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Apes, dolphins, 18-month-old human babies, and now roosters can all pass versions of the mirror test.
Like the question of what lies beyond the universe and what happens when we die, thinking too long or too hard about the implications of what it means if the things we eat have self-awareness can drive you a little mad. Certainly, it’s deeply uncomfortable to contemplate at length.
Take it from me: Earlier this year, I tried to weigh the ethical dilemma of eating more chicken — which would be vastly better for the planet, short of the impossibility of everyone becoming a vegetarian — and the fact that replacing beef and pork in our diets with more poultry would necessitate the slaughter of an additional 41 billion animals worldwide. Now, a new study out this week in the journal PLOS One has upped the stakes of my ethical conundrum: It appears that roosters can recognize themselves in a mirror, a test that researchers have long used to assess the self-awareness of animals and that has only been passed by the ones we consider “smart,” like whales, primates, dolphins, and elephants.
Roosters failed the traditional mirror test, which is passed when an animal investigates a paint spot on its body using a mirror, thereby proving it “recognizes” the image in the glass as its own reflection and not another animal of the same species. But animal behavior specialist Sonja Hillemacher of Germany’s University of Bonn devised an improved version of the experiment that would cater more to a rooster’s sensory experience of the world. Roosters “are known to cry out to warn each other when a hawk is circling overhead,” The New York Times writes. “But when they’re alone and a predator is near, they stay silent to avoid attracting attention.”
Hillemacher’s resulting experiment went like this, the Times explains (if you need a visualization, see fig. 3 here):
Ms. Hillemacher wrangled roosters and gave them time in an enclosure with a mirror, so they could get used to the experimental set-up. Because roosters warn others more reliably than hens do, the team chose to focus on them, but they believe the results of the test apply to all chickens. She then projected a hawk silhouette over the roosters to see how they’d react.
When another rooster was visible through a partition, the rooster that was the subject of an experiment cried out to warn the other of danger. When alone without a mirror, the bird stayed quiet. When another rooster was present, but blocked from view by a mirror, the test subject still tended to stay silent.
The researchers interpreted this behavior to mean that the rooster didn’t perceive its reflection to be another rooster, and felt it also showed that the birds were sensing each other with sight — not hearing or smell.
The self-awareness and “experience” of animals is a particularly contentious corner of behavioral science and ethics, at least in part because the psychological stakes are so high. Still, the Times is careful to note that while the study appears to indicate the possibility of rooster self-awareness, it is not likely to persuade everyone. The mirror test itself is considered an imperfect indicator of animal “intelligence” by some researchers.
But if I didn’t feel queasy enough about trying to reconcile the positives of more climate-friendly eating with the negatives of animal suffering, I sure do now! For example, pigs — which some people refrain from eating because of their intelligence — have not confidently passed a mirror test. At this point, chickens are the only animal in most people’s diets that have.
I don’t have all the answers, besides a perennial reminder that eating more plants = good. (Also, is this another point in favor of eating bugs???) Instead, I’ll leave you with the words of the researchers themselves:
“With over 19 billion individuals worldwide used for meat and egg production each year, chickens are the most widely used farm animal,” they write. “Despite their worldwide presence and use, only a few studies [have] addressed their cognitive capacities.”
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Add it to the evidence that China’s greenhouse gas emissions may be peaking, if they haven’t already.
Exactly where China is in its energy transition remains somewhat fuzzy. Has the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases already hit peak emissions? Will it in 2025? That remains to be seen. But its import data for this year suggests an economy that’s in a rapid transition.
According to government trade data, in the first fourth months of this year, China imported $12.1 billion of coal, $100.4 billion of crude oil, and $18 billion of natural gas. In terms of value, that’s a 27% year over year decline in coal, a 8.5% decline in oil, and a 15.7% decline in natural gas. In terms of volume, it was a 5.3% decline, a slight 0.5% increase, and a 9.2% decline, respectively.
“Fossil fuel demand still trends down,” Lauri Myllyvirta, the co-founder of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, wrote on X in response to the news.
Morgan Stanley analysts predicted Friday in a note to clients that this “weak downstream demand” for coal in China would “continue to hinder coal import volume.”
Another piece of China’s emissions and coal usage puzzle came from Indonesia, which is a major coal exporter. Citing data from trade data service Kpler, Reuters reported Friday that Indonesia’s thermal coal exports “have dropped to their lowest in three years” thanks to “weak demand in China and India,” the world’s two biggest coal importers. Indonesia’s thermal coal exports dropped 12% annually to 150 million tons in the first third of the year, Reuters reported.
China’s official goal is to hit peak emissions by 2030 and reach “carbon neutrality” by 2060. The country’s electricity grid is largely fueled by coal (with hydropower coming in at number two), as is its prolific production of steel and cement, which is energy and, specifically, coal-intensive. For a few years in the 2010s, more cement was poured in China than in the whole 20th century in the United States. China also accounts for about half of the world’s steel production.
At the same time, China’s electricity demand growth is being largely met by renewables, implying that China can expand its economy without its economy-wide, annual emissions going up. This is in part due to a massive deployment of renewables. In 2023, China installed enough non-carbon-emitting electricity generation to meet the total electricity demand of all of France.
China’s productive capacity has shifted in a way that’s less carbon intensive, experts on the Chinese energy system and economy have told Heatmap. The economy isshifting more toward manufacturing and away from the steel-and-cement intensive breakneck urbanization of the past few decades, thanks to a dramatically slowing homebuilding sector.
Chinese urban residential construction was using almost 300 million tons of steel per year at its peak in 2019, according to research by the Reserve Bank of Australia, about a third of the country’s total steel usage. (Steel consumption for residential construction would fall by about half by 2023.) By contrast, the whole United States economy consumes less than 100 million tons of steel per year.
To the extent the overall Chinese economy slows down due to the trade war with the United States, coal usage — and thus greenhouse gas emissions — would slow as well. Although that hasn’t happened yet — China also released export data on Friday that showed sustained growth, in spite of the tariff barriers thrown up by the Trump administration.
The nonprofit laid off 36 employees, or 28% of its headcount.
The Trump administration’s funding freeze has hit the leading electrification nonprofit Rewiring America, which announced Thursday that it will be cutting its workforce by 28%, or 36 employees. In a letter to the team, the organization’s cofounder and CEO Ari Matusiak placed the blame squarely on the Trump administration’s attempts to claw back billions in funding allocated through the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.
“The volatility we face is not something we created: it is being directed at us,” Matusiak wrote in his public letter to employees. Along with a group of four other housing, climate, and community organizations, collectively known as Power Forward Communities, Rewiring America was the recipient of a $2 billion GGRF grant last April to help decarbonize American homes.
Now, the future of that funding is being held up in court. GGRF funds have been frozen since mid-February as Lee Zeldin’s Environmental Protection Agency has tried to rescind $20 billion of the program’s $27 billion total funding, an effort that a federal judge blocked in March. While that judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, called the EPA’s actions “arbitrary and capricious,” for now the money remains locked up in a Citibank account. This has wreaked havoc on organizations such as Rewiring America, which structured projects and staffing decisions around the grants.
“Since February, we have been unable to access our competitively and lawfully awarded grant dollars,” Matusiak wrote in a LinkedIn post on Thursday. “We have been the subject of baseless and defamatory attacks. We are facing purposeful volatility designed to prevent us from fulfilling our obligations and from delivering lower energy costs and cheaper electricity to millions of American households across the country.”
Matusiak wrote that while “Rewiring America is not going anywhere,” the organization is planning to address said volatility by tightening its focus on working with states to lower electricity costs, building a digital marketplace for households to access electric upgrades, and courting investment from third parties such as hyperscale cloud service providers, utilities, and manufacturers. Matusiak also said Rewiring America will be restructured “into a tighter formation,” such that it can continue to operate even if the GGRF funding never comes through.
Power Forward Communities is also continuing to fight for its money in court. Right there with it are the Climate United Fund and the Coalition for Green Capital, which were awarded nearly $7 billion and $5 billion, respectively, through the GGRF.
What specific teams within Rewiring America are being hit by these layoffs isn’t yet clear, though presumably everyone let go has already been notified. As the announcement went live Thursday afternoon, it stated that employees “will receive an email within the next few minutes informing you of whether your role has been impacted.”
“These are volatile and challenging times,” Matusiak wrote on LinkedIn. “It remains on all of us to create a better world we can all share. More so than ever.”
The company managed to put a positive spin on tariffs.
The residential solar company Sunrun is, like much of the rest of the clean energy business, getting hit by tariffs. The company told investors in its first quarter earnings report Tuesday that about half its supply of solar modules comes from overseas, and thus is subject to import taxes. It’s trying to secure more modules domestically “as availability increases,” Sunrun said, but “costs are higher and availability limited near-term.”
“We do not directly import any solar equipment from China, although producers in China are important for various upstream components used by our suppliers,” Sunrun chief executive Mary Powell said on the call, indicating that having an entirely-China-free supply chain is likely impossible in the renewable energy industry.
Hardware makes up about a third of the company’s costs, according to Powell. “This cost will increase from tariffs,” she said, although some advance purchasing done before the end of last year will help mitigate that. All told, tariffs could lower the company’s cash generation by $100 million to $200 million, chief financial officer Danny Abajian said.
But — and here’s where things get interesting — the company also offered a positive spin on tariffs.
In a slide presentation to investors, the company said that “sustained, severe tariffs may drive the country to a recession.” Sounds bad, right?
But no, not for Sunrun. A recession could mean “lower long term interest rates,” which, since the company relies heavily on securitizing solar leases and benefits from lower interest rates, could round in the company’s favor.
In its annual report released in February, the company mentioned that “higher rates increase our cost of capital and decrease the amount of capital available to us to finance the deployment of new solar energy systems.” On Wednesday, the company estimated that a 10% tariff, which is the baseline rate in the Trump “Liberation Day” tariffs, could be offset with a half percentage point decline in the company’s cost of capital, although it didn’t provide any further details behind the calculation.
Even in the absence of interest rate relief, a recession could still be okay for Sunrun.
“Historically, recessions have driven more demand for our products,” the company said in its presentation, arguing that because their solar systems offer savings compared to utility rates, they become more attractive when households get more money conscious.
Sunrun shares are up almost 10% today, as the company showed more growth than expected.
For what it’s worth, the much-ballyhooed decline in long-term interest rates as a result of Trump’s tariffs hasn’t actually happened, at least not yet. The Federal Reserve on Wednesday decided to keep the federal funds rate at 4.5%, the third time in a row the board of governors have chosen to maintain the status quo. The yield on 10-year treasuries, often used as a benchmark for interest rates, is up slightly since “Liberation Day” on April 2 and sits today at 4.34%, compared to 4.19% before Trump’s tariffs announcements.