages perform better than others, climate messaging in general resonates. But it’s harder to make sure that those messages are actually reaching voters. “The major challenge on climate legislation is a distribution challenge rather than a messaging challenge,” he says. “We don’t have nearly enough spokespeople, we don’t have nearly enough faces of the movement. We need a lot more people talking about it.”
Political will for climate action could easily grow. “We, the citizens, haven’t changed,” he says. “The government changed . . . but the regular people haven’t changed. They’re getting the same limited amount of information. They still care a lot about this issue, and they’re phenomenally moveable on the issue.”
It can be tough out there for leaders. Its challenging to drive results, ensure youre supporting employees well-being, and maintain your own motivation as well.
So how can you be a good leader, and what are the strategies that really work? A helpful concept is spacious leadershipa management approach in which you create space for others to participate, make choices, and be their best. With spacious leadership, you also ensure space for yourself to enhance your own effectiveness and satisfaction on the job.
THE NEED FOR IMPROVED LEADERSHIP
In spite of leaders who work hard to do their best, a new survey by consulting firm DDI finds that only about 40% of workers believe that leaders are high quality. In comparison, leaders tend to rate themselves better than others rate them. Theres a perception gapalong with an opportunity for leaders to get better.
Theres also evidence that leaders are feeling the pressure. In fact, 71% of leaders say their stress levels have increased, 54% report they are worried about burnout, and 40% have given thought to leaving a leadership role because they struggle with their own well-being, according to the DDI data.
A spacious leadership approach addresses how leaders support others, and also how they manage their own workplace experience.
CREATE SPACE FOR INVOLVEMENT
One of the first ways to demonstrate spacious leadership is to invite people to participate, get involved, and have a voice. At the root of this kind of leadership is humility.
It doesnt mean giving up your voice. Spacious leaders have a strong point of view, and theyre secure with their own expertise, but they dont assume they have all the answers or the best answers.
Comfort with admitting mistakes is also related to spacious leadership. Leaders dont have to know it alland people appreciate it when their managers ask for ideas and value input in finding solutions.
Spacious leaders empower people to be part of the process by communicating effectively. When leaders offer clear direction, goals, or challenges, people are able to be proactive and suggest ways to get things done. And when people have the opportunity to get involved, they are also more likely to feel a sense of ownership and dedication to their work. Demonstrate spacious leadership by inviting people in and sharing context so they can be effective participants in the process.
CREATE SPACE FOR LEARNING AND GROWTH
People of all generations crave development. In spacious leadership, you create space for people to expand their skills and competencies.
Investing in employees growth sends a message that you value them and their contributions. You can support people by creating succession plans or recommending formal learning sessions, offering regular coaching and feedback, or introducing them to mentors outside your department.
The outcomes of these approaches are striking. According to the DDI study, when leaders provided coaching and feedback to employees, those employees were nine times more likely to trust their leader. And when leaders actively supported development, employees were 11 times more likely to trust their leader. Demonstrate spacious leadership by coaching and developing people.
CREATE SPACE FOR PERFORMANCE
We all have an instinct to matter, and people will be happier and provide more discretionary effort when they are supported in performing at their best. When youre creating space for performance, youre giving people plenty of choice, control, and autonomy.
Control and decision-making have been proven to matter for health and longevity. According to two Indiana University studies (one conducted in 2016 and the other in 2020), people who experienced high job stress and had limited control over their work process were less healthy and had higher mortality rates. On the other hand, when they were in high-stress jobs but had greater choice and more decision-making power, they were healthier and lived longer.
People also perform best when they have enough time to get things done. Sometimes things are hectic, urgent, or last minute, but spacious leaders do their best to give people adequate time to deliver results. This allows people the space to reflect, plan, and invest in the quality of their outcomes. Demonstrate spacious leadership by giving people the necessary support to perform their best.
CREATE SPACE FOR WELL-BEING
Another way to create space for people is by attending to their well-being. Give people the opportunity to set and maintain appropriate boundaries in their work and life. In addition, tune into how people are doing and ask questions. You dont need to be a professional social worker, but when you can demonstrate empathy and point people to resources, it sends a strong message about how much you care. Create space for them to share, and then listen and offer support.
Paying attention to well-being is good for peopleand it pays off for organizations. In a global study by the Workforce Institute at UKG, a workplace software provider, 80% of people said they were energized at work when they had better mental health, and 63% said they were committed to their work.
Some 69% of workers reported that their leader has a bigger impact on their mental health than their therapist or their doctorand about the same impact as their partner. When organizations prioritize well-being, the DDI data finds, people are 12 times more likely to rate leadership quality as high. Demonstrate spacious leadership by ensuring people have the space to nurture their wellbeing.
CREATE SPACE FOR SELF-CARE
As a leader, your own strength is critical to how you can support others. Just as you create space for your teams excellence, do the same for yourself. Be consistent, present, and accessible, but also ensure you have time to get away and turn off.
Also consider the self-care that works best for you. The popular narrative about self-care suggests that you should spend time alone, but you may choose to spend time with others who energize you. Many people think self-care must always involve saying no, but it can also include saying yes to activities that you feel passionate about. Most important is to make choices that are nourishing for you.
Another way to ensure self-care is to create a small group of trusted colleagues. Leadership requires a balance of authenticity and transparency with appropriate professionalism. Youll want to establish trusting relationships with other leaders (or people outside your organization) with whom you can relax, share worries and concerns, or get advice. Demonstrate spacious leadership by giving yourself space to regroup, rejuvenate, andbring your best.
THE LANGUAGE WE USE
The way we think about things and how we talk to ourselves have a significant impact on the choices we make and how we behave. With spacious leadership, youll focus on all the ways you can create space for others and for yourself, resulting in terrific success.
The climate crisis is worsening. Last year was the warmest on record, global sea ice levels are at a record low, and the economic toll of extreme natural disasters continues to mount.
Just this week, the World Meteorological Organization said the global average temperature is likely to rise nearly 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels within the next five years, with growing negative impact on our economies, our daily lives, our ecosystems and our planet. Experts are adamant that the only way to slow the warming is to stop burning the fossil fuels that create the greenhouse effect.
And yet, in 2024, emissions reached a new high. As the WMOs Secretary-General Celeste Saulo put it: We are heading in the wrong direction. And as the temperature rises, so does the chance that Earths natural systems will cross thresholds that trigger irreversible and cascading destruction.
The encroaching threat of these tipping points is why the British governments Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) is pouring 57 million ($76 million) into studying climate cooling approaches. Thats a fancy way of referring to climate geoengineering, or intentionally tinkering with the Earths weather systems in an attempt to cool things down. More specifically, ARIA is examining whether we might be able to reflect some sunlight away from the surface of the Earth and back into space.
With this investment, the UK government becomes the top funder of solar geoengineering research in the world. But whats really raising eyebrows is the news that some of ARIA’s experiments could take place outside, in the real world, and with a governments seal of approval. Could this be a step toward legitimizing what has, up until now, been seen as a climate hack of last resort?
Geoengineering has long been a somewhat taboo topic in the larger conversation about climate change. Many scientists worry it could have unintended and irreversible consequences, possibly doing more harm than good. For example, modelling from a recent study published in the journal Nature Climate Change suggested that so-called marine cloud brightening off the U.S. West Coast would indeed help lower temperatures locally, but could inadvertently trigger more intense heat waves in Europe.
At the same time, environmentalists fear geoengineering would give a free pass to polluters to carry on with business as usual. ARIA acknowledges these anxieties, and gives concession to the net-zero purists. Decarbonization is the only sustainable way to reduce global temperatures, says ARIA program director Mark Symes.
But ARIA also says that the dearth of real and relevant physical data from outdoor [geoengineering] experiments is itself dangerous given the direction were headed. What might be the risks of hurried deployment of under-researched climate engineering approaches where we have little understanding of the consequences? the group asks. In other words, if things get so bad that we have to use these tools, wed better know what were doing. As things stand, if we were to face a climate tipping point in the near future, we currently lack the basic knowledge needed to understand what our options are, Symes says.
ARIA aims to fill the existing knowledge gaps and answer fundamental questions about whether solar geoengineering is practical, measurable, and controllable.
ARIA aims to fill the existing knowledge gaps and answer fundamental questions about whether solar geoengineering is practical, measurable, safe, controllable, or even whether [it] should be ruled out entirely, Symes says.
It will fund 21 projects over the next five years, four of which are controlled, small-scale outdoor experiments focusing on solar geoengineering methods including: spraying seawater into the air to brighten clouds over the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, and in the UK; using an electric charge to brighten clouds in the UK; and using weather balloons to expose small amounts (as in milligrams) of mineral dust to the stratosphere to understand whether this method could be used to reflect sunlight (the balloon launch locations have yet to be determined but are likely to be in the U.S. or the UK).
A fifth outdoor experiment will focus on trying to re-thicken Arctic sea ice in Canada (which, if successful, could also have the knock-on effect of reflecting more sunlight back into space). The soonest any of these outdoor projects would begin is early 2026.
The other 16 projects will examine the ethics of geoengineering, how it might be responsibly governed, as well as computer modeling and simulating climate cooling in the lab. ARIAs broad program of research will help advance our fundamental understanding of solar geoengineering and help to ensure that policymakers have the information they need to make informed decisions about these ideas in future, said Dr. Pete Irvine, a research assistant professor at the University of Chicago who studies solar geoengineering, and the co-founder of SRM360, a nonprofit focused on fostering discussions around solar reflection methods.
Previous attempts to conduct outdoor geoengineering tests have been short-lived and quickly condemned. At least eight U.S. states have passed or are considering legislation to ban the practice, and the Environmental Protection Agency is investigating a geoengineering startup called Make Sunsets, accusing it of polluting the air (nevermind the EPAs loosening of pollution restrictions for, say, coal-fired power plants). On an international scale, many nations have signed onto a de facto large-scale geoengineering moratorium. The U.S. has also been building an alert system that would be able to detect if other nations are using solar geoengineering.&bsp;
None of this has stopped scientists and private companies from dabbling. If anything, the stigma around geoengineering has pushed projects to become more rogue and secretive. Just last year, a study on cloud brightening techniques in Alameda, California, was forced to shut down in part because local officials only learned about the research from an article in The New York Times.
The ARIA program is hoping to avoid a similar fate by engaging with local communities at the outset of a project, and keeping lines of communication open as work progresses. ARIA sees consultation and engagement with the public as processes that will be sustained for the lifetime of projects, Symes wrote recently. A key aim is to earn and maintain trust in the research that is being undertaken. The group will conduct environmental assessments, and be transparent about any known risks, as well as test results. The program is also overseen by an independent oversight committee.
ARIA says it has no intention of actually deploying or scaling any of the solutions it wants to test. That may be a comfort to some, but it could also be seen to undermine the value and legitimacy of the research. “These technologies will always remain speculative, and unproven in the real world, until they are deployed at scale, said Mike Hulme, a professor of human geography at the University of Cambridge. Just because they work in a model, or at a micro-scale in the lab or the sky, does not mean they will cool the climate safely, without unwanted side-effects, in the real world. There is therefore no way that this research can demonstrate that the technologies are safe, successful, or reversible.
Theres no real guarantee these experiments will go ahead. According to ARIA documents, the tests will be required to start indoors, and can only move out of the lab if questions still remain unanswered and researchers are certain that any effects would last no longer than 24 hours. And ARIA might pull the plug on a project that fails to meet certain research milestones.
Our current trajectory suggests that warming is happening at an alarming rate, Symes says. Our goal is to build knowledge and help shape global standards for how this science is conducted responsibly.
