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Earth Day handout with explanations and a blank copy

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Earth Day handout with explanations and a blank copy

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Aftermath: Population Zero - The World without Humans | Free Documentary

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6.4M views · 29K reactions | David Attenborough – this is your life. Have an AMAZING 94th birthday! 🎁🎉 | BBC

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David Attenborough – this is your life. Have an AMAZING 94th birthday! 🎁🎉

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How plastic bags were supposed to help the planet - BBC News

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How plastic bags were supposed to help the planet - BBC News

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How plastic bags were supposed to help the planet - BBC News

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Living Off Grid For 30 years: A Story Of Happiness Through Isolation 

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Living Off Grid For 30 years: A Story Of Happiness Through Isolation 

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Home Design, Garden & Architecture Blog Magazine

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Posted February 8, 2016 5:29pm UTC by designer

Jill Redwood lives in East Gippsland, Australia where she built her house almost 30 years ago. She prefers to be really self-sufficient, having an orchard, a garden with vegetables and an animal farm which provide almost everything she needs on a daily basis, without having to frequently drive one hour and a half to the nearest town. Moreover, with regard to energy and water supply, she uses solar panels and a waterwheel.
Living entirely off-grid, on around $80 a week and surrounded only be animals, Jill happily says: „what more do I need?"
For more details on Jill's extraordinary story, check out the video bellow:
More ideas:

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Living Off Grid For 30 years: A Story Of Happiness Through Isolation

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Jill Redwood lives in East Gippsland, Australia where she built her house almost 30 years ago. She prefers to be really self-sufficient, having an orchard, a garden with vegetables and an animal farm which provide almost everything she needs on a daily basis, without having to frequently drive one hour and a half to the [...]

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The secret language of trees - Camille Defrenne and Suzanne Simard

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The secret language of trees - Camille Defrenne and Suzanne Simard

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The secret language of trees - Camille Defrenne and Suzanne Simard

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Sir David Attenborough's plastic message - BBC

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Sir David Attenborough's plastic message - BBC

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Sir David Attenborough's plastic message - BBC

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Two Men Created “Leather” From Cactus to Save Animals and the Environment

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Two Men Created “Leather” From Cactus to Save Animals and the Environment

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As one of the world's most traded products, leather is part of a booming $80 billion industry. But, its use of animal products and harsh chemicals makes leather problematic not only for animal rights activists but environmentalists. Luckily, two entrepreneurs from Mexico have worked to find a leather alternative that is not only eco-friendly but has the look and feel of real leather. So what are they using to make their faux-leather? The answer might surprise you.

Adrián López Velarde and Marte Cázarez have developed a method of transforming cacti into a vegan leather that looks so realistic, you'd never guess it was made from this desert plant. They called their cactus vegan leather Desserto and it is made from cacti grown on their plantation in the Mexican state of the Zacatecas. The cactus is known for its rugged, thick skin, which makes it the perfect texture to simulate animal leather.

"The idea of using this raw material was conceived because this plant does not need any water to grow, and there is plenty of it throughout the Mexican Republic. Also, symbolically, it represents all of us Mexicans and everybody knows it," shared López Velarde. "Besides, to be able to incorporate this material into various industries, it is essential to count on a stable, abundant supply of raw material. We currently have 2 hectares where we cultivate nopals, as well as an expansion capacity of 40 hectares. Regarding production capacity, we have 500,000 linear meters a month."

Mature leaves are cut from organically grown cactus plants, cleaned, mashed, and then left out in the sun to dry for three days prior to processing. It can then be dyed naturally using methods developed by Adriano Di Marti, López Velarde's and Cázarez's company. This makes for vegan leather that is certified organic and can hold up to regular usage for nearly a decade.

If that wasn't enough to convince you, Adriano Di Marti's vegan leather is on par, in terms of pricing, with genuine leather. So far, the company has created car seats, shoes, handbags, and even apparel. And since it's made of organic material, their leather is breathable, which is often a problem with synthetic alternatives. In another plus for the environment, cactus leather is partially biodegradable and doesn't contain any plastic-another issue with synthetic leather. This makes for a true alternative to animal leather that doesn't have a negative impact on the planet.

Adriano Di Marti caused a splash when it debuted in 2019 at the world's most important fair for leather manufacturers, Lineapelle. Reception to the cactus leather was overwhelmingly positive, with the material being lauded for its flexibility, softness, touch, and color. Currently, the brand is negotiating projects with major players in a variety of industries and working to make the material more accessible to medium and small businesses. So before you know it, you might just find yourself putting on a pair of cactus leather shoes.

Desserto is vegan leather made from cacti that can be used to create anything from wallets to shoes.

Learn more about how these entrepreneurs dreamed up the idea of transforming a cactus into leather.

All images via Desserto.

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These Two Men Created "Leather" From Cactus to Save 1 Billion Animals and the Environment

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As one of the world's most traded products, leather is part of a booming $80 billion industry. But, its use of animal products and harsh chemicals makes leather problematic not only for animal rights activists but environmentalists. Luckily, two entrepreneurs from Mexico have worked to find a leather alternative that is not only eco-friendly but has the look and feel of real leather.

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If you want to save the world, veganism is not the answer.

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If you want to save the world, veganism is not the answer.

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eganism has rocketed in the UK over the past couple of years - from an estimated half a million people in 2016 to more than 3.5 million - 5% of our population - today. Influential documentaries such as Cowspiracy and What the Health have thrown a spotlight on the intensive meat and dairy industry, exposing the impacts on animal and human health and the wider environment.

Our soils were almost dead. Now we have ​19 types of worm, and 23 species of dung beetle in a single cowpat

But calls for us all to switch entirely to plant-based foods ignore one of the most powerful tools we have to mitigate these ills: grazing and browsing animals.

Rather than being seduced by exhortations to eat more products made from industrially grown soya, maize and grains, we should be encouraging sustainable forms of meat and dairy production based on traditional rotational systems, permanent pasture and conservation grazing. We should, at the very least, question the ethics of driving up demand for crops that require high inputs of fertiliser, fungicides, pesticides and herbicides, while demonising sustainable forms of livestock farming that can restore soils and biodiversity, and sequester carbon.

In 2000, my husband and I turned our 1,400-hectare (3,500-acre) farm in West Sussex over to extensive grazing using free-roaming herds of old English longhorn cattle, Tamworth pigs, Exmoor ponies and red and fallow deer as part of a rewilding project. For 17 years we had struggled to make our conventional arable and dairy business profitable, but on heavy Low Weald clay, we could never compete with farms on lighter soils. The decision turned our fortunes around. Now eco-tourism, rental of post-agricultural buildings, and 75 tonnes a year of organic, pasture-fed meat contribute to a profitable business. And since the animals live outside all year round, with plenty to eat, they do not require supplementary feeding and rarely need to see the vet.

The animals live in natural herds and wander wherever they please. They wallow in streams and water-meadows. They rest where they like (they disdain the open barns left for them as shelter) and eat what they like. The cattle and deer graze on wildflowers and grasses but they also browse among shrubs and trees. The pigs rootle for rhizomes and even dive for swan mussels in ponds. The way they graze, puddle and trample stimulates vegetation in different ways, which in turn creates opportunities for other species, including small mammals and birds.

Little owls - one of five owl species found at Knepp - feast on the burgeoning dung beetle population. Photograph: Ned Burrell

Crucially, because we don't dose them with avermectins (the anti-worming agents routinely fed to livestock in intensive systems) or antibiotics, their dung feeds earthworms, bacteria, fungi and invertebrates such as dung beetles, which pull the manure down into the earth. This is a vital process of ecosystem restoration, returning nutrients and structure to the soil. Soil loss is one of the greatest catastrophes facing the world today. A 2015 report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization states that, globally, 25 to 40bn tonnes of topsoil are lost annually to erosion, thanks mainly to ploughing and intensive cropping. In the UK topsoil depletion is so severe that in 2014 the trade magazine Farmers Weekly announced we may have only 100 harvests left. Letting arable land lie fallow and returning it to grazed pasture for a period - as farmers used to, before artificial fertilisers and mechanisation made continuous cropping possible - is the only way to reverse that process, halt erosion and rebuild soil, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. The grazing livestock not only provide farmers with an income, but the animals' dung, urine and even the way they graze, accelerates soil restoration. The key is to be organic, and keep livestock numbers low to prevent over-grazing.

Twenty years ago, our soils at the farm - severely degraded after decades of ploughing and chemical inputs - were almost biologically dead. Now we have fruiting fungi and orchids appearing in our former arable fields: an indication that subterranean networks of mycorrhizal fungi are spreading. We have 19 types of earthworm - keystone species responsible for aerating, rotavating, fertilising, hydrating and even detoxifying the soil. We've found 23 species of dung beetle in a single cowpat, one of which - the violet dor beetle - hasn't been seen in Sussex for 50 years. Birds that feed on insects attracted by this nutritious dung are rocketing. The rootling of the pigs provides opportunities for native flora and shrubs to germinate, including sallow, and this has given rise to the biggest colony of purple emperors in Britain, one of our rarest butterflies, which lays its eggs on sallow leaves.

Not only does this system of natural grazing aid the environment in terms of soil restoration, biodiversity, pollinating insects, water quality and flood mitigation - but it also it guarantees healthy lives for the animals, and they in turn produce meat that is healthy for us. In direct contrast to grain-fed and grain-finished meat from intensive systems, wholly pasture-fed meat is high in beta carotene, calcium, selenium, magnesium and potassium and vitamins E and B, and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) - a powerful anti-carcinogen. It is also high in the long-chain omega-3 fatty acid DHA, which is vital for human brain development but extremely difficult for vegans to obtain.

Much has been made of the methane emissions of livestock, but these are lower in biodiverse pasture systems that include wild plants such as angelica, common fumitory, shepherd's purse and bird's-foot trefoil because they contain fumaric acid - a compound that, when added to the diet of lambs at the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen, reduced emissions of methane by 70%.

In the vegan equation, by contrast, the carbon cost of ploughing is rarely considered. Since the industrial revolution, according to a 2017 report in the science journal Nature, up to 70% of the carbon in our cultivated soils has been lost to the atmosphere.

So there's a huge responsibility here: unless you're sourcing your vegan products specifically from organic, "no-dig" systems, you are actively participating in the destruction of soil biota, promoting a system that deprives other species, including small mammals, birds and reptiles, of the conditions for life, and significantly contributing to climate change.

Our ecology evolved with large herbivores - with free-roaming herds of aurochs (the ancestral cow), tarpan (the original horse), elk, bear, bison, red deer, roe deer, wild boar and millions of beavers. They are species whose interactions with the environment sustain and promote life. Using herbivores as part of the farming cycle can go a long way towards making agriculture sustainable.

There's no question we should all be eating far less meat, and calls for an end to high-carbon, polluting, unethical, intensive forms of grain-fed meat production are commendable. But if your concerns as a vegan are the environment, animal welfare and your own health, then it's no longer possible to pretend that these are all met simply by giving up meat and dairy. Counterintuitive as it may seem, adding the occasional organic, pasture-fed steak to your diet could be the right way to square the circle.

Isabella Tree runs Knepp Castle Estate with her husband, the conservationist Charlie Burrell, and is the author of Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm

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If you want to save the world, veganism isn't the answer | Isabella Tree

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eganism has rocketed in the UK over the past couple of years - from an estimated half a million people in 2016 to more than 3.5 million - 5% of our population - today. Influential documentaries such as Cowspiracy and What the Health have thrown a spotlight on the intensive meat and dairy industry, exposing the impacts on animal and human health and the wider environment.

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12 new year’s resolutions for the planet in 2020

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12 new year’s resolutions for the planet in 2020

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Javascript must be enabled for the correct page display

Skip to Content

Climate Action

It's that time of year again: Time to put 2019 - a tumultuous year of ups and downs for our planet - to bed and start fresh with renewed energy and vision for 2020. And there's no better time, because 2020 going to be a pivotal year for our planet.

Five years into the adoption of the Paris Agreement, 2020 will mark the year where we assess our collective progress on our greatest global challenges at the international political scale. The year is also ripe for political movement, as more than 65 countries will be hosting major elections this year.

The time could not be better for individuals and communities to make their priorities known, and to vote on those priorities at the ballot boxes and polls.

2020 will also mark 50 years of Earth Day (I know, it's flown by for me, too). The 50th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22 will bring Earth Day back to its roots to mobilize millions to act for our planet.

We hope to see you in April, but what if you also want to do something today? To combat climate change, we need bold political action (that's where your power as a voter comes in) and transformative change across industries and sectors. But change also starts with individual action.

Look, I know that composting your food scraps or cleaning up your community isn't all that we need to transform our way of living - we need bold political action (that's where your power as a voter comes in) and transformative change across industries and sectors as well.

But what these acts may do is set you on the path of continued action, and increased ambition, from day to day, week to week, and year to year.

Solving our climate crisis isn't going to be easy. It's going to be a challenge, and it's going to be uncomfortable. But, hey, it's the New Year. If I can't get you to make some changes when I have you at your most guilt-ridden, when can I?

Ready to take the first step (or steps) to save the planet?

12 resolutions for the planet in 2020:

1. Go plant-based (1-2 meals a day)

You might be regretting your food choices over the holidays. Skip the crash diet (you look beautiful!) and try plant-based instead.

Animal agriculture has an enormous impact on climate change, contributing as much greenhouse gases as every car, plane, train, and ship on Earth. Going plant-based is one of the most powerful ways to reduce our personal carbon footprints (or foodprint, as we call it). Not ready to go all the way? Just start with one meal, or go plant-based for breakfast and lunch, like author Jonathan Safran Foer. Bon appetit!

2. Skip the gym. Skip the car.

Did I mention again that you look great just as you are? But if you're insistent on toning up, skip the gym membership (it's kind of a New Year's cliché, isn't it?) by skipping the car.

We know this doesn't work for everyone, but where and when you can, skip the car and walk, bike or take public transportation instead. You'll get some good (free!) exercise, while taking a huge bite out of your personal carbon footprint. For every mile you don't drive, you reduce your carbon footprint by one pound. Bonus points if you're lugging bags of groceries home on your walk.

4. Compost, compost, compost

Food waste greatly contributes to climate change. Think about it - when you toss food in the trash, you're wasting all the resources that it took to grow, harvest and ship that food.

Food also sits in a landfill, producing methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that is 34 times more potent over a 100-year period than carbon dioxide. If food waste were a country, it would be the world's third-largest emitter after the U.S. and China. So serve yourself as much as you can eat, salvage your leftovers and compost what's truly bad.

Not sure where to compost? Try your local farmer's market - many coordinate with municipal services to provide free composting to communities - or pair up with others in your apartment or on your block to split a composting service.

6. Skip the single-use plastic bag

Did you know that those convenient plastic grocery bags are only used for an average of 15-20 minutes? Meanwhile they have a lifespan of 500-1,000 years in the landfill. Suddenly that convenience is looking very inconvenient for our planet...

Just stick a reusable bag in your purse or backpack, or stash one in your desk. It's that simple.

To take this step to the next level, see if you can go a whole day without plastic. It's much harder than you might think, but it gives you an illuminating view at just how bad our plastic problem is, while identifying key places to cut plastics from your life.

7. Pass it on: Recycling edition

The last one was easy, so this resolution will push you.

The next time you see someone recycling wrong, let them know. Connect over how you also used to toss your containers in unwashed, or tried to recycle plastic grocery bags - which you should be skipping in the first place - then share the right way to do it,

Pass along our 7 tips to recycling better or just show them. Let us know that you and your friends are recycling right.

It can be hard to correct people, especially loved ones who have been doing things one way (the wrong way) for years, but when you pass on what you know, information can spread exponentially.

Also, don't be afraid to remind them that recycling isn't the be-all-end-all solution to our planet's woes, and that in many ways recycling is an opportunity for industries to shunt the burden of responsibility onto consumers, when it should be squarely on producers who should be developing more sustainable alternatives...or you can save that for another day.

8. Register your Earth Day event (and turn up!)

The American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead once said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

The power of civil society mobilization cannot be overstated - just look at the first Earth Day, when 20 million individuals mobilized to come together to demand increased protections for our planet. History was made on April 22, 1970, and it's a history that we have marked every year since then.

The first Earth Day sparked a fire of legislative action to follow, from the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, to the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water and Endangered Species Acts.

The 50 th anniversary of Earth Day is going to be another historic moment for our planet. But to make history, we need you. How can you take your action to the next level on Earth Day?

Take your action to the next level on Earth Day by joining the global EARTHRISE mobilization for our planet on April 22, checking out the confirmed events for Earth Day 2020 and registering your own events.

9. Go plant-based (2.0 version)

So you've replaced two meals a day with plant-based options - awesome. Now make the jump to go plant-based three times a day. Each time you buy plant-based products, you're sending a demand signal to the food industry by voting with your wallet.

Not sure you can do it? Read how our staff writer went plant-based in 2019, and be inspired. Because if that meat-eating Midwesterner can embrace a tofu scramble, anyone can.

10. Travel, with care

Travelling to new places is always a top resolution, but air travel is, well, problematic.

Just how problematic, you ask? As author David Wallace Wells warns in his book "The Uninhabitable Earth," every round-trip flight from New York to London costs the Arctic three square meters of ice.

Short of travelling by solar sailboat (à la Greta Thunberg), let's resolve to travel smarter in 2020. For instance, you can travel by train (Greta's other preferred mode of travel) and explore locations closer to home. Maybe 2020 is the year that you finally see those incredible local landmarks and national parks.

Also, consider swapping a vacation for a staycation - you'll greatly reduce your carbon footprint, as well as saving massive amounts of money (another top New Year's resolution).

11. Stop buying crap

Since we're talking about saving more money, one of the best ways to do that is by simply buying less. What we really mean is buy less crap.

Take fast fashion - we buy far more clothing than we need (and wear), often tossing clothes in the trash: Research shows that a garbage truck's worth of clothing and textiles is landfilled or incinerated every second.

Every. Second.

So, don't buy it, and don't buy into it! You should never underestimate your power as a consumer. Try writing to the company or use the power of social media to call for an end to unjust and wasteful practices. Instead, try shopping secondhand. It's a great way to give new life to old clothes while saving money and keeping perfectly good clothing out of landfills.

It's also a good way to ensure you're not wearing the same faux-hipster bohemian crop top as everyone else this season...

Like with food waste, not only are these clothes sitting in landfills to produce greenhouse gases as they break down, but the resources (including low-paying and dangerous labor for marginalized communities) used to create these textiles is also wasted as well. Our current clothing industry is incredibly polluting, resource-intensive and wasteful (not to mention unjust).

12. Register to vote (and turn up!)

Two of the greatest civic opportunities that citizens have are the ability to mobilize, and the ability to vote. These are two unassailable chances to help drive and shape the political agenda, so don't waste them!

As we mentioned, 2020 will see more than 65 countries hosting major elections. Is your country one of them? If so, make sure you're registered to vote. Then do your research and understand candidates' stances before you show up at the polls.

Most importantly, TURN UP on election day - get to your polling place and vote. It's arguably the most powerful individual action that a person can take, with an impact bigger than carrying a reusable bag every day or taking public transportation.

Climate change will never be solved by recycling, or bicycling, for that matter. It's going to require immense political will and leadership to overhaul our cities, our industries and our economies to embrace the opportunities of a clean energy future. This sounds huge - and it is - but remember that these political leaders are elected by votes from individuals just like you and me.

If you really want to save the planet, make voting your top priority in 2020.

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12 New Year's resolutions for the planet in 2020 - Earth Day

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Javascript must be enabled for the correct page display Skip to Content Climate Action It's that time of year again: Time to put 2019 - a tumultuous year of ups and downs for our planet - to bed and start fresh with renewed energy and vision for 2020.

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Strokkur in Iceland's Haukadalur valley is one of the world's most active geysers, erupting like clockwork every 10 minutes or so, sending plumes of steaming hot water up to 65 feet into the air. Like other geysers, Strokkur is propelled by underground magma, an intense heat source close to the Earth's surface.

All over Iceland, steam rises up from underground. The nation's geothermal plants tap into this source to heat water and homes. Tourists who have been to Iceland's Blue Lagoon pools bathe and luxuriate in the runoff water from a nearby geothermal plant.

But it's what's being done at the sleekly modern Hellisheiði geothermal plant, sitting on a bleak and black volcanic plain half an hour outside of the capital Reykjavík, that's creating buzz among scientists around the globe.

A team of young researchers there is capturing carbon dioxide emissions from the plant and infusing it into basalt rock that lines these volcanic plains.

Unlike previous capture and injection attempts, these emissions don't leak out. Instead, it becomes a non-polluting organic part of the underground landscape.

It's a raw windy day, sleet pelting, when we visit the so-called Carbfix project. We're issued hard hats and protective gear before we head out by car with Kári Helgason, the project's manager. He gestures out the window at a small, white Swiss prototype carbon injection well, housed in a white shack.

"This is the little one," he says. "We call it the Arctic Fox."

Sandra Ósk Snæbjörnsdóttir, the geoscientist at the helm of Carbfix, laughs, noting that it looks a little like an outhouse.

It's small but mighty, says Andri Magnason, an Icelandic environmentalist, poet and cultural icon.

"This captures 50 tons [of C02] a year," he says. "To get 1,000 gigatons out of the atmosphere, we have to scale this up not 1 million times, but 1 billion times."

"If you fly to Europe and back it will take this unit about a week to offset your emissions," Helgason adds.

That's why there's so much excitement about the newer, larger Carbfix injection wells that can capture 1,000 times more emissions. And if it were to run at that capacity, 'then we have solved the climate crisis," Magnason says.

We ask Helgason about the rocks we're walking on.

"This is all volcanic rock. If you pick one up for example it's like Swiss cheese. There's a lot of porosity and a lot of holes," he says. "So this is also what we have underground. It's what gives us the possibility to put the C02 underground. The space is there."

For the Carbfix system to work, Helgason says, "you need a lot of water, it can be seawater. You need favorable rock formations. And you need C02."

All simple, he says, except "we're lacking the stream of C02."

The process does work, but Iceland's geothermal plants produce clean energy, meaning the amount of C02 it captures is minimal. The team is thirsty for more polluting emissions to inject into rock.

"We need to catch it where it flows from the chimneys," Helgason says.

"If we're going to scale this up a million times, there will be millions of jobs created," Magnason says.

"It will be scaled up," Helgason adds. "We know it's going to be scaled up. The question is whether it will be scaled up enough. And how fast."

As people across the globe begin to take the climate crisis more seriously, Magnason speculates about what coming years will look like. "So in the future you will have capturing equipment on chimneys of the world and gas ships sailing to harbors where it will be pumped down with maybe seawater."

Soon, we arrive at a series of buildings that resemble igloos. Among them are wells retrofitted to inject CO2 into the ground - the world's most advanced carbon injection wells. Inside are a series of pipes, valves and cranks; in the center of the room, a long pipe arm reaches deep into the cement floor.

Snæbjörnsdóttir explains why basalt rock is the gold standard for C02 injection, and why sedimentary rock, used on previous CO2 injection projects, is ineffective. Sedimentary rock, she says, contains softer material that gets washed away leaving only silica behind.

It's also not reactive. But basalt rock contains metals that are needed to react with the C02 and turn it into stone. To facilitate the process, she explains, Carbfix infuses the CO2 with water, killing the gas' buoyancy. Then, she says, "it sinks instead of rising up."

Snæbjörnsdóttir walks to a metal piping system she calls the wellhead, which reaches 2,000 meters below. One pipe infuses the water while the other, which reaches down 800 meters, injects the C02.

She walks to the windowsill and picks up a pipe-shaped black rock formation, flecked with what look like white crystals.

"The dark rock is just the basaltic rock," she says. "The white precipitates are actually C02 turned to stone."

It's a biblical image - researchers are taking one of the most dangerous drivers of climate change and turning it into stone.

Magnason reiterates that the problem here isn't that it doesn't work - it does! It's that more emissions are needed to thwart worldwide temperature increases.

"But if you have a coal-fired power plant and it can fill a tank ship, then the hard work is over," he says. "Then you can pump it into basalt anywhere in the world where you have that. So the infrastructure that the 21st century will make, and it has to be as big as sewage or road systems, has to be C02 removal."

Helgarson and Snæbjörnsdóttir nod in agreement. Helgarson says that carbon-emitting plants have to start assessing whether this type of process can work at their current locations. If not, "then we can start thinking about transporting it to favorable rock formations, like in Iceland."

"This seems to be a real, plausible solution if this is scaled up properly and the price seems favorable," Magnason adds.

The issue of cost is an important one, Snæbjörnsdóttir agrees.

"Up until now, it's been cheaper to do nothing that to do something about your emissions," she says.

But she says that's changing: Soon it will be more expensive to emit. Prices of quotas in the European systems are rising, she says, "and now it's approximately the same price for doing this as doing nothing."

Helgason says that industry is starting to approach the team and asking about how to become involved.

"Even though Iceland is perfect for this," Snæbjörnsdóttir says, "... we can find big fields of basalt all over the world. It's actually the most common kind of rock on Earth."

She adds that in locations without basalt, there is often already an infrastructure in place that could help. "We have the know-how," she says, and, "We have a lot of wells from the search of oil, and lots of unused wells that could be used for injecting."

In other words, the infrastructure now in place for fracking and for transporting oil could be used to pipe emissions to locations where it could be infused into rock and neutralized.

Finally, adds Snæbjörnsdóttir, there's a misconception that because Carbfix is housed at a geothermal plant, it means hot water is needed for the injection process. In fact, she clarifies, cold water is more effective.

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Researchers In Iceland Can Turn CO2 Into Rock. Could It Solve The Climate Crisis?

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Strokkur in Iceland's Haukadalur valley is one of the world's most active geysers, erupting like clockwork every 10 minutes or so, sending plumes of steaming hot water up to 65 feet into the air. Like other geysers, Strokkur is propelled by underground magma, an intense heat source close to the Earth's surface.

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7 common household products that are terrible for the environment

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7 common household products that are terrible for the environment

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Human activity has had an effect on the environment for thousands of years, from the time of our very earliest ancestors. Since Homo sapiens first walked the earth, we have been modifying the environment around us through agriculture, travel and eventually through urbanization and commercial networks. At this point in earth's physical history, our impact on the environment is so substantial that scientists believe "pristine nature," or ecosystems untouched by human intervention, no longer exist. ¹

In ways both positive and negative-and likely in more ways than you'd even think-human civilization and technology have affected our earth, altering our planet forever. Consider these five tangible impacts our species has had on the environment, and whether you're one who will advance their effects or intercede to halt them.

1. The Population Bomb

Human overpopulation has been affecting the environment for hundreds of years and a concern for scientists since at least 1798, when Thomas Malthus first published his finding that, without significant and ongoing technological innovation, the human population would almost certainly outstrip the planet's food supply. In 1968, this concern was again raised in Stanford professor R. Paul Ehrlich's book "The Population Bomb." ²

Accommodating population growth has been a root cause for much of the impact we've had on our environment. Since Malthus first noted his grave concerns, technological advances have created a new double-edged sword: health and abundance. Our food supply today can support more lives than ever, and advances in medical science have led to increasingly longer lifespans. But this reality has the profound side effect of reducing population turnover and leading to its rapid expansion. So as our quality of life and life expectancy improve, the challenges wrought by overpopulation accelerate as well. ³

2. Agriculture, Domesticated Animals and Genetic Modification

The demand to feed a growing human population has facilitated notable advances in agriculture, which was the first major human innovation to enable our survival as a species. Early agriculture allowed hunter-gatherer cultures to settle an area and cultivate their own food. This immediately impacted the environment by transplanting non-native species to new areas, and by prioritizing the cultivation of certain plants and animals over others. And more recently, advances in genetic modification have raised concerns about the environmental impact of newly developed crops. ⁴

In particular, the domestication of livestock and other species, including dogs and cats, by early humans affected the environment by altering the land in significant ways. Grazing animals contributed to environmental change by depleting native grasses and contributing to soil erosion. And we now know that the rapid expansion of cattle populations to meet human dietary demands has contributed substantially to changes in the composition of gases within the atmosphere. ⁵

The industrialization of agriculture in the last several centuries has exacerbated these effects, but it has also prompted a subsequent wave of counter-movements, which seek to undo the negative effects of human intervention. People today are increasingly aware of the impact vast factory farms have on the environment, and seek to return to smaller farms and even urban gardens. As "eating local" rises in popularity, urban land is being reclaimed for traditional agriculture and the environment is once again altered due to human labor. ⁶

3. Deforestation...and Reforestation

Growing populations have to be housed, which means they seek more space to build homes and cities. This often involves clearing forests to make room for urban and suburban development, as well as to provide building materials. Currently, it is estimated that 18 million acres of trees are clear-cut every year to create space for development and to be used in wood products. ⁷

Deforestation has many effects, including decreasing oxygen levels (and increasing greenhouse gases), elevated risk of soil erosion and the destruction of animal habitats. But as is the case with industrial agriculture, some groups have endeavored to create a positive counter-impact to deforestation's detrimental effects on the environment. Reforestation efforts seek to replace as much forest land as possible every year, and it is currently estimated that about 40 percent of the trees removed each year are being replaced. ⁸

4. Pollution

Human activities affect the environment by contributing to air pollution, or the emission of harmful substances into the air. While it can be difficult to understand which pollutants are associated with specific effects on the environment or public health, it is generally accepted that air pollution can indeed cause public health problems and also harm plant and animal life. ⁹

Pollution isn't just limited to the air. It can affect soil or waterways and can come from human waste, industrial chemicals and other sources. These toxins can exert tremendous effects on the natural world, leading to environmental degradation and problems like acid rain and harmful algal blooms in the ocean.

Environmental protection laws on the local and federal level have been enacted as a means to stem the ecological damage caused by pollution, and some communities have engaged in ongoing conversations aimed toward promoting sustainable, low-impact living.

5. Global Warming and Climate Change

Among the most critically impactful ways that humans have affected the environment is our extraction and consumption of fossil fuels and their attendant CO2 emissions. Recent studies indicate that CO2 emissions contribute to the deterioration of the earth's ozone layer, which may, in turn, contribute to global climate change; this is especially true when emissions are combined with the loss of the carbon-sink effect of forest lands (due to deforestation) and existing particulate matter in the air. ¹⁰ Though the scale and impact of such climate change are up for debate, the scientific community has reached a consensus that human activity does have some degree of impact on the global climate.

Human Impact on the Environment is a Double-edged Sword

The expansion of human population and the requirements of our growing human family place strenuous demands on our environment. Through human intervention, we have altered our ecosystem forever. However, though some of these changes may be negative, humans also have the power to correct our mistakes and change our environment for the better.

Discover how you can contribute to a thriving future for our planet. Explore the online Master of Geographic Information Science from Kent State University, and find your opportunity to work toward the renewal of the earth's ecosystem, from its forest grounds to its water resources and farmlands.

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Learn how everyday human activity is affecting the environment. And how we can correct our past mistakes and make the environment a better place. More here.

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Recovering Plastic from the Pacific Ocean

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Recovering Plastic from the Pacific Ocean

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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Explained | Research | The Ocean Cleanup

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Walt Whitman saw in trees the wisest of teachers and Hermann Hesse found in them a joyous antidote to the sorrow of our own ephemerality. "The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way," William Blake wrote in his most beautiful letter. "As a man is, so he sees."

Many tree-rings after Blake and Whitman and Hesse, another visionary turned to trees as an instrument of civil disobedience, empowerment, and emancipation, advancing democracy, human rights, and environmental justice.

Born near a holy fig tree in the central highlands of Kenya twenty years after the country became a British colony, Wangari Maathai (April 1, 1940-September 25, 2011) went on to become the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded for her triumph of promoting "ecologically viable social, economic and cultural development" by founding the Green Belt Movement responsible for planting 30 million trees and empowering women to partake in social change - an act of courage and resistance for which she was beaten and imprisoned multiple times, but which ultimately helped defeat Kenya's corrupt, authoritarian president and blazed a new path to ecological resilience.

French children's book author Franck Prévot and illustrator Aurélia Fronty tell her remarkable story in Wangari Maathai: The Woman Who Planted Millions of Trees (public library) - a lovely addition to the most inspiring picture-book biographies of cultural heroes.

Growing up in a small hut with walls made of mud and dung, Wangari watched the British colonialists grow richer and richer by cutting down trees to plant more tea. She ached to see the trees fall, but didn't yet know that she had the agency to stand up for them and for her people.

One day, with the simplicity and sincerity of a child's enormous question, her older brother asked the family why he was allowed to go to school and learn, but Wangari was not. And, just like that, the unquestioned cultural more that girls must remain at home until they marry and have a family of their own unraveled. Their mother made the radical decision to answer her son's question with action and enrolled her daughter in the village primary school.

At eleven, Wangari left home to study at a boarding middle school run by Italian nuns. She graduated from high school at a time when very few African women learned to read at all. In September 1960, then-senator John F. Kennedy initiated a program that welcomed promising African students to study in the United States. Of the entire continent, only a few hundred young people earned such an invitation. Wangari Maathai was among them.

She arrived in America to discover with shock that even in a country as wealthy and emblematic of freedom, human rights were not equally apportioned. She witnessed the height of the civil rights movement just as her own country was finally winning its independence from British rule.

And yet upon returning to Kenya, she found that trees were no better off - colonialism had crumbed, but it had left in the rubble a nation so impoverished and dependent that Kenyans were forced to continue cutting down trees just as the British had, selling the lumber and using the felled land to plant tea, coffee, and tobacco for export. As marine biologist and author Rachel Carson was making ecology a household word across the Atlantic and issuing the radical insistence that the real wealth of a nation "lies in the resources of the earth - soil, water, forests, minerals, and wildlife," Wangari Maathai was realizing that her nation's welfare depended on healing the broken relationship between a broken economy and a broken ecology. She came to see that a tree is much more than an economic resource. She came to see, in Prévot's lovely words, that "a tree is a little bit of the future."

Progress, however, is slow. "The longer the lever the less perceptible its motion," Thoreau - the patron saint of trees and civil disobedience - wrote in contemplating the long cycles of social change. In 1977, three decades into her outrage, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement and set out to plant trees all over Kenya, traveling to villages and encouraging people to think about the future, whatever the privations of the present may be.

Her insistence on women's leadership was nothing short of countercultural in a society where women were expected to demur and lower their gaze in the mere presence of a man. And yet she persisted, entrusting tree nurseries to local women and seeding in them a newfound sense of civic agency. She herself stood up to the president himself, who had initiated a massive real-estate development in the city's precious urban forest, habitat to endangered species like the blue monkey and the river hog, and had endeavored to build a skyscraper and a statue of himself in the heart of Nairobi's largest park.

In response to the lengthy protests she organized, for which she was imprisoned several times, the government forced Maathai out of her office, calling her "a crazy woman" in press statements and describing the Green Belt Movement as "a bunch of divorcees." (Meanwhile in America, Rachel Carson was enduring the same sexist assaults from government and industry, who painted her as a hysterical spinster for her composed, courageous, scientifically rigorous exposé of the pesticide industry that would catalyze the environmental movement.)

But Maathai persisted, alerting leaders around the world to the ecological and human rights abuses in her country. In letters and speeches, her voice reached beyond the government-controlled echo chamber of the Kenyan press, igniting an international investigation that eventually made the president relinquish his exploitive development plans. Upon her triumph, a man from rural Kenya greeted her during one of her village visits with these words: "You are the only man left standing."

Over and over, the president tried to fell Maathai and her movement. In a desperate bid for control, emblematic of Hannah Arendt's insight into how tyrants use isolation and separation as a weapon of oppression, he attempted to set neighboring tribes against one another. But Maathai and the Green Belt Movement built a simple, brilliant bridge across this artificial divide - they offered saplings from tree nurseries as tokens of peace to be exchanged between tribes.

Eventually, Amnesty International and UNESCO published a report exposing the president's corruption and human rights abuses, ending his quarter-century reign. Maathai - by that point affectionately known as Mama Miti, "the mother of trees" - was elected to the new Parliament and appointed Assistant Minister of the Environment, Natural Resources, and Wildlife.

On October 8, 2004, midway through her sixty-fifth year, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. By the end of her life, the movement she started had planted thirty million trees, reimagining the ecological and economic landscape of possibility for generations of Kenyans to come, and modeling for the rest of the world a new form of civic agency standing up for nature and humanity as an indivisible whole.

Complement the immensely inspiring, gorgeously illustrated Wangari Maathai: The Woman Who Planted Millions of Trees with this Krista Tippett's wonderful On Being conversation with Maathai, then revisit philosopher Martin Buber on what trees teach us about being human and ecologist Lauren Oakes on what one endangered tree species can teach us about grace and resilience.

For other heartening picture-book biographies of visionaries who have changed this world, savor the illustrated stories Jane Goodall, Jane Jacobs, Ada Lovelace, Louise Bourgeois, John Lewis, Frida Kahlo, E.E. Cummings, Louis Braille, Pablo Neruda, Albert Einstein, Muddy Waters, and Nellie Bly.

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Planting Trees as Resistance and Empowerment: The Remarkable Illustrated Story of Wangari Maathai, the First African Woman to Win the Nobel Peace Prize

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Walt Whitman saw in trees the wisest of teachers and Hermann Hesse found in them a joyous antidote to the sorrow of our own ephemerality. "The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way," William Blake wrote in his most beautiful letter.

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Global Climate Strike -      20 September 2019 

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Global Climate Strike -      20 September 2019 

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With resources and climate strike arts kit

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#CleanUpStandardChartered

Fridays for Future fights against Standard Chartered Bank's abuse of environmental and human rights by providing finance to fossil fuel expansion. As a movement, FFF rises up to stop SCB from financing fossil fuel companies immediately.

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Fridays For Future is an international climate movement active in most countries and our website offers information on who we are and what you can do.

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FridaysForFuture is a youth-led and -organised global climate strike movement that started in August 2018, when [then] 15-year-old Greta Thunberg began a school strike for climate. To begin with, she was alone, but she was soon joined by others...

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The Gleaners Jean-François

Millet  & Julie Nahon

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Greta Thunberg - Inspiring Others to Take a Stand Against Climate Change 

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Greta Thunberg - Inspiring Others to Take a Stand Against Climate Change 

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Greta Thunberg - Inspiring Others to Take a Stand Against Climate Change | The Daily Show

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Architects are turning cities into giant sponges | One man’s mission to save hundreds of cities from dangerous flood waters. Watch the latest in our Pioneers for the Planet series with WWF:... | By World Economic Forum | Facebook

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606K views, 6.4K likes, 651 loves, 183 comments, 4.8K shares, Facebook Watch Videos from World Economic Forum: One man’s mission to save hundreds of cities from dangerous flood waters. Watch the...

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“We live in a strange world, where children must sacrifice their own education in order to protest against the destruction of their future.”

Here is my... | By Greta Thunberg | Facebook

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4M views, 71K likes, 27K loves, 5.7K comments, 52K shares, Facebook Watch Videos from Greta Thunberg: “We live in a strange world, where children must sacrifice their own education in order to...

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Designed by Gdańsk-based architects Jan Sikora and Andrzej Marek, the 'Human Forest' hotel places guests right in the forest, without the walls and roofs of traditional buildings, maximising contact with its sights and sounds. sikorawnetrza.com

A "Human Forest" hotel where guests live and sleep between the trees, giving them the full woodland holiday experience, has been designed by Polish architects.

Amid concern about the future of the planet, more architects are seeking to balance building and harmony with nature.

In addition to the environmental benefits of this approach, it brings people in closer contact with the natural world, helping them escape the stress of life in the city and relax.

The "Human Forest" hotel places guests right in the forest, without the walls and roofs of traditional buildings, maximising contact with its sights and sounds.

Designed by Gdańsk-based architects Jan Sikora and Andrzej Marek, Sikora's studio, which does interiors and architecture, has worked on a variety of projects, from libraries to railway stations.

The hotel is based around four modules covering basic human needs, like eating, sleeping and washing.

The structures have been designed to resemble trees, which allows them to blend into the forest.

With its inbuilt grill-like structure for cooking food, the kitchen module provides a designated place for preparing meals. The living module contains storage space, which can be used for everyday items.

The bathroom module contains a toilet and shower, which uses rainwater collected in a tank at the top of the module. Like the rest of the hotel, these have no walls - there is only a curtain for privacy.

The sleeping module features raised platforms for guests to sleep on, covered by clear, tent like structures. They can be reached by climbing the wooden rungs that stick out from the module.

The raised structures help visitors stay safe and dry while they sleep. They can also use pulleys attached to the modules to store their luggage high above the ground, protecting it from wild animals and the damp forest ground.

Another advantage of the modules is that they can be grouped together in different configurations, depending on the site and the number of expected visitors.

An image on Sikora's website shows four arranged together, with canopies spread between them to provide further protection from the elements.

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Tree-mendous! 'Human Forest hotel' set to become the new eco-holiday trend

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A "Human Forest" hotel where guests live and sleep between the trees, giving them the full woodland holiday experience, has been designed by Polish architects. Amid concern about the future of the planet, more architects are seeking to balance building and harmony with nature.

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Sisters on a mission to ban plastic bags.

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Sisters on a mission to ban plastic bags.

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Melati and Isabel Wijsen: Our campaign to ban plastic bags in Bali

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Plastic bags are essentially indestructible, yet they're used and thrown away with reckless abandon. Most end up in the ocean, where they pollute the water and harm marine life; the rest are burned in garbage piles, where they release harmful dioxins into the atmosphere.

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1500 year old yew tree - Judi Dench: My Passion For Trees: Preview - BBC One

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"ocean cleanup" "4 ocean" "ocean trash removal" "ocean bracelet" "ocean conservation" "remove trash from the ocean" 4ocean "ocean plastic pollution" "save th...

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4ocean is here to clean the ocean and coastlines while working to stop plastic pollution by influencing change in consumption habits. Our channel provides information about who we are, the efforts we're making to save the ocean, and ways that you can help.

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Top 10 Eco Friendly Cities in the Wolrld (Part 2)

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Our Planet: David Attenborough's speech at the premiere of Netflix film.

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Our Planet: David Attenborough's speech at the premiere of Netflix film.

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Our Planet: David Attenborough speech at premiere

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How one man started the world's largest beach cleanup

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48 online poetry writing templates for every grade. The site has step by step directions for each poem, examples for each type and then has the student follow prompts to make writing a poem a breeze.

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How to transform apocalypse fatigue into action on global warming

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How to transform apocalypse fatigue into action on global warming

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Please [contact us](https://www.ted.com/contact) and let us know what happened.

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Page not found – Wildlife Works Field-Cast

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Greta Thunberg's emotional speech to EU leaders

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Chris Packham on students protesting against climate change

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Chris Packham on students protesting against climate change

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Chris Packham 'Salutes' Students Protesting Against Climate Change | Good Morning Britain

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Jane Goodall, "Tragically we humans are destroying this tapestry of life..." - Extinction Rebellion

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Greta Thunberg tells MPs: 'Our future was sold' - video

My name is Greta Thunberg. I am 16 years old. I come from Sweden. And I speak on behalf of future generations.

I know many of you don't want to listen to us - you say we are just children. But we're only repeating the message of the united climate science.

Many of you appear concerned that we are wasting valuable lesson time, but I assure you we will go back to school the moment you start listening to science and give us a future. Is that really too much to ask?
Greta Thunberg condemns UK's climate stance in speech to MPs
In the year 2030 I will be 26 years old. My little sister Beata will be 23. Just like many of your own children or grandchildren. That is a great age, we have been told. When you have all of your life ahead of you. But I am not so sure it will be that great for us.

I was fortunate to be born in a time and place where everyone told us to dream big; I could become whatever I wanted to. I could live wherever I wanted to. People like me had everything we needed and more. Things our grandparents could not even dream of. We had everything we could ever wish for and yet now we may have nothing.

Now we probably don't even have a future any more.

Because that future was sold so that a small number of people could make unimaginable amounts of money. It was stolen from us every time you said that the sky was the limit, and that you only live once.

You lied to us. You gave us false hope. You told us that the future was something to look forward to. And the saddest thing is that most children are not even aware of the fate that awaits us. We will not understand it until it's too late. And yet we are the lucky ones. Those who will be affected the hardest are already suffering the consequences. But their voices are not heard.

Is my microphone on? Can you hear me?

Around the year 2030, 10 years 252 days and 10 hours away from now, we will be in a position where we set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control, that will most likely lead to the end of our civilisation as we know it. That is unless in that time, permanent and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society have taken place, including a reduction of CO2 emissions by at least 50%.

And please note that these calculations are depending on inventions that have not yet been invented at scale, inventions that are supposed to clear the atmosphere of astronomical amounts of carbon dioxide.

Furthermore, these calculations do not include unforeseen tipping points and feedback loops like the extremely powerful methane gas escaping from rapidly thawing arctic permafrost.

Nor do these scientific calculations include already locked-in warming hidden by toxic air pollution. Nor the aspect of equity - or climate justice - clearly stated throughout the Paris agreement, which is absolutely necessary to make it work on a global scale.

We must also bear in mind that these are just calculations. Estimations. That means that these "points of no return" may occur a bit sooner or later than 2030. No one can know for sure. We can, however, be certain that they will occur approximately in these timeframes, because these calculations are not opinions or wild guesses.

These projections are backed up by scientific facts, concluded by all nations through the IPCC. Nearly every single major national scientific body around the world unreservedly supports the work and findings of the IPCC.

Did you hear what I just said? Is my English OK? Is the microphone on? Because I'm beginning to wonder.

During the last six months I have travelled around Europe for hundreds of hours in trains, electric cars and buses, repeating these life-changing words over and over again. But no one seems to be talking about it, and nothing has changed. In fact, the emissions are still rising.

When I have been travelling around to speak in different countries, I am always offered help to write about the specific climate policies in specific countries. But that is not really necessary. Because the basic problem is the same everywhere. And the basic problem is that basically nothing is being done to halt - or even slow - climate and ecological breakdown, despite all the beautiful words and promises.

The UK is, however, very special. Not only for its mind-blowing historical carbon debt, but also for its current, very creative, carbon accounting.

Since 1990 the UK has achieved a 37% reduction of its territorial CO2 emissions, according to the Global Carbon Project. And that does sound very impressive. But these numbers do not include emissions from aviation, shipping and those associated with imports and exports. If these numbers are included the reduction is around 10% since 1990 - or an an average of 0.4% a year, according to Tyndall Manchester.

And the main reason for this reduction is not a consequence of climate policies, but rather a 2001 EU directive on air quality that essentially forced the UK to close down its very old and extremely dirty coal power plants and replace them with less dirty gas power stations. And switching from one disastrous energy source to a slightly less disastrous one will of course result in a lowering of emissions.

But perhaps the most dangerous misconception about the climate crisis is that we have to "lower" our emissions. Because that is far from enough. Our emissions have to stop if we are to stay below 1.5-2C of warming. The "lowering of emissions" is of course necessary but it is only the beginning of a fast process that must lead to a stop within a couple of decades, or less. And by "stop" I mean net zero - and then quickly on to negative figures. That rules out most of today's politics.

The fact that we are speaking of "lowering" instead of "stopping" emissions is perhaps the greatest force behind the continuing business as usual. The UK's active current support of new exploitation of fossil fuels - for example, the UK shale gas fracking industry, the expansion of its North Sea oil and gas fields, the expansion of airports as well as the planning permission for a brand new coal mine - is beyond absurd.

This ongoing irresponsible behaviour will no doubt be remembered in history as one of the greatest failures of humankind.

People always tell me and the other millions of school strikers that we should be proud of ourselves for what we have accomplished. But the only thing that we need to look at is the emission curve. And I'm sorry, but it's still rising. That curve is the only thing we should look at.

Every time we make a decision we should ask ourselves; how will this decision affect that curve? We should no longer measure our wealth and success in the graph that shows economic growth, but in the curve that shows the emissions of greenhouse gases. We should no longer only ask: "Have we got enough money to go through with this?" but also: "Have we got enough of the carbon budget to spare to go through with this?" That should and must become the centre of our new currency.

Many people say that we don't have any solutions to the climate crisis. And they are right. Because how could we? How do you "solve" the greatest crisis that humanity has ever faced? How do you "solve" a war? How do you "solve" going to the moon for the first time? How do you "solve" inventing new inventions?

The climate crisis is both the easiest and the hardest issue we have ever faced. The easiest because we know what we must do. We must stop the emissions of greenhouse gases. The hardest because our current economics are still totally dependent on burning fossil fuels, and thereby destroying ecosystems in order to create everlasting economic growth.

"So, exactly how do we solve that?" you ask us - the schoolchildren striking for the climate.

And we say: "No one knows for sure. But we have to stop burning fossil fuels and restore nature and many other things that we may not have quite figured out yet."

Then you say: "That's not an answer!"

So we say: "We have to start treating the crisis like a crisis - and act even if we don't have all the solutions."

"That's still not an answer," you say.

Then we start talking about circular economy and rewilding nature and the need for a just transition. Then you don't understand what we are talking about.

We say that all those solutions needed are not known to anyone and therefore we must unite behind the science and find them together along the way. But you do not listen to that. Because those answers are for solving a crisis that most of you don't even fully understand. Or don't want to understand.

You don't listen to the science because you are only interested in solutions that will enable you to carry on like before. Like now. And those answers don't exist any more. Because you did not act in time.

Avoiding climate breakdown will require cathedral thinking. We must lay the foundation while we may not know exactly how to build the ceiling.

Sometimes we just simply have to find a way. The moment we decide to fulfil something, we can do anything. And I'm sure that the moment we start behaving as if we were in an emergency, we can avoid climate and ecological catastrophe. Humans are very adaptable: we can still fix this. But the opportunity to do so will not last for long. We must start today. We have no more excuses.

We children are not sacrificing our education and our childhood for you to tell us what you consider is politically possible in the society that you have created. We have not taken to the streets for you to take selfies with us, and tell us that you really admire what we do.

We children are doing this to wake the adults up. We children are doing this for you to put your differences aside and start acting as you would in a crisis. We children are doing this because we want our hopes and dreams back.

I hope my microphone was on. I hope you could all hear me.
Greta Thunberg

Read the full text of the speech Greta Thunberg gave to MPs at the Houses of Parliament

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‘You did not act in time’: Greta Thunberg’s full speech to MPs | Greta Thunberg | The Guardian

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Read the full text of the speech Greta Thunberg gave to MPs at the Houses of Parliament

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Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot (animated + full text)

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Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot (animated + full text)

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Over the years, I've enjoyed my share of animated adaptations of Carl Sagan's iconic Pale Blue Dot monologue, based on the seminal photograph of Earth taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1990.

Now comes a lovely motion graphics adaptation by animation studio ORDER - enjoy, and see if you can hold back the chills.

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity - in all this vastness - there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Complement this spiritually electrifying ode to our corner of the cosmos with Carl Sagan on science and spirituality.

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Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot, Animated in Motion Graphics

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Over the years, I've enjoyed my share of animated adaptations of Carl Sagan's iconic Pale Blue Dot monologue, based on the seminal photograph of Earth taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1990. Now comes a lovely motion graphics adaptation by animation studio ORDER - enjoy, and see if you can hold back the chills.

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The most effective ways to curb climate change

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The most effective ways to curb climate change

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Quiz

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Drew Kann, Will Houp, Judson Jones, and Sean O’Key

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The most effective ways to curb climate change might surprise you

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We need unprecedented action to stop climate change. Take CNN’s quiz to see how much you know about the most effective solutions.

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What really happens to the plastic you throw away - Emma Bryce

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Ryan's Recycling | Kid Entrepreneur // 60 Second Docs

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This NYC Store is an Environmentalist's Wonderland

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These Sustainable Homes Are Made From Trash, But They're Absolutely Stunning 1

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The shopping mall where everything is recycled

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The shopping mall where everything is recycled

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The shopping mall where everything is recycled - BBC News

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Brazilian Couple Created 1,502-Acre Forest In 20 Years

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Brazilian Couple Created 1,502-Acre Forest In 20 Years

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Technology is the single greatest contributor to climate change but it may also soon be used to offset the damage we've done to our planet since the Industrial Age began.

In September 2018, a project in Myanmar used drones to fire "seed missiles" into remote areas of the country where trees were not growing. Less than a year later, thousands of those seed missiles have sprouted into 20-inch mangrove saplings that could literally be a case study in how technology can be used to innovate our way out of the climate change crisis.

"We now have a case confirmed of what species we can plant and in what conditions," Irina Fedorenko, co-founder of Biocarbon Engineering, told Fast Company. "We are now ready to scale up our planting and replicate this success."

According to Fedoranko, just two operators could send out a mini-fleet of seed missile planting drones that could plant 400,000 trees a day -- a number that quite possibly could make massive headway in combating the effects of manmade climate change.

The drones were designed by an ex-NASA engineer. And with a pressing need to reseed an area in Myanmar equal to the size of Rhode Island, the challenge is massive but suddenly within reach. Bremley Lyngdoh, founder and CEO of World Impact, says reseeding that area could theoretically house as many as 1 billion new trees.

"Obviously, planting a billion trees will take a long time without the help of drones," Lyngdoh told Fast Company.

But they've now got a powerful new ally in their corner. For context, it took the Worldview Foundation 7 years to plant 6 million trees in Myanmar. Now, with the help of the drones, they hope to plant another 4 million before the end of 2019.

Myanmar is a great case study for the project. In addition to the available land for the drone project, the nation has been particularly hit by the early effects of climate change in recent years. Rising sea levels are having a measurable impact on the population. In addition to their ability to clear CO2 from the atmosphere, healthy trees can also help solidify the soil, which can reduce the kind of soil erosion that has been affecting local populations in Myanmar.

Going forward, technologies like seed-planting drones could help stem the tide of catastrophic climate change while our governments and societies work to change the habits of consumers and corporations that are driving the problem. Our endless hunger for new technology may be the driving force behind climate change and deforestation but it could also end up being the solution to a problem.

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These tree-planting drones are firing 'seed missiles' into the ground. Less than a year later, they're already 20 inches tall.

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Technology is the single greatest contributor to climate change but it may also soon be used to offset the damage we've done to our planet since the Industrial Age began. In September 2018, a project in Myanmar used drones to fire "seed missiles" into remote areas of the country where trees were not growing.

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365 Books to Start Your Climate Change Library

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365 Books to Start Your Climate Change Library

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The idea of a single day devoted to the earth is absurd. In the 49 years since the first Earth Day was celebrated, human civilization-checked by neither morality nor policy-has wrecked devastation upon the planet, increasing with each passing year of excess and inaction the likelihood that coming generations will live in a world unrecognizable to Senator Gaylord Nelson, who first conceived of the day as an environmental teach-in on April 22, 1970. But if there is any hope in righting this awful course, we need to think of every day as Earth Day.

With that in mind we have come up with the beginnings of a climate change library, 365 books that show us where we've come from, where we're at now, how we might survive this crisis, and how we might cope if we don't. With contributions from the likes of Richard Powers, Rebecca Solnit, Bill McKibben, Elizabeth Rush, Aminatta Forna, Maja Lunde, Francesca Angiolillo, Stephen Sparks, Amy Brady, Jean-Baptiste del Amo, and many more, this collection is neither exhaustive nor fixed, and with the help of readers and writers alike, we hope to add to it in the coming months (and years, if we can). Divided broadly-and subjectively!-into four sections, we begin today with some classics of the genre.
Featured art from Gilbert White, The Natural History of Selborne (1789) Landscape Painting Now, edited by Todd Bradway, courtesy DAP.
Twenty years of detailed observations of the rural Hampshire parish of Selborne, southwest of London, told in charming epistolary form. As time capsules go, looking back 250 years at the natural world might as well be 2,000.

A well-worn classic of nature writing from the edge of the old frontier (upstate New York!); a compelling portrait of Cooperstown, New York.

A man, a plan, a pond. You probably know this one, the American ur text of walking out on polite society and writing about it. Walden spawned 10,000 imitators, some good, a few greater than the original, and the rest best left out in the woods.
Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1906)
The foundational text of evolutionary biology should be required reading for those of around for the downslope of the evolutionary process... (too dark?)

Mary Austin is a writer who seemed to walk around with her third eye wide open. In Land of Little Rain it's the Great American Desert she wanders, from the Mojave to the Eastern Sierras, along the way overturning stones and names. Austin's keen eye spotted great glinting doom of the American West early, for her time and place. Literature of the Anthropocene-heads will recognize her from a cameo in Mark Reisner's essential Cadillac Desert, in which Austin confronts William Mullholland about his plans to steal Owens Lake.

- Claire Vaye Watkins

Because human rights, animal rights, and the environment are so closely intertwined, The Jungle deserves a place on eco-fiction lists. Few industries are more abusive to human workers than factory farms and slaughterhouses, or more devastating to the environment. And the book is not as dated as it may seem; while food safety has certainly improved since The Jungle, the human and animal abuses are still prevalent, as is the pollution caused by animal agriculture. As groundbreaking as the novel was back in the early 20th century, The Jungle remains relevant today.

My First Summer in the Sierra describes John Muir's first trip to California's Sierra Nevada Mountains, located in what is now Yosemite National Park. Muir, a young Scottish immigrant, joined a crew of shepherds and kept a diary while tending sheep over four months. He details vistas, flora and fauna, and other natural wonders. No one has advocated more for the preservation of wilderness in the United States than John Muir, who went on to co-found the Sierra Club. His 12 books-and hundreds of articles-mark him out as a key naturalist and nature writer. This book was brought numerous visitors to Yosemite with four million people now visiting each year. The Sequoia National Park was also created partially thanks to his work.

Climate change activists regularly cite Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) as the beginning of the modern environmental movement. When it came to ocean conservation, however, her first book Under the Sea Wind (1941), succeeds better in reminding us about the beauty and complexity of marine ecosystems. Not one line of this nonfiction masterpiece is antiquated. Indeed, the external lessons learned from Under the Sea Wind are will never be "gone." As a biologist Carson studied the interrelationship of sea creatures more loving than anybody else. Carson's Under the Sea Wind is divided into three scientifically exact sections: "Edge of the Sea" (a study of a migratory sanderling named Silverbar); "The Gull's Way" (centered on a mackerel named Scomber swimming through a gauntlet of near-death experiences); and "River and Sea" (an ocean ecosystem as experienced by Anguilla the eel). Putting the reader into the life script of three lovable sea creatures Carson's book should be required reading in American high schools. I hope the next U.S. president leads a global moonshot to save the world's oceans from desecration with Under the Sea Wind serving as the foundational text.

Published in same year as the opening of the Everglades National Park, The Everglades described how the wetlands were suffering and in need of restoration and preservation, positioning the Everglades as a national treasure at time when many people thought it was just a swamp.

In a series of essays, Aldo Leopold describes the land around his home in Sauk County, Wisconsin. He advocates for a responsible relationship between the land and people, enumerating the importance of striking a balance between the two and revealing the negative effects of removing one species, like a predator, from the natural order. He coined the term "land ethic," asking that humans develop a new sense of morality in order to preserve ecosystems.

Ring of Bright Water details Gavin Maxwell's experiences with otters at his remote house in Scotland. It's an account of humanity with wildlife, and coming to understand nature. It shows that no matter how advanced we feel, we can always learn more about nature and animals and was turned into a film starring Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna in 1969.

Silent Spring was revolutionary for documenting how unregulated use of pesticides adversely affected both the environment and humankind. With it, Carson challenged America's chemical industry at a time when environmental activism was unheard of. The book was met with fierce criticism from major chemical producers, but it sparked the start of the US ecological movement and led to major media coverage about the negative effects of pesticides. The use of DDT was eventually banned in the US in 1972, and a worldwide ban followed. The book is still controversial today; many critics blame Carson for hampering agricultural production around the world and allowing millions to die from malaria (DDT was originally intended to control malaria among soldiers in World War II). Even today, it's a shocking portrayal of how far corporations can go when unregulated.

Wallace Stegner is something of an anomaly in the grand tradition of wild and free American nature writing. Disciplined, hard-working, and practical, not only was Stegner a prolific novelist, naturalist, and biographer, he was also something of a lobbyist on behalf of the environment ( activist doesn't quite fit), affecting change within the political system, both locally and nationally. Wolf Willow is an impressionistic memoir of his boyhood on the high Saskatchewan prairie, elegy for a landscape that would stay with Stegner his entire life, informing everything after.

In Never Cry Wolf, Farley Mowat describes his experiences investigating the declining caribou population in the Canadian sub-arctic in 1948. At the time, it was believed that wolves were to blame; he discovered that they existed mostly on small mammals such as mice. He found that when wolves did hunt caribou, they kill the weaker, older, and sick animals, which benefits the herd by allowing the fittest animals to breed and increasing the speed of the herd's migration. Instead, he blamed human hunters for the decline in caribou. The book is widely credited for discouraging the practice of culling wolves. Although several Canadian government bodies saw Mowat as a disruptive influence at the time, he's regarded as an environmental pioneer today. The prose is highly readable and ideal for young readers brought up on children's fiction where the wolf is big and bad.

Desert Solitaire is a collection of essays about life in the wilderness based on Edward Abbey's activities as a park ranger at Arches National Monument in Utah in the late 1950s. He writes about damage caused by overdevelopment and tourism while also waxing philosophical, dwelling on the power and ruthlessness of the desert. His essays reveal that a desert area can be as fascinating as a forest or coastline and heavily criticized the US Parks Service for developing parks filled with highways, where visitors could drive-in and drive-out without truly experiencing the surroundings; in his mind, American culture was not in the least aligned with nature. The book is widely credited with putting the Arches National Monument on the map.

The first favorite book of every budding environmentalist. Still kind of sad after all these years. Possibly sadder.
-John Freeman
Annie Dillard was only 28 when she wrote this seminal account of four seasons spent in relative solitude in Virginia's Blue Ridge mountains. A diaristic mix of observations both internal and external, Tinker Creek 's spiritual dimension sets it in America's Transcendentalist tradition (Edward Abbey called Dillard Thoreau's "true heir")-but it is Dillard's wild and saintly voice that sets it apart.

Snyder's 1974 collection of poems and essays inverts the typical centering of human life in the biosphere. He begins with a translation of a term many native tribes used for North America. Using Turtle Island instead of, say, America, Snyder argues, it becomes possible "to see ourselves more accurately on this continent of watersheds and life communities-plant zones, physiographic provinces, culture areas: following natural boundaries. The "U.S.A" and its states and counties are arbitrary boundaries and inaccurate impositions on what is really here." Poem by poem, essay by essay, Snyder tries to look past such barriers and see clearly what calls North America home. Most of the characters actors and agents in this book are animals, gods, natural phenomena. Bears, hawks, magpies. Sometimes they are roadkill, sometimes they speak back. To read this book is to appreciate the diminishment that has fallen on to so much poetry from this continent when it interacts with nature. Here is not the poet looking at nature, but rather, the poet erasing himself, and then taking away the periscope, too.

What is thrilling about the book is we get to watch this happen, as in, Snyder hasn't shown up shorn of illusions or the culture which made him. One of Snyder's most often anthologized poems, "I Went into the Maverick Bar," sings a psalm of familiarity to the kitsch and pageantry of the West's shabby dominion over the land which it stole. But there's work to be done, the poem famously concludes, work to undo the hold such things have on him. In poems like "Facts" we watch him educate himself across this book, poems like "The Real Work" reveal him, encountering new ways of seeing. Snyder has spent his lifetime doing this work, and in so doing has helped us see what is before us-what was before the US, what was vandalized and worse by its creation. If you haven't read him, this book-which won a Pulitzer in 1975-is where to begin.

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With this 1975 classic, Australian philosopher Singer changed the way we think and talk about animals by introducing the concept of "speciesism": the systematic disregard for non-human animals that allows for chilling acts of cruelty against them. The foundational text of the animal liberation movement, and important in considering humanity's relationship to the natural world.
Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975)
Zwinger is to western rivers what Rachel Carson was to the ocean (not surprising, since they shared a literary agent). Run, River, Run is Zwinger's account of her trip down the Green River, from its headwaters in Wyoming's Wind River Range to its confluence with the Colorado River. It won the John Burroughs Award for Nature Writing in 1976.

In Zwinger's narrative of the landscape through which the Green River flows, time folds in on itself, and history occurs simultaneously with the present. She deftly weaves together stories about the local Fremont Indians and historic exploration of and settlement in the region (Butch Cassidy's hideout at Brown's Hole, or the wagon train crossing at Sublette), with its natural history (plants, animals, river geomorphology), and even broader geologic history. "I feel no time interval, no difference in flesh between who stood here then and who stands here now," she writes.

While Zwinger remains in the background, focusing instead on the land through which she travels, her luminous writing can't help but connect you to the author herself. " . . . Aspen here . . . form solid groves that gleam like some Mycenaean treasure just opened to the sun," she writes. "The river becomes a way of thinking, ingrained, a way of looking at the world."

The Monkey Wrench Gang is what we talk about when we talk about eco-fiction-and while Abbey's fascinating, comic, and adventurous novel was published in 1975, its influence has lasted for generations. The novel is credited with influencing direct-action organizations such as Earth First! and the Earth Liberation Front, and it still captures the angst and helplessness of today's activists. While I might argue that the characters in the book could be a lot more eco-friendly themselves (they hunt and litter among the lands they aim to protect), standing up for the wilderness that cannot protect itself (from industry, development, agribusiness) should never go out of style.
-Jonny Diamond
A classic, wonderful 1970s travelogue about a part of the world that may soon cease to exist -in its current form, at least.

This is an amateur naturalist's diary for the year 1906 where the changing seasons are shown by changes in plants and animals in the English countryside. In it, Edith Holden uses text, including poetry, and illustrations of birds, plants and insects. It was first published in 1977 and became an immediate publishing sensation, although it was a personal diary and never intended for publication. It shows almost anyone can have an appreciation for nature, if they just take the time to look carefully.

In the great and tangled genealogy of 20th-century nature writing, Nan Shepherd would be the wild, eccentric great aunt (Robert Macfarlane, for example, is one of her many spiritual nephews). The Living Mountain is an ode to Shepherd's beloved Cairngorms-that inward range of druidically serious mountains that gather in the heart of the Scottish Highlands. At turns philosophically probing and scientifically precise, Shepherd's book, written in 1944 but not published until 1977 was like a hidden blueprint for so much British nature writing to come.

The rapaciousness is what gets to you, destruction for the pleasure of it. In Of Wolves and Men, Barry Lopez writes of the wolf killers, "It was as though these men had broken down at some point in their lives and begun to fill with bile." The early settlers went for the wolves first, slaughtering them to the point of extinction and often with ingenious barbarity, and they went for the land and over centuries the air and the oceans. Reading Lopez describe the viciousness with which men destroyed wolves, one is left with a sense of the soul of humankind at its most depraved, as yet unchecked.

- Aminatta Forna
-John Freeman
The mega-bestselling book that introduced millions of readers (and viewers, in its TV incarnation) to the facts of the universe. Of which we are a part. For now!

Jonathan Schell dedicated his life to peace during a militarist time. From his first book, drawn on reports on the US massacre at the village of Ben Suc, which he reported on age 24, to his last, a glimpse at how after seven decades, the threat of nuclear disaster had not left us, Schell chronicled the costs of this militarism on its victims, on societies, and in the ways it brought Americans to conceive of power and energy. While it's not a book on carbon footprints or ice melting, his 1982 blockbuster, The Fate of the Earth is absolutely a book on climate change because it confronts the power to destroy the earth entirely. A power that has not left us, even if it has left the news.

To read The Fate of the Earth today is to realize how much more seriously this threat was taken during the Cold War. There's an urgency and plainness to the writing that is startling. Much of its power proceeds from how Schell poses a question that is now at the heart of our moral failure to address climate change with real policy. "The possibility that the living can stop the future generations from entering into life compels us to ask basic new questions about our existence," Schell wrote. "[T]hat the fruit of four and a half billion years can be undone in a careless moment-is a fact against which belief rebels." As a publication, The Fate of the Earth became a key part of the disarmament movement. Would that he had lived to finish the book he was finishing upon his death-a book on climate change-perhaps the connection between peace and climate change would be clearer to us all.

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Every Day is Earth Day: 365 Books to Start Your Climate Change Library

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The idea of a single day devoted to the earth is absurd. In the 49 years since the first Earth Day was celebrated, human civilization-checked by neither morality nor policy-has wrecked devastation upon the planet, increasing with each passing year of excess and inaction the likelihood that coming generations will live in a world unrecognizable to Senator Gaylord Nelson, who first conceived of the day as an environmental teach-in on April 22, 1970.

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Recycled Homes | Earthships // 60 Second Docs

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In This European City, Plastic Waste Collected From The Rivers Is Used To Create Floating Parks

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June 5 marks the 35th annual World Environment Day - a global event spearheaded by the United Nations that aims to increase worldwide action to protect our environment.

Every year, the UN campaigns to raise awareness about environmental issues like marine pollution, increasing carbon emissions, and overpopulation. In 2019, the focus is addressing air pollution.

Air pollution causes some 8.8 million deaths annually worldwide. Currently, 91% of the world's population lives in places where the air quality does not meet the standards for safety set by the World Health Organization.

Read More: 19 types of pollution you might encounter every day that could hurt your health

Humans pollute the air, land, and sea by burning fossil fuels, overusing chemicals and pesticides, and creating sewage run-off.

The human health consequences of pollution aside, the degradation of our natural environment is forcing hundreds, if not thousands, of species down a path to extinction.

As news on the environmental front gets more dire - oceans are warming, Arctic and Antarctic ice melt is increasing, 5 trillion pounds of plastic have entered the seas - it's all the more important to remember that our planet is filled with species and habitats worth protecting.

In honor of World Environment Day, we've compiled some of the most beautiful - and heartbreaking - images of our planet and its flora and fauna.

Here are 30 images that illustrate our planet and its species' fragility and resilience.

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Stunning photos reveal the fragility and resilience of the Earth and its animals

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June 5 marks the 35th annual World Environment Day - a global event spearheaded by the United Nations that aims to increase worldwide action to protect our environment. Every year, the UN campaigns to raise awareness about environmental issues like marine pollution, increasing carbon emissions, and overpopulation.

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A campaign for “ecocide” to be recognised as a crime against humanity

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If you are looking for Stop Ecocide international, the driving force behind the growing global movement to make ecocide an international crime, please go to: www.stopecocide.earth

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‘Forest Bathing’ Is Great for Your Health. Here’s How to Do It

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‘The key to unlocking the power of the forest is in the five senses’