Know better. Do better.

It's 2040 in Miami, and a powerful hurricane has swamped the low-lying city. You stand alone under a dark, foreboding sky, chest-high waves sloshing around you, an abandoned car one of the few objects visible in the expanse of water.

The harrowing scene is from an immersive virtual reality game developed by the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center to give policymakers a visceral sense of what their decisions on climate change today could mean in the future, for better or worse.

Climate experts have long struggled to help people see and genuinely grasp likely scenarios as the planet changes, both the dystopian and positive. But virtual reality - particularly games that put controllers in users' hands, letting them make decisions and see the consequences - are changing that.

"People don't realise what their city will be like in 2040 if they don't implement climate solutions," said Nidhi Upadhyaya, of the Arsht-Rockefeller center. But using virtual reality, "we can get them to see what's going to happen."

She hopes that if games can make the future tangible, they can become a major impetus for faster climate action - one reason the center is working to share expertise to build more of them.

A smart bit of technology is also helping researchers better protect nature.

By filtering river water in Peru, for instance, and pulling out DNA samples, scientists have discovered where elusive manatees are living - giving new incentives for conservation of the river.

As countries at the COP15 U.N. biodiversity talks in Montreal negotiate a global pact to stem nature losses, such technology could help pinpoint where protections are needed, and track if they are being achieved.

That's crucial with up to 1 million of Earth's estimated 8 million plant, insect and animal species at risk of extinction, many within decades, scientists say.

"All of a sudden now you can know whether things are getting better or not - and that's just not been possible before," said Katie Critchlow, the CEO of NatureMetrics, which developed the DNA filtering system.

A growing ability to estimate the amount of carbon stored in soils is also giving farmers a new financial incentive to adopt climate-smart, environmentally friendly agricultural practices, like tilling the soil less, planting cover crops and rotating pastures more frequently.

So far, payments for changing farm procedures to boost the amount of carbon absorbed into the soil are fairly small - just a fraction of the earnings from growing crops like soy and maize - and big questions remain about how effective soils can be in storing carbon for the long run.

But changing farm practices could potentially capture and store up to 250 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually in the United States - or 4% of the nation's emissions - the National Academy of Sciences found in 2019.

For now, "it's like a gold rush. People are trying to figure it out, but there's not a lot of clear structure and knowledge," said Matthew Houser of the University of Maryland.

Efforts to find new jobs for young people in India's oldest coalfield are also struggling, with many youth still hoping for unlikely miracles, such as their online videos going viral. 

"This generation is more aware of what is happening across the world. They have access to the internet and realise the potential outside coal. The biggest challenge would be to find alternatives for them," said Ajay Kumar Rastogi, the chair of India's first Sustainable Just Transition Taskforce.

See you next week,

Laurie