Climate engineering, also known as geoengineering, refers to the deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system to counteract anthropogenic climate change. These interventions aim to modify the environment to mitigate the impacts of global warming.
Ecotourism is a form of responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment, sustains the well-being of local people, and involves interpretation and education. It emphasizes minimizing the impact on natural habitats and promoting environmental and cultural awareness among travelers.
Ecodesign, or ecological design, is an approach to designing products and services that gives special consideration to the environmental impacts of a product over its entire lifecycle. The main goal of ecodesign is to anticipate and minimize negative environmental impacts associated with manufacturing, using, and disposing of products, while maintaining high standards of quality and functionality.
Eco-anxiety refers to a form of psychological distress related to concerns about climate change and environmental crises. This emotional state can manifest as a chronic fear of environmental doom, leading to feelings of helplessness and distress about the planet’s future.
Eco-lucidity: Faced with the reality of an “eco-anxious generation”, eco-lucidity is a way out of the pathologization of a legitimate reaction to the alarming ecological situation we are living through. It’s about politicizing the source of this concern: the weakness of current political power to curb, mitigate and adapt to the crisis of the living. Thus redefined, politico-anxiety frees us from our sense of powerlessness to take ambitious collective action.
An ecosystem is a complex network of living organisms (biotic components) and their physical environment (abiotic components) interacting as a functional unit. These interactions involve energy flows and nutrient cycles that connect organisms with each other and their surroundings.
The Anthropocene is a proposed term to describe a new geological epoch characterized by the significant impact of human activities on Earth’s systems, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and alterations in biogeochemical cycles. The term combines the Greek words “anthropo” (human) and “cene” (new). Although widely used in scientific and cultural contexts, in 2024, the International Commission on Stratigraphy decided not to officially recognize the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch.
The term anthropogenic refers to effects, processes, or materials that are derived from human activities, as opposed to those occurring in natural environments without human influences. It is commonly used in environmental science to describe pollutants and environmental changes that result from human actions, such as industrial emissions, deforestation, and urbanization.
The term “climate overshoot” refers to a scenario where the global average temperature temporarily exceeds a specific warming target, such as a 1.5°C increase above pre-industrial levels, before eventually returning below that threshold. This temporary exceedance is often projected in climate models that account for the inertia of the climate system and the time required to implement effective mitigation measures. However, even a temporary overshoot can lead to significant and potentially irreversible impacts on ecosystems and human societies.
Environmentalism is a political and ethical movement that seeks to improve and protect the quality of the natural environment through changes to environmentally harmful human activities. It asserts that living things other than humans, and the natural environment as a whole, deserve consideration in moral reasoning about political, economic, and social policies.
Global Warming Potential (GWP) is a metric that quantifies the relative impact of different greenhouse gases on Earth’s warming over a specified time horizon, typically 100 years, compared to carbon dioxide (CO₂).
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the United Nations body responsible for assessing the science related to climate change.