Climate Change

Liberals hit the brakes on buying Teslas

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 13:30:00 +0000

Liberals hit the brakes on buying Teslas Rachel Sauer Fri, 09/19/2025 - 07:30

Bradley Worrell

Research co-authored by CU Boulder environmental psychologist Amanda Carrico finds CEO Elon Musk’s embrace of rightwing politics results in liberals being less willing to buy the EVs

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s embrace of rightwing activism has not done him any favors with liberal-leaning Americans—the U.S. demographic group most inclined to purchase electric vehicles—while not resulting in any notable corresponding increase in purchase intentions among the country’s conservatives.

That’s according to a recent research paper published in Humanities & Social Sciences, which was co-authored by Amanda Carrico, an environmental psychologist whose research focus is on understanding people’s behaviors, attitudes and perceptions related to the environment. She is also an associate professor with the ��Ƶ Department of Environmental Studies.

Carrico and her co-authors conducted five surveys of Americans between August 2023 and March of this year about their willingness to embrace 30 actions that would reduce greenhouse emissions. Purchasing electric vehicles (EVs) was the most polarizing item among those actions, with positive intentions recorded for liberals and negative intentions among conservatives.

CU Boulder scholar Amanda Carrico is an environmental psychologist whose research focus is on understanding people’s behaviors, attitudes and perceptions related to the environment.

However, in the past three surveys (May 2024, July 2024 and March), liberals have pumped the brakes regarding their intentions to buy Teslas—and that decline is associated with Musk’s relatively recent embrace of rightwing politics, Carrico says.

“We definitely find that overall intentions to purchase Tesla seems to decrease over time, so there seems to be an intensification of rejection of Teslas among liberals as Musk’s conservative persona emerged,” she says. That’s particularly significant given that liberals are the demographic group most inclined to purchase electric vehicles, she adds.

What's at stake when EV tax credits end Sept. 30?

“At the same time, conservatives have been pretty predictable across the entirety of the surveys: They just aren’t interested in EVs,” Carrico says. “As Elon Musk was shifting to the right, our initial theory was: Maybe we’ll see conservatives become more interested in EVs, because you’ve got this now conservative figure in the industry who is excited about EVs because of their benefit to the environment. We thought we might be on the precipice of EVs becoming a less polarized issue. However, that has not turned out to be true.”

To support their research on Musk’s impact on the Tesla brand, Carrico and her co-authors also point to a series of Morning Consult polls showing a steady decline in self-reported willingness to buy a Tesla among Democrats since 2023. Separately, a Data for Progress poll found two-thirds of Democrats and half of Independents reported that Musk had made them less likely to buy a Tesla.

Recently, Carrico spoke with Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine regarding the findings and implications of the research paper. Her responses have been lightly edited for grammar and clarity and condensed for space.

Question: Your team conducted five surveys between November 2023 and March of this year. Was it always the plan to ask specifically about Musk and Teslas, or did that come later?

Carrico: The idea came later, so it was opportunistic. It was interesting to us to see from the beginning that EVs were among the most polarizing action items, so we asked ourselves in 2024 if we should modify the question from EVs generally to Teslas.

There were two motivations for that. One was: How are people’s opinions shifting in response to this emergent political shift (by Musk)? The second was: We felt like we needed more information about people’s opinions about EVs generally versus Teslas, so some respondents were asked about EVs and some were asked about Tesla specifically, and that’s where you could see some delineation between those two categories.

Question: If Musk’s embrace of rightwing politics cost him the support of liberals without picking up notable support from conservatives, did he basically drive Tesla sales into a proverbial ditch?

"We thought we might be on the precipice of EVs becoming a less polarized issue. However, that has not turned out to be true,” says CU Boulder researcher Amanda Carrico. (Photo: Dylan Calluy/Unsplash)

Carrico: I would not want to speculate on the underlying economics of Musk’s portfolio. A lot of his businesses are interconnected, and a lot of the technologies are interconnected.

But just purely looking at the impact of his political persona in relation to consumer interests in purchasing Teslas, and also the market data about purchasing Teslas, it does seem very clear that there is a decline in consumer interest in Teslas. Of course, business leaders and public figures make value judgments all the time, just like we all do. We don’t know if this decision (by Musk) was driven by economics or other factors. …

I personally would stop short of making a judgment about whether that was a smart decision or an unwise one, but you can certainly see that relationship (Musk’s embrace of a conservative persona and a declining interest among liberals to buy Teslas) play out in our data and the market data that we were able to acquire during the project.

Question: Do you have thoughts as to whether Tesla could regain support, particularly support from liberals, if Musk either stepped away from his company or perhaps walked back some of his rightwing views?

Carrico: I think there are some insights we could look to, to make an educated hypothesis on what might happen there. I will say, I think once something becomes politically polarized, like becoming aligned with a political identity, it’s very hard to undo that. Politics are very sticky, so it becomes hard to shed that.

With consumer behavior, we have seen a lot of companies recover from these kinds of things. For example, Budweiser being boycotted several years ago in response to their alliance with a transgender influencer. That was different, though, because Budweiser wasn’t entering into the political arena.

This is a very different thing, with Musk being the figurehead of a company. Tesla is unique in how tied Musk is to Tesla. For comparison, I don’t know how many people in America could tell you who is the leader of Nissan or Suncor or other companies, but Musk is uniquely visible in his role with Tesla.

Question: Do you have any thoughts as to how other EV manufacturers should respond to the survey findings when it comes to branding or messaging?

Carrico: Clearly, liberals want to explore EVs. I think it’s clear that it’s aligned with their identity. One interesting thing in this study that was very surprising to us is that the disinterest in EVs that started to grow over the course of the study wasn’t just isolated to Teslas. We started to see it bleed over into interest in purchasing EVs in general.

I wondered if that wasn’t so much a rejection of EVs as a disinterest in one of the leading vehicles in the EV market. Teslas were considered state-of-the-art in many respects. The charging infrastructure for Teslas feels quite superior to other alternatives, so it does feel like there’s a consumer demand that’s not being met by other alternatives.

"Teslas were considered state-of-the-art in many respects. The charging infrastructure for Teslas feels quite superior to other alternatives, so it does feel like there’s a consumer demand that’s not being met by other alternatives," says Amanda Carrico, CU Boulder associate professor and department chair of environmental studies.

Of course, that’s easier said than done, but insofar as there are opportunities for other producers to fill this space—to offer purchasing opportunities that are not Tesla but that fulfill the same goals and amenities as Tesla offered—I think that’s a real opportunity, and I’m sure they are scrambling to take advantage of that.

Question: A number of media outlets have reported on the study’s findings. What kind of reaction has the paper been generating?

Carrico: It’s been very interesting because the reaction has depended heavily upon the political orientation of the news outlet, which is perhaps not surprising. If it was covered by a more liberal outlet—Mother Jones, for example—the main takeaway was, ‘Look at Elon Musk. What a fool he was, shooting himself in the foot.’

Then if you look on the right—it’s been covered by Breitbart, for example—the narrative has been, ‘Look at these liberals rejecting these products that solve the problem they care so much about,’ meaning climate change.

There’s been accurate depictions of the findings in the paper, but also it’s been interesting because anyone can take what they want out of the paper and spin it, or link it, to their political identity.

Question: Do you think this is a topic you and your co-authors will revisit, perhaps to see how opinions on EVs in general, and Teslas in particular, evolve over time?

Carrico: To be honest, we have not talked about it yet, but I would not be surprised if that happens. Writing papers like this, there’s a lot of work to get one completed, and the review process can be long and tedious. But the team (of co-authors) is still meeting, and so I anticipate that within the next few months we’ll be revisiting things, deciding what we want to focus on next and trying to understand how polarization impacts a range of behaviors.

There is an aspect of this project that is trying to understand things people do agree on. Specifically, where is there less polarization? Because those areas are appealing targets for public policy, with the idea (that) we can make progress on the areas we agree on and wait for things we don’t agree on to see if there’s opportunities in the future.

I hope that this moment fades, so that we can move away from this rancor around EVs. I’m really hopeful about the potential of decarbonization and how that is linked with a changing of the vehicle fleet (from combustion engine to EV), so I still think there’s a lot of potential there, and I’m hopeful we will still see some renewed interest in this technology. I think we will.

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Research co-authored by CU Boulder environmental psychologist Amanda Carrico finds CEO Elon Musk’s embrace of rightwing politics results in liberals being less willing to buy the EVs.

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Top photo: Dmitry Novikov/Unsplash

CU Boulder researcher named one of 2025 Grist 50

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 21:31:21 +0000

CU Boulder researcher named one of 2025 Grist 50 Rachel Sauer Thu, 09/18/2025 - 15:31

Zia Mehrabi joins a cohort of leaders from across the U.S. who are working on solutions to the planet’s biggest challenges

Zia Mehrabi, an assistant professor of environmental studies at the ��Ƶ and director of the Better Planet Laboratory, has been named one of the 2025 Grist 50, an annual list of leaders from across the U.S. who are working on solutions to the planet’s biggest challenges.

The Grist 50 features “climate leaders across the U.S. who are tackling some of the most pressing problems of today in innovative and exciting ways,” according to Grist, a nonprofit independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. “The list provides an annual dose of inspiration and a reminder that the stories we tell about climate change are incomplete without the narratives of those fighting back, bringing change to their communities and inventing a better future.”

Illustration: Grist

The Grist 50, whom the organization calls “fixers,” includes “creatives bringing powerful stories to new audiences, advocates pushing for healthy and just food systems and tech wizards putting AI to work for more efficient energy infrastructure. These leaders have pushed back against harmful industries (and won), cut carbon emissions from hospitals, advanced wildfire solutions from Hawai‘i to California and brought together unlikely coalitions to break ground on clean energy networks. They’re teachers, scientists, doctors, farmers, artists, entrepreneurs, and activists who are putting climate front and center in their work and driving real progress,” according to Grist.

Mehrabi and the Better Planet Laboratory are a group of data scientists and creatives who build data products and services for a better and fairer planet. They work to scale their impact through partnerships with a range of partners across the world, from intergovernmental agencies to grassroots NGOs and human rights organizations. Their work has included mapping the world agricultural lands, the agricultural workforce and the climate stress they face, the global flows of food across the world from producers to consumers and the human cost of consuming carbon-intensive products, as well as the potential for alternative ways of farming, and more.

Mehrabi and the Better Planet Laboratory are focused on mapping violations of the United Nations resolution of the human right to a healthy and safe environment and using modern technologies to support the United Nations Committee on Rights of the Child’s efforts to tackle grave violations of children's rights, among other projects.

Earlier this year, Mehrabi won the U.S. National Champion Frontiers Planet Prize, and one of three international Frontiers Planet awards, for co-authoring groundbreaking research studying how adding diversity back into agricultural systems in 11 countries might improve environmental and social outcomes.

“It’s common to hear people say you are a product of your environment,” Mehrabi says. “I think what we sometimes forget is that our environment is a product of us, too—that we can change the world we live in, and there are so many inspiring people in the U.S.A. doing this right now.”

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Zia Mehrabi joins a cohort of leaders from across the U.S. who are working on solutions to the planet’s biggest challenges.

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Top illustration: Grist

Is drought the new normal?

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 17:56:36 +0000

Is drought the new normal? Rachel Sauer Thu, 08/14/2025 - 11:56

Pedro DiNezio and Timothy Shanahan

Climate models reveal how human activity may be locking the Southwest into permanent drought

A new wave of climate research is sounding a stark warning: Human activity may be driving drought more intensely—and more directly—than previously understood.

The southwestern United States has been in a historic megadrought for much of the past two decades, with its reservoirs including lakes Mead and Powell dipping to record lows and legal disputes erupting over rights to use water from the Colorado River.

This drought has been linked to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a climate pattern that swings between wet and dry phases every few decades. Since a phase change in the early 2000s, the region has endured a dry spell of epic proportions.

CU Boulder scientist Pedro DiNezio, along with climate researchers around the world, assert that human activity may be driving drought more intensely—and more directly—than previously understood.

The PDO was thought to be a natural phenomenon, governed by unpredictable natural ocean and atmosphere fluctuations. But new research published in the journal Nature suggests that’s no longer the case.

Working with hundreds of climate model simulations, our team of atmosphere, earth and ocean scientists found that the PDO is now being strongly influenced by human factors and has been since the 1950s. It should have oscillated to a wetter phase by now, but instead it has been stuck. Our results suggest that drought could become the new normal for the region unless human-driven warming is halted.

The science of a drying world

For decades, scientists have relied on a basic physical principle to predict rainfall trends: Warmer air holds more moisture. In a warming world, this means wet areas are likely to get wetter, while dry regions become drier. In dry areas, as temperatures rise, more moisture is pulled from soils and transported away from these arid regions, intensifying droughts.

While most climate models simulate this general pattern, they often underestimate its full extent, particularly over land areas.

Yet countries are already experiencing drought emerging as one of the most immediate and severe consequences of climate change. Understanding what’s ahead is essential, to know how long these droughts will last and because severe droughts can have sweeping affects on ecosystems, economies and global food security.

Human fingerprints on megadroughts

Simulating rainfall is one of the greatest challenges in climate science. It depends on a complex interplay between large-scale wind patterns and small-scale processes such as cloud formation.

Until recently, climate models have not offered a clear picture of how rainfall patterns are likely to change in the near future as greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, power plants and industries continue to heat up the planet. The models can diverge sharply in where, when and how precipitation will change. Even forecasts that average the results of several models differ when it comes to changes in rainfall patterns.

The techniques we deployed are helping to sharpen that picture for North America and across the tropics.

We looked back at the pattern of PDO phase changes over the past century using an exceptionally large ensemble of climate simulations. The massive number of simulations, more than 500, allowed us to isolate the human influences. This showed that the shifts in the PDO were driven by an interplay of increasing warming from greenhouse gas emissions and cooling from sun-blocking particles called aerosols that are associated with industrial pollution.

From the 1950s through the 1980s, we found that increasing aerosol emissions from rapid industrialization following World War II drove a positive trend in the PDO, making the Southwest rainier and less parched.

After the 1980s, we found that the combination of a sharp rise in greenhouse gas emissions from industries, power plants and vehicles and a reduction in aerosols as countries cleaned up their air pollution shifted the PDO into the negative, drought-generating trend that continues today.

This finding represents a paradigm shift in our scientific understanding of the PDO and a warning for the future. The current negative phase can no longer be seen as just a roll of the climate dice—it has been loaded by humans.

Our conclusion that global warming can drive the PDO into its negative, drought-inducing phase is also supported by geological records of past megadroughts. Around 6,000 years ago, during a period of high temperatures, evidence shows the emergence of a similar temperature pattern in the North Pacific and widespread drought across the Southwest.

Tropical drought risks underestimated

The past is also providing clues to future rainfall changes in the tropics and the risk of droughts in locations such as the Amazon.

One particularly instructive example comes from approximately 17,000 years ago. Geological evidence shows that there was a period of widespread rainfall shifts across the tropics coinciding with a major slowdown of ocean currents in the Atlantic.

These ocean currents, which play a crucial role in regulating global climate, naturally weakened or partially collapsed then, and they are expected to slow further this century at the current pace of global warming.

A recent study of that period, using computer models to analyze geologic evidence of earth’s climate history, found much stronger drying in the Amazon basin than previously understood. It also shows similar patterns of aridification in Central America, West Africa and Indonesia.

The results suggest that rainfall could decline precipitously again. Even a modest slowdown of a major Atlantic Ocean current could dry out rainforests, threaten vulnerable ecosystems and upend livelihoods across the tropics.

What comes next

Drought is a growing problem, increasingly driven by human influence. Confronting it will require rethinking water management, agricultural policy and adaptation strategies. Doing that well depends on predicting drought with far greater confidence.

Climate research shows that better predictions are possible by using computer models in new ways and rigorously validating their performance against evidence from past climate shifts. The picture that emerges is sobering, revealing a much higher risk of drought across the world.

Pedro DiNezio is an associate professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the ��Ƶ. Timothy Shanahan is an associate professor of geological science at the University of Texas at Austin

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Climate models reveal how human activity may be locking the Southwest into permanent drought.

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Farm-diversification research wins top international prize

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 16:03:33 +0000

Farm-diversification research wins top international prize Rachel Sauer Tue, 06/17/2025 - 10:03

Clint Talbott

CU Boulder’s Zia Mehrabi is one of three researchers named international champions of the Frontiers Planet Prize for research that finds environmental and social benefits of agricultural diversification

Widespread agricultural diversification could improve the health of the world’s environment and that of its people, a landmark study published last year found.

Zia Mehrabi, assistant professor of environmental studies at the ��Ƶ, has been named one of three international champions in the Frontiers Planet Prize, the Frontiers Research Foundation announced today. Mehrabi and his team will receive $1 million in funding to advance their research.

The Frontiers Planet Prize celebrates breakthroughs in Earth system and planetary science that “address these challenges and enable society to stay within the safe boundaries of the planet’s ecosystem.” The prize puts scientific rigor and ingenuity at its heart, helping researchers worldwide accelerate society toward a green renaissance, the Frontiers Research Foundation says.

Zia Mehrabi, a CU Boulder assistant professor of environmental studies, has been named the U.S. national champion for the Frontiers Planet Prize. (Photo: Patrick Campbell/CU Boulder)

Professor Jean-Claude Burgelman, director of the Frontiers Planet Prize, said the planet faces immense threats that require bold, transformative solutions rooted in evidence and validated by science.

“Innovative yet scalable solutions are the only way for us to ensure healthy lives on a healthy planet,” Burgelman said. “By spotlighting the most groundbreaking research, we are helping scientists bring their work to the international stage and provide the scientific consensus needed to guide our actions and policies.”

Mehrabi, who leads the Better Planet Laboratory, was recognized, alongside his co-authors, for an article published last year in the journal Science titled “Joint environmental and social benefits from diversified agriculture.”

Laura Vang Rasmussen of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and Ingo Grass of the University of Hohenheim in Germany were lead authors of the paper, which had 58 co-authors. Claire Kremen of the University of British Columbia was a senior author and co-principal investigator on the study.

The researchers found that diversifying crops and animals and improving habitat, soil and water conservation on individual farms can improve biodiversity while improving or, at a minimum, not coming at a cost to yields. Additionally, diversified farming can yield social benefits and improve food security—showing improved food access or a reduced number of hungry months, for example, particularly in smallholder systems.

The more diversification measures farms employed, the more benefits accrued, researchers observed. Essentially, the team found evidence to move toward agriculture that more closely reflects natural systems.

“If you look at how ecosystems operate, it’s not just plants growing alone. It’s not just animals or soil,” Mehrabi said last year. “It’s all of these things working together.”

Using data from 2,655 farms across 11 countries and covering five continents, the researchers combined qualitative methods and statistical models to analyze 24 different datasets. Each dataset studied farm sites with varying levels of diversification, including farms without any diversification practices. This allowed the team to assess the effects of applying more diversification strategies.

Diversified farming differs from the dominant model of agriculture: growing single crops or one animal on large tracts of land. That efficient, “monoculture” style of farming is a hallmark of agriculture after the Green Revolution, which reduced global famine by focusing on high-yield crops that rely on fertilizers and pesticides.

“The Green Revolution did many, many great things, but it came with a lot of costs,” Mehrabi says, noting that synthetic fertilizers and pesticides harm the environment.

Also, to increase labor productivity, large farms rely on mechanization, which tends to “replace people with machines.”

“So, the idea of trying to engineer nature into our agricultural systems is somewhat antithetical to the whole way we think about agricultural development,” Mehrabi says.

Making a case for a different way of doing agriculture is one thing. Implementing it on a widespread basis is something else. The dominant view, fostered by “big ag” (short for agriculture), is that “if you want to do ag, you’ve got to do it this way,” Mehrabi says.

“If you look at how ecosystems operate, it’s not just plants growing alone. It’s not just animals or soil. It’s all of these things working together,” says Zia Mehrabi.

“Our work challenges that idea, but it’s a bit of a David-and-Goliath situation,” he adds. “We have the stone, but it hasn’t yet landed.”

But it’s necessary to confront Goliath, Mehrabi contends, noting that agriculture affects all the things people care about environmentally, including climate change, water security, biodiversity, pollution, land use and habitat destruction.

A third of the Earth’s land is used for agriculture, and about a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions stem from agriculture, he notes. Climate change has reduced agricultural yields by as much as 5% to 10% in the last four decades, research has shown.

“If we want to do something about environmental issues, agriculture is one of the big buckets that we need to really, really start in.”

Separate from the research published in Science, Mehrabi has done modeling of the future state of agriculture globallyif the world continues business-as-usual farming. He found that in the next century, the number of farms is likely to be cut in half and the average size of farms would likely double.

Given that, along with what scientists know about the loss of natural ecosystems as farm sizes increase, “the future looks a little bit bleak,” Mehrabi says. But this new research shows it could be different.

Though he does not suggest that all farms must be small farms, he does advise that agriculture strive to diversify systems that have been “massively depleted and massively simplified.”

��Ƶ the Frontiers Planet Prize, Mehrabi says he and his team are gratified to be recognized as one of three international champions. Additionally, he underscores the importance of the Frontiers Research Foundation’s financial commitment to this kind of research, calling it a “signal” to other funding entities that might follow suit.

“We need to really think about innovation in agriculture,” Mehrabi said. “We all need food to eat. We really need to innovate, and we should put money behind that. It’s worth it.”

Launched by the Frontiers Research Foundation on Earth Day 2022, the prize encourages universities worldwide to nominate their top three scientists working on understanding and putting forward pathways to stay within the safe operating space of nine planetary boundaries that are outlined by the Stockholm Resilience Center.

These nominations are then vetted at the national level, and the top scientists face an independent jury of 100—a group of renowned sustainability and planetary health experts chaired by Professor Johan Rockström—who vote for the National and International Champions.

Read a guest opinion by Zia Mehrabi and co-authors at this link. See a Q&A with Mehrabi about adding carbon-footprint labels on food at this link.

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Students are shaping (and leading) CU’s climate response

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 27 May 2025 18:12:47 +0000

Students are shaping (and leading) CU’s climate response Rachel Sauer Tue, 05/27/2025 - 12:12

Cody DeBos

Fueled by a passion for climate justice and a commitment to student involvement in the university’s future, interdisciplinary graduate student team designs and teaches undergrad course on climate action planning

As the ��Ƶ continues to advance its Climate Action Plan (CAP), an interdisciplinary group of graduate students has championed a new way to involve students in shaping a more sustainable future.

Initially, the CU steering committee creating the CAP did not involve students. In response to the exclusion of student voices, a group of graduate students began work to give students a seat at the table and engage the undergraduate community in CU’s climate-planning work. First, the group launched a petition calling for student participation in the drafting of the CAP. Then the group helped pass a resolution through student government to grant student seats on the committee implementing the CAP in the future.

“Students have always been key drivers of sustainability and climate action on campuses across the U.S., including at CU Boulder,” the team says. “As young people, our futures are jeopardized by the climate crisis, so we have a collective stake in rapidly reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.”

The graduate students and faculty who co-designed and now teach an undergraduate course on climate-action planning include (left to right) Brigid Mark, Nadav Orian Peer, Jonah Shaw, Sean Benjamin, Mariah Bowman and Sara Fleming.

But the group didn’t stop there. Fueled by a shared passion for climate mitigation and the belief that students should help shape the university’s future, the group of five graduate students from four different departments spent hundreds of hours co-designing and now teaching an undergraduate course on climate-action planning.

The course gives undergrads hands-on experience with CU’s campus emissions data, collaboration opportunities with university stakeholders and a chance to develop sustainability strategies that could be implemented campuswide.

Their efforts recently earned the group CU Boulder’s 2025 Campus Sustainability Award for Student Leadership. The group also won a $5,000 scholarship from the women-led nonprofit Zonta Foothills Foundation, in recognition for their groundbreaking work in climate education and advocacy. The CU School of Engineering, following advocacy from generous faculty members David Paradis and Carol Cogswell, was also gracious enough to provide funding for their work.

A more engaging climate classroom

The group of graduate instructors brings an interdisciplinary approach and myriad perspectives to the classroom.

The teaching team includes Mariah Bowman (law), Sara Fleming (geography), Sean Benjamin (mechanical engineering), Brigid Mark (sociology) and Jonah Shaw (atmospheric and oceanic sciences). Each has worked to tackle climate-related issues through the lens of their expertise, from Indigenous environmental justice to climate-change modeling.

The team’s diverse makeup is reflected in the design of their course and has fueled their success. But the road to this point hasn’t been easy.

“This is a labor of love,” the team says. “We are doing this because we care. Funding and the time required have been challenges.”

Before the course launched, each graduate instructor spent many unpaid hours creating the syllabus, listing the course and building campus partnerships to access emissions data. During the semester, they spend many hours a week on teaching responsibilities that come in addition to their regular duties.

Financial support from the School of Engineering and the Zonta Foothills award has helped, but long term, the team hopes to see the course institutionalized and funded.

The team says, “Institutionalizing the course so that it runs each year and guaranteeing funding for instructors and teaching assistants would ensure the longevity and sustainability of this course. It would ensure continued involvement of students in the Climate Action Plan, and a more robust, actionable plan.”

An interdisciplinary group of graduate students (holding plaques) who worked work to give students a seat at the table and engage the undergraduate community in CU’s climate-planning work received CU Boulder’s 2025 Campus Sustainability Award for Student Leadership.

Hands-on climate action

From the start, the group has viewed student involvement as essential, not symbolic.

At the start of the semester, students gain foundational knowledge on topics like climate justice, global carbon budgets and emissions accounting. From there, they split into teams to tackle different emissions categories on campus: commuting, waste, business travel and student/parent flights.

“Students work in four teams, each focused on a different category of campus emissions. They’re developing strategies to reduce emissions for their category, adding depth and student perspective to the high-level strategy suggestions in the CAP,” the instructors say.

Guest speakers, including administrators and national experts, round out the curriculum. Students have heard from Stanford University’s sustainability team and CU Boulder faculty like Professor Karen Bailey (environmental studies) and Professor Nadav Orian Peer (law). They also meet with stakeholders across campus to refine their proposals.

The team believes this approach is the best way to facilitate opportunities to create actionable, equity-centered climate strategies grounded in real data.

“Involving students in climate initiatives enables them to apply knowledge about climate change to their own institution, experience they will carry to become leaders in climate action in their future workplaces and communities,” says Mark.

The results are already visible on campus.

One student team is working with CU’s transportation specialist to revise the campus commuting survey. Another is working on a survey for better tracking of student and parent air travel. Others are collaborating with dining services and facilities to reduce waste and consulting with faculty to provide more accurate emissions calculations of flights taken by faculty and staff.

“Students often learn about the gravity of climate change without learning about solutions, which can be quite depressing,” says Mark.

An interdisciplinary team of graduate students teaches the climate-action planning course for undergraduate students.

“Involving students in climate-action planning and implementation can combat feelings of hopelessness and enable participation in creating real change.”

Impact on both sides

This student-led course has already sparked engagement on both sides of the classroom. One undergraduate took the initiative to launch a campus club to raise awareness about the CAP. Others hope to join implementation committees or pursue careers in sustainability.

“To me, this demonstrates that students are hungry for interdisciplinary courses that enable them to apply their skills and creativity to issues on campus and engage with solutions to the climate crisis,” Fleming says.

For Bowman, the most rewarding part of the experience is the students themselves. “They are passionate, knowledgeable, interested, hardworking and fun to be around! It has been deeply meaningful to get to train them on something I care so much about, and have them care about it in return,” she says.

And for Fleming, designing and teaching the course has also given her much. She adds, “Team teaching is so much fun, and I’ve learned so much from each of my teammates on both content and pedagogical skills.”

As for the future, the graduate instructors each plan to continue fighting for climate action in their respective fields, using their knowledge and experience to make a difference on campus, in state government and in the community.

They also hope CU continues what they started so future students can participate in a course that gives them a voice in the climate conversation through data, creativity and real-world collaboration.

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This summer, where there's smoke there's probably fire

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 21:01:58 +0000

This summer, where there's smoke there's probably fire Rachel Sauer Wed, 04/23/2025 - 15:01

Laura Dee

Controlled burns reduce wildfire risk, but they require trained staff and funding—this could be a rough year

Red skies in August, longer fire seasons and checking air quality before taking my toddler to the park. This has become the new norm in the western United States as wildfires become more frequent, larger and more catastrophic.

As an ecologist at the ��Ƶ, I know that fires are part of the natural processes that forests need to stay healthy. But the combined effects of a warmer and drier climate, more people living in fire-prone areas and vegetation and debris built up over years of fire suppression are leading to more severe fires that spread faster. And that’s putting humans, ecosystems and economies at risk.

To help prevent catastrophic fires, the U.S. Forest Service issued a 10-year strategy in 2022 that includes scaling up the use of controlled burns and other techniques to remove excess plant growth and dry, dead materials that fuel wildfires.

CU Boulder researcher Laura Dee is an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.

However, the Forest Service’s wildfire management activities have been thrown into turmoil in 2025 with funding cuts and disruptions and uncertainty from the federal government.

The planet just saw its hottest year on record. If spring and summer 2025 are also dry and hot, conditions could be prime for severe fires again.

More severe fires harm forest recovery and people

Today’s severe wildfires have been pushing societies, emergency response systems and forests beyond what they have evolved to handle.

Extreme fires have burned into cities, including destroying thousands of homes in the Los Angeles area in 2025 and near Boulder, Colorado, in 2021. They threaten downstream public drinking water by increasing sediments and contaminants in water supplies, as well as infrastructure, air quality and rural economies. They also increase the risk of flooding and mudslides from soil erosion. And they undermine efforts to mitigate climate change by releasing carbon stored in these ecosystems.

In some cases, fires burned so hot and deep into the soil that the forests are not growing back.

While many species are adapted to survive low-level fires, severe blazes can damage the seeds and cones needed for forests to regrow. My team has seen this trend outside of Fort Collins, Colorado, where four years after the Cameron Peak fire, forests have still not come back the way ecologists would expect them to under past, less severe fires. Returning to a strategy of fire suppression − or trying to “go toe-to-toe with every fire” − will make these cases more common.

Proactive wildfire management can help reduce the risk to forests and property.

Measures such as prescribed burns have proven to be effective for maintaining healthy forests and reducing the severity of subsequent wildfires. A recent review found that selective thinning followed by prescribed fire reduced subsequent fire severity by 72% on average, and prescribed fire on its own reduced severity by 62%.

But managing forests well requires knowing how forests are changing, where trees are dying and where undergrowth has built up and increased fire hazards. And, for federal lands, these are some of the jobs that are being targeted by the Trump administration.

Parts of Cameron Peak in north-central Colorado that burned in a severe fire in 2020 showed scant evidence of recovery four years later, when this photo was taken. (Photo: Bella Olesky/CU Boulder)

Some of the Forest Service staff who were fired or put in limbo by the Trump administration are those who do research or collect and communicate critical data about forests and fire risk. Other fired staff provided support so crews could clear flammable debris and carry out fuel treatments such as prescribed burns, thinning forests and building fire breaks.

Losing people in these roles is like firing all primary care doctors and leaving only EMTs. Both are clearly needed. As many people know from emergency room bills, preventing emergencies is less costly than dealing with the damage later.

Logging is not a long-term fire solution

The Trump administration cited “wildfire risk reduction” when it issued an emergency order to increase logging in national forests by 25%.

But private − unregulated − forest management looks a lot different than managing forests to prevent destructive fires.

Logging, depending on the practice, can involve clear-cutting trees and other techniques that compromise soils. Exposing a forest’s soils and dead vegetation to more sunlight also dries them out, which can increase fire risk in the near term.

In general, logging that focuses on extracting the highest-value trees leaves thinner trees that are more vulnerable to fires. A study in the Pacific Northwest found that replanting logged land with the same age and size of trees can lead to more severe fires in the future.

Research and data are essential

For many people in the western U.S., these risks hit close to home.

I’ve seen neighborhoods burn and friends and family displaced, and I have contended with regular air quality warnings and red flag days signaling a high fire risk. I’ve also seen beloved landscapes, such as those on Cameron Peak, transform when conifers that once made up the forest have not regrown.

My scientific research group and collaborations with other scientists have been helping to identify cost-effective solutions. That includes which fuel-treatment methods are most effective, which types of forests and conditions they work best in and how often they are needed. We’re also planning research projects to better understand which forests are at greatest risk of not recovering after fires.

This sort of research is what robust, cost-effective land management is based on.

When careful, evidence-based forest management is replaced with a heavy emphasis on suppressing every fire or clear-cutting forests, I worry that human lives, property and economies, as well as the natural legacy of public lands left to every American, are at risk.

Laura Dee is an associate professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Controlled burns reduce wildfire risk, but they require trained staff and funding—this could be a rough year.

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Top image: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

How we can, why we must transform food systems

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 19:07:24 +0000

How we can, why we must transform food systems Rachel Sauer Mon, 04/21/2025 - 13:07

Laura Vang Rasmussen , Ingo Grass , Claire Kremen and Zia Mehrabi

Evidence shows that diversified farming is key

If you had to pick the single most important thing driving the overshooting of multiple planetary boundaries, it would be the food we eat and how we produce that food. The environmental grand challenges of our day—biodiversity loss, climate change, freshwater use and pollution—all tie back to our food systems.

So also do our social challenges: As of writing, one in four people around the world does not have reliable access to nutritious food. Our food systems need transformation. They must become environmentally safe and socially just.

For years, ecologists have advocated for designing our food systems to be diverse, like ecosystems, to help bring the planet into a safe operating space for humanity. And despite clear examples of both innovative farmers and more traditional ones around the world doing this in practice, governments have remained skeptical due to the opposition this idea poses to mainstream agricultural-development policy.

As we undertook our published research, we set out to explore if mainstream thinking surrounding agricultural development was wrong and, if so, what adding diversity back into agricultural systems might do to correct farming systems around the world.

We worked with more than 50 researchers, who in turn worked with thousands of farmers across 11 countries covering five continents, to test the idea. We covered vastly different food systems, from maize production in Malawi to silvopastoral cattle farming in Colombia, winter wheat production in Germany, strawberry cultivation in the United States and more.

One unique feature of our approach was that all co-authors participated actively in the study design to interweave the many data sets spread across the world. Our project was far from a standard research initiative; it was highly interdisciplinary, involving the co-production of knowledge among researchers from various fields and farmers.

Further, a stakeholder committee, including representatives from different levels of government, U.N. organizations, NGOs and various national farmers’ organizations, was involved in co-production through workshops and engagement activities.

We all worked together to answer a basic question: If more diversity is added into, or kept on, farms, what happens to the environmental and social outcomes we care about? Do we create a better world for people and nature?

CU Boulder scientist Zia Mehrabi and his research colleagues found that across systems, a general rule emerged: the more diversification done at a farm, the better. (Photo: California Strawberry Commission)

The outcomes we looked at were directly related to planetary boundaries on reducing environmental pollution, land use, biodiversity loss and the disruption of biogeochemical flows.

But, unlike earlier studies, we also assessed social outcomes at the same time, including human well-being, crop yields and food security. This integration allowed us to assess whether both positive environmental and social outcomes can be achieved at the same time, something that had never been done before in this way.

What we produced was novel: the first-ever cross-continental, multi-farming system and culturally contextual evidence from real food systems that diversifying agricultural systems helps move agriculture toward where we want it to be. We found that the benefits of diversification differed depending on the practices and farming systems they were tied to. But saliently, we found that across systems, a general rule emerged: the more diversification done at a farm, the better.

And even more promisingly, this was especially true when it came to improving food security and biodiversity at the same time—two outcomes that have previously been juxtaposed in policy and that need the world’s urgent attention now more than ever.

Critically, our study was not theoretical or abstract, nor was it run on field stations or in laboratories. It was conducted with farmers on real-world farms. The main effects we identified held up to a range of different analyses.

We even came up with a list and typology of on-farm interventions, all clearly defined, for practical implementation and support by governments, NGOs, research for development organizations and civil society groups. Importantly, the significance of these interventions is already recognized as a possible pathway toward change and was a key focus of the U.N. Food Systems Summit.

Our work provides robust evidence that investment in these areas will yield the desirable outcomes, bolstering ongoing initiatives by governments and the private sector to support these transformative actions.

Our research demonstrates that diversification represents a significant, tangible and policy-relevant step towards achieving more sustainable food systems globally: one not just grounded in theory or anecdotes but also supported by rich data, covering a vast range of farming systems across the world.

Other observations made during our research project include the insight that farmers in many locations have already been actively working against the odds, finding ways past barriers to diversification. We’ve found this in Malawi, Brazil and the United States, where grass-roots communities of farmers and social networks are mobilizing knowledge, land, seeds, equipment, processing infrastructure and markets to support this movement. Policymakers and practitioners can now support these groups by lowering the structural barriers that have limited their growth and the growth of diversified farming to date.

We are now at a critical juncture where agricultural-development policy requires urgent attention. While the action will be location dependent—diversifying systems that have been made far too simple to function properly and retaining diversity in systems where it is threatened—the time has come, and the options exist, to ensure that the damages and losses done in the past do not continue into the future.

Laura Vang Rasmussen is associate professor of geosciences and natural resource management at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Ingo Grass is professor and head of the Department of Ecology and Tropical Ecological Systems at the University of Hohenheim in Germany. Claire Kremen is the president’s excellence chair in biodiversity at the University of British Columbia in Canada. Zia Mehrabi is an associate professor of environmental studies at the ��Ƶ.

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Evidence shows that diversified farming is key.

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Farm-diversification research wins high kudos

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 19:03:22 +0000

Farm-diversification research wins high kudos Rachel Sauer Mon, 04/21/2025 - 13:03

Clint Talbott

CU Boulder’s Zia Mehrabi and an international group of researchers are named national champion of the Frontiers Planet Prize for research that finds environmental and social benefits of agricultural diversification

Widespread agricultural diversification could improve the health of the world’s environment and that of its people, a landmark study published last year found.

Zia Mehrabi, assistant professor of environmental studies at the ��Ƶ, alongside a large group of international researchers, has been named the U.S. national champion for the Frontiers Planet Prize, the Frontiers Research Foundation announced today.

As one of 19 national champions, Mehrabi and team are in contention to be named one of three international champions, each of whom will receive $1 million in funding to advance their research. The international champions will be announced at the Frontiers Planet Prize ceremony in Switzerland in June.