Good morning!

From scientific discoveries to activist wins, here are the latest news stories that showcase the people who are taking on climate change and nature loss, and winning.

1. Voters who care about climate could swing the election

Volunteers are hitting the phones to encourage people who care about climate change to vote – a wave that could end up swinging the election, since on one estimate, there’s 8 million people who care about the climate but who didn’t vote in the 2020 election. The Environmental Voter Project, the group that’s doing the phone banking, says it has persuaded 350,000 inactive voters in Pennsylvania since 2017, and this year is working across 19 states. Its tactics are interesting – it doesn’t mention candidates or climate change at all to prospective voters, but uses pressure to change their behaviours, for instance by reminding people their votes are public record.

2. The Arctic is warming – but not as fast as we thought

The Arctic is warming 3-4 times faster than the global average, but because of an ocean current, it might not reach the dangerous temperatures we’d previously anticipated. This current, which carries heat from the Tropics towards the Arctic, is slowing down, decelerating the rate of warming as a result. This is good news – as long as we use this time to combat the sources of emissions that are causing this warming.

3. Reviving Indigenous practices to stop wildfires

For millennia, the Indigenous result practice of ‘cultural burning’ – frequent, small-scale fires which reduce shrub cover – limited the number of wildfires in Australia. With colonisation, these practices were all but wiped out, but reintroducing them could help stem the huge wildfires that ravage the country.