Over the past week, hundreds of thousands of people in France and Spain fled their homes, many in the dead of night, carrying only what they could. In the coming days and weeks, as evacuation orders lift, some will come home to partially destroyed towns. Others will find only ash.

The fourth heat wave of a broiling summer is underway this week, and Europe has already seen one of its most destructive wildfire seasons on record, leading to one of the largest evacuation of people on the continent since the Second World War. It’s also the latest consequence of climate change, according to a study released on Thursday by World Weather Attribution, a scientific non-profit that analyzes the role of global warming in extreme weather events. Human-induced climate change made the likelihood of fire-prone conditions in France at least twice as likely, and at least 20 times as likely in central Spain.

“This is not an isolated event; it is part of a pattern,” says Maria Alcazar Castilla, the deputy regional director of the International Federation of Red Cross in Europe. The Red Cross is helping coordinate the disaster response effort in both countries and providing supplies and temporary shelter for thousands.

For months leading up to the recent wildfires, Western Europe had been scorched by back-to-back heat waves and an extended drought that dried out trees, shrubs and farmland, turning the landscape into a tinderbox. Climate change makes the confluence of these extremes more likely, scientists say.

Last year, similar conditions created Europe’s worst wildfire season in history, with more than two million hectares burned by September. This year could be on track to surpass that: some 430,000 hectares have burned so far – roughly 100,000 more than this time last year with two months left to go. In Spain alone, the burned area is roughly equivalent to the size of London.

With heat waves projected to continue in the coming weeks, the risk of more fire looms over the continent. Other research on Southern Europe, also released on Thursday, found that summer days with conditions making them prone to extreme fires have more than doubled in recent decades.

At the height of the disaster this week, more than 300,000 people had been displaced across France and Spain. Rural areas that rely on farming and tourism have been the worst hit, Alcazar says. “The impact to the livelihoods of people will be huge.”

The high temperatures that set the stage for these fires had their own devastating consequences. This June was the hottest ever recorded in Western Europe. In addition to causing nuclear reactors and train lines to shut down, the oppressive heat killed thousands of people across the continent in the span of a few weeks.

This summer has shown that climate change is a “national security emergency facing Europe and threatening our way of life,” officials from the United Kingdom and Spain said in a joint statement on Thursday.

Scientific research that links climate change to weather events is a relatively young field known as attribution science. Groups like World Weather Attribution skip the typical publishing process in science and use rapid analysis methods to get answers faster. The goal is to give the public an understanding of the role climate change plays in an extreme event before the news cycle has moved on.

Clair Barnes, a research associate at World Weather Attribution who led the analysis, says this particular study was completed more quickly than the organization’s usual studies. It drew from the group’s earlier research on heat and drought, which, along with wind speed, are key components in so-called fire weather. The group also analyzed historical weather data to compare this year’s fire conditions with those from past summers, as well as with simulations of a world without climate change. “As long as we continue to emit fossil fuels into the atmosphere, those greenhouse gases are going to continue to warm the planet more,” Barnes says. “This is just the beginning of how bad it’s going to be.”

One significant factor, the group found, was a rainier than usual winter in January and February, which prompted a burst of vegetation growth in the spring. Then, as the monthslong drought set in, those plants dried up, becoming the tinder that fuelled these fires.

I don’t think it’s an issue of firefighting capacity or investment. It’s fundamentally an issue of landscape management in the face of global warming.

– Robert Field, fire and climate researcher at Columbia University in New York

This phenomenon, sometimes called “weather whiplash,” is a direct result of climate change. As the atmosphere warms, it gets spongier and thirstier, sucking up more moisture from the land and holding on to it for longer periods of time. That, in turn, leads to more intense rainfall that happens less frequently.

How people use the land can also make wildfire conditions significantly worse, says Robert Field, a fire and climate researcher at Columbia University in New York.

In both France and Spain, abandoned farmland and a shift away from cattle, which graze on plants, might have played a role in fuelling the fire. In France, the wildfire outbreak was centred in the Landes de Gascogne, a coastal region with an abundance of planted pine forests. Research on wildfires worldwide has shown that timber plantations like these can be twice as flammable as natural forests. “I don’t think it’s an issue of firefighting capacity or investment,” Field says. “It’s fundamentally an issue of landscape management in the face of global warming.”

Since Tuesday, firefighters have managed to partially contain many of the fires, and authorities have allowed more than 100,000 evacuees to return home in southwest France. A weak cold front is also on its way to Europe, potentially providing a small window of relief, according to Jason Nicholls, a meteorologist and international forecasting lead at AccuWeather.

But another surge of heat could come as soon as this weekend, with more heat expected by mid-August, forecasts show. “I don’t see any drought relief in the near term, which would mean the wildfire risk will stay very elevated,” Nicholls says. The drought and heat will continue to smother France, Spain and other parts of Central and Western Europe, like Germany and Hungary.

“I’ve been doing international forecasting for 20 years,” Nicholls says. “These wildfires have been some of the worst I’ve ever seen.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/wildfires/study-monster-wildfires-spain-france-attribution/. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style.

Grist is a non-profit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.

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While it’s tempting to imagine the majestic Ents stalking Middle Earth in The Lord of the Rings, this migration is the more subtle result of seeds dispersing by way of wind, animals and water. Indeed, the movement of tree species echoes other migratory patterns that are also influenced by a warming planet.  

The movement of trees is not new. Scientists have long tracked how these shifts occur, describing them as proof of the resilience of species. But they are happening more quickly because of temperature changes in the planet. One pattern observed is the move away from heat. Some move to higher altitudes, others to areas with more moisture. A new study published in the International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation paints a more nuanced picture, finding that both climate and anthropogenic factors have to do with tree movement. Between 2000 and 2020, 42% of treelines shifted upslope, while 25% shifted downslope. “The rate of treeline shifts was strongly influenced by anthropogenic disturbances,” the study found, in particular from fires.  

Unsurprisingly, trees are short on speed. They simply may not be able to migrate quickly enough to keep up with the pace of environmental changes. Some scientists are calling for “assisted migration” as a way to help smooth out the adaptation process. In Canada, the practice is taking root. The provinces of British Columbia and Alberta have extended seed transfer zones 200 metres higher for most species, and in B.C., planting of the western larch is now permitted outside of its previous range.  

Assisted migration is not without risks or controversy, and some scientists consider it another example of human meddling. New species may become invasive in a new ecosystem, or they may be ill-equipped to adapt to local soil conditions and sun exposure. “The idea that humans can help fill the gap between the ability of species to migrate and the rate of change in climate conditions is increasingly being considered and debated as a possible management option,” Canada’s Ministry of Natural Resources stated in a 2025 briefing note.  

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New findings from the popular tourism website Booking.com released in April show that more people – nearly three-quarters – factor in extreme weather, in particular heat, when choosing where to visit. The findings are based on a survey of 32,500 people living in 35 countries or territories that include North and South America, Asia, Africa and Europe. Some 55% of the respondents said that certain destinations had become too hot to travel to when they wanted to visit them.  

The toll of recent dramatic summer heat waves in Europe is lodged in our memory. There were more than 47,000 heat-related deaths in Europe in 2023. Rising temperatures are the main engine behind the so-hot coolcation trend.

Hotter summers are also linked to other environmental consequences that are affecting tourism, such as wildfires, drought and water shortages. Parts of Europe are in the midst of historic wildfires this summer. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to evacuate in Spain and France, which has been described as one of the biggest evacuations since the Second World War. And another heat wave is expected to set in this week, making the work of tamping down the blaze all the more fraught. Officials in Europe are warning that the wildfire season could stretch into October and November. Wildfires are also raging in Canada, with nearly four million hectares burned so far this year.  

Even before the grim season got underway, Norway was outright marketing its coolcation potential – noting its “lush, green forests” and “crisp, fresh air.” But other Nordic and northern countries have also become magnets.

A 2024 survey by Virtuoso, a luxury travel website, found that travel to northern Europe and Canada went up 44% that summer, while Italy, Greece and France dipped by half a percent. For the typically warmer locales in the northern hemisphere, data from the European Travel Commission show that while the summer months still are the favourite – with 25% of European travellers picking July and August to take a trip – September is a close second, at 22%. 

The coolcation is often billed as a more sustainable form of travel, because it takes the pressure off the typical hot spots and does not strain certain kinds of energy consumption, such as air conditioners. However, the distance travelled is another factor to consider in that calculation.  

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We all remember that initial shock in 2020, when our systems of trade and transport – previously understood as untouchable, and nearly always reliable – were thrust into disarray. Suddenly it mattered more where our purchases originated from, and what materials they were generated from. Travelling abroad became more difficult, if not outright impossible. Planes were grounded all over the world, and the return to “normal” seemed like a distant dream.

And it all unfurled while we were collectively confronting an unknown and deadly virus.

We adapted, and as a result of this tremendous upheaval, certain good ideas gained widespread traction: embracing a better work–life balance, baking sourdough bread and making the most of the region where you live. It became the age of the “staycation.”

Now, in the summer of 2026, we’re witnessing the return of some of the markers of those disease-ridden summers. The war in Iran, and the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz, has triggered a massive fuel shortage. Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency, has called it “the greatest global energy security threat in history.”

Some 13,000 flights were cancelled in May alone. The implications have been felt around the world. In Europe, governments have called on citizens to limit their car trips, while European airports, including Paris’s Charles de Gaulle and Amsterdam’s Schiphol, have seen some of the highest flight-cancellation rates globally. In Asia, which was the recipient of 90% of the oil coming through the strait, fuel shortages have meant that families have no fuel with which to cook, let alone travel. Canadian airlines have discontinued flight routes, with several airlines cancelling nearly all U.S.-bound flights. The Middle East and South America are also grappling with the fallout.

Even before the fuel crisis, Canadians were choosing to stay closer to home. Political tensions with the United States, historically their preferred travel destination, and a weak Canadian dollar are among the factors cited in a recent Léger poll that found that 67% of Canadian travellers planned to keep it domestic.

This shift lines up well with the conditions required for an increased interest in sustainable, nature-focused vacations, according to a research paper in the Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism co-written by Michelle Rutty, assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of Waterloo. The findings, based on a survey of 753 Canadians during the pandemic, indicated that Canadians showed a preference for sustainable, regenerative tourism (including staycations) for post-pandemic travel, due to changes in their motivations, values and behaviours.

Current conditions will make many hesitate to book a trip, Rutty says. “It’s important to note that Canadians won’t stop travelling, but rather [will] change the way they travel,” she adds, and will instead consider more local destinations.

This shifting approach to vacations is already being reflected in numbers from parks throughout Canada. BC Parks registered a 60% increase in reservations for the May long weekend this year. Banff National Park notched a record-breaking 4.5 million visitors in the fiscal year 2025/2026. In Quebec, the most recent data available show a 25.3% increase in natural parks visits, reaching 9.4 million in 2023/2024, while total Ontario Parks visits surged to 12.4 million in 2024.

The increased interest in outdoor adventures has led to upgrades in park facilities across the country. In 2025, the Ontario government committed nearly $60 million to add up to 300 new campsites and improve 800 campsites by providing electricity. BC Parks has changed its booking system, which now allows visitors to book just three months in advance instead of four. In Quebec in May, provincial cycling organization Vélo Québec released a new digital platform to encourage more “bike-cations” using the province’s many interconnected bike routes.

Jax Jacobsen is a Montreal-based journalist who specializes in mining, business and climate.

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Vibrio bacteria are invasive pathogens that thrive in brackish and warmer water. They have been recorded in areas that used to be too cold for their taste, including the northeastern coast of the United States. Vibrio causes an infection called vibriosis, whose symptoms commonly include diarrhea, vomiting and fever. But an aggressive “flesh-eating strain” can be deadly, causing severe infections within days when coming into contact with open wounds.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, 3,743 cases of vibriosis were reported in 2024, including 222 cases of the particularly dangerous Vibrio vulnificus. Atlantic Coast states accounted for the largest share of infections. The CDC cautions that these figures likely underestimate the true toll because many infections are never diagnosed or reported. Not to mention that these numbers are only growing as the warming of oceans continues.

Scientists have long warned about the numerous consequences of warming oceans. Water has a remarkable capacity to absorb heat, but that buffering effect comes at a cost.

According to NASA, about 90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases over the past century has accumulated in the ocean, making ocean heat content one of the clearest indicators of climate change.

Vibrio bacteria are particularly sensitive to these changing conditions. Naturally found in coastal waters around the world, they multiply rapidly as temperatures rise and salinity levels shift. Researchers have increasingly documented the appearance of Vibrio bacteria in places once considered inhospitable. In a landmark 2012 study published in Nature Climate Change, scientists linked unusually warm conditions in the Baltic Sea to the emergence of Vibrio infections at higher latitudes and warned that continued warming could expand the pathogen’s range even further.

A growing body of research suggests Vibrio may serve as a blueprint for understanding how climate change can reshape the spread of infectious diseases more broadly. A 2024 review in PLOS Pathogens argues that the Vibrio bacteria can be used as a model organism to illustrate the complex ways in which environmental change, ocean warming, pathogens and diseases, as well as human health more broadly, intersect.

The oceans’ ability to absorb humanity’s excess carbon and heat has slowed the pace of atmospheric warming. Yet the same process is transforming marine environments in ways that can have immediate consequences for human health. The appearance of Vibrio bacteria in new waters raises difficult questions for health authorities: how to recognize emerging threats early, communicate risk without causing alarm and protect populations that may no longer be as insulated from these infections as they once were.

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires-based journalist and senior editor at Corporate Knights. Alexandre Paquet is a Toronto-based researcher writing about video games and culture industries.

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But climate change has turned this transient phenomenon into a moving target. Tokyo’s sakura peak this year was around March 19, which is up to a week earlier than usual. Early arrivals between 2021 and 2023 in Kyoto smashed 1,200-year-old records. The main culprit is rising temperatures, but erratic winters may also threaten a tree’s ability to bloom at all. Research suggests that under a medium emissions scenario, peak bloom may move up another week by 2100.

“To me, the cherry blossom record really captures how extreme these changes are,” Elizabeth Wolkovich, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia who studies plant communities and climate change, told National Geographic.

The study of recurring biological events such as flowering and leaf emergence, known as phenology, has arguably become one of the most powerful tools for understanding climate change. Studies by Wolkovich show that rising temperatures are advancing spring biological events across the globe, with plant phenology shifting by roughly four to six days for every degree Celsius of warming. Her research has also found that experimental studies often underestimate how rapidly plants respond to warming compared with long-term observational records.

For more than 1,200 years, Kyoto’s cherry blossoms have been documented in imperial court diaries, temple records, aristocratic journals and historical chronicles, creating one of the world’s longest continuous phenological datasets. Yasuyuki Aono and Shizuka Saito, two researchers affiliated with Osaka Metropolitan University and Fujicco Co. Ltd., have reconstructed temperatures of medieval Kyoto by “gap-filling” cherry blossom records beginning in 812 CE. Their research suggests that peak bloom dates remained relatively stable around mid-April throughout the medieval period, making the recent string of record-breaking early blooms especially striking against a millennium of historical precedent.

This shift is changing how people experience one of Japan’s most important seasonal traditions. Hanami, the centuries-old practice of gathering under blooming cherry trees, is traditionally timed around the short window of peak cherry blossom, often coordinated through workplace outings, school calendars and travel itineraries. As flowering now arrives earlier and with greater variability, these social rhythms are increasingly strained. Visitors and locals alike rely on increasingly precise forecasts, yet even small temperature fluctuations can shift peak bloom by days, compressing or displacing long-planned gatherings. What emerges is a subtle reordering of seasonal life: a cultural calendar once anchored in predictable natural cycles is now being recalibrated in real time to a climate that is less stable, making hanami not only a ritual of appreciation, but also one of adaptation.

If current warming trends continue, the timing of cherry blossoms may keep shifting beyond familiar seasonal boundaries, leaving a tradition once anchored in predictability to unfold within an increasingly uncertain climate future.

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires-based journalist and senior editor at Corporate Knights. Alexandre Paquet is a Toronto-based researcher writing about video games and culture industries.

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In her keynote speech at the flagship event, Diana Fox Carney called climate change “the biggest challenge of our lifetime” and said the movement’s task is to convince people “that a more climate-friendly future is not only possible, it’s the one everyone wants” – safer, more inclusive and more just. But subsequent speakers charged that Canada is backsliding on climate performance, weakening standards and putting its own zero-emission targets beyond reach.

Fox Carney is a well-known economist, policy expert and adviser on climate issues to global investors – and her husband is Prime Minister Mark Carney, who has faced criticism from environmental groups on his climate agenda thus far. The former central banker has been a powerful proponent of sustainable finance, but his response to growing global protectionism has been, in part, to unleash Canada’s fossil-fuel industries, roll back emissions caps and support new pipelines.

In her opening remarks, Fox Carney did note that economic concerns such as “security and affordability” have been edging out climate concerns. Nonetheless, she added, “we need a shared sense of purpose around these issues.” Climate champions need to act fast, she said, and offer “solutions that are affordable, practical and able to improve people’s lives now.”

“It’s hard to overthrow legacy systems,” Fox Carney observed. Even so, “the question is not ‘Is change coming?’ The question is ‘Will Canada lead this change?’” she concluded, to loud applause.

Canada’s climate crawl

Rick Smith, president of the Canadian Climate Institute, received even more applause for calling out Canadian complacency. Why, he asked, is Canada ignoring the climate threat? Forget the United Nations’ 1.5°C target for global warming, he said: Canada has already warmed by 2.5°C over previous levels, and the wildfire summers of 2023 and 2025 demonstrated the urgent need to prevent even greater destruction.

Smith noted that only one-third of recent media stories about flooding in Canada refer to the longer-term climate trends. He also challenged the country’s overarching focus on the costs of climate action, rather than the true costs of inaction. In the past decade, forest fires have caused $37 billion in insured damage, two and a half times more than in the previous 10-year period. And uninsured losses, Smith said, are usually double those of insured properties.

Canadians are also falling behind on electric vehicles, Smith said. “Globally, 30% of cars being sold today are EVs. But the story of gasoline-car decline is not something we absorb as Canadians.” In the last quarter of 2025, just 11% of the cars sold in Canada were electric.

Between the past and the future

While Canadians line up at the gas pumps, the electric future is already here. According to Smith, 75% of new demand for electricity last year was met by solar sources. Battery storage in 2025 grew faster than ever. Last year, China exported $22 billion in green and solar technologies.

With the United States’ energy transition struggling under Trump, Canadian innovators have a chance to stand out on world markets. But that advantage may not last long. Smith predicted that a Democratic win in the midterm elections in November will rekindle the U.S. sustainability economy: “The North American focus on climate change is about to kick into gear, again.”

But some speakers pointed out that climate inaction is not an incidental failure of Canadians not paying attention, but a deliberate result of lobbying campaigns run by the resource-extraction industries. “Fossil-fuel disinformation is driving a lot of these rollbacks,” said Laura Tozer, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Toronto. While many other countries are racing ahead on climate issues, she said, in Canada and the United States, “fossil-fuel owners are using these times of turmoil to double down.”

Signs of progress

How to get beyond this impasse? One of the most effective messages came from Joannah Lawson, a principal of the Brian + Joannah Lawson Family Foundation, the platinum sponsor of Toronto Climate Week. A former business consultant, Lawson’s opening remarks offered clarity. Beneath an image of the earth hanging alone in space, she said, “The atmosphere is the only thing keeping us alive.” But now, she says, “we’re putting too much carbon into the atmosphere.”

In response to this crisis, Lawson offered four reasons why she remains hopeful:

1) Climate change is caused by humans, which means humans can also fix it.

2) The transition to clean energy is well underway. (In fact, she said, renewables production has tripled in the last 20 years.)

3) Regenerative agriculture, or holistic farming that focuses on soil health, is a powerful lever to reverse climate change by capturing carbon from the atmosphere.

4) Canada has huge nature resources to preserve – and we’re doing it! Last month, for instance, the Carney government released Canada’s first national strategy for protecting nature, which came with $3.8 billion for conservation and protection.

Transforming climate change from existential crisis to solvable problem could be key to creating consensus and investing in the future. With Canada falling behind, Fox Carney noted, “We must stop arguing amongst ourselves.” The current struggle, she said, “will shape the economic prospects of our country for years to come.”

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The Pacific Ocean has become a particularly important backdrop. For months now, the United States Coast Guard has been aggressively tracking and intercepting high-speed boats allegedly carrying thousands of pounds of cocaine across choppy international waters. One operation alone nabbed US$133-million worth of illicit drugs in January. Further afield, near the Philippines and Japan, China has deployed various aircraft carrier strike groups, testing the geopolitically sensitive region. Not to be outdone (or outgunned), the United States has significantly increased military exercises in the region, including large-scale drills in the Philippines and Japan that involve thousands of troops from various nations, along with air and maritime exercises.  

But arguably the most disruptive force in the Pacific is just pulling up. Forces of nature are gathering to create what some are predicting will be another “Super El Niño” season. In April, a typhoon flipped a U.S.-flagged cargo ship in the Pacific, near Guam, killing at least one crewmember and another five are still missing.  

El Niño and La Niña are two sides of the same meteorological coin, known as ENSO – or the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. The WMO says its impact on rainfall, drought and extreme events give it the ability to “reshape global weather.” 

El Niño comprises warm sea-surface temperatures in the central Pacific that extend all the way to South America. Super El Niño, a more extreme weather pattern, increases the chances of drought and damage to food crops in various parts of the world. For nations most dependent on agriculture, it can have a serious impact on livelihoods. The WMO does not use the “Super” moniker because it is not part of standardized classification. The term emerged in 2003 when Australia’s national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, used it to describe events where the Niño 3.4 index – a measure of sea-surface temperature anomalies in the central equatorial Pacific – exceeded 3°C. Yale Climate Connections notes that the term has been used more liberally, and informally, by the media and commentators.  

La Niña operates in an opposite way, pushing warm water toward Asia and cooler water toward the Americas. This can still lead to drought in places like the southern United States and heavy rains and flooding in the Pacific Northwest. Winter is warmer than normal in the south during La Niña and cooler than normal in the north.  

According to the WMO, forecasts point to above-normal temperatures across nearly the entire world this summer. There is an 82% chance of El Niño taking shape in May through July, according to a May 14 outlook from the National Weather Service Prediction Center. Scientists have found that the combination of ENSO and a warming climate make for more extreme weather events.  

So far, 2026 paints a grim picture. The World Weather Attribution, a global climate research collaboration, compiled a long list of already worrisome events, including record-low levels of Arctic sea ice, the hottest winters ever for a number of U.S. states, record rain in Spain (just a few years after record dry spells), and temperatures as high as 46°C in India. Combined with El Niño, the planet could be headed toward “an unprecedented year of global fire and record-breaking weather events,” the organization said in a statement.  

Countries are bracing. International organizations such as the WMO have been pushing for vital early-warning systems to help nations and communities plan. The UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) notes that El Niño effects will feel harshest in places with preexisting structural vulnerabilities. The U.S.–Israel war in Iran and its impact on the Strait of Hormuz have triggered “the most severe energy crisis in history,” according to Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency – one that will have wide-reaching effects beyond the shipment of goods.  

“Together, these pressures leave governments and households less able to absorb climate shocks than during previous El Niño cycles,” ESCAP said.  

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With sustained winds of nearly 300 kilometres per hour, storm surges of four metres, and half a metre of rain, Hurricane Melissa flattened much of western Jamaica, doing somewhere between US$8 and $15 billion in damage. But even as roofs were still flying off churches and palms were bending like stalks of grass, Edmund Bartlett, Jamaica’s minister of tourism, was already giving interviews to international media, encouraging travellers to visit and to visit soon.

The almost manic push to have all the island’s hotels operational by mid-December, when the peak season begins, threw into sharp relief a contradiction that underlies the Caribbean as a whole: it depends on an industry that, in some respects, is also responsible for its undoing.

The Caribbean is the most tourism-dependent region in the world. It is also one of the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Warming oceans, rising sea levels and increasingly frequent extreme weather events represent existential threats to the region: not only to residents but also to the tourism industry on which they depend. Sustainability, in this context, is not a nice add-on, but a necessity. If tourism is to remain a mainstay of Caribbean economies, it has to be resilient to the impacts of climate change, protective of increasingly fragile ecosystems and beneficial to local economies as a whole.

It’s asking a lot of an industry that, as Antiguan author Jamaica Kincaid argued in her 1988 book A Small Place, exhibits a similarly extractive quality to the slave-based plantation economies of the 17th and 18th centuries. Kincaid draws a direct line from Caribbean sugar to sand: resources that have been exploited by foreign powers with little to no regard for the well-being of locals.

“Tourism is both a lifeline and a liability,” says Therez Walker, who grew up in Antigua and is now a lecturer on sustainable tourism at NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands. “It’s a very uncomfortable reality that a lot of people don’t want to face.”

Half a century ago, when the imperial powers that colonized the Caribbean dropped preferential trade arrangements for their agricultural exports – primarily bananas, sugar and rum – these tropical islands, with World Bank support, set their sights on the postwar middle class’s growing appetite for beach vacations. Tourism ministries were established and tax incentives were offered to foreign developers. In 1970, some four million international guests visited the Caribbean. Since then, the figure has increased almost 10-fold.

Tourism now accounts for an average of 11% of the gross domestic product of the 33 political entities – sovereign states, dependencies and overseas territories – that make up the Caribbean. But in some countries, the sector constitutes a virtual monoculture. In Antigua, for instance, tourism generates 88% of the country’s GDP and provides 91% of all jobs, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council.

Such dependency on a single industry creates vulnerability, particularly when only a fraction of its economic benefits flow back to the country. The vast majority of revenue generated by Caribbean tourism lands with the foreign operators who control it: airlines, cruise companies and hotel chains. The United Nations World Tourism Organization puts the level of economic “leakage” from Caribbean tourism at about 80%. At the same time, local governments have to contend with 100% of the waste that the industry generates.

Climate change is only amplifying this vulnerability. Over the last five decades, rising sea temperatures have cost the Caribbean almost half of its hard coral cover: a blow to the marine life that coral sustains as well as the huge revenues generated by snorkelling and diving. At current rates, sea level rise is expected to reduce the Caribbean’s sandy beaches by half and to force the closure of a third of existing hotels by the end of this century. Likewise, extreme heat and storm events like Hurricane Melissa are becoming more intense and frequent.

When Walker, who has been based in the Netherlands since 2022, returns home to Antigua, she feels both frustration and sadness. The beach she went to as a child is barely recognizable. The water is higher, the shore depleted. Gone are the mangrove swamps and the thriving fish populations they once hosted. In her community, water is in chronically short supply: many households have running water only twice a week. When she drives past water trucks parked outside the island’s all-inclusive resorts, she is resentful – not of the guests inside, but of decision-makers who have failed to protect domestic and environmental interests.

The needs of tourists and residents are often not aligned. Drought for locals translates into a sun-filled vacation for visitors. The mangroves that serve as natural barriers against erosion and storms are the enemy of the pristine sand beach. The protected coastline that hosts animal, plant and marine life is an obstacle to shoreline resorts.

“Our policymakers go to UN climate conventions and talk about our vulnerability,” Walker says. “And then they come home and approve another huge development on an ecologically sensitive coastline.”

According to Beienetch “Bennie” Watson, who teaches tourism policy and planning at the University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica, the problem with Caribbean tourism is its foundation in a “colonial logic” that is top-down and externally driven. “Those seated around the table haven’t reflected the voice of ‘the people,’” she says. “The people’s vision of tourism hasn’t been heard.”

But in recent years, Watson has seen a shift, prompted in part by the COVID-19 pandemic, when Caribbean hotels stood empty and tourism revenue dropped by half. Some islands took the opportunity to promote homestays and longer-term accommodation options. Others directed visitors to more tailored experiences in eco-, adventure, and rural tourism. Watson is encouraged by a younger generation of traveller that, often prompted by social media, wants to explore outside resort walls.

A 2025 World Bank report on the future of Caribbean tourism emphasized the importance of moving beyond “sea, sun and sand,” pointing out how the short-term economic benefits of volume tourism – all-inclusive resorts and cruise tourism – have overshadowed their high environmental, energy, water-consumption and emissions costs.

Three months after Melissa, Jamaican Tourism Minister Bartlett went on an international marketing blitz to boost investor and traveller confidence in his island. At a luncheon in New York City, he announced that 70% of Jamaica’s hotels were up and running: a remarkable accomplishment.

But Watson, who lives in Kingston, has witnessed recovery on another level. Members of her church go out every Thursday to help communities that are rebuilding. She says the hurricane has proven something important to Jamaicans: that the island is close-knit, solidarity is strong, and residents’ needs matter.

Therez Walker agrees that change has to come from below. “We need to demand more of tourism,” she says. “This is an ‘us’ problem.”

Naomi Buck is a Toronto-based writer.

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Amid the cow-shaped ice sculptures at the 20th annual Embryos on Snow event in Colorado, buyers in cowboy hats bid on the genetics shaping the future of the United States’ cattle industry, from frozen embryos to semen. Auctioneers tout breeding programs, semen-collection-company sponsors and even “pregnancies for you to purchase” from a steadily growing sector of the livestock industry: assisted reproductive technologies.

At the National Western Stock Show, this premier event sold cattle embryos for an average of US$2,760, up to $26,000, this year. Bull semen sold for an average of nearly $10,000 a unit, with the highest lot going for $200,000.

What happens at Embryos on Snow and other genetics sales is a stark contrast to how meat and dairy are marketed today. Portrayals of food and farming in the United States often emphasize the “naturalness” of meat and dairy, yet in reality, much of the industry is shaped by intensive confinement, genetic manipulation and assisted reproductive technologies.

Proponents say that assisted reproductive technologies in animal agriculture, including in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination and embryo transfer, can improve efficiency, increase sustainability, benefit animal welfare and boost the odds that high-value genetic traits are inherited, such as increased calf and milk production. However, some bioethicists and animal advocates worry that these benefits tell only part of the story.

“It is quite difficult to really distinguish between the nice words and the ideals and aspirations” of assisted reproductive technologies, Koen Kramer, bioethicist and assistant professor in animal ethics at Utrecht University, tells Sentient, “from what’s actually happening.”

The cattle reproductive tech market

Despite the familiar image of cows on grassy, open fields, living and perhaps breeding in natural ways, the reality is different. High-tech assisted reproductive technologies are a growing agricultural sector for farmers seeking higher milk production and more and higher-value offspring. These methods of selective breeding typically include in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination and embryo transfer. In vitro fertilization is when the embryos are developed outside of an egg “donor” cow’s body before inserting one or more of the embryos into a surrogate female’s uterus. Embryo transfer is performed when a “donor” cow’s embryos are fertilized by artificial insemination, flushed out of her, and then inserted into a surrogate cow to carry to term. This way, a high-value cow can produce more calves. Flushed embryos sold for as high as $50,000 at Embryos on Snow.

Global bovine genetics was a booming US$3.9 billion market in 2025 and is projected to reach $6.7 billion by 2033. North America held the largest share of the market in 2025 at about 40%, with the United States leading the region.

More than 60% of dairy cows in the United States in 2025 were bred using artificial insemination.

Proponents of these technologies say they help farmers rapidly multiply an animal’s best traits, producing more high-value offspring from top animals. “You can amplify those elite genetics,” Alison Van Eenennaam, animal biotechnology and genomics specialist at the University of California Davis, tells Sentient. “If you look at the improvement in genetics over time, that has these knock-on effects,” she adds, citing efficiency, or needing “less animals to produce the same amount of product.”

Research on California dairy farms does show that producing a glass of milk in 2014 results in about half the emissions that it did in 1964.

Andrew Hunt, founder of The Bullvine, highlights several advantages of cattle embryo transfer. These include improved breeding success under difficult conditions, such as heat, and giving producers global access to “top-notch genetics” without moving live animals or risking disease spread to another herd.

Peer-reviewed research has also shown that embryo transfer can improve pregnancy success rates in heat-stressed cattle. Whether or not embryo transfer gives cattle breeders “top-notch genetics,” however, is up for debate. A 2023 review in the journal Animal shares the successes of embryo transfer in improving genetics, but suggests that in vitro-produced embryo transfer technology has obstacles to address before it will be efficient enough to meet the needs of the industry.

What about animal welfare?

The livestock industry primarily promotes the production benefits of assisted reproductive technologies, but some critics are concerned about how they affect animal welfare, biologically and behaviourally.

Kramer and bioethicist F. L. B. Meijboom argue in their 2021 Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics research paper that these tools may enable more intensive production systems that “speed up selective breeding for economically viable traits that affect welfare negatively.”

There are also bioethical concerns about magnifying biological and genetic issues through assisted reproductive technologies, such as an increased risk of abnormal development of the fetus and difficult births. A 2023 literature review in Animal suggests that in vitro reproduction may be linked to large offspring syndrome, a condition involving abnormal overgrowth, organ enlargement, congenital defects, as well as increased risk of difficult birth and low survival.

Meijboom and Kramer suggest in their research paper that these technologies could potentially reduce suffering by breeding animals more resistant to disease and stress, and could conceivably eliminate the need for painful practices such as disbudding (burning off calves’ horn buds) or de-beaking (common in egg and poultry production) “by breeding hornless cows and chickens with blunt beaks.” In the Netherlands, for example, there is movement toward phasing out disbudding and dehorning as part of broader animal welfare reforms. A key ambition in this, Kramer, who is Netherlands-based, tells Sentient, is breeding cattle to be hornless or polled. The hornlessness trait is a target in some breeding programs using artificial insemination, and Van Eenennaam led a research collaboration with Tad Sonstegard, chief scientific officer at Acceligen, to develop hornless cattle via genome-editing technology.

But Meijboom and Kramer also raise ethical concerns about how assisted reproductive technologies – and animal breeding in general – affect animal welfare and innate behaviour. They argue that there is also a risk of undermining welfare by altering animals’ true nature. In other words, even if these technologies can reduce physical suffering, changing animals’ capacities and behaviours may compromise their ability to live natural – or, to be more precise, species-typical – lives. For example, though horns can hinder livestock production, particularly in intensive confinement systems, research shows that horns play a role in cow social behaviour. “Polled animals may have greater difficulties in establishing stable social dominance relationships and may engage in more physical agonistic interactions.”

“It is about productivity,” author and activist Carol J. Adams writes via email. “The hormonal manipulation of the cow is a necessity, so they get to fuck with her, with another bodily intrusion.” She adds that “the cow is not seen as having bodily integrity. That would require the farmers to stop and ask ‘What right do we have to be plunging our arms into her orifice? What right do we have to force any cow to become pregnant?’’’ Adams has long studied and written about the sexual politics of meat and dairy and argues that reproductive technologies used in these industries are “scientific manipulation of reproduction in the service of profit.”

Van Eenennaam sees it differently. Breeding animals in a way that makes them more profitable also lends itself to breeding animals who are healthier and live longer, she argues. For example, she points to the U.S. dairy industry’s “Net Merit” indices, which rank animals and their traits, such as milk production, fertility, udder composition and disease resistance, generating a dollar value based on the combination of traits. Though it is designed around economics, it also incorporates wellness traits linked to animal welfare, including mastitis resistance, calving ease and mobility.

This commodification of traits, though, can also be seen as objectifying and instrumentalizing animals, Kramer argues. As female animals in particular are used as tools in this way, he adds, they become even more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. During the 2025 Embryos on Snow event, viewable on YouTube, embryos are promoted based on the parents, described by the auctioneers as “milestone producers,” “one of the hottest bulls” and “proven matings.” And when a female embryo is up for sale: “Come get her, boys,” the auctioneer shouts.

At another genetics sale in Oklahoma earlier this year, the auctioneer refers to a cow, stating, “Great udder quality. Proven factory.”

“What we’re talking about is using, more discretely, the very best animals to have more offspring, and not having the bad animals have any offspring,” Van Eenennaam argues. “You could say it’s eugenics, and I would argue, well, that’s kind of what animal breeding is.”

At the Oklahoma sale, the auctioneer tells attendees, “We’ve got a few live lots, a great set of eggs, and some semen as well.” First up, a red angus bull, whom the farmer “built” from the ground up. “He comes from an incredible cow family,” the auctioneer announces, describing the mother as an “excellent donor there in their program. Great udder; just a beautiful spine; got a lot of look; very maternal.” His name is Cosmic Cowboy. Then the bidding begins.

Jessica Scott-Reid is a freelance writer covering animal rights and welfare and plant-based food topics. She is also the culture and disinformation correspondent for Sentient. 

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