Ranthanbore National Park, Rajasthan
David Attenborough’s Green Planet
Mike Gunton, creative director of the BBC Natural History Unit and a long-time collaborator with David Attenborough.PHOTOGRAPH: BENEDICT REDGROVE
David Attenborough has been a frequent feature in our pages over the years. Each conversation with him repeats something we already knew but shares something we had not previously known:
David Attenborough’s Unending Mission to Save Our Planet
“We tend to think we are the be all and end all—but we’re not. The sooner we can realize that the natural world goes its way, not our way, the better.”
David Attenborough’s Green Planet is his latest series in a career that began in the 1950s and is as notable for its variety of firsts—pioneering 16-mm film in TV; first to film a Komodo dragon; first to use drone cameras—as it is for his long-standing commitment to bringing wildlife and environmental issues into the homes of viewers around the world. PHOTOGRAPH: NADAV KANDER
WE MAKE LOTS of programs about natural history, but the basis of all life is plants.” Sir David Attenborough is at Kew Gardens on a cloudy, overcast August day waiting to deliver his final piece to camera for his latest natural history epic, The Green Planet. Planes roar overhead, constantly interrupting filming, and he keeps putting his jacket on during pauses. “We ignore them because they don’t seem to do much, but they can be very vicious things,” he says. “Plants throttle one another, you know—they can move very fast, have all sorts of strange techniques to make sure that they can disperse themselves over a whole continent, have many ways of meeting so they can fertilize one another and we never actually see it happening.” He smiles. “But now we can.” Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Large Grey Babbler
Rishikesh, Uttarakhand
Points For Creativity
Edward Constance and Brian Souyana race on Rasta Rocket, made from plastic drain pipes and fishing buoys that washed up on Aldabra. About 68 tonnes of marine litter a year is washed ashore
Do not ask yourself whether this will change anything; just smile and acknowledge that it is probably not hurting anyone to have some creative fun with environmental disasters:
Recycled regatta: world heritage site highlights plastic pollution crisis
When environmentalists on a Seychelles atoll decided to race boats made from ocean litter, they had 500 tonnes to pick from
Photographs: Anna Koester/Seychelles Islands Foundation
Martin van Rooyen, a researcher, and Luke A’Bear, a science coordinator, prepare to set sail on Red Lion, buoyed by discarded oil drums
Red Lion is the kind of boat you would not see in most regattas. Its frame is made of bamboo, sourced from washed-up fishing equipment, and it uses two old oil drums for buoyancy.
Equally strange is Rasta Rocket – made from old plastic drain pipes, washed-up floats and fishing buoys.
These were two of the boats in the inaugural Aldabra Regatta: an ironic attempt to draw attention to marine plastic pollution by racing boats made from marine debris. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: African Grey Hornbill
Etosha National Park, Namibia
Planetary Health Diet
What we should eat for the sake of our individual and communal futures is one of the topics most posted on this platform. Gayathri Vaidyanathan’s article below adds to the most macro of perspectives on these topics. It takes a moment to process the information in the graphic above, but this article from the journal Nature makes it clear:
What humanity should eat to stay healthy and save the planet
What we eat needs to be nutritious and sustainable. Researchers are trying to figure out what that looks like around the world.
Illustration by Paweł Jońca
A clutch of fishing villages dot the coast near Kilifi, north of Mombasa in Kenya. The waters are home to parrot fish, octopus and other edible species. But despite living on the shores, the children in the villages rarely eat seafood. Their staple meal is ugali, maize (corn) flour mixed with water, and most of their nutrition comes from plants. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Vernal Hanging Parrot
Mattighatta Green Ravine, Karnataka
Greenpeace @ 50
Greenpeace ship MY Esperanza and activists try to hinder the shooting of a minke whale by the Yushin Maru No.2 catcher ship. Photograph: Kate Davison/Greenpeace
Paul Watson and Sea Shepherd were favorite post topics for a while, but long time no see. With a major anniversary for Greenpeace, a look at other important images from their history seems a fitting tribute:
Greenpeace: half a century on the frontline of environmental photo activism
On the organisation’s 50th anniversary, former head of photography at Greenpeace International talks about the motives behind the creation of its picture desk
Vega boarded by French commandos in Moruroa, 1973. Photograph: Ann-Marie Horne
Fifty years ago, on 15 September 1971, a ship named the Greenpeace set out to confront and stop US nuclear weapons testing at Amchitka, one of the Aleutian Islands in south-west Alaska.
Two years later a small boat called the Vega, crewed by David McTaggart, Ann-Marie Horne, Mary Horne and Nigel Ingram sailed into the French nuclear test site area at Moruroa, French Polynesia in the southern Pacific Ocean. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Black Eagle
Bandipur Tiger Reserve, Karnataka
Society for the Protection of Underground Networks
Hotspots of mycorrhizal fungi are thought to be under threat, from agriculture, urbanisation, pollution, water scarcity and changes to the climate. Photograph: Biosphoto/Alamy
We featured three articles by Fiona Harvey, Environment correspondent for the Guardian, each in 2016 on quite different topics, and then we did not see her again until today. Our attention to fungi has been constant since Milo got the topic started in 2011, and SPUN’s mapping project counts as good news:
World’s vast networks of underground fungi to be mapped for first time
Project aims to help protect some of trillions of miles of the ‘circulatory system of the planet’
Vast networks of underground fungi – the “circulatory system of the planet” – are to be mapped for the first time, in an attempt to protect them from damage and improve their ability to absorb and store carbon dioxide. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Black-crowned Sparrow-Lark (female)
Desert National Park, Rajasthan
Rehabilitation Of Antitrust Law
Starting seven years ago I have been paying attention to monopoly power mostly in the context of Amazon. One of the clearest articles on the topic focused on a young person’s breakthrough idea. So I was very happy to read about Lina Khan’s Battle to Rein in Big Tech by rehabilitating antitrust law:
As monopolies and other large companies gain increasing control of our daily lives, Khan is Joe Biden’s pick to do something about it.
In the spring of 2011, a recent Williams College graduate named Lina Khan interviewed for a job at the Open Markets Program, in Washington, D.C. Open Markets, which was part of the New America think tank, was dedicated to the study of monopolies and the ways in which concentration in the American economy was suppressing innovation, depressing wages, and fuelling inequality. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Black-crowned Sparrow-Lark (male)
male
Desert National Park, Rajasthan
Glass Origins
This glass fish was found in a fairly modest private house in Amarna, buried under a plaster floor along with a few other objects. It may once have contained ointment. The Trustees of the British Museum
We have featured stories about artisanal glass in the previous posts but this time the story is about the origins of the substance:
A Brief Scientific History of Glass
Featuring ingots, shipwrecks and an international trade in colors, the material’s rich past is being traced using modern archaeology and materials science
Blue glass ingots from the Uluburun shipwreck. Panegyrics of Granovetter / Flickr
Today, glass is ordinary, on-the-kitchen-shelf stuff. But early in its history, glass was bling for kings.
Thousands of years ago, the pharaohs of ancient Egypt surrounded themselves with the stuff, even in death, leaving stunning specimens for archaeologists to uncover. King Tutankhamen’s tomb housed a decorative writing palette and two blue-hued headrests made of solid glass that may once have supported the head of sleeping royals. His funerary mask sports blue glass inlays that alternate with gold to frame the king’s face. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Little Spiderhunter
Western Ghats
More Trees Now
A hazel sapling (Corylus avellana) in the ditches of the tree hub at Amsterdamse Bos. Photograph: Judith Jockel/The Guardian
The trillion trees concept, which inspires but has had its share of legitimate questions, has a scrappy cousin with a novel approach:
‘Every tree counts’: Dutch come up with cunning way to create forests for free
More Trees Now aims to give away 1m unwanted saplings to farmers and councils with hope idea will spread across Europ
Hanneke van Ormondt saves a sapling at the tree hub in Amsterdamse Bos, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Photograph: Judith Jockel/The Guardian
In a clearing in the Amsterdamse Bos, a forest on the outskirts of the Dutch capital, is a “tree hub” where hundreds of saplings, among them hazelnut, sweet cherry, field maple, beech, chestnut and ash, are organised by type.
The idea behind it is simple: every day unwanted tree saplings were being cleared and thrown away when those young trees could be carefully collected and transplanted to where they are wanted. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Black-crested Antshrike
Guajira, Colombia
Fixing Carbon Offset Markets
A steel re-rolling mill in Narayanganj, Bangladesh. Well-designed carbon markets could spur companies in developing countries to reduce emissions. AHMED SALAHUDDIN / NURPHOTO VIA AP
Thanks to Yale e360 for this opinion on a hot topic that we have sometimes mused less seriously about:
How to Repair the World’s Broken Carbon Offset Markets
Markets that connect businesses hoping to offset their carbon emissions with climate change mitigation projects have been plagued by problems. But an economist and his co-authors argue that carbon markets can be reformed and play a significant role in slowing global warming
In the wake of the Glasgow climate summit, governments must now return to the daunting challenge of making good on their emissions-reductions pledges, which at this point remain insufficient to hold warming below 2 or even 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Spotted Dove
Rishikesh, Uttarakhand
Thanksgiving, Organikos & Authentica At Year 3
Introduced at the Authentica shops in Costa Rica on Thanksgiving Day, 2021
The base of the lamp at my desk is a ceramic bird that serves as a year-round reminder of Thanksgiving. And the ceramic coffee artifacts on my desk serve the same purpose, reminding me each time I sit to work that there are constantly plenty of reasons to give thanks.
We opened two Authentica shops in Costa Rica on Thanksgiving weekend 2019. Sophomore year for both Organikos and Authentica was mettle-testing. We passed. If flying colors were not evident enough in how we passed, here they are in the label for our newest coffee. First introduced last month to a group of students at Cornell University, whose tasting notes we have appreciated receiving, as of today it is available in our shops in Costa Rica.
So, thanks for all that.
Organikos 