Ecology plays a vital role in human existence, making it requisite to maintain Earth’s balance, influenced by factors like climate, vegetation, and biodiversity; however, the impact of human activities cannot be disregarded. This study examines the future dystopian novel Water Must Fall by British-South African writer Nick Wood. The study also investigates the novel’s portrayal of environmental collapse and climate change, focusing on the water crisis and its reflection on contemporary ecological concerns. Taking ecocriticism as a theoretical framework, this research highlights the symbolic implications of water as a living force and investigates how its commodification and exploitation intersect with capitalism, social inequality, and gentrification, ultimately leading to environmental collapse. This study involves close reading and thematic analysis of the text. This study illuminates the novel’s contribution to the genre of environmental literature and its potential to stimulate critical thinking in addressing contemporary planetary crises.
This study investigates how audience segmentation can support strategies to address climate change disinformation. A nationally representative survey conducted in Lithuania in 2024 used latent class analysis (LCA) to identify four audience segments based on perceptions of science, trust in research, and media use: “Engaged Enthusiasts,”” Informed Sceptics,” “Occasional Observers,” and the “Hard-to-Reach.” While the segmentation structure is comparable to earlier findings from Switzerland, differences were observed in demographic composition, media practices, and engagement levels. The questionnaire was adapted to the Lithuanian context by including nationally relevant media sources and a section on climate change. Attitudes toward climate change vary across the segments. “Engaged Enthusiasts” strongly align with the scientific consensus and support climate science. “Informed Sceptics” also accept the reality and human causes of climate change, despite their more critical views of science. “Occasional Observers” show the weakest agreement with key climate statements, reflecting low scientific interest. The “Hard-to-Reach” segment, although disengaged from science generally, expresses relatively strong concern about climate change. These findings suggest that counter-disinformation strategies should differentiate between audience segments and align communication with their trust levels and information behaviors.
This article considers the construction of models to assess the level of negative impacts of industrial and agricultural technologies, transportation, and communication on the atmosphere in the region. We conduct a comprehensive study of the dynamics and results of the impact of natural, climatic, meteorological, and anthropogenic factors in the Belgorod region of the Russian Federation, which serves as a pilot site. The region simultaneously leads in the production of agricultural and metallurgical products. This combination of industries allows for the efficient use of the region’s resources but also creates certain environmental challenges. An analysis of the territories within the pilot site reveals that the Gubkinsky and Starooskolsky districts, which house the cluster of metallurgical industries, have an anthropogenic impact on the Chernyansky and Korochansky districts, where most agricultural lands are located. This is supported by the observation of increased carbon dioxide levels in these areas. Additionally, a study of meteorological data and yield indicators for various agricultural crops shows a decline in crop yields in some areas compared to others. A web module has been developed to provide a visualized, spatial, temporal, and structural assessment of air pollution levels in the form of interactive maps. Situational models synthesizing geoformation and neural network technologies have also been developed and studied. These models allow for high-precision assessments, forecasting, and visualization of the spatial distribution and accumulation of pollutants and greenhouse gases in the atmospheric boundary layer.
As climate patterns shift, buildings must adapt to evolving energy demands to safeguard occupant comfort, safety, and operational performance. This study quantifies those demands for United States office buildings through long-term climate simulations. Using future weather files for 2050 and 2080 derived from the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) 4.5 and 8.5, we employed EnergyPlus to estimate changes in Energy Use Intensity (EUI) for the US Department of Energy’s small, medium, and large office prototypes. Four representative ASHRAE climate zones—2A (hot humid), 2B (hot dry), 6A (cold humid), and 5C (cool marine)—capture a broad spectrum of US conditions. Results indicate a pronounced rise in cooling demand in warmer regions. In Zone 2A, for example, cooling energy in small offices is projected to increase by 7.2% under RCP 4.5 and 8.0% under RCP 8.5, by 2080. Conversely, heating loads decline in colder climates, though they remain significant. Notably, heating demand for large offices in Zone 6A falls by 36.5% under RCP 4.5 but rebounds under RCP 8.5, illustrating complex climate–energy interactions across emission pathways. These findings underscore the urgency of region-specific, resilient design strategies—ranging from high-performance envelopes and adaptive controls to advanced heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) technologies—to curb future energy loads. Integrating such measures into codes, retrofits, and new construction will be essential for sustainable building operations in a warming climate.
The impact of democracy on climate change mitigation remains contested, as empirical findings are mixed. This inconsistency may stem from prior studies relying on single democracy measures and narrow model specifications, leaving the true democracy-climate relationship unclear. We address these limitations by conducting a comprehensive panel analysis with multiple democracy indices and advanced estimators. Specifically, we employ six distinct democracy indices and various time-series cross-sectional methods (including panel-corrected standard errors, fixed effects [FE], and a random effects within-between [REWB] model) to separately capture long-run (structural) democracy and short-run changes. Our findings show that higher long-run levels of democracy are consistently associated with lower carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions per capita. This negative association is especially pronounced in high-income countries and significantly weaker in low-income countries. Moreover, the results remain robust across different model specifications and sensitivity checks, including outlier exclusions and temporal lags. These findings suggest that enduring democratic institutions can facilitate climate mitigation, but only when supported by sufficient economic development and administrative capacity. Taken together, the results reconcile previously mixed evidence and advance theoretical understanding of the democracy-climate nexus.
Contemporary climate-change denialism increasingly thrives on participatory platforms where visibility emerges from design features and interaction incentives. However, scholarship lacks circulation-aware evidence linking denialist frames to platform affordances and diffusion patterns. This study introduces blunt-edged politics and examines how this scales within participatory media ecologies. Using an analytical modeling approach, the study integrates deductive–inductive content analysis, sentiment labeling, logistic regression, and hashtag network mapping across selected social media posts from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram, sampled across three Conference of the Parties (COP)-related periods. Reliability scores were high, and a supervised transformer classifier generated sentiment labels for the study. Results show that conspiracy frames dominated high-engagement flows; shares and comments predicted denialist presence, while likes did not. YouTube displayed the highest adjusted odds of denialism. The hashtag network formed modular clusters bridged by a few high-brokerage anchors. Here, denialism operates as a circulation regime, suggesting the need for counter-strategies that disrupt brokerage and strengthen share-ready corrective narratives.
