At the 2021 Climate Summit in Glasgow, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared that Canada “would take a leadership role in the fight against climate change.”

It’s not often you hear the word “vampiric” coming out of a U.N. secretary-general’s mouth. But on Wednesday, Secretary-General António Guterres said at the U.N. Water Conference in New York that countries “are draining humanity’s lifeblood through vampiric overconsumption and unsustainable use” of water. Lengthy droughts are also wreaking havoc.

As countries continue to innovate ways to battle climate change, there is a new, related “slimy arms race” afoot. (Credit to The New York Times for the “slimy arms race” phrasing.) It seems that seaweed, in all its slippery glory, is a multifaceted, under-tapped, and potentially powerful weapon that can be used a number of ways in the ongoing fight to slow or stop global warming.

Khambampati Rama Devi mixes cow dung, cow urine, soil, and jaggery, creating a mixture called jeevamrutam. She then sprays the brown concoction on her cotton crop.

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of people have died, countless numbers have been forcibly taken to Russia, and nearly 1,600 Ukrainian cultural sites and churches have been purposefully destroyed. But there is another potentially catastrophic fallout from the war that is less talked about.