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Yuan Longping, the Chinese agronomist credited with saving millions of people from dying of hunger, died at 90 on Saturday.

In 1973, Longping developed the world's first high-yield hybrid rice strain, which produced 20% more rice per acre than nonhybrid varieties. That means his innovations helped feed an extra 70 million people per year. 

The backstory: China suffered a disastrous famine in the early 1960s as a result of Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward plan to collectivize agriculture. Yuan said his experiences of seeing people starving to death led him to research rice, which serves as the main grain for half the world's population. 

Yuan's breakthroughs turned him into a national hero in China and within the international agriculture community. He crisscrossed the globe introducing his rice hybrids to farmers in lower-income nations.

Looking ahead...food security remains top of mind for Chinese officials. Last year, President Xi Jinping called on citizens to stop wasting food and to be more conscientious about food consumption. 

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GOP Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah on Thursday asked state residents to engage in a "weekend of prayer" for rain amid a severe drought.

Cox's request came after he declared a state of emergency last month. The entire state is considered to be "abnormally dry," with 90.2 percent of Utah undergoing an "extreme drought" and 62.2 percent of the state experiencing an "exceptional drought," according to the National Drought Mitigation Center.

Under such conditions, there is an increased risk of fire danger and native vegetation is adversely impacted.

"By praying collaboratively and collectively, asking God or whatever higher power you believe in, for more rain, we may be able to escape the deadliest aspects of the continuing drought,"he said in a video. "Please join me and Utahns, regardless of religious affiliation, in a weekend of humble prayer for rain."

Cox detailed the measures that he's already promoted to prevent a strain on existing water reserves but was frank in his assessment of the lack of moisture throughout the state.

"I've already asked all Utahns to conserve water by avoiding long showers, fixing leaky faucets, and planting water-wise landscapes," he said in a press statement. "But I fear those efforts alone won't be enough to protect us."

He added: "We need more rain, and we need it now. We need some divine intervention."

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On Thursday, the National Weather Service in Utah advised of "excessive heat" across much of the state through Saturday evening.

Last month, Cox signed an executive order prohibiting state agencies from watering during the warmest times of the day, roughly between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m.

Glen Merrill, the hydrologist at the National Weather Service in Salt Lake City, told The Washington Post that about 95% of Utah's water supply originates from melting snowpack in higher elevations.

This year, the "reduced snow cover" generated less water, which was absorbed by the dry soil.

"It didn't make it into the channels and streams," he told The Post. "The forecast for [stream] volume through July is about 25 to 40 percent of normal."

Merrill added that the drought came on in 2019 and accelerated last summer, advancing across the state.

"[The drought] even spread all the way into the beginning of our cool season [in 2020]," he told The Post. "It's rare to see that."

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Imagine a wall of rock and ice 1,800 feet wide falling the length of four Empire State Buildings stacked end-to-end.

A slab that size is responsible for the disaster in northern India that killed more than 200 people and destroyed two power plants four months ago, according to a new study published Thursday.

Just before dawn on February 7, a massive chunk broke off a glacier on Ronti Peak in the Indian Himalayas. The slab dropped more than a mile into the valley below, from its position roughly 18,000 feet above ground, at almost 134 miles per hour. 

As the chunk landed, the rock disintegrated and the ice melted, creating a wall of water and debris that swiftly funneled into the river valley below. From there, the mixture cascaded toward the Rishiganaga and Tapovan hydropower plants in India's Chamoli district. After a curve in the valley slowed the sludge down, it swept into tunnels underneath the plants at speeds of up to 56 miles per hour, trapping and killing many workers inside.

The severity of the event, known as the Chamoli disaster, initially stumped scientists. Typically, landslides in the region don't kickstart floods as rapid or lengthy as the one that occurred in February.

"A 'normal' dry rock avalanche would not have traveled as far as this one did — in other words, would not have reached either the Rishiganga or Tapovan hydroplants," Dan Shugar, a geoscientist at the University of Calgary and co-author of the new study, told Insider.

Shugar's team discovered key elements that could explain the disaster's severity: The initial avalanche's composition (about 20% ice and 80% rock), coupled with its mile-long fall, resulted in a hyper-mobile torrent of debris that doomed workers in the valley below.

The researchers calculated that the flood was 27 million cubic meters in volume — enough to cover more than 1,600 football fields in 10 feet of debris and still have some left over.

The flood climbed 722 feet up the valley walls

Flooding and landslides are not uncommon in Uttarakhand, the area of northern India where Chamoli is located. In 2013, heavy rainfall set off devastating floods in the area than killed up to 5,700 people. 

After the February disaster, experts initially thought a lake near the top of Ronti Peak had burst after the chunks of glacier holding it together cracked or broke off. Some glacial lakes can hold hundreds of millions of cubic meters of water. 

But satellite imagery showed there were no such lakes along the debris flow's path. 

By analyzing maps of the valleys' terrain, video footage of the event, and earthquake data in the area, Shugar's team was able to reconstruct what happened.

The chunk of glacier that broke off Ronti Peak in the early morning was, on average, 262 feet thick. When it touched down at the mountain's base, the slab flattened a section of nearby forest, and threw a thick dust cloud into air. The impact with the valley floor was so violent that the rock and ice therein blended together to form a flood that climbed 722 feet up the valley walls.

It was "almost the 'optimal' combination" for melting glacier ice, Holger Frey, a glaciologist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, told Insider. The massive flood, he added, "facilitated the large reach and destructive nature of this disastrous event."

'It's only a matter of time' until a disaster like this happens again

The flood caught workers at the hydroplants in Chamoli by surprise. 

But according to the study, an early warning system could have given workers six to 10 minutes of notice before the flood reached them. Seismic sensors — which monitor rumblings in the Earth for signs of earthquakes or shifting rock — can detect when an avalanche happens and let workers know if a flood is on its way.

Even if the Chamoli disaster couldn't have been prevented, Frey said, "a well-designed warning system should be able to warn workers at these plants and allow them to seek safe grounds."

After all, the conditions that led to the Chamoli disaster aren't going to disappear any time soon.

Evidence from other mountainous regions, like Alaska, suggest glacier-related landslides are increasing in frequency as the climate warms, according to Shugar.

"I expect this would be similar in high mountain Asia," he said.

Rising air and surface temperatures are linked to more instability in glaciers and an increasing likelihood of landslides high in the mountains. The warmer the Earth becomes, the more glaciers shrink.

"It's only a matter of time before the next such massive event will happen somewhere in the Himalayas," Frey said in a press release.

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NOW WATCH: Here's how to survive an avalanche

Following is a transcript of the video.

Narrator: There's a volcano beneath Yellowstone National Park. But it's not your average volcano. It's hundreds of meters deep, larger than the state of Rhode Island and capable of eruptions thousands of times more violent than anything we've ever witnessed. This is a supervolcano. It's one of three in the US and it's considered to be the greatest volcano threat in the country.

If Yellowstone's volcano erupted, it would be catastrophic. The eruption would shoot a tower of ash into the air, taller than Mount Everest, covering nearby cities in over a meter of ash and creating giant clouds that would block the sun for decades. Ultimately, global temperatures would drop, plants would die, and agriculture would fail. In fact, the UN estimates that the entire world would run out of food in just over two months.

Now, Yellowstone has a history of eruptions like this. It's erupted three times in the past 2.1 million years. That's roughly once every 600,000 years. And the last time it erupted? Oh, around 600,000 years ago. But despite what these sensational headlines might have you think, Yellowstone is not going to erupt tomorrow or even 1,000 years from now. In fact, scientists estimate that another supereruption might not happen for another few million years or so. Or with some scientific ingenuity, we could make it so that Yellowstone never erupted again.

That was the idea behind a thought experiment that several scientists at NASA JPL put together in 2015. The idea? Cool the volcano down. After all, heat is what often causes volcanic eruptions in the first place. It rises from Earth's core and builds up within the volcanic chamber until one day the pressure is so great it explodes. And Yellowstone is no different. Each year, it produces enough heat to power six industrial power plants. About 60 to 70% of that heat escapes through hot springs and geysers, like Old Faithful. But the rest stays underground, inside the supervolcano's magma chambers. And it's here that the scientists staged the attack. In the scenario, they propose to drill a series of wells around the perimeter of the supervolcano. The wells would be some of the deepest in the world, reaching up to 10 km below the surface. They'd pump cold water down into the wells, which over time, would cool a ring of rock around the magma chamber. Sort of like how coolant in your car carries heat away from its engine. And bonus, the water's heated to around 340 degrees Celsius as it moves through the chamber. So the plan is to loop it back through the wells and use it to drive an electric generator, which could power the surrounding area for tens of thousands of years, essentially transforming Yellowstone into a giant geothermal power station. And ultimately, paying for itself in the end.

The scientists concluded that yes, in theory, this could work. But would we ever actually try it? Probably not. For one thing, you'd have to extract 20 gigawatts of energy to cool the volcano down to a safe temperature, which would take an estimated 16,000 years from start to finish. Not to mention, the plan would cost $3.46 billion. That's about 20% of NASA's annual budget. Even worse, cooling the rock could create fractures near the magma chamber, which might trigger a supereruption, the very thing we're trying to avoid in the first place. But lucky for us, the volcano is still sleeping. And probably will be for a while.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This video was originally published in January 2019.

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SpaceX may have to delay its first Starship rocket orbit mission because of ongoing assessments of wildlife and ecosystems around the launch area, a source told CNN on Tuesday.

The launch was scheduled for July, according to a tweet from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. NASA Spaceflight reported in March that SpaceX's internal goal for launch was July 1.

But the date could be pushed back due to ongoing environmental reviews that need to be approved by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) before SpaceX can get a launch license, the source, who is familiar with the licensing process, told CNN.

SpaceX needs to conduct an environmental assessment to ensure that the Starship-Super Heavy system won't harm nearby wildlife or ecosystems around its launch pad in Boca Chica, Texas.

The assessments and a launch license won't be processed in time for an early July launch, the source told CNN.

The company may ultimately need a new environmental impact statement, which could take up to three years to complete, Insider's Morgan McFall-Johnsen and Aylin Woodward reported in March.

Musk's space company has launched five prototypes of the 16-story Starship rocket. The first four exploded, but the fifth landed successfully, meaning Starship can now be tested with the 23-story Super Heavy booster, designed to blast the rocket into orbit.

The first orbital test of Starship, which is due to take around 90 minutes, is set to launch from South Texas and splash down off the coast of Hawaii, according to the company's FCC filing in May.

SpaceX eventually wants the Starship system to carry humans to the moon and to Mars, returning back to Earth for repeat trips.

Musk has said he is "highly confident" that SpaceX will launch an uncrewed Starship to Mars in 2024, followed by a crewed mission in 2026. Space industry experts told Insider that SpaceX could well reach Mars, but not as soon as Musk hopes.

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A Chick-fil-A employee has posted a video on TikTok purporting to show the amount of chicken nuggets that are thrown out by the fast-food chain daily.

In the footage, the worker can be seen by what appears to be another employee tossing away a full tray of chicken nuggets into the trash. The caption of the now-viral video read: "What they do every night with the chicken nuggets at Chick-fil-A." 

The video, which only lasted a few seconds, has since amassed more than 7.4 million views, per Newsweek. 

The outlet reported that a user commented: "The amount of food we throw away and the amount of starving people there are just doesn't sit right with me."

One person who said they formerly worked at Chick-fil-A wrote that the chain's workers were not allowed to take home uneaten food, or they would be penalized. "I used to work at [Chick-fil-A] and we would get written up if we took food home and didn't throw it out. They were stingy [as f***] which is why I quit," they alleged, according to Newsweek.

A spokesperson for Chick-fil-A told Insider in response to the video: "We aren't able to determine which Chick-fil-A restaurant this occurred at but can provide some clarity to what may have occurred. Chick-fil-A restaurants have high food safety and quality standards, so when food falls outside a certain hold time we're no longer able to safely serve it in our restaurants." 

According to Chick-fil-A's website, the chain has a food donation program called Chick-fil-A Shared Table, which launched in 2012. The program is intended to fight hunger in local communities "by donating surplus food to local soup kitchens, shelters and nonprofits to feed those in need." 

It is unclear, however, if the Chick-fil-A location filmed in the video was part of the program. 

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In April, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said that Black Lives Matter "is the strongest terrorist threat in our county."

She also introduced legislation to award Congressional Gold Medals to law-enforcement officers "who protected American cities during the Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots" of 2020.

But on May 19, Greene invested up to $15,000 in stock from Walmart Inc. — a company that President and CEO Doug McMillon said would "help replace the structures of systemic racism" and "build in their place frameworks of equity and justice that solidify our commitment to the belief that, without question, Black Lives Matter."

Consumers may also buy numerous Black Lives Matter-themed products at Walmart.com — but no "All Lives Matter" merchandise.

Greene's Walmart-stock purchase, disclosed on June 17 in a US House stock-transaction filing reviewed by Insider, is the latest example of the Georgia Republican's political rhetoric and financial ambitions colliding.

Read more: Assassination threats, AOC potshots, and wolf teats: 2 wild weeks inside Marjorie Taylor Greene's Georgia district as it flips a giant middle finger at DC

Last month, she also purchased stock worth up to $15,000 in NextEra Energy Inc., a major power-generation company that touts its efforts to combat the human causes of the climate crisis — including those of its own doing.

"Our industry can best confront climate change by investing in clean power generation that produces zero or low emissions," NextEra wrote in a 2020 report on its environmental, social, and governance goals. "We believe that no company in any industry has done more to reduce carbon emissions and to confront climate change than NextEra Energy."

Greene has expressed skepticism toward the climate crisis and has vocally opposed liberal environmental ideas such as the Green New Deal.

In 2018, Greene erroneously speculated in a Facebook post that deadly California wildfires could have been caused not by the climate crisis but by a Pacific Gas and Electric-connected "light beam coming down to Earth"— fodder for the "Jewish space laser" meme with which Greene's detractors have endlesslytrolled her.

In an email Monday to Insider, Greene attributed her stock activity to a financial advisor. 

"I have an independent investment advisor that has full discretionary authority on my accounts," Greene wrote. "I do not direct any trades."

Greene did not say whether she provided general guidance to her advisor, such as whether to avoid buying certain kinds of stocks.

Representatives for Walmart and NextEra did not respond to Insider's request for comment. Since Greene purchased her shares, Walmart's stock price has declined slightly, while NextEra's has increased slightly.

On May 18 or 19, Greene also purchased up to $30,000 worth of shares in Nestle SA and $15,000 worth of shares each in Advanced Micro Devices Inc., the energy-resource company BHP Group, Seagate Technology Holdings PLC, Southern Co., and Vulcan Materials Co.

Greene did not address questions about how her stock investments are picked, or whether members of Congress should be allowed to buy and sell individual stocks in the first place. 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, both Democrats, have said they plan to introduce bills directed at banning the practice, which is legal despite corporations routinely lobbying lawmakers, testifying before Congress, and jockeying for federal-government contracts.

Sticky stock situations

Several federal lawmakers, including Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina and Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski of New Jersey, have faced recent investigations into their stock activity.

This isn't the first time this year Greene made curious stock trades. 

On January 20, Greene and her husband sold up to a combined $210,000 worth of shares in Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon, The Daily Beast's Sam Brodey reported. (Members of Congress are required to report the values of their stock trades only in broad ranges.)

Greene has regularly clashed with corporate America since becoming an elected official in January.

Read more: How Marjorie Taylor Greene went from Nowhereville to fundraising juggernaut and AOC of the far right

She has routinelycriticized such tech companies as the "Silicon Valley Cartel" after some suspended or banned the accounts of prominent conservatives — including that of former President Donald Trump — for violating their terms of service. 

"This is yet another attempt by the Silicon Valley Cartel to silence voices that speak out against their far-left woke orthodoxy," Greene's office said in March after Twitter temporarily suspended her account "in error."

Greene has also blasted corporations supporting COVID-19 "vaccine passports"— typically, an app that displays proof of someone's vaccination — as engaging in "corporate communism." 

In February, the House voted 230-199 to strip Greene of her posts on the House Budget Committee and House Education and Labor Committee, citing her past support of conspiracy theories and remarks deemed racist or antisemitic.

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Hundreds of songbirds across at least eight US states are dying from a mysterious illness with strange symptoms, but experts have no idea what's causing it.

The US Geological Survey said on June 9 that sick and dying birds were being reported in several US states, with neurological symptoms and some physical complications that include eye swelling and crusty discharge.

Birds with these symptoms have now been reported in Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Washington DC, Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland. Allisyn Gillet, an ornithologist with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, said a large variety of songbirds are dying from the unknown illness.

"We need to figure out what makes this disease be able to affect all these different species," she told Insider, "and why is it in all these different states."

The affected species include those that are typically seen in backyards — common grackles, blue jays, European starlings, American robins, and cardinals, among others.

It's 'as if they didn't have any control over their head'

Gillet said they realized something was going on when a local wildlife rehabilitation center in the state started taking in birds with the same combination of peculiar symptoms. The birds had eye swelling, crustiness, and discharge, to the extent that it hindered their ability to see.

The birds were also disoriented and exhibiting unusual behaviors, including walking in strange ways and stumbling around. They had little control of their limbs and would do things like kick their legs up while on their backs.

"They would sway their heads in strange ways, as if they didn't have any control over their head," Gillet said.

People were reporting the birds seemed oddly unafraid of people, but Gillet said they were likely just too blinded or disoriented to react. She said the mortality rate of the illness appears high, as most of the birds are dead shortly after they are reported to officials. There have been 280 confirmed bird deaths with these symptoms in Indiana alone, according to Gillet.

Diagnostic labs are testing the bird specimens for viruses and bacteria, and are conducting toxicology testing for chemicals. They have been able to rule out avian influenza and West Nile virus, but not much else.

"They haven't come to any conclusion. There are no definitive results right now," Gillet said.

One possible factor being explored is the recent brood of cicadas throughout the eastern US. The emergence of the cicadas aligns with the timing and range of the bird illness. Gillet said there's a correlation there, but a link has not yet been established.

Taking down bird feeders and baths helps the birds 'socially distance'

In the meantime, officials in the impacted states are recommending citizens take down their bird feeders and bird baths, things that encourage birds to congregate.

"We want them to socially distance," Gillet explained. "We don't know enough, so we have to take the proper precautions."

She also recommended reporting instances of birds displaying these symptoms to local wildlife authorities. Some states, like Kentucky and Indiana, have online wildlife disease reporting systems where citizens can upload photos or videos of the afflicted bird.

Gillet said the illness is especially unfortunate given that birds in North America already face many threats, such as habitat loss, window collisions, and natural predators with inflated populations.

A study published in the journal Science in 2019 found 3 billion birds have vanished from North America since 1970, and that even common species are experiencing declines.

"It's unfortunate that there has to be another thing that is affecting their populations negatively," Gillet said.

Have a news tip? Contact this reporter at kvlamis@insider.com.

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Construction in the popular tourist destination of Tulum, Mexico, is booming to keep up with an influx of digital nomads and other visitors. 

With new hotels and restaurants come a greater draw for tourists. But the construction has been spelling disaster for the environment. Cenotes, which are sinkholes or caves that have filled with water and are often used as swimming holes, have grown polluted because of such development over the years, and the new construction is making matters worse. Of the 6,000 cenotes found across the Yucatán Peninsula, about 80% are contaminated, said Mexico's Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources.

Part of the problem stems from the destruction of mangroves that takes place during much of this construction. These trees and shrubs act as a natural filtration system to keep pollutants out of the water. Without them, contaminants such as sewage, chemicals, and more find their way into Tulum's waterways.

From there, the contamination can seep into the underground water system and then into the sea. Divers have even documented contamination of the cenotes with feces. The construction also harms wildlife, such as sea turtles, by destroying their natural habitats.

Read more about how the rise in tourism is impacting destinations such as Tulum in Insider's story here.

Groundwater pollutants in the aquifers under Mexico's Riviera Maya district include chemicals from painkillers, illicit drugs such as cocaine, remnants of personal-care products such as deodorants and toothpaste, and chemical runoff, a United Nations University study found.

The pollution of cenotes can also "adversely affect the nearby ecosystem, like lagoons, estuaries and coral reefs, causing a serious deterioration of this ecosystem and in public health," said a study published last year that examined coliform bacteria in cenotes in Cancún.

Adding to the problem is the fact that cenotes are often used as dumping grounds for waste. About 25% of household wastewater on the peninsula ends up in the region's aquifers untreated. Researchers said improvements to regional wastewater treatment and sewage-management systems are necessary to help curb this practice. Addressing agricultural runoff is another important step.

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NOW WATCH: Where you should go to stay safe during an earthquake

Following is a transcript of the video. 

Narrator: Bees might not be your favorite insects out there. After all, their stings can really hurt.

Hand: Ouch!

Narrator: But as far as important species go, bees are near the top of the list. You see, bees are critical pollinators, meaning they're responsible for pollinating more than a third of the crops that feed the world's population. But today, bees are dying off at record rates. So, what would a world without bees look like, and what would that mean for our global food supply?

Narrator: Well, if all the bees on Earth suddenly dropped dead tomorrow, things wouldn't look good for our planet. And that's because pollination is critical to the health of our global ecosystem. It's what allows plants to reproduce and grow the fruits and vegetables humans need for a balanced diet. And the thing is, bees are some of the best pollinators out there. In fact, they've co-evolved with flowering plants over millions of years to become pollinating machines.

Elina Niño: Of course, a lot of them are fuzzy, so they have hairs, or specialized equipment, so to speak, where they can store pollen.

Narrator: Bees help pollinate the reported 84% of crops humans eat that are insect-pollinated. Globally, this accounts for a staggering $235 billion to $577 billion in annual food production. Without bees and other pollinators, supermarket shelves would hold about half the fruits and vegetables they have now, transforming the produce section from this... to this. We wouldn't have luxuries like almonds, apples, or avocados.

Niño: We would also suffer in terms of dairy production. We use alfalfa to feed dairy cattle, and dairy cattle, of course, produces the milk, and the milk is used to produce many dairy products that we eat. When I talk to the kids, all the kids are very disappointed to hear that we might lose ice cream.

Narrator: The extinction of bees could have a disastrous domino effect, killing off animals that eat those plants, and so on up the food chain. Luckily, humanity wouldn't face a global famine like you might expect.

Niño: We wouldn't necessarily starve to death, because there are a lot of plants that we do eat and we depend on that are wind-pollinated, including, for example, wheats.

Narrator: So if the bee apocalypse does hit, we could still meet the daily calorie needs of our global population. Our diets, however, would suffer in major ways, as foods that provide key nutrients for our bodies would become scarce and extremely expensive.

Niño: A lot of the plants that we eat that are dependent on animal pollination do provide the necessary micronutrients that improve our health. We would probably be very sickly. So, for example, let's just think about citrus, right? We would probably have issues with scurvy, if you think about it. I guess you could really supplement that with vitamins, but again, definitely not all of the vitamins can be as easily accessible to the body as they are when you're actually eating them.

Narrator: According to the US Department of Agriculture, the work that bees do for US farmers is worth about $15 billion a year, so without them, the cost of produce would skyrocket.

Niño: Especially those who are socioeconomically challenged, they already have hard times accessing the healthy foods, so this would probably impact them even worse.

Narrator: And we could be closer to a bee-less future than you might expect. In 2018, American beekeepers reported losing 41% of their colonies, and worldwide, bees have been dying off at record rates for the past decade.

Niño: Honeybees, at least in the past, I believe, 12 years have been declining about up to 45% annually, in some cases.

Narrator: Scientists haven't pinned down an exact reason for this sudden decline in the bee population. However, likely reasons are global warming, overuse of pesticides, and parasitic varroa mites, which spread viruses to bee colonies. Right now, countries around the world are working to monitor bee colonies and even create new pollination methods using robots.

Niño: There are researchers who are trying to develop drone pollinators, so using drone technology to pollinate flowers. It all would most likely be more costly.

Narrator: So, what can the average person do to be more bee-friendly? Well, if you have a garden, plant a range of flowers so wandering bees can have access to nectar throughout the year.

Niño: Bees that we have that are wild bees, that are native bees, a lot of them actually nest in soil, so leaving bare ground for those bees is really useful if you're redoing your lawn, for example. Providing access to water would also be very helpful for the bees, and reducing pesticide input if at all possible.

Narrator: While steps are already being taken to save the world's bee population, there's still a lot to be done to protect Earth's most buzzy pollinators.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This video was originally published in November 2019.

SEE ALSO: The Great Barrier Reef is at a critical tipping point and could disappear by 2050

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Over the past month, thousands of dead fish have washed up along Florida's once pristine Tampa Bay coast.

The culprit behind Florida's 3 million pounds of dead marine life is a harmful algae bloom that caused Florida to declare a state of emergency three years ago. It's called a red tide because it can turn the ocean a rusty red color.

Red tides are formed by Karenia brevis, a microscopic but powerful organism that occurs naturally in the Gulf of Mexico. 

But it's not just life under the sea that's being damaged by the algae bloom — small businesses across Florida's tourism and seafood industries are suffering from the repercussions of the red tide as well. 

"We were certainly impacted, we had to close for almost two months of harvest," Lost Coast Oyster, Tampa's first sustainable oyster farm, told Insider. "During that two months of closure, we still have to go out and take care of our farm ... and the products we're sitting on and not able to sell, some of it dies."

Viral TikTok videos drew national attention to the causes of the red tide, as environmental activists and local residents documented the dire loss of marine life. Some said wastewater from an abandoned fertilizer plant that was recently released into the bay could have contributed to the strength of the bloom. 

The most circulated video shows a tractor lifting a 400-lb dead Goliath Grouper out of the water, garnering just under 3 million views. Another user posted a video of a dead manatee washed up onshore with a caption that reads "juvenile manatee we found on the beach, dead. Can't believe this is happening."

David Scokol, the owner of Fresco's Waterfront Bistro in St. Pete told Spectrum's Bay News that he had to close the restaurant for a few days because the smell of the rotting fish was so bad.

In hopes of mitigating the stink, Scokol said he hired people to scoop up the dead fish from below the restaurant and put fans out along the outside patio. Fresco's suffered from a substantial drop in business, even after the smell went away, he told Bay News.

Other businesses that rely on local tourism such as fishing charters cut their season short by over a month, according to The Counter. Some local governments even hired shrimp boats to troll for fish carcasses, forming an "ad hoc armada" to lead clean-up efforts, The Tampa Bay Times' Zachary Sampson reported in July.

"You don't want to stay silent on this stuff because you don't want this stuff to happen," Dustin Pack, a fly fishing guide, told The Counter's Jessica Fu. "But then on the other side, you have guys whose livelihoods depend on the water. If you're telling everybody in the world that the fishery is dying, then nobody wants to come here."

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When world leaders from 195 countries gathered in Paris almost six years ago, they agreed to try to cut greenhouse-gas emissions enough to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.

According to a new climate report, however, Earth's temperature is set to blow past that mark in the next 20 years — under any conceivable scenario of future emissions.

The findings, released on Monday, come from the sixth climate assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — a United Nations body that recruits hundreds of scientists from across the globe to synthesize years of climate research and modeling.

The report found that human-driven emissions have already caused the planet to warm by 1.1 degrees in the last 170 years, and that warming trend will continue until over the next two to three decades to some degree, regardless of how much emissions drop.

What climate change will look like in the short term

Global temperatures have risen faster in the last 50 years than any other 50-year period in the last 2,000 years. That's because humanity emitted about 2.4 trillion tons of carbon dioxide between 1850 and 2019. Every trillion tons causes the world's average temperature to increase roughly 0.45 degrees Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit).

The IPCC report outlined five potential future scenarios, each of which assumes a different quantity of carbon emissions between now and the year 2100. So the scenarios all result in different levels of warming. 

Even if emissions drop to net zero in the next 30 years — the IPCC authors' best-case scenario — the global temperature will rise at least 1.5 degrees between now and 2040, the report found. In the worst-case scenario, in which emissions double by 2050, temperatures would rise 2.4 degrees above pre-industrial levels between 2041 and 2060. Then that increase would nearly double by 2100.

If the best-case situation played out, though, temperatures would eventually dip back down, dropping below the 1.5-degree mark by the end of the century.

Some changes in ocean heat and sea-level rise are locked in until 2100

Even in the best-case scenario, the authors found, the ocean warming observed between 1971 and 2018 will double. Waters will also get more acidic and lose oxygen, which can devastate marine life and alter currents that are critical to seasonal weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere. These changes will be irreversible for the next hundreds, if not thousands, of years. 

The report shows as well that glaciers will keep melting for decades or even centuries, and the Greenland Ice Sheet will continue losing ice until 2100 (the Antarctic Ice Sheet will most likely do the same). Because this contributes to sea-level rise, it is virtually certain that oceans will continue rising through the end of this century.

In the best case scenario, the IPCC authors said, oceans will rise by nearly a foot over the next 80 years.

Avoiding 1.5 degrees of warming was the Paris agreement's ideal scenario, though it set 2 degrees as the threshold never to cross. To make sure we stay under that, the new report says, we have about 900 billion tons of carbon left in our budget. In 2019, emissions reached about 37 billion tons— so if that rate continues and no carbon gets removed from the atmosphere, we'd have about 25 years of emissions left.

Still, the impacts a 2-degree temperature increase will have on weather — including extreme heat and heavy precipitation — will be dramatically more severe. For every half-degree of warming, the frequency and intensity of heat waves and droughts increase. At the same time, the planet's permafrost, snow cover, glaciers, ice sheets, and Arctic sea ice shrinks.

7 fast facts from the IPCC report

The UN created the IPCC in 1988 to inform policymakers about how the climate is changing. This is its sixth assessment of existing scientific research.

For these reports, hundreds of scientists from across the globe comb through thousands of scientific papers. They assess how the climate is changing, the impacts of those changes, risks for the future, and what can be done. Almost all the observations and predictions in the report are assigned a level of likelihood or certainty. 

Monday's report is just the first part of the IPCC's sixth assessment. The second and third will be released in early 2022.

Other key findings from the new report include:

• The global temperature between 2001 and 2020 was about 1 degree Celsius higher than it was between 1850 and 1900.
• The world's average sea level rose by about half a foot (0.2 meters) between 1901 and 2018. The rate of annual sea-level rise nearly tripled during that time.
• In 2019, the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere was higher than at any time in at least 2 million years. Concentrations of methane and nitrous oxide — more potent greenhouse gases than CO2 — were higher than at any time in at least 800,000 years.
• Average yearly Arctic sea-ice levels between 2001 and 2020 were their lowest since 1850. The Arctic is likely to have a sea-ice free September at least once before 2050.
• Major tropical cyclones, heat waves, and heavy precipitation events have increased in frequency around the globe over the last four decades.
• Combinations of extreme events like heavy rainfall and hurricane-caused storm surge, paired with rising sea levels, will continue to make flooding more likely in coming decades.
• The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, an ocean current that carries warm water north and cold water south, is weakening. If the current slows enough, Europe and the US East Coast would be hit by freezing temperatures.

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NOW WATCH: Some experts believe climate change may increase the emergence of new animal-to-human transmitted diseases like COVID-19

Following is a transcript of the video.

Benjamin Cook:"Global warming is caused by cow farts."

Deepti Singh: It's not by their farts, but it's by belching.

Cook:"A few degrees' difference is not a big deal." And the way I always like to think about it too is like your body's temperature. If your temperature is three or four degrees warmer, then you're seriously sick.

"It's too late to do anything about it." Unless you're Elon Musk and gonna head off towards Mars, we're all stuck here, so we should try to figure out how we can make it the best planet we can.

Singh: I'm Deepti Singh. I'm an assistant professor in the School of the Environment at Washington State University. I've been studying climate change for about 11 years, and I study extreme weather events and how human activities are influencing them.

Cook: My name is Benjamin Cook, and I'm a climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. I've been working there for about 14 years now. And I study how droughts are changing with global warming and climate change.

Singh: And today we'll be debunking myths about global warming.

Cook: Myths from pop culture. Oh, boy, I'm glad you got this one, Deepti. "The sun is causing global warming."

Singh: Changes in the amount of energy we get from the sun do affect our climate. But over the last 150 years, we know that because the amount of energy we're getting from the sun has not changed significantly over this period. Satellites have been recording the amount of solar radiation that our planet receives. I think Ben has a graph that shows that.

Cook: And what we're looking at here on the yellow is the amount of energy that's coming from the sun, and red is global temperatures. It's pretty clear that the amount of energy we're getting from the sun has been more or less flat for the last several decades, even as temperatures continue to go up and up.

Singh:"Scientists don't agree on what causes climate change."

Cook: 100% of the climate scientists on this Skype call agree.

Singh: If you review the published literature in reputable journals by reputable scientists, all those papers agree that climate change is caused by human activities.

Cook: There's really no other explanation that fits the data. We've looked at the sun. We've looked at just natural variations in circulation in the ocean, in the atmosphere. We've looked at volcanoes. We've looked at changes in ecosystems. And at the end of the day, the only thing that can adequately explain the degree of warming that we've seen over the last 150 years is human greenhouse gas emissions, primarily through the burning of fossil fuels. There's a real clear incentive for people to find some other explanation. Nobody can come up with even a plausible alternative hypothesis.

"Global warming is caused by cow farts."

Singh: It's not by their farts, but it's by belching. Agriculture is a pretty substantial contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, close to 25%. It's not the whole 25%, but it's a good chunk.

Cook: It's important to note, too, that even the cow burps that are producing this methane is not natural. It's all part of a kind of human agricultural system. So blaming it all on cows doesn't take people off the hook.

Singh: "Plants and animals will adapt."

Cook: So, we know that in the past, plants and animals have adapted to climate change, but there's a few fundamental different things now that are very likely to make it quite difficult. In addition, it's not just climate change that's threatening plants and animals, it's habitat fragmentation, it's pollution, it's a variety of other environmental stressors. And so once you kind of put climate change on top of pollution, on top of habitat loss, then it becomes much, much more difficult.

Singh: And just to add to that, I think the extinction rate of species is much higher than the natural extinction rate. And it's partly driven by the processes that Ben just mentioned.

Cook: Myths from social media.

Singh: "Global warming is natural."

Cook: So, we know in the past that climate can change really dramatically from natural causes. The climate during the time of the dinosaurs is very different from the climate during the time of the last ice age. But the changes that we're seeing right now for the most part are not natural. The warming that we're seeing is very likely the fastest warming we've seen anytime in the last several thousand years. It coincides directly with the industrial revolution and the burning of fossil fuels and widespread deforestation. You can look at almost any natural cause, and none of them are sufficient to explain the warming that we've seen in recent decades.

Singh: "Carbon dioxide is the problem."

So, CO2 isn't the problem. It's the increase in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere that is resulting in the rapid warming we're seeing over the last century, which is the problem.

Cook: So, carbon dioxide is one of these gases that we call greenhouse gases, because they're responsible for the greenhouse effect, which basically helps trap energy on Earth and make things much, much warmer than it otherwise would have been. It's not a big stretch then to observe that if we start increasing CO2 concentrations, we're gonna trap more energy and we're gonna warm up.

Singh: Before the industrial revolution, CO2 levels were close to, like, 280 parts per million. And now we're at close to 418 parts per million. So that's a pretty large change in the concentration.

Cook: And the fact is that pretty much anytime the world was warmer, CO2 levels in the atmosphere were higher. And anytime the world was cooler, CO2 concentrations were lower.

"A few degrees' difference is not a big deal." And the way I always like to think about it too is like your body's temperature. We're all supposed to be about 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Even one degree or two degrees of warming is considered a low-grade fever. And if your temperature is three or four degrees warmer, then you're seriously sick.

Singh: So, just to give you a sense, the Earth has warmed by about one degree over the last century. That one degree is an average temperature around our planet. That means some parts of our planet are warming faster than others. I come from India. We have a lot of people that live below poverty in the country. And most of those people, for example, don't have an air conditioner to deal with extreme heat events. So it depends on who we're talking about when we say it's not a big deal, because there are some people around the planet that have the capacity to adapt or cope with these kind of extreme events and with the warming that we've experienced, and then there are billions of people that do not have the capacity to cope with even small changes.

Myths that we, climate scientists, hear the most.

"Global warming will destroy the planet by 2030."

Cook: Just like there's kind of climate deniers who don't know what they're talking about, there's climate doomists who also don't know what they're talking about. This whole idea of the planet being destroyed by 2030 comes out of discussion about, how much time do we have to keep global warming under two degrees? And so it's very likely that we need to kind of get emissions under control by 2030 to keep it under two degrees. It doesn't mean that the world is going to explode or we're all going to be consigned to a fiery "Mad Max" kind of hellscape. It just means that it'll be warmer than we maybe wanted it to be.

Singh: When they say it's gonna destroy the planet, well, the planet's not going to blow up. But it does mean that the way of life and the livelihoods and the things people depend on are going to be affected. There are already people who have been displaced because of sea-level rise, people that are experiencing life-threatening heat conditions.

Cook: The impacts of climate change are not going to be equally felt. These kind of blanket statements are very, very dismissive. And I think they can take attention away from the people who are likely to be most vulnerable to climate change.

Singh: It's not really helpful to put a date on it. I think we just need to know that delaying action on climate change is going to just cost more to society.

Cook:"Global warming is China's fault."

Singh: So, to address that myth, I think there's one important fact we need to understand. When CO2 is emitted, it can stay in the atmosphere for hundreds, if not thousands of years. The CO2 concentrations we're seeing today are a consequence of emissions that have happened over a much longer period, over the last century. And most of those emissions are associated with the industrial revolution and development of countries like the US and industrialized nations in Europe. If we look at emissions this year specifically, sure, the emissions from China are close to what the emissions from the US are. But those emissions are being used to produce products and goods that are being used in other parts of the world. So I don't think it's fair to say that China's responsible when we're all benefiting from the products that are produced there.

Cook: I think even today, it's worth thinking not just about how much is a country emitting, but how much are they emitting per person? And I have another visual aid here. You can pretty clearly see the highest-intensity emitters are places like Australia, the US, Canada, Russia, Saudi Arabia. China isn't even in the top 10.

Singh: It's also a complicated problem because the well-being of people is tied to their consumption of energy. So as long as we're doing that in a sustainable, cleaner way, I think we all have to benefit from it.

"Renewable energy is too expensive to be realistic."

Cook: Renewable energy is getting cheaper all the time, even faster than we expected. And there's a lot of places where it actually can outcompete some fossil fuel sources. For example, I believe wind and solar is more cost-effective than coal in pretty much the entire United States.

Singh: The cost of producing solar panels today is a fraction of what it was just a decade ago. I keep going back to India because that's another region I'm very familiar with. There are a lot of villages there that have been provided energy because they're using solar and wind, which would not have been possible if we were still depending upon CO2. Now, there's still challenges.

Cook: We're not going to kind of be able to switch everything overnight, but it's like any other technology. It's getting cheaper over time. It's getting more efficient. And the more we kind of invest in it, then the faster we'll get to the point that we'll be able to use it for most of our needs.

"Extreme weather isn't caused by global warming."

Singh: So, the right question to ask is not whether an extreme event would have been possible without warming, but it's to ask how the event itself was affected by warming. For example, a tropical storm or a tropical cyclone might result in heavier precipitation because a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture. And so there's more moisture, more fuel in the storm, which results in heavier precipitation and likely more flooding.

Cook: I think a good analogy is a professional athlete on steroids. Athletes need to have some kind of innate fitness and ability, but if you go on steroids, you're a bit more likely to hit a home run. So CO2 is kind of like the steroids of the climate system, and it's just intensifying everything that's already there.

Singh: "The temperature record is unreliable." What do you have to say about that, Ben?

Cook: The record we have of warming for the last 150 years is constructed from basically thousands of thermometer records from around the world. Climate scientists often get accused of modifying the temperature record to make it look like it's warming more than it actually is. At least half a dozen groups around the world who are all independently putting together these records and estimating the global temperature changes that we've seen over the last two centuries, and they're all basically getting the same answer. All this data is publicly available! Anybody can go and get this data and come up with their own calculation. And the fact is that nobody has shown one that is credibly different.

"It's too late to do anything about it."

Singh: It's easy for us to say, "Well, it's too late to do anything about it. Let's throw our hands up and not do anything about it." But there is a lot we can do about it, both individually as well as at the international level. It doesn't have to be a major change, but reducing our consumption of certain meat products that are extremely energy-intensive is one way in which we can affect greenhouse emissions.

Cook: The decisions we make today, we are going to have to deal with, our children are going to have to live with. I will never say that people should not recycle or reduce their car use or eat less meat. But at the end of the day, the big lever is just going to be government. And 'cause the government can set policies that can incentivize actions.

Singh: It's also a weird time to say that it's too late to do anything about it, because we're at a point in time when we have so much information. There are people working on technologies to address climate change and to make our environment cleaner and better. So this is not a time for us to put our hands up. It's our time to take action.

Cook: Climate change itself is not pass-fail. Keeping warming to three degrees is better than four degrees. Keeping warming to two and a half degrees is better than three degrees. Keeping warming to two degrees is better than all of those things. We're all stuck here, so we should try to figure out how we can make it the best planet we can. Climate change is a global problem, and it's going to require a global solution and people to actually kind of work together.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This video was originally published in March 2021.

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In the 2004 film "The Day After Tomorrow," a climatologist played by Dennis Quaid warns world leaders about a rapid climate shift.

The key factor is an ocean current system called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which moves warm water from the equatorial tropics up to Europe and the north Atlantic. This influx of warmer water contributes to western Europe's mild, temperate climate.

In the movie, the AMOC stops completely, causing an ice age to begin almost overnight. While the speed and intensity of that cold snap are hyperbolized in the film, the AMOC is very real, and research suggests a slow down of its circulation is a likely consequence of climate change. 

In a paper published last week, climate scientist Niklas Boers concluded that the AMOC is approaching a tipping point. If enough fresh water from melting polar ice enters the ocean, the current system will experience an "abrupt weakening," and destabilize, he told Insider.   

A new climate report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) similarly suggests that the AMOC will very likely weaken by the end of the century.

According to Boers, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, this weakening would cause temperatures in Europe to fall, and "the cooling effect would be stronger the further north you go."

On the US East Coast, meanwhile, sea levels would rise. Parts of central and west Africa would experience persistent drought conditions, since those areas also benefit from the AMOC's circulation.

An on/off switch for the Atlantic's currents

When the AMOC is flowing quickly, western Europe enjoys a wet and warm climate. Scientists have likened the system to a conveyor belt: Once warmer water reaches the area around the UK, it cools and sinks to the bottom of the Labrador and Nordic Seas. Then that cold water makes a U-turn and snakes along the ocean floor, down to Antarctica's Southern Ocean.

But if this circulation is sluggish and weak, warm tropical waters don't get moved up, and the north Atlantic cools.

The AMOC's speed is determined by a delicate balance of salt and fresh water. Salty water is dense, so it sinks easily. But as Greenland's ice sheet and glaciers continue to melt, more fresh water is joining the AMOC's salty surface water, making it lighter and less likely to sink. That clogs up the circulation's flow.

Prior research suggests that a change in the strength of water circulation in the Atlantic really does precede abrupt climate changes. By examining ice cores dated to Earth's last ice age, scientists have found that the AMOC alternates between two states — a strong "on" state, where the current system runs quickly, and a weak "off" state where that circulation decelerates. 

"A shutdown of the AMOC is the easiest, most efficient way to disrupt the climate system," Francesco Muschitiello, a geographer specializing in paleoclimatology at the University of Cambridge told Insider, adding, "95% of time when we talk about rapid climate change, it's associated with AMOC."

Still, Boers said, any cooling related to the AMOC wouldn't look like "The Day After Tomorrow"— it "would take a few decades," and North America "won't get as cold as the movie suggests."

It would take at least a few hundred years for the AMOC to re-strengthen

In the past, when the AMOC reached a tipping point, the transition from strong to weak took a couple of decades, Boers said. But it takes much longer for the system to switch back.

"It typically took a few hundred to a few thousand years for the AMOC to go back to the strong mode," he said, adding, "if the AMOC were to collapse to the weak mode at some point in the future, it would indeed be very hard to bring it back to the strong mode."

According to the IPCC report, it's possible that the AMOC will experience an abrupt collapse by 2100. That collapse, the report authors said, could be triggered by an unexpected additional melted ice from the Greenland Ice Sheet, which has been thawing at an unprecedented rate. A 2019 study found the ice sheet was melting six times faster than it was 40 years ago. 

It's unlikely, however, that the Greenland Ice Sheet will ever melt quickly enough to completely stop the AMOC.

A full halt like the one depicted in "The Day After Tomorrow," would only happen "if the Greenland ice sheet was to melt over the course of a few days," Muschitiello previously told Insider.

That said, some studies suggest that the AMOC has stopped entirely in the past.

"These major distortions of the AMOC led to the coldest events ever recorded," Muschitiello said.

In those cases, the cold events may have lasted for up to 1,000 years. If the AMOC were to shut down completely again, Boers said, the only way to undo it would be "to reverse the global temperature trend and get back to pre-industrial conditions."

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NOW WATCH: Here's what would happen if all the ice on Earth melted overnight

Whiny, self-obsessed, not politically engaged enough — the accusations directed at millennials by older generations seem endless.

Millennials, or anyone born between 1980 and 2000, often get painted as pampered do-gooders with a naive worldview, whose priorities extend only to getting sabbaticals and being allowed to work from home.

That said, decades of disregard for the climate, unfair policies and structures being implemented between the generations, and questionable ideas concerning success in the workplace have left 18 to 38-year-olds with a heavy weight to bear.

Twenty-one young people from Germany told Insider of the problems the baby boomers have created and perpetuated in Germany and how they can be solved:

'Let's stop talking about what's gone wrong.'

We're hurtling towards the edge of a cliff at full pelt — it isn't for the sake of science that we're trying to figure out the quantity by which sea levels are set to rise; it's about survival.

Together, with more than 67,000 other children and young people from our Plant for the Planet initiative, I've committed myself to combat the climate crisis. And yes, perhaps the older generation is listening to us but are they doing enough?

The climate crisis is the greatest challenge of our time. The CO2 clock is ticking. What must we do and what can we do right now? Well, we can massively reduce our CO2 emissions. And we can plant 1,000 billion trees to absorb a quarter of man-made CO2. I'd say to the older generations, to company bosses, and to politicians: "Let's stop talking about what's gone wrong or what's going wrong — let's plant trees together and save our future."

'It's older people who get to call the shots on pensions — yet they no longer have to cough up.'

Most baby boomers will be retiring soon, which will put considerable pressure on our pension system. There's a massive disparity between the number of working people and the increasing number of pensioners for whom those working people are footing the bill.

I think a simple and logical solution would be if everyone had to work for a period of time during their later years. And retirement should be linked to life expectancy. I'm skeptical about who decides what's what when it comes to pensions. You only find older people sitting on the Pensions Commission, who no longer foot the bill themselves. We younger people have to hand out payments but aren't given a say.

'The biggest problem the baby boomers have left us isn't that they haven't grown out of their crap.'

The biggest problem the baby boomers have dumped on us isn't that they haven't grown out of their crappy habits: it's the state they've in which they've left the future of our pension system. Pay-as-you-go financing, which has been successfully practiced for decades, will come under increasing pressure as more baby boomers leave the workforce and begin receiving benefits from the pension fund. This news comes as no surprise but politics has, so far, failed to make provisions for that day, when it comes.

Fewer contributors and more beneficiaries mean great challenges will be posed for the statutory pension for a good 15 years. How these challenges will be managed isn't just a technical question. In fact, some are taking the opportunity — through scandalous inaction — to slowly chip away at the principle of solidarity when it comes to pensions and to privatize them. If all employees became contributors, we could increase contributions slightly and, if necessary, avoid shying away from tax subsidies.

'We've inherited the baby boomers' workaholic attitude and taken it to the next level.

The notion that Generation Y has no interest in professional success and thinks of the home office as synonymous with doing nothing is certainly not new — and unfortunately, it's firmly rooted in the minds of many among the older generation. I actually believe we've inherited their workaholic attitude — always better, always more, always higher — and that we've taken what the baby boomers did and pushed it much further.

Whether among friends, colleagues, or in reports in the media — no other generation linked with topics such as burnout or partly unpaid overtime as often as ours. The demands on our generation when it comes to starting a career are enormous. You're expected to have five years of professional experience after completing your studies as well as to nearly have finished your Ph.D. Of course, you can't solely blame the baby boomers, but they've always stressed the importance of establishing a career and reinforced that it was the key to a successful and happy life. Although we've taken on this attitude, we'd actually do a lot better to leave it behind. Generation Y continues to work a lot, but having a private life is much more important than money: leisure and downtime shouldn't be overlooked.

Our generation is on its way to achieving the ideal work-leisure balance and to putting the baby boomers' workaholic madness to rest.

'Too much emphasis on progress and performance is a key problem we've inherited from the older generation.'

A serious problem we've inherited from the older generation is this fixation on progress and performance. In our tireless efforts to push boundaries, whatever the cost, there's usually little room to address the often serious consequences. There's no doubt about it: constant growth and development do pay off and, as a species, we have to take certain risks every now and then in order to move forward and survive. But pushing boundaries mustn't become the objective itself nor must it come at the cost that it currently does.

In order to steer us into a desirable future, we need those in decision-making positions to be sharp. They need both the courage to change yet the informed judgment to pick up on warning signs too. To ensure we don't continue to deplete our resources, we need a clear plan that takes into consideration the effects of our actions. Otherwise, we'll leave our future generations with more — possibly even more serious — problems than those we have inherited, whether they be nuclear waste, the bees dying off, or climate disasters.

'Our education systems barely differ to those of the previous generation — and neither has the emphasis on grades and targets in the world of work, unfortunately.'

I'm firm on the notion that we owe much to those who came before us. Especially the generation born in 1968, who revolutionized so much and helped break down so many structures.

But one area in which far too little has happened in recent decades is education. Our education systems have barely changed from those of the previous generation — and neither has the emphasis on grades and targets in the world of work, unfortunately.

At the age of 10, our children are still "sorted" into schools — not based on their individual talents, but purely according to their grades. Applicants are still assessed according to their qualifications on paper far too often, and not by what they actually know. And academic degrees are still worth more than emotional education.

I still remember the look of horror on the faces of my first boyfriend and his parents when I announced I was leaving high school as soon as I legally could, to follow my heart and become a childcare worker.

But I think I learned more life lessons through doing so than I could have ever done at university.

And that's exactly what our generation so urgently needs: lessons in life. More and more tasks are being taken over by machines and artificial intelligence. The skills Generation Y needs in professional life today are not obedience, authority, and academic knowledge, but empathy, flexibility, and problem-solving.

Our generation must adapt quickly to new circumstances, because the job you did yesterday may look quite different tomorrow. And the office is no longer about sitting at a desk from nine until five; it's about working at a time and place that maximizes one's quality of work, based on the individual.

That's why I'm committed to ensuring our future generations get better human and digital education, so they make our world more human and each individual person can be as he or she is — and thus achieve their own best performance.

'Those who monopolize most of the power are, on average, much too old.'

Today's prosperity is probably the greatest legacy of the previous generation. We should definitely be grateful for it. But it's not as though it's being passed down to younger generations without its drawbacks. The downside is that his focus on prosperity means few provisions have been made for the future and we haven't adapted to our current challenges.

Those who monopolize most of the power are still, on average, far too old. Our generation is still trapped in a gilded cage. At some point, young Germans are going to escape that cage and find that the country is no longer at the top of the list of industrial nations.

This power needs to be handed over to the younger generation at an early stage. We're ready to take on the responsibility and start restructuring things.

'The older generation knows little about what constitutes a healthy and balanced diet.'

The abundance in food and convenience have featured heavily in the kitchens of the post-war generation. Where meat had previously featured rarely on the dining table, it was almost a compulsory, everyday part of meals in the 1950s. But it had to be simple, fast, and cheap.

It's becoming increasingly clear that this kind of practice can't go on indefinitely for future generations.

Due to this abundance and a lack of true appreciation for food, some among the older generation have little idea about what constitutes a healthy, balanced diet. What's more, over the years a lot of marketing-driven pseudo-sciences — which, simply put, is often wrong and sometimes even dangerous — have persisted.

Questions like: "Where do vegans get protein from if they don't eat meat?" or the myth that milk consumption is good for the bones (when the opposite is true) are still firmly anchored in their minds and will only be shifted with a lot of effort.

We try to set a good example and show that vegan life is anything but boring, that we don't just live off salad or tofu — that the kitchen can be a place to have fun. We're trying to show that cooking with friends, either alone or in pairs, is not another tedious chore; it's the best thing you can do.

'Politicians must take us and our ideas seriously.'

The baby boomers, our parents and theirs, have been instrumental in ensuring we grew up with high living standards. I'm grateful for that but we've also inherited a few problems, one of them being the pension situation. Like many in my generation, I don't assume I'll be provided for in old age. The level of baby boomers being paid for by us is ever increasing while there are fewer of us to foot the bill. It's great that people are living longer but the subsidy for the pension system is already the largest item in the German budget.

At the same time, less and less is being invested in the future: for example, in education, and in infrastructure. My generation is outnumbered. But those who focus only on large voter groups are putting the future of our country at risk in favor of short-term electoral success. Politicians must take us and our ideas seriously. Ultimately it will help not only one generation but the whole country.

'We know humanity has power over the Earth's biophysical systems, thanks to our predecessors.'

For some time, we've known humanity affects and has control over the Earth's biophysical systems more than any other force of nature — knowledge we've attained only thanks to our predecessors. It is both a blessing and a curse for our generation.

Never before have so many people been able to inhabit our planet and never before have commodities like regular holiday flights been so easy and readily affordable.

At the same time, hurricanes, floods, and heatwaves have threatened to destroy (and, in many cases, have destroyed) the lives and homes of millions.

My personal goal, through a more responsible approach than previous generations, is to help our generation ensure this power sticks around long term, instead of putting it at risk by inviting irreversible climate disasters.

'Older generations aren't prepared to take risks.'

Setting up a business in Germany is far too complex; it should be more straightforward. Other countries are well ahead and we should be moving on as soon as possible. The tax system in Germany is also massively outdated and makes it extremely difficult for those looking to get started with a business.

Start-ups could be much better supported with tax reforms so the start-ups could focus more on taking care of their business. Singapore has attracted startups from all over the world with its simple control system and has become the hub of the crypto scene. Our political structures are also too slow to change and aren't able to keep up with innovation. Things have to change on this front.

A survey by U.S. News showed Germany was in first place in the "Entrepreneurship" category, ahead of Japan and the USA. It's clear Germany is at the forefront despite the clear room for improvement.

Work has also changed: people used to stay in the same job their whole life, which is why it used to be feasible to work without constantly developing and learning. Today we seem to switch jobs every year or two. I think it has a lot to do with the Internet.

We always need to be ready to learn new things and take risks. And many opportunities and possibilities arise with the Internet if you're open to it — cryptocurrencies are something I'm currently heavily involved in and open to, and I realize older generations aren't.

There's a conflict simply because older generations always advocate stability and safety over risk-taking, which they aren't prepared to do. I can only speak for myself but if I'd never taken risks, I'd never have learned. We have to learn through trial and error that you can't make money from anything and everything. Failure has become a valid part of working life, even if older generations still don't want to admit it.

But older generations are starting to accept the start-up scene for what it is: it's fast-moving, involves risk-taking, and isn't always lucrative.

'The older generation has left European peace in a fragile state.'

The rapid rise in greenhouse gases, the dramatically worsening climate crisis, the question of nuclear waste disposal, the irreversible death of countless plant and animal species — these are just some of the many consequences of failed climate and environmental policies from previous generations. Because they haven't relied on sustainability, they've dumped the consequences of and responsibility for their actions onto future generations. We're now having to face a mammoth challenge together: to keep global warming below two degrees to give future generations the chance to make mistakes.

As for Europe, our younger generation has inherited the task of establishing European peace, a project which the older generation has left in a sorry state. The continually rising rate of youth unemployment within the EU, austerity policies, Brexit — all of these things have greatly weakened the notion of the "European community" and reinforced right-wing nationalist and populist forces in Europe. I myself have close ties with Greece, and over the years I've witnessed the destructive effects of austerity there, and have also seen growing disillusionment towards the EU. We have to stop this in its tracks and do it now because lasting peace between us all is the most basic of prerequisites for taking on the many challenges ahead and finding solutions for tomorrow.

Where justice and gender equality are concerned, the older generation has set us on a path of clear progress, particularly as regards legal equality between the sexes. While we have to defend this success, we also have to continue fighting for 100% equality between men and women, whether in family and work, pay or pension, and the end of sexual violence towards women and girls.

'Digitisation is largely a generational issue.'

Being digital means being online, networking, being open to new business models — and being young. It seems to be a largely generational issue: older people are less likely to be online than younger people, which is a pity because digitization opens up many new possibilities, especially for people who are aging. It can simplify and enrich everyday life. I hope people of all ages will greet digitization with open arms and optimism, but obviously not without a healthy dose of skepticism. Networking is at the heart of the digital world and could contribute to a better level of understanding between young and old. And it would help us learn much more from older people and vice versa.

'Pension plans are a big disappointment.'

The subsequent drop in birth rate as a result of the rise of the contraceptive pill among the baby boomers is exacerbating demographic change. This has resulted in a shortage of specialists and labor in all areas of the economy. We young entrepreneurs and managers in particular are suffering from this as employers. Moreover, our country's pension plans are a huge disappointment for our generation and an attack on intergenerational justice, particularly in view of demographic changes. The question of billions of funding for the "maternal pension" that's been proposed in Germany remains open.

What can be done to increase employment rates and to mitigate the consequences of demographic change, as well as the pensions package? We need to look at options for flexible retirement. The statutory retirement age should be done away with. And working time law needs to be fundamentally reformed.

'Climate change presents us with challenges that will dictate the opportunities of future generations.'

We've inherited a lot of problems to do with CO2 in the atmosphere. Climate change today presents us with a task — and how we manage this task will directly determine the opportunities available for future generations. That's why I'm fully committed to limiting climate change as much as possible. We will only succeed with a market-based climate policy in which politicians set clear targets for reducing emissions. Other bans and regulations are unnecessary and provide false incentives. If we succeed in building a global emissions trading scheme with ambitious goals, which is as broad as possible for all economic sectors, I'm convinced we can limit global warming to an acceptable level.

'We've been left with a society that revolves around profit rather than sustainability.'

We have much to thank the previous generations for: no generation has grown up as carefree and with as many possibilities as ours. However, it's come at a price: we've been left with a society that revolves around profit rather than sustainability, where material prosperity counts more than individual happiness.

My professional field, science, is set up for the short term: there are many temporary contracts, focusing on trendy topics. But this profit-focused society has left its mark everywhere. The environment is riddled with pesticides, exhaust gases, plastics, and much more. People are stressed and it seems they would sooner pop pills than demand the time to live more healthily. Hardly anyone stops to breathe.

We, all generations together, can define new goals and break out of this established cycle, that's exploiting human and environmental resources. Instead of sitting passively in front of the television and getting worked up about company bosses, we should all be taking responsibility and consuming both more sustainably and consciously. And we should be asking ourselves from time to time what actually makes us truly happy.

'We're still teaching as though we're in the 19th century.'

Living in the 21st century, teaching 19th-century style: this is what seems to be at the core of our schooling.

I've tried myself to fend this off with learning methods that combine critical thinking and communication with creativity and teamwork, as well as the use of digital media. My students shouldn't just be learning content and facts; they should be learning how to obtain new facts, how to share work effectively and efficiently, and how best to absorb and apply what they've learned. In this way, they develop openness, a willingness to learn, and also a certain degree of independence. The teacher becomes more of a companion for learning and a moderator.

My school is open to digital media and supports me in my creative work. I almost always use QR codes or get foreign-language authors, into the classroom via Skype.

Yet, due to a lack of technical support, training, time, and security, few teachers can organize something like this on their own initiative. On my page "Toller Unterricht" I publish lots of my ideas as well as tried and tested lesson plans, with materials included.

Politicians have made promises to digitize schools. In addition to the lack of qualifications teachers have, there also seems to be a lack of equipment. I'm glad my school has some projectors and smartboards I can use for my lessons, but some don't even have Internet access.

Data protection is currently being taken to ridiculous extremes: new data protection regulation makes the use of private computers difficult, so some are being advised to use paper and pen. This won't work within the frame of a digitization strategy for Germany in 2018.

Therefore, comprehensive reform is needed. Only then can we equip all our students with the skills to prepare them for life and learning in the 21st century.

'It's as if the parents think schools are responsible for raising children.'

The older generation has paid far too little attention to sustainable development. Sustainable development means empowering children to form their own opinions and encouraging them to act sustainably. Sustainable development means the current generation is developing, not compromising the next generation, but actively considering it. Children haven't been sensitized to this at all.

I think there's a very different tone in schools now. I get the sense that kids are becoming less and less respectful. Manners are disappearing and, unfortunately, you rarely see a boy holding the door open for a girl. It's as if parents think schools are responsible for bringing children up.

Some children are only interested in who has the latest, highest-end mobile. The children who do not have a say in this are outside the picture — and I think that the generation above us is responsible for instilling different values.

'We've inherited a toxic political style from the generation before us.'

We've not inherited generational conflicts; we've inherited a toxic political style from the generation before us, which has dealt little with political change or shaping the future and has been more focused on how everything can remain as is. One only has to look at how Merkel's government dealt with a climate crisis and how it's always been ignored and fought against by one commission or another. This political style has disappointed our generation and rightly so: it's clear to young people that a little isn't enough to answer the hard questions. For example, how can we still find well-paid and permanent jobs in 20 years' time in spite of digitalization?

'The older ranks of conservative politicians are afraid of change.'

As an activist for a united Europe, I'm always reminded of how much of the older ranks of conservative politicians fear change. While young people are almost unanimous in their commitment to a united Europe, the older generation is still resistant to it, although though the United States of Europe has been on the agenda of previous German political figures such as Franz Josef Strauss himself.

While old politicians are practicing against the left by remaining on the right, today's young people are already focusing more on the spirit of the European Parliament, namely by looking for solutions.

In the 21st century, it is no longer about just having ideas, but about collaborating for a shared future. For example, the campaign #FreeInterrail — a free Interrail ticket for all Europeans as soon as they turn 18 — was devised by the youth for the youth. Ideas like these will secure our peace and cohesion in the long term.

SEE ALSO: I was born in 1985 but I hate the 'millennial' label — here's why

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NOW WATCH: How racism contributed to marijuana prohibition in the US

Following is a transcript of the video. 

Jeff Karson: Here we go.

Abby Tang: This is lava. And this is also lava. One's man-made, and one's, well, coughed up by Mother Earth. But both these scientists are working toward the exact same goal: figuring out how to predict the unpredictable.

Arianna Soldati: To be able to make the best decisions about how to keep people safe, it's important to be able to predict what is lava going to do once it starts flowing out of the vent.

Abby: One-tenth of the world's population lives within the danger zone of a lava flow, which means knowing how lava works and reacts to elements like water, metal, and ice is key. So on this episode of "Science Skills," we're going to look at two ways scientists study lava, starting with DIY.

This huge furnace behind me is Syracuse University's personal volcano and brainchild of an unlikely scientist and artist duo. That's professors Jeff Karson and Bob Wysocki, and they didn't feel like waiting for a volcano to spit up lava. So they decided to make their own.

Jeff: The project originated really when Bob came into my office and said he wanted to make lava. I thought that was a pretty crazy suggestion at that time. But the more we talked, the more we saw that he had a really good idea of what needed to be done.

Abby: And the first thing that needed to be done? Figure out what to make the lava in, which is where this came in. The tilt furnace is really the statement piece of the whole operation. It can hold hundreds of kilos of lava and execute experiments about viscosity, morphology, structures, and formations. But she's a little bit finicky when it comes to lava-making.

Bob: The furnace literally melts itself and tears itself apart over a very short period of time.

Abby: These were originally made to melt bronze and aluminum, but the Lava Project has repurposed one of them to melt up to 800 pounds of billion-year-old basaltic rock shipped all the way from Wisconsin. The process takes hours. Bob and his team pile the rocks into a receptacle called the Crucible, turn up the furnace, and gradually bring the rocks up to temperature.

If we were doing just lava and melting stuff, the furnace would be on about medium and we would just never turn it down or up.

What temperature is medium?

Medium is a sound out there that I hear in the flame. I can adjust the furnace blindfolded and tell you what it's doing, and it's all sound.

There's just a butterfly valve in here, and -- [furnace rumbling]

Abby: Oh, you can hear it.

Bob: That's it.

Abby: We looked this up later. Medium is also somewhere between 2,000 and 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit. So pretty darn hot. Which means these scientists really have to suit up. These suits made of aluminum can withstand radiant heat up to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Bob: We used to wear welding leathers, but it dries out from the heat. When you start to smell barbecue, 'cause it's pigskin, you knew that you were too close to something, 'cause you're cooking. Your clothing is cooking.

How do you know you're too close with these guys?

Bob: You don't.

Abby: You don't?

Bob: These are the spats. The apron, which I wear around my waist. The jacket, which, put your arms out. Right, because you don't need it in the back.

Abby: No. It's like campfire style.

Bob: Exactly. And it's just that.

Abby: Back half of me is cool, front's warm.

Bob: So there's that. And then the helmet, it looks like it's a regular tinted thing like sunglasses, but this is 24-karat gold.

Abby: Ooh, fancy.

Bob: That is a sheet of it.

Abby: What is it about the gold? Is it just the reflective quality?

Bob: It's so highly reflective, and it's why you see satellites and stuff, why they have the gold foil on.

And is this really similar to some of the stuff that volcanologists would use in the field, right?

Same stuff.

Yeah, but maybe with a back?

Bob: They have a back on it.

Abby: Yeah, in case the volcano's behind them. Do you want to show us how it works?

Yeah, let's go talk about this.

Do we need any of the gear?

It is sweltering! How hot is it up here?

Bob: Well, the bright yellow you see back there, that's about 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit. So right now the lava in there is too hot. When we dump it out of here, about the meter it falls from the spout to the trough and through the trough, we lose about 275 degrees Fahrenheit. By the time it hits the end, we want to be at 2,150 Fahrenheit. And that's the magic spot for the lava.

Abby: Researchers are looking for that sweet spot between 1,600 and 2,200 degrees, the range for natural lava. Knowing the lava's temperature at what time and where is crucial. So the team has an array of 10 digital cameras to capture 3D images of the flow, and a thermal camera, which can read up to 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit. That way, researchers like Arianna Soldati can analyze both the lava's movement and temperature, leading to a key piece of data.

Arianna: Viscosity is possibly the most important property in volcanology. It really controls everything, from eruptive style to appearance of the flow. And the main physical property that controls viscosity is temperature. The hotter something is, the less viscous it is, and the cooler it is, the more viscous. So it's really important that we can tell what temperature the lava is, because we want to match that with the viscosity.

Abby: With this, the team can study how different variables, like metal or crystals, affect how fast the lava cools, and therefore its viscosity. But there's the lab, and then there's the real world, where unplanned and unpredictable factors come into play. That's where this guy comes in.

Ben Edwards: Well, this is a piece of the earth that we call the mantle.

Abby: That's a piece of the mantle?!

Ben: This is a piece of the mantle. And this is one of the sidelights that make some volcanoes incredibly important to study.

Abby: This is Ben Edwards, and he likes to get lava data straight from the source. Here's him collecting a sample from a flow in Russia back in 2013. As you can see, Ben's protective gear has more coverage than what they use at Syracuse. Because sampling from a natural lava flow can be a 360-degree experience.

If you're going next to a lava river to sample, even in this suit, like, I was doing this in Russia from a lava river that's maybe 10, 15 meters wide. And after being there for a minute or so making some measurements, I could hear my Russian colleagues saying, "Ben, move back! You're smoking." [laughing] But it was getting hot enough in the suit that even after about 30 to 45 seconds, I had to back up.

Abby: When Ben's around to witness an eruption, he's prepared to collect data. A lot of data.

Ben: Am I going to focus on taking lots of lava temperatures? Am I going to focus on getting lots of samples of lava? Am I going to focus on using drones and trying to map very carefully how fast the lava's coming out?

Abby: To pull a sample out of the flow, Ben usually uses a rock hammer, but ...

If I was trying to collect really hot samples, I would probably use some sort of an iron bar that wouldn't catch fire. Like, this is OK for short --

Abby: That's made of wood! Ben: Yeah. Abby: Here's a clip of Ben's colleague Alexander Belousov using an iron bar to collect a sample.

Ben: He rests the bar on top of a rock, and he uses a lever to pry the sample out. Because it's kind of nonintuitive. It's a lot stickier than it looks. If you're just watching it flow by, it's like, "Wow, that must be pretty fluid, 'cause it's moving pretty fast."

Abby: That dollop of forbidden honey is then dumped into a bucket of water. Not just to cool it down, but to cool it down fast, because ...

Ben: As the sample cools naturally, it does produce these crystals. Abby: The crystals, yeah. Ben: And if you want to see what was in the sample as it was moving down the lava stream, then you want to cool it like that to kind of take all the heat out and basically turn the heat off so that you preserve the sample. And you preserve the crystal content and the sizes of crystals that were actually in the active lava flow.

Abby: Crystal size impacts viscosity, so extra growth would lead to inaccurate measurements.

To take the temperature of that flow, Ben might use a handheld FLIR camera, like Arianna did in the lab, or a four-channel data logger.

Each one of these yellow things is a separate thermal probe. So with this recorder, I can record four temperatures at once. For example, if I'm interested in figuring out how fast the lava's cooling, right? So here's my lava surface. I might want to put one of these in, just barely in, and the other one I might want to have a little bit deeper. So I can put two of these together, and I'm measuring different temperatures now in that same cooling surface.

Abby: But you probably won't get those probes back.

Ben: I've got wires that are buried in Kamchatka, because once you get two feet of this underneath the lava flow, you're not gonna get it back out.

Abby: That's not yours anymore.

Ben: No. It's one of the great things about the Syracuse lava lab, right, 'cause I do a lava flow there, and in the end I take my big hammer and I recover my equipment. [laughing]

Abby: If you don't have probes to spare, you might try thermal-mapping the flow from above. And so drones are really revolutionizing what we can do to study active earth processes.

Abby: You can strap a FLIR camera, a regular camera, or gas sensors to a drone -- potentially even all three if you get a drone big enough.

Ben: They basically become a volcano-observation platform, as opposed to just a drone. And one can envision even someday a drone that would have some sort of a tool that would hang down that would allow you to, if not sample lava, because it is tough to get your little sample bucket out, and you wouldn't want your drone to get pulled into the lava flow. But you might be able to catch volcanic ash. You could hang a big piece of duct tape that's 20 feet long from the drone and fly it through a diluted ash cloud, and some of the ash particles would stick to the duct tape.

Abby: It's just like a fly trap. Exactly.

Abby: But until robots officially take over, we'll need humans on the ground, risking their lives and arm hairs, to study lava flows.

It's like the lava domes of Montserrat. The only reason we know there've been three or four domes, I can't remember which, is because there've been people watching and sampling. And, "Yep, there's a dome," and then, boom, "Ope, the dome blew way.""Oh, there's another dome, ope, and it blew," right? And if there wasn't someone there to watch, we might not necessarily know.

So, it's important to be in the field for posterity?

Well, and for science. Right? If we're trying to understand that volcano and what it does over time to predict it in the future. And that's the challenge we face when we go to older volcanoes and try to understand what we see in the older volcanoes, because there was no one there watching.

Abby: Data gathered in the field help shape safety plans for people in specific regions. But applying those learnings around the world would be almost impossible without careful testing in the lab.

Arianna: As geologists, we always need that starting point of what happens in the field, what happens in reality. But unfortunately, you know, in nature, there's no repeatability. Every time there's a lava flow, every time there's an eruption, it's going to be different. You have no control over any of the parameters. Here we can vary things in a systematic way, and this allows us to isolate what could be the cause and what could be the effect and tie them together.

Abby: Roasting marshmallows is an art form.

Arianna: I would say it's a science.

Abby: [laughs] All right, all right.

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The climate-crisis news is constant: Wildfires start earlier and earlier in the year in California, extreme weather floods places not built to handle extreme weather, the Arctic is melting, and the world keeps getting hotter— all with no sign of stopping. And now the UN has said we can't avoid many of the worst effects of global warming, no matter how hard we try.

Given the overwhelming negativity, it makes sense that people are either in denial about the magnitude of the problem, or end up feeling hopeless, defeated, and without recourse. The media spent the past few decades simply convincing people the issue was real. But that war has been won: In a 2020 survey of over 1,000 American adults by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, only 10% of respondents said they didn't believe in the climate crisis.

Now we face a new problem: None of us know what to do.

While a large majority of Americans agree we need to act on the climate crisis, no one seems to know what we should do, except push our government to do more. In the Yale survey, 40% of respondents who believe in climate change said they felt "helpless" about it. 

But this helplessness is not an inevitable result of the severity of the crisis — severe as it may be. Instead, it's a conditioned response to a world in which the most powerful politicians and corporations want to cast the issue as too difficult and overly complex. To protect their bottom line, those in power want to obfuscate what should be an obvious truth: We can stop global warming only if we end fossil-fuel extraction. And we can do that only through direct action, protest, and political revolt. 

To hide this truth, the powerful have used the mainstream media to make it seem like the answer to the climate crisis is in small, incremental, and largely electoral steps. Mainstream news has made everyday Americans feel like we have no options to influence climate change beyond voting, and that's given us the illusion there's nothing else to be done. Until we adjust our media diets and start paying less attention to the everyday, overwhelming destruction, and more attention to the people who are already combating the crisis, we'll keep vacillating between overwhelm and helplessness.

Framing matters 

In May, when a series of environmental wins came back to back, the media widely reported the news as a "bad day for Big Oil." And while this wasn't untrue, the sentiment ignored the positive side of the stories, namely that pro-environment and anti-oil activism had worked— the public tide had turned against oil, causing shareholder revolts at two major oil companies. One was ordered by the government to drastically reduce emissions.

By focusing on the oil companies, media outlets failed to show why the companies' luck had turned, obscuring the work of environmental activists and leaving the impression that climate change is something that happens passively, without human and corporate actors. 

As the climate journalist Emily Atkin pointed out in her newsletter, the media prefers this framing mostly because it hides a fact they're reluctant to acknowledge: "that stabilizing the climate requires an end to oil and gas extraction." Atkin explains that "describing May 26 as 'A good day for life on Earth' means admitting to that fact, and becoming vulnerable to cries of bias from the oil industry and its allies. News outlets don't want to deal with that, so they simply call it 'a bad day for Big Oil,' and let the industry attack those pesky oil-hating climate activists instead."

This framing extends to nearly every news article produced about the climate crisis and its related disasters. In the thousands of articles written on, say, the California wildfires, the cause of the problem — namely the fact that oil and gas companies, other large corporations, and the US military still exist — is nowhere to be found. Imagine if every story about a wildfire started with: "Due to the inaction of the US government and the unsustainable practices of corporations, California is burning."  

While this might seem unrealistic, the fact that news stories don't connect the dots leaves media consumers feeling like climate change is just something that happens — it has no direct cause, and thus, no direct solution.

"Media that doesn't focus on climate accountability alongside sounding the alarm perpetuates a damaging circle of silence around the root causes of the crisis, which in effect protects those who are profiting from our burning planet, rather than protecting the masses who will pay for their selfishness — and already are," Britt Wray, a writer and expert on climate-induced dread, told me. 

This leaves media consumers feeling abandoned and helpless, unsure of where to focus their anger, which then simmers into nihilism.

Shifting the focus 

The problem goes deeper than the omission of blame. Our hopelessness about the climate crisis also comes from having a political theory of change promoted by the media that feels too small and slow to really challenge such a gargantuan issue. We've been conditioned to think we should vote every few years, and then politicians will work on issues like global warming, and then we'll wait to see the effects. 

We all know this isn't working — climate change is here, and no political party is working fast enough to stop it or help us adapt to it. But if you go to the homepage of the biggest newspapers and broadcasting companies, the vast majority of stories about challenges to addressing the climate crisis are about electoral politics.

This is not unique to climate: The media's modus operandi is to uphold our current power structures so that we think radical, swift change is unrealistic. In Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman's seminal 1988 book "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media," the authors explain that "free" countries like the US don't need an official state propaganda system because the commercial, mainstream media acts like one anyway, which upholds the needs of those in power.

The media does this for five reasons, what Chomsky and Herman call "filters," the first two of which are ownership and advertising. We can see these two filters play out regularly: Just a few corporations control the vast majority of the media. While it might be OK to acknowledge the climate crisis in the mainstream news these days, most opinions about the emergency that are anti-corporate or anti-capitalist will get left out because they directly implicate the massive corporations that own the media. And the fact that most of the media is reliant on advertising further constrains opinions — it's unlikely that companies that advertise big oil companies would call for their abolition, especially when those media companies are producing the ads for Big Oil themselves.

The corporate ownership of media also encourages a false sense of "unbiasedness," meaning any criticism of those responsible for the climate crisis by reporters and news outlets leads to charges that they're too radical or left wing, which further constrains climate coverage to the gloom and doom, and not about who is to blame or successful activism against the oil-based economy.

This doesn't mean that getting information from mainstream media is bad, just that the information produced is incomplete: It will tell us what the problem is in a myopic sense, but it won't tell us who is to blame or what can be done beyond voting. When news outlets are owned by large corporations — ones with deep ties to our governmental power structures— they're not likely to advocate for forms of change that would threaten their bottom line.

If you're used to consuming a steady diet of mainstream print and broadcast news, it makes sense that you'd become hopeless about the climate emergency. So the first step toward changing that is to change what you read. A quick click over to news sites like It's Going Down or Unicorn Riot show a much different theory of political change about climate than The New York Times. There's no mention of electoral politics, President Joe Biden, or diplomatic accords. Instead, the focus is on people who are alreadydoingthings— risking their lives and their liberty — to fight climate change and the powerful entities responsible for it. 

Of course, reading different sorts of stories on the climate isn't a complete solution to our crisis — we still have to abolish oil companies and drastically reconfigure the extraction-based economy we live in. But changing our media diet gives us a key ingredient to start of those massive changes: hope that transformation is possible, and perhaps even imminent. 

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NOW WATCH: A Silicon Valley founder shares the 6 traits she looks for in the entrepreneurs she invests in

For years, Apple has insisted that your iPhone is good for the planet. 

"We build them with the environment in mind," the company proclaims, and it builds the ubiquitous devices "to last." Gone are the days when the phones' glass was laced with mercury and arsenic. Now, the iPhone is green.

But the truth is that smartphones have a serious environmental toll. iPhones, like most smartphones, run on lithium ion batteries — manufactured with precious metals mined from Tibetan grasslands, the salt flats of Chile, and, soon, the Salton Sea in California. The waste from these mines is poisonous and leaches into surrounding communities. Lithium extraction requires enormous quantities of water and eats up local water supply.

And every day, instead of repairing their broken phones, consumers discard hundreds of thousands of smartphones, which then join the billions of tons of electronic waste that is flowing into landfills, into the ocean, and into city streets. 

The old smartphones are replaced with more, newer smartphones, adding to the tech industry's carbon footprint. Apple's own environmental reports, in fact, show that lifetime carbon emissions of newer iPhone models are higher than older models, and are growing — directly contradicting their claims of a greener phone. For the iPhone 12, more than 80% of those emissions occurred during production. The demand for lithium and copper is, subsequently, on the rise. Our single-use model for technology is unsustainable.

The material that I find most representative of the problem at hand is not a precious metal, however. It is glue. Consumer tech manufacturers have, gradually, replaced screws with adhesives — which make your smartphone more intimidating to repair.

In the newest iPhone models, for example, glue ensures that the glass on the back of the devices is nearly impossible to replace — although one resourceful repair shop suggests that a laser machine could do the job. Not only are our smartphones full of destructive rare earth metals, they are glued together, full of speciality screws that make them difficult to open, and hostile software that flashes warnings when parts are replaced.

These features have ensured that tech is difficult to fix, for both independent repair shops and DIY tinkerers. They have also kept the tech industry booming. Consumers, meanwhile, are forced to give money to the manufacturer for repairs — or, more often, to just buy a new phone. Our irreparable tech is thus heading to the landfill at a rapid pace. To fight against mass waste, consumers not only need the right to repair our devices — we need to value technology that lasts.

The 'right to repair' movement

It was last spring, at the onset of the pandemic, that the question of repairability — often a more niche movement — began to take on a new urgency. As the pandemic filled emergency rooms, ventilators began to break. And hospitals were not able to fix them: They were constrained by the whims of medical tech manufacturers, which frequently keep repair instructions from the public, forcing hospitals to consult "authorized" repair technicians, even when on-site staff were qualified to do so.

The needlessly broken ventilator was a powerful image. Biomedical technicians were forced to hack into ventilators, amounting to, as Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon wrote in Slate, "denying sick people access to life-saving equipment over a repair manual." It became a metaphor for the ways that consumers are being held hostage by technology companies, all for the sake of revenue. 

Still, the fight for consumers — and independent repair shops — to be able to fix their own goods has a longer history. In the early 2010s, the automobile industry lobbied hard against proposed legislation to ensure that independent repair shops had access to the same repair information as dealers. It was a lone Massachusetts law that forced the industry to craft nationwide standards around repair rights — although car manufacturers are still lobbying against them. This was the first major victory of "Right to Repair"— a longstanding movement to give consumers the right to repair their own devices. In most other industries, however, there is no such agreement.

Increasingly computerized 

Take the agricultural sector, for instance. For years, farmers have warred with John Deere, a tractor and machinery manufacturer, to allow them to fix their equipment without heading to the dealer. John Deere has been unrelenting. Three years after the company had promised to provide tools and parts to independent shops, farmers still have no access to those resources. 

Part of the issue with John Deere is that tractors, like cars, are increasingly computerized— requiring the work of software engineers, instead of mechanics, when problems emerge. Like John Deere's tractors, our cars, our tools, and our household appliances, too, are becoming more alien — wired with impenetrable software that consumers are prevented from fixing.

The use of software might make the machines more modern, but it also renders them more controllable by the manufacturer. John Deere argues that relinquishing control of its software would pose a security risk: "It's a 40,000-pound tractor going down the road at 20 miles an hour," CTO Jahmy Hindman told Verge. "Do you really want to expose untested, unplanned, unknown introductions of software into a product like that?" It's a fragile argument, however: What's the difference between making a software modification and installing an engine modification? 

Change on the horizon

Last month, President Biden signed an executive order that announced his support for better consumer protections for repairs, directing the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to consider new enforcement on the issue. And a few weeks ago, the FTC voted unanimously to better enforce laws around the right to repair. It was, as Nathan Proctor, a repair advocate with the US Public Interest Research Group, wrote: "a big day for the right to fix our stuff." It was a big day, too, for the fight for a greener economy.

This rhetorical support is, of course, not yet translated into actual enforcement. The US's formidable intellectual property regime poses a real threat to a robust legal right to repair. And, for years, manufacturers have gotten away with crafting illegal warranties that prevented consumers from seeking out third-parties repairs. The FTC itself concluded, in a report issued earlier this year, that there were "serious concerns" around manufacturers' compliance with such laws. But the urgency is justified. Unnecessary waste from electronics is a major threat to the environment — the "fastest-growing waste stream in the world,"according to the UN— and is aggravating the encroaching climate catastrophe.

The FTC's announcement signals an important first step: enforcing laws like the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, which already gives consumers the right to third-party repairs without breaking a warranty. But much more is needed to reduce the extraordinary waste produced by flimsy, single-use consumer tech. 

Biden's executive order, and the FTC's actions, focus on competition in the marketplace — on cutting back the aftermarket monopolies that manufacturers have created by limiting repairs on their products. But they fail to address the underlying culture that the tech industry has created: As one study found, consumers are often eager to upgrade their iPhones, even if nothing is wrong with them, buying into the wasteful aesthetics marketed by Apple and other companies. To fight back against the ever-growing pile of e-waste, consumers must, instead, want their technology to last.

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Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett on Friday rejected a bid to halt construction of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago's historic Jackson Park.

A nonprofit organization called Protect Our Parks, which has long opposed the library being built on the site, asked the Supreme Court to temporarily bar construction.

The library's opponents filed an emergency motion directed at Barrett, who is assigned to such handle matters for much of the Midwest.

Barrett, who was appointed to the court by former President Donald Trump in 2020, denied the motion without comment.

The suit asked that a writ of injunction be issued to block any additional groundbreaking for the center, as well as preventing trees from being cut in Jackson Park for the facility. 

The organization's website states that they support an Obama Presidential Center on the city's South Side, preferably in the Washington Park neighborhood located west of the Jackson Park, but stress that the site should be "outside of a dedicated public park."

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The applicants argued that the groundbreaking should be stopped because the trees in Jackson Park, which was designed in 1871 by the famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, are important for migratory birds, in addition to raising concerns about noise and air pollution.

With Barrett's decision, the Supreme Court will let construction of the presidential center proceed as planned.

After a four-year federal review process, the Obama Presidential Center released their plans to break ground at the site earlier this year.

"The project serves as a catalyst for long-overdue investment in and around historic Jackson Park — creating a new destination to move visitors from hope to action, breathing new life into the park, and delivering amenities and economic benefits to the community the Obamas called home," the Obama Foundation said in a February release.

Obama, who lived in the nearby Kenwood neighborhood of Chicago when he served as a US Senator, praised the progress of his library in a videotaped statement at the time.

"Michelle and I want to thank you for making this project even better — a space for the community, built in partnership with the community," he said. "We know that by working together, we can unlock the South Side's fullest potential — and help set up our city, our country, and our world for even better years still to come."

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