image: edward burtynsky/courtesy flowers gallery. cerro dominador solar project #1, atacama desert, chile.
Beware the backlash, but move the ball forward:
Green protectionism comes with big risks
Some analysts worry that new laws could slow the green transition
Politicians think they have cracked it. Continue reading
Overgrown agricultural machinery on a vacant farm near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. OKLA MICHEL / CTK VIA AP
Thanks to Fred Pearce, as always:
Abandoned Lands: A Hidden Resource for Restoring Biodiversity
Abandoned farmland has been increasing, with a billion acres — an area half the size of Australia — lost globally. Ecologists are increasingly pointing to the potential of these lands and of degraded forests as neglected resources for rewilding and for capturing carbon.
Gergana Daskalova was nine months old when she was taken in by her grandparents in their small village in Bulgaria. It was soon after the fall of the Iron Curtain, and her parents had left for the city after the closure of the village’s state-run collective farm. Continue reading
We are surprised that his employer cannot appreciate his decision:
Dr Gianluca Grimalda. Photograph: Institute for World Economy – Kiel
Climate scientist faces sack for refusing to fly to Germany from Solomon Islands archipelago
Dr Gianluca Grimalda told by Kiel Institute for World Economy he must be at his desk on Monday after finishing fieldwork
A climate researcher has been threatened with the sack by his employer after refusing to fly back to Germany at short notice after finishing fieldwork on Bougainvillein the Solomon Islands archipelago. Continue reading
Thank you as always, Cara Buckley. The topic today is wind power, again, this time more on its use propelling ships:
In Shipping, a Push to Slash Emissions by Harnessing the Wind
More ships are running on wind power, as the global industry tries to fight climate change. One concept has backing from Abba, the Swedish pop stars.
The Pyxis Ocean began its first wind-assisted voyage in August. Cargill and BAR Technologies
One ship was pulled across the sea with the help of an enormous sail that looked as if it belonged to a kite-surfing giant. Another navigated the oceans between China and Brazil this summer with steel and composite-glass sails as high as three telephone poles. Continue reading
View in the “Cross Timbers,” Texas, by George Catlin, c. 1832. Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr.
Lapham’s Quarterly, judged here only by the rare occasions when we have linked to their work, offers gem quality items of interest, such as this essay by Rosemarie Ostler:
Corn pitcher, Southern Porcelain Company, c. 1855. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sansbury-Mills Fund, 2014.
The Early Days of American English
How English words evolved on a foreign continent.
English settlers faced with unfamiliar landscapes and previously unknown plants and animals in the Americas had to find terms to name and describe them. They sometimes borrowed words from Native American languages. They also repurposed existing English words and invented new terms, as well as keeping words that had become archaic in British English. As non-English-speaking immigrants began to arrive during the eighteenth century, they accepted words from those languages as well. By the time of the American Revolution, English had been evolving separately in England and America for nearly two hundred years, and the trickle of new words had become a flood. Continue reading
A podcast that catches our interest with this most recent episode on why leaves change colors.
Bats need protection; these clever engineers and scientists will surely figure out how to, considering what they have already accomplished:
Spinning Wind Turbines Kill Nearly a Million Bats a Year. Researchers Aim to Find Out Why
Land-based wind turbines kill as many as 880,000 bats a year, wiping out so many threatened bats that at least one species could soon become endangered without preventative action, according to a recent study.
Bat conservation experts and scientists say they currently do not know how to stop turbine collisions. Continue reading
Virginia Heffernan has appeared in our pages only once before, also reviewing a book. She is one of the great writers in the English language, but often on topics not connected to our themes here. While we mostly are interested in topics related to the natural world, and we know that this topic is a whole other realm, we can guess that AI’s impact on the natural world is part of what the title of this issue of Wired will mean to us pretty soon:
What If the Robots Were Very Nice While They Took Over the World?
First it was chess and Go. Now AI can beat us at Diplomacy, the most human of board games. The way it wins offers hope that maybe AI will be a delight.
THE MORRISSEY HAD the right melodrama in his limbs, and his voice was strong and pained. I was at Gramercy Theatre in Manhattan to see a Smiths tribute band. I tried to get Morrissey’s acid yodel in my throat, to sing along. I am human and I need to be loved / just like everybody else does. But it didn’t feel right to copy a copy. Continue reading
We shared an interview with the author of this book a few months ago, but missed the numerous reviews when her book was published last year. Thanks again to a Dutch biologist named Leon at the Inquisitive Biologist for this book review now:
BOOK REVIEW – THE VALUE OF A WHALE: ON THE ILLUSIONS OF GREEN CAPITALISM
In an attempt to address climate change and other environmental problems, governments are increasingly turning to economic solutions. The underlying message is clear: capitalism might have created the problem, but capitalism can solve it. Adrienne Buller, a Senior Fellow with progressive think tank Common Wealth, is, to put it mildly, sceptical of this. From carbon credits to biodiversity offsets, she unmasks these policies for the greenwashing that they are. The Value of a Whale is a necessary corrective that is as eye-opening as it is shocking. Continue reading
Illustration by Igor Bastidas
We have ideas on what to take away if you are visiting Costa Rica. Yesterday, Joshua Hunt made this unexpected recommendation on travel takeaways:
Want a Vacation Souvenir? Buy Toothpaste.
The quotidian joys of this pocket-size keepsake.
Six weeks after my first trip to Italy, the fresh mozzarella I brought home is long gone, and so is the hard salami and pistachio-flavored chocolate. To squeeze a bit more from my Mediterranean experience, I can rely a little while longer on the tube of Elmex-brand toothpaste I used to brush away all that food. Continue reading
The Cheery line of cherries has been developed to do well even if temperatures rise. BLOOM FRESH
Agricultural adaptation to a changing climate has caught our attention frequently with regard to wine grapes. Thanks to Kim Severson for this look at other fruits and vegetables:
Hot-weather cherries, drought-resistant melons and six other crops in the works that could change how we eat in a fast-warming world.
The Cosmic Crisp was bred at the University of Washington with a changing climate in mind. Credit…Ines Hanrahan/Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission
Plant breeders, by nature, are patient people. It can take them years or even decades to perfect a new variety of fruit or vegetable that tastes better, grows faster or stays fresh longer.
But their work has taken on a new urgency in the face of an increasingly erratic climate. Recent floods left more than a third of California’s table grapes rotting on the vine. Too much sunlight is burning apple crops. Pests that farmers never used to worry about are marching through lettuce fields.
Breeding new crops that can thrive under these assaults is a long game. Continue reading
A Kuikuro village in the southeastern Amazon. JOSHUA TONEY
Thanks to Yale e360 for this one:
How Ancient Amazonians Locked Away Thousands of Tons of Carbon in “Dark Earth”
A new study reveals how, by cultivating fertile soil for farming, ancient Amazonians locked away thousands of tons of carbon that have stayed in the ground for centuries. Continue reading
Spider silk fibres produced by silkworms. Junpeng Mi, Donghua University
This will be the fifth time for CRISPR in our pages. We suspend judgement each time we link to explanations of the technology, or new applications:
Silkworms genetically engineered to produce pure spider silk
Spider silk has been seen as a greener alternative to artificial fibres like nylon and Kevlar, but spiders are notoriously hard to farm. Now researchers have used CRISPR to genetically engineer silkworms that produce pure spider silk
Silkworms have been genetically engineered with CRISPR to produce pure spider silk for the first time. The worms could offer a scalable way to create things like surgical thread or bulletproof vests from spider silk, which is prized for its strength, flexibility and lightness. Continue reading
Raul Arboleda / AFP via Getty Images
We have been preaching, and practicing, reduction in the consumption of meat and dairy for as long as we have been sharing on this platform. Reminders of why are always welcome. Our thanks to Max Graham, a Food and Agriculture Fellow at Grist for this reminder-primer:
What would happen if the world cut meat and milk consumption in half?
Agricultural emissions would fall by almost a third. But getting there wouldn’t be easy.
Cows are often described as climate change criminals because of how much planet-warming methane they burp. Continue reading
O’Keefe’s team designed bat boxes that offer a wide range of interior temperatures. Joy O’Keefe
We have pointed to stories about activism and entrepreneurship in the interest of protecting animal habitat plenty of times, but not so much on the science of the field work. As part of its Climate Desk collaboration Mother Jones shares this article originally published by Undark, written by Marta Zaraska, that addresses some of the science of species-specific safe spaces:
Inside Scientists’ Race to Create Safe Refuges for Animals
Climate crisis is destroying habitats. Can technology help create new ones?
Conservation ecologist Ox Lennon simulated stacks of rocks that would create crevices big enough for skinks, but too small for mice. Courtesy Ox Lennon
In 2016, Ox Lennon was trying to peek in the crevices inside a pile of rocks. They considered everything from injecting builders’ foam into the tiny spaces to create a mold to dumping a heap of stones into a CT scanner. Still, they couldn’t get the data they were after: how to stack rocks so that a mouse wouldn’t squeeze through, but a small lizard could hide safely inside. Continue reading
Sprinklers water a field on Sept. 28, 2022 near Yuma, Arizona. Photo by David McNew/Getty Images.
This article by Stephen Robert Miller in the New Republic tells a story that is simultaneously inconceivable and yet perfectly explanatory of humanity’s contribution to climate change:
Why are we paying for crop failures in the desert?
Taxpayers are on the hook for heat-related crop losses in parched states like Arizona. That needs to change.
In mid-July in Phoenix, a man demonstrated to a local news station how to cook steak on the dashboard of his car. The city sweltered through a nearly monthlong streak of 110-degree temperatures this summer, while heat records are tumbling across the Southwest. Continue reading
A pair of humpback whales synchronized the release of bubbles to corral and consume sand eels.
This article by Ellie Duke, with photographs and video by Sutton Lynch, is a sort of bookend to another recent article. It makes one wish for more people skilled with cameras in the oceans, and fewer skilled in placing nets:
A school of bluefish forming a circle in shallow water.
The photographer Sutton Lynch is documenting a dramatic turning point off the coast of Long Island — a resurgence of sea life after decades of depletion.
Sutton Lynch rises most days before the sun, arriving at Atlantic Beach in Amagansett, N.Y., for the early-morning calm. It’s the same beach he’s been going to since he was a child, and where he worked as a lifeguard for years as a teenager. Now 23, he spends his mornings surveying the horizon. When he spots activity on the water’s surface, he sends out his drone. Continue reading
Fireflies in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. RADIM SCHREIBER
Fireflies being among the more charismatic insects, they and other glowing creatures have been covered in our pages second only to bees. Our thanks to Ted Williams, writing for Yale e360, for explaining their specific challenge:
A Summer Light Show Dims: Why Are Fireflies Disappearing?
Fireflies — whose shimmering, magical glows light up summer nights — are in trouble, threatened by habitat destruction, light pollution, and pesticide use. With 18 species now considered at risk of extinction in North America alone, recovery efforts are only just beginning.
For millions of people around the globe, fireflies have been a big part of the magic of spring and early summer nights. They certainly were in our family. When my children were young, our field in central Massachusetts blazed with fireflies. Continue reading
Chris Winkler, a fisherman in ever-fancier Montauk on Long Island, is accused of breaking limits on his catch.
We hope that the wrongs get righted:
The Government Takes On a Fisherman Over 200,000 Pounds of Fluke
Chris Winkler is on trial, accused of taking too many fish from the seas off gentrified Montauk. His former partners have pleaded guilty, and stand to make millions from the sale of their small seafood-themed empire.
Along with trash fish, catch that exceeds daily limits must be tossed overboard even if it perishes.
It was just before dawn when Chris Winkler, a fisherman in Montauk, N.Y., set off on his trawler, the New Age.
A longhaired surfer who looks far younger than his 63 years, Mr. Winkler was in flip-flops and shorts, trailed by Murphy, a good-natured Irish water spaniel who is usually his only company. Continue reading
The last time we shared an advertisement here? Never. Occasionally, we promote a video like Kill the K-Cup that serves the opposite purpose. But this ad? Must see. It promotes a powerful message, and paradoxically at the same time, as Bill McKibben points out in this week’s newsletter, a whole other big mess is lurking just behind the curtain. He starts by bringing our attention to a new bill being considered in California, and then relates that bill to Apple in a way that raises questions about the accomplishments celebrated in the ad:
…#In California, SB 253 made it through the legislature, which is an incredibly big deal. Because California is the fifth largest economy on earth, and this law would force the big companies that do business there—which is everyone, really, because who is going to miss out on that economy?—to fully disclose their carbon emissions, including their “Scope 3” emissions, which are the ones that come from the supply chain. Continue reading
Organikos 