This Week on Earth: April 8-14
Lunar eclipse during the early morning hours of Friday, March 14. (Jonathan Zhao/ION)
United States
On April 8, 2025, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced it would cut $4 million in funding to Princeton University’s climate-focused programs.
The Commerce Department said Princeton’s work in collaboration with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration “promotes exaggerated and implausible climate threats, contributing to a phenomenon known as ‘climate anxiety,’” in a press release.
In justifying cuts to a collaborative program focused on water modeling, the Commerce Department explained that the initiative “suggests that the Earth will have a significant fluctuation in its water availability as a result of global warming.” They continued, saying that “using federal funds to perpetuate these narratives does not align with the priorities of this Administration.”
Climate change, whether we like it or not, is happening. Sea levels are rising, global temperatures are increasing and weather patterns are changing to devastating effect. Just as the administration announced it would cut funding for these programs, areas in the U.S. South and Midwest experienced heavy rainfall, storms and tornadoes.
Turning a blind eye to reality and declaring phenomena actively hurting American residents and people across the globe “alleged,” or their study “misaligned with the administration’s priorities”? I allege that’s misaligned with the priorities of the human race.
Texas
This week, the internet has been abuzz with news on de-extincted dire wolves and the company behind it: Colossal Biosciences.
De-extinction is the replacement of an extinct species by adapting a living organism to “serve the ecological function of the extinct species by altering phenotypes” through various breeding techniques, according to a paper published in Genes.
The process can help restore lost biodiversity due to human interference in habitats, or help support species that are currently at the brink of extinction.
Some express skepticism over whether the so-called “de-extincted” dire wolves can be considered de-extincted, pointing to the fact that they are grey wolves with modified DNA.
“A grey wolf with 20 edits to 14 genes, even if those are key differences, is still very much a grey wolf,” Nic Rawlence, paleontologist at the University of Otago, told Vox.
Colossal’s announcement has been met with both excitement about its possibilities and concern about its ethicality.
The Trump administration expressed excitement at the potential of technological solutions to climate change (rather than regulation or policy-driven ones).
“Going forward, we must celebrate removals from the endangered list - not additions,” Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum wrote in an X post. “Since the dawn of our nation, it has been innovation – not regulation – that has spawned American greatness.”
Worldwide
Amazon, Microsoft and Google are operating water-intensive data centers in already water-scarce areas across the globe, as reported by non-profit SourceMaterial and the Guardian.
In the age of big data and artificial intelligence, centers for data storage and processing are becoming crucial for tech giants. Running AI models is an intensive process that generates a lot of heat, requiring substantial cooling systems.
The most common cooling methods require water, meaning these centers can be highly water-intensive. Large data centers, like the ones Google runs to support services like Gmail or Google Drive, use about 550,000 gallons of water per day.
According to SourceMaterial’s analysis, 38 data centers owned by Amazon, Microsoft and Google are “in parts of the world already facing water scarcity,” with “24 more under development.”
A recent Princeton University study found that developed nations are able to “externalize the environmental costs of land use,” offloading their environmental impact onto developing countries.
This is exactly the type of exploitative relationship the Paris Agreement, for example, tried to mitigate. With Trump pulling out of the agreement, it remains to be seen how global priorities for equitable climate resilience might shift.