I am concerned by climate scientists becoming climate activists, because scholars should not have a priori interests in the outcome of their studies. Likewise, I am worried about activists who pretend to be scientists, as this can be a misleading form of instrumentalization.

The European Union must be climate neutral by 2050. However, recent studies show that meeting this target will require many more measures than currently established to combat climate change. On behalf of article 22 Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive of the European Union and given the biennial conference of the Association of German Jurists that took place in autumn 2024, the following article analyses how a “climate quota” for large businesses could be one further step in “Greening Corporate Law”.

This comment critiques Gritsenko et al.‘s dismissal of environmental assessments such as Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) in analyzing digitalization’s environmental impacts. While acknowledging the need for action amidst uncertainty, we argue that LCA yet provides valuable insights into potential impacts, trade-offs, and areas to focus on in a supply chain. Especially in the rapidly evolving digital landscape, LCA helps manage decision-makers’ uncertainty and informs targeted measures for sustainable digital infrastructure deployment and use.

The CLIMREC Dataset on Green Economic Recovery Spending offers new insights into the emissions profiles of 40 major economies’ economic recovery packages during the Global Financial Crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Analyses reveal that most governments have allocated modest recovery spending towards decarbonization objectives, with green spending patterns changing little over time. Overall, governments have prioritized emissions-neutral economic stabilization measures over advancing the clean energy transition in crisis-related fiscal spending.

Political instability and geopolitical tension, together with rising nationalism, bureaucracy and economic pressure, increasingly challenge free access to and exchange of scientific data (both physical and digital), knowledge transfer (within and beyond academia), and research campaigns (of national and international teams around the world). Here, we call for an open-data convention implemented by universities and institutions, academies and organisations, journals and editors, as well as funding agencies and national administrations.

Heritage conservation recognizes that losses and damages cannot be entirely prevented, that decisions about what to keep and what to let go are fundamental to maintaining values for future generations; even when what is valued is gone. The heritage principle of curating transformation can advance climate action through pragmatic and participatory management of losses and damages, offering lessons for climate change adaptation and giving people agency over what is lost.

Climate change decision making is complex and subject to attempted influence from actors with diverse agendas. Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technologies are emerging as new tools in influencing public discourses and decisions, which will increasingly be applied to climate change issues. We define a typology of influence of climate decisions by GenAI, present example cases, and highlight urgent research needs in this field.