From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.

Octavia E. Butler, 1998:

⭐NEW PAPER ⭐
We collaborated with AWorld, the largest app for personal climate action, to examine behavioral patterns, data quality, and the links between users' actions, carbon footprints and psychological factors.

iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...
@fdabl.bsky.social @cameronbrick.bsky.social

After Intense Lobbying, Carney Allows Gas-Powered Data Centres in Alberta Energy firm pushed federal officials to scale back clean-electricity rules tied to AI sector by Taylor C. Noakes Updated 11:46, Mar. 27, 2026 | Published 6:30, Mar. 27, 2026

he Alberta electricity company Capital Power, which is developing a new, large artificial intelligence data centre in the province powered by natural gas, lobbied the federal Mark Carney government dozens of times in 2025 to eliminate clean-energy regulations, DeSmog has learned. These regulations were subsequently dropped from a fossil fuel accord that the prime minister signed with the Government of Alberta this past November, allowing new, large data centres fuelled by gas turbines to proceed. “We’ve got a new paradigm that allows us to look at growth capital” for Canadian gas-powered AI projects, Capital Power chief executive officer Avik Dey said in reaction to the Carney government announcing it would suspend the regulations.

The term “data centre” appears at least twenty-five times in notes from Capital Power’s interactions with the federal government, while the term “emissions” appears seventeen times, and “clean-energy regulations” and “net zero” appear each at least fourteen times.

The AI boom is itself driving a massive development of gas-power generation: over 1,000 gigawatts worldwide, a quarter of which is in the United States. Though AI data centres can be powered by any form of electricity, the gas industry has marketed gas power as cheap, efficient, and reliable.

What a stunning demonstration of how data centre development is directly and materially boosting fossil fuels. After ferocious lobbying the Carney government caved and killed off environmental rules to allow fossil gas power plants to be built for data centres:

thewalrus.ca/after-intens...

A staircase diagram with six levels rising from bottom-left to top-right. Each level on the left represents a stage in the causal chain of climate change, connected by a dashed arrow to a corresponding intervention on the right. From bottom to top: Root Drivers (economic system, fossil finance, colonial and historical structures, geopolitics) connects to Transformative System Change (economic restructuring, post-colonial redress, geopolitical shifts); Human Activities (consumption and production patterns) connects to Socio-technical and Behavioural Change (electrification, behaviour change, market incentives); Energy and Land Systems connects to Infrastructure Transition (renewables, grids, land-use redesign); Emissions connects to End-of-pipe Controls (CCS); Atmospheric GHG Concentrations connects to Carbon Dioxide Removal (including NETs); Earth's Energy Imbalance connects to Geoengineering (SRM). A diagonal arrow runs across the full diagram from Structural/Preventative at the bottom-left to Reactive/Compensatory at the top-right.

1/ Yesterday @wmo-global.bsky.social made Earth's Energy Imbalance a headline #climate indicator for the first time.

I think this could be a significant reframing of climate discourse, and it's worth paying close attention to why. 🧵

Screenshot showing the Climate Shift Index from Climate Central for March 19, 2026. There is a change in likelihood of CSI 5 across nearly the entire Western USA.

Even in a world of extremes, some events still stand out to me. This is one. All-time monthly records are being shattered.

The size of this ridge across the western U.S. is truly striking for March, and we see a very clear climate change connection.

Explore: csi.climatecentral.org/climate-shif...

SEVEN advises the government on how to achieve policy goals for insulation and electricity consumption - SEVEN The Dutch Ministry of Climate Policy and Green Growth will incorporate the policy recommendation by the University of Amsterdam’s Climate Institute SEVEN.

This was a very rewarding and insightful collaboration, and you can read a short summary of this work — commissioned by the Dutch Ministry for Climate Policy and Green Growth — and the full report here: seven.uva.nl/en/content/n...

Across 3 sessions, we brought together stakeholders from policy, science, civil society, and practice to jointly map the structures underlying the two behaviours.

We identified feedback loops that could accelerate or hinder progress, and distilled a set of policy recommendations with high leverage.

This has implications for policy: the most impactful interventions are unlikely to be isolated campaigns or one-off incentives, but efforts to change the structures that shape behaviour.

This is where a systems perspective is especially useful. Instead of locating behaviour change primarily at the level of the individual, it asks how personal, social, and structural factors interact to make certain behaviours easier or harder.

These factors do not operate in isolation. They interact in ways that can either support change or generate friction that reinforces the status quo.

Take home insulation, for example. Whether people insulate depends not only on motivation or costs, but also on the availability of skilled installers, the stability of government policy, the availability of trusted advice, and the experiences and expectations of others around them.

Behaviour change is often framed narrowly as a matter of individual choice: give people better information, the right incentive, or a small push, and change will follow.

But many climate-relevant behaviours do not work like that. They are shaped by the broader systems in which people are embedded.

Simplified Causal Loop Diagram for Insulating to the Standard

We recently published a report from a project at SEVEN, in which we used group model building to map the systems shaping home insulation and shifting electricity use away from peak hours in the Netherlands: seven.uva.nl/en/content/n...

It also highlights something broader about behaviour change 🧵

This has implications for policy: the most impactful interventions are unlikely to be isolated campaigns or one-off incentives, but efforts to change the structures that shape behaviour.

This is where a systems perspective is especially useful. Instead of locating behaviour change primarily at the level of the individual, it asks how personal, social, and structural factors interact to make certain behaviours easier or harder.

These factors do not operate in isolation. They interact in ways that can either support change or generate friction that reinforces the status quo.

Take home insulation, for example. Whether people insulate depends not only on motivation or costs, but also on the availability of skilled installers, the stability of government policy, the availability of trusted advice, and the experiences and expectations of others around them.

Behaviour change is often framed narrowly as a matter of individual choice: give people better information, the right incentive, or a small push, and change will follow.

But most climate-relevant behaviours do not work like that. They are shaped by the broader systems in which people are embedded.

🚨 Techno-optimism reduces willingness to address climate change 🚨

In a new preprint, @maiensachis.bsky.social, @fdabl.bsky.social, and I examined the causal effect of techno-optimist beliefs on the willingness to contribute to addressing climate change.

🔗 Read the paper: lnkd.in/eE847_jK

How climate scientists balance the tension between research and public protest – new study Researchers said they tried to manage how their activism was perceived by clarifying their expertise and acting alongside other scientists.

How do scientists balance science with protest? My new piece for @theconversation.com, explores how scientists transition into activism and sustain their engagement.

This is based on my recently published ethnographic paper journals.plos.org/climate/arti...

theconversation.com/how-climate-...

The Hardest Lesson | Climate Majority Project The one lesson he's afraid to teach. Watch. Discuss. Act. Use our Discussion Guide to start a conversation in your classroom, community, or home:…

No one trains teachers for this part of the job.

Watch The Hardest Lesson - a short film about what it's really like to teach during a #climate crisis.

Not the facts.
The feelings.
The silence.
The responsibility.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H-5...

Important new @annualreviews.bsky.social review on #AMOC collapse. 🌊⚠️

🔗 www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Here are 8 key takeaways from Dijkstra & van Westen (2026) on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and its risks.

👇🧵

Reviewing one year of blogging Writing blog posts has been one of the most rewarding experiences for me over the last year. Some posts turned out quite long, others I could keep more concise. Irrespective of length, however, I have...

Haha, thank you! Starting a blog was one of the best decisions I made during my PhD — it warms my heart to remember how much fun I had: fabiandablander.com/r/Reviewing-... More innocent times!

Graphic shows three line graph time series of monthly carbon dioxide abundance in ppm (blue line), monthly methane abundance in ppb (red line), and monthly nitrous oxide in ppb (purple line). Graphs are all shown from January 1984 through December 2025/September 2025. Current levels of CO2 are 427 ppm. Current levels of methane are 1941 ppb. Current levels of nitrous oxide are 339 ppb. All graphs show long-term increasing trends along with some interannual variability and seasonality.

Status of the most recent monthly-averaged greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide.

Observational data provided by gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/

Speaker Spotlight: Rachel Donald

How can we make sense of a world shaped by interlocking crises? Where in the world can we find stories and places already modeling the changes we need?

We're excited to have @racheldonald.bsky.social help us tackle these questions!

⏳ Apply until Jan 26: acscc.nl

Speaker Spotlight: Kristian Nielsen

How do individual behavior change & broader systems change interact? How can behavioral science realize its full potential to address climate change?

We're excited to have @kristiansn89.bsky.social help us tackle these questions!

⏳ Apply until Jan 26: acscc.nl

Speaker Spotlight: Julia Steinberger

How can societies ensure decent living for all while staying within planetary boundaries?

We are excited to have @jksteinberger.bsky.social as an ACSCC keynote speaker to address this critical question.

⏳ Apply until Jan 26 at acscc.nl

Stephen Miller goes on a rant defending Trump's imperialist aggression against Venezuela: "We’re a superpower… we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower."

Jake Tapper: "I don't even know what you're talking about right now."

Just a few things I'd like to say about this @hausfath.bsky.social piece.

The first is that every 10th of a degree of heating over 2C raises risks for multiple irreversible catastrophes MORE than every 10th of a degree of heating under 2C.

That's why the 2C target exists. It's not random.

🧵