A team of farmers, university researchers and environmentalists is busy at work in the wetlands of eastern England. They are digging into the area’s wheat fields, looking for wet earth that could hide lost ponds underneath. It takes the group of diggers just a few hours to revive (使复活) one dying pond. It’s near Hindolveston, a thousand-year-old village close to the North Sea.

“As soon as the buried ponds get water and light, they just spring to life,” says Nick Anema, a farmer in nearby Dereham. He’s brought seven ponds on his farm back to life. “Frogs and all the insects like dragonflies can be seen here again,” he said.

But the battle for the wetlands is a struggle. While efforts to stop losses are continuing, wetlands around the world are still being filled in and covered up. Over the past three centuries, almost 90% of the world’s wetlands have disappeared. The loss rate has increased since the 1970s, with wetlands now disappearing three times faster than, the world’s forests.

Some 5,000 wetland-dependent animal species could die out because of such losses. Wetland loss can also affect human beings. Wetlands act as natural storage areas for water. Losing those areas could lead to more severe flooding in many parts of the world. And the act of removing water from wetlands can release huge amounts of carbon dioxide, a major contributor to climate change.

Human-made wetlands, however, aren’t decreasing in number. Rice fields, water reservoirs and agricultural stock ponds have all increased since the 1970s. Yet scientists are concerned about this phenomenon. “People brag (自夸) about the fact that there’s been no net loss (净损失) of wetlands. But what they’ve done is destroy natural wetlands and create artificial ones,” says Stuart Pimm, a Duke University professor. “It makes it look like you’re doing no harm when the reality is very different.”

Torrential rains have hit China In July, with 617.1mm of water reportedly falling form Saturday to Tuesday in Zhengzhou, for which more than 100,000 people have been evacuated. The scenes of devastation(破坏)in Zhengzhou added to a list of disasters this year that have raised the fear of climate change.

As the effects of climate change become more disastrous, well-known research institutions and government agencies are focusing new money and attention on an idea: artificially cooling the planet, in the hopes of buying humanity more time to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

That strategy, called solar geoengineering, involves reflecting more of the sun's energy back into space to abruptly reduce global temperatures. The idea has been considered as a dangerous and fancied solution, one that would encourage people to keep burning fossil fuels while on the other hand exposing the planet to unexpected threatening side effects, producing more destructive hurricanes, wildfires, floods and other disasters.

But as global warming continues, producing more destructive hurricanes, wildfires, floods and other disasters. some experts say that concerns about geoengineering should be outweighed by the imperative to better understand it, in case the consequence of climate change become so terrible that the world can't wait for better solutions.

One way to cool the earth is by injecting aerosols(气溶胶)into the upper layer of the atmosphere, where those particles(粒子)reflect sunlight away from the earth. That process works, according to MacMartin, a researcher at Cornell University.

“We know with 100% certainty that we can cool the planet,” he said. What's still unclear, he added, is what happens next. Temperature, MacMartin said, is an indicator for a lot of climate effects. “What does it do to the strength of hurricanes?” he asked, “What does it do to agriculture production? What does it do to the risk of forest fires?”

Another institution funded by the National Science Foundation will analyze simulations of aerosol injection, testing the effects on Weather extremes around the world. One goal of the research is to look for a sweet spot: the amount of artificial cooling that can reduce extreme weather events without causing broader changes in regional rainfall patterns or similar impacts.

A Dutch city will become the first in the world to ban meat adverts from public spaces in an effort to reduce consumption and greenhouse gas emissions (排放). Haarlem, which lies to the west of Amsterdam and has a population of about 160,000, will enact the prohibition from 2024 after meat was added to a list of products thought to contribute to the climate crisis.

Adverts will not be allowed on Haarlem’s buses, shelters and screens in public spaces, causing complaints from the meat sector that the city government is “going too far in telling people what’s best for them”.

Recent studies suggest global food production is responsible for one-third of all planet-heating emissions, with the use of animals for meat accounting for twice the pollution of producing plant-based foods. Forests that absorb carbon dioxide are cut down for the grazing (放牧) of animals while fertilisers used for growing their feed are rich in nitrogen (氮), which can contribute to air and water pollution and climate change. Livestock also produces large quantities of methane (甲烷), a powerful greenhouse gas.

Ziggy Klazes, a councillor from the GroenLinks party, who drafted the law banning meat advertising, said she had not known the city would be the world’s first to enforce (执行) such a policy when she proposed it. She told the Haarlem105 radio channel, “We are not about what people are baking and roasting in their own kitchen; if people wanted to continue eating meat, fine... Of course, there are a lot of people who find the decision unacceptable, but there are also a lot of people who think it’s fine.”

The ban also covers holiday flights, fossil fuels and cars that run on fossil fuels. The ban is delayed until 2024 due to existing contracts with companies that sell the products.

Research suggests that to meet the EU target of net zero emissions by 2050, meat consumption must be reduced to 24 kg per person per year, compared with the current average of 82 kg, or 75.8 kg in the Netherlands, which is the EU’s biggest meat exporter.