Good news: Climate pollution is falling

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Global climate pollution is on track to fall by 0.5% this year in part as a result of the U.S.-Israel war against Iran, according to a new analysis from Carbon Brief, a climate change publication. 

As the Yale Climate Connections team has been documenting, the widening conflict has disrupted major oil chokepoints, sent fuel prices skyrocketing, and boosted demand for electric vehicles – at least outside the U.S. As people switch from cars and appliances powered by fossil fuels to cleaner options, such as EVs and heat pumps, climate pollution drops. 

“Each month of disruption – and each new flashpoint, such as in Yemen – is increasing the incentive to switch to alternatives,” Carbon Brief explained. 

As recently as January 2026, the International Energy Agency forecast that oil demand would rise this year by 930,000 barrels per day, Carbon Brief said. But in its most recent forecast, the IEA said it expected oil demand would actually decline by 2.5 million barrels per day. 

The longer the conflict lasts, the greater the likelihood of permanent behavior change, known as “demand destruction.”  

“The IEA expects 2027 demand to barely recover to pre-conflict levels, and a portion of demand destruction may be permanent,” Pavel Molchanov, an investment strategy analyst at Raymond James, said in an email, according to The Washington Post. 

– Sara Peach, Editor-in-Chief 

Buying on the brink in Hawaii

Rachel Ramirez reports:

This story was originally published by The Confluence as part of a pop-up climate newsroom of independent journalists. Subscribe here.

HONOLULU – Walking the stretch between Sunset Beach and Rocky Point on O’ahu’s North Shore means choosing between a violent shoreline that could sweep you away, or climbing the top of giant geotextile tubes filled with sandbags called “sand burritos,” installed by property owners as temporary makeshift barriers to fight coastal erosion.

Standing on a sandbar separating the murky Pa’amalu stream from the sea, Denise Antolini and I paused to watch a pregnant woman and her husband precariously cross atop these massive sand burritos covered in black fabric. We waited for them to pass before we set off in the opposite direction. One misstep, and you might just fall down the steep embankment onto the shrinking strip of the shore below.

“It’s very, very dangerous to have this kind of lateral access,” said Antolini, a former resident of this coastline. “That’s the only access the public has right now, and it’s a big problem. We need to have this stuff removed and the beach restored so we don’t have to walk treacherously like that.”

One by one, Antolini pointed out the multi-million-dollar oceanfront homes that had collapsed, been demolished, or moved back. Nearly three-quarters, or 73%, of North Shore beaches suffer from chronic erosion – a figure expected to reach nearly 90% within 30 years as sea levels rise to just 10 inches, according to 2020 data. Additionally, 28% of beachfront homes along this key 2.5-mile stretch currently sit within 20 feet of water. With about two feet of sea level rise, that number climbs to roughly 40%. Desperate to protect these investments, landowners have been pushing for temporary fixes like seawalls or sand burritos to delay the inevitable.

There was a time when the government “was handing out seawall permits like Halloween candy,” said Charles Fletcher, a climate scientist and the dean of the School of Ocean Earth Science and Technology at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. “They didn’t realize that in an era of rising sea level, if you trap the beach, it’s going to drown and go away.”

When sea levels rise, beaches naturally move inland to survive. If they have nowhere to move, they drown. Building seawalls or placing sandbags to protect coastal property blocks this natural movement. Instead of saving the beach, these hard barriers cause incoming waves to wash away the sand even faster, damaging nearby properties and eventually causing the beach to completely disappear.

In Hawaii, all sandy beaches extending landward to the highest reaches of the waves belong to the public, and as rising seas erode the coast, that public boundary shifts inland into once-private land. To defend its shores, the state enacted a series of aggressive, first-of-their-kind laws: banning coastal armoring such as seawalls and sand burritos in 2020, mandating real estate sellers to disclose sea-level rise risks as well as the presence of illegal erosion barriers in 2021, and cracking down with heavy fines on long-expired and unpermitted coastal armoring like sandbags in 2023. Yet despite these stringent legal hurdles, wealthy owners keep pouring millions into crumbling oceanfront estates – igniting a fierce battle between private property rights and the survival of Hawaii’s public beaches.

“We’re at a real crisis point,” warned Antolini, a retired law professor at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa turned full-time environmentalist. “Somebody needs to speak for the beach.”

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Your moment of hope

Jono Anzalone, managing director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, was in Portland, Maine, earlier this month for a workshop called “From Concern to Action: What Young People Want from Climate Leadership.”

Jono writes: “We shared some YPCCC research and then turned things over to an incredible panel of five young women representing three Maine colleges/universities and one high school. They were thoughtful, candid, funny, and genuinely inspiring as they talked about climate concern, what gives them hope, what gets in the way of action, and what they want and need from climate leaders.”

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