Can Fusion Deliver the Dream of Limitless Energy?

The Sounds of the Amazon

As part of this year’s Climate Forward conference, [https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/09/24/climate/climate-forward-conference] the team wanted to find a new way for attendees to understand how our planet is changing. Producer Evan Roberts talked to scientists and researchers who are capturing natural soundscapes before they change forever. The Climate Forward team compiled the work of three field recordists to create an audio installation, called the Sounds of Climate Change. This soundscape offers a sonic tour of the Amazon rainforest. Izabela Dluzyk, a field recordist originally from Poland, grew up memorizing bird calls and listening closely to sparrows. Inspired by a fascination with parrots, she crowd-funded her way to the Tambopata National Reserve in Peru to record the dusk and dawn symphonies of the rainforest. Blind since birth, Ms. Dluzyk was accompanied into acoustically lush areas of the Amazon by her brother and her Amazonian guide. She captured a thunderous ritual of macaws gathering at eroding clay banks along the Tambopata River, eating the sodium-rich soil that is essential to their health and to raising their chicks. But years of severe droughts threaten to disrupt that delicate balance and turn the sound-rich canopy into grassland. “Rainforests are so fragile,” Ms. Dluzyk said. “ We need to become fascinated with what we can hear.” To learn more, sign up for the Climate Forward newsletter. [https://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/climate-change] Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts [http://nytimes.com/podcasts] or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com [https://pcm.adswizz.com] for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A Melting Glacier

As part of this year’s Climate Forward conference [https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/09/24/climate/climate-forward-conference], the team wanted to find a new way for attendees to understand how our planet is changing. Producer Evan Roberts talked to scientists and researchers who are capturing natural soundscapes before they change forever. The Climate Forward team compiled the work of three researchers to create an audio installation, called the Sounds of Climate Change. This soundscape offers a sonic tour of a melting glacier. Ludwig Berger, a sound artist from Alsace in France, first recorded the sounds of the Morteratsch Glacier in Switzerland more than a decade ago. What he heard astonished him: deep resonances of ancient air bubbles being released from crevices and making sounds like wailing synthesizers. As Mr. Berger put it, he records “last sounds.” Each time he returns to record, he has to climb farther up the mountain to reach the ice, as the glacier has retreated. The locations of many of the sounds you’ll hear in his soundscape are now gone, he said. “There’s no ice left there, there’s just a bare rock,” he said. To learn more, sign up for the Climate Forward newsletter. [https://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/climate-change] Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts [http://nytimes.com/podcasts] or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com [https://pcm.adswizz.com] for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hear the Arctic’s ‘Underwater Jungle’

As part of this year’s Climate Forward conference [https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/09/24/climate/climate-forward-conference], the team wanted to find a new way for attendees to understand how our planet is changing. Producer Evan Roberts talked to scientists and researchers who are capturing natural soundscapes before they change forever. The Climate Forward team compiled the work of three researchers to create an audio installation, called the Sounds of Climate Change. This soundscape offers a sonic tour of the underwater Arctic. Bernie Krause, a prominent audio ecologist, coined the term “biophony” to describe earthly sounds from nonhuman organisms, like the calls, songs and buzzes produced by animals and insects. Paired with nonbiological sounds of the Earth, or the “geophony,” these layers of sound make up the ambient symphony of our planet. And as our planet warms, this natural soundscape is shifting in surprising ways. For those who have spent their careers listening closely, these changes are not abstract. “When I started going up to the Arctic, I thought I would be spending my career listening to bowhead whales,” said Kate Stafford, a bioacoustician at Oregon State University, who recorded this soundscape.  “But what I’ve ended up doing is listening to climate change.” Dr. Stafford records what she calls the “underwater jungle.” By lowering hydrophones, or waterproof microphones, into the frigid ocean, she captures bowheads moaning, belugas whistling and even the deafening sound of air guns being used in oil exploration. She has heard the shrinking sea ice disrupt animal migration patterns and introduce new predators. As the planet warms, the waters of the ice-covered Arctic is becoming louder and stormier. To learn more, sign up for the Climate Forward newsletter. [https://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/climate-change] Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts [http://nytimes.com/podcasts] or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com [https://pcm.adswizz.com] for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Can Fusion Deliver the Dream of Limitless Energy?

Fusion energy has long been hailed as the ultimate climate solution: clean, limitless and just out of reach. At the Climate Forward live event, Bob Mumgaard, chief executive of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which aims to build the world’s first commercial fusion power plant, discussed how close his company is to bringing fusion energy to reality. Sign up for the Climate Forward newsletter https://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/climate-change   Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts [http://nytimes.com/podcasts] or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com [https://pcm.adswizz.com] for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

An Island Nation on the Front Lines of Climate Change

Few countries face the existential threat of climate change as urgently as the Marshall Islands, where rising seas endanger land, livelihoods and culture. In this conversation, President Hilda Heine spoke with Somini Sengupta about the nation’s fight for survival on the front lines of a warming world. What does climate leadership look like when the stakes are nothing less than a country’s future? Follow Climate Forward’s reporting at https://www.nytimes.com/column/climate-fwd [https://www.nytimes.com/column/climate-fwd] Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts [http://nytimes.com/podcasts] or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com [https://pcm.adswizz.com] for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.