Small But Meaningful Legal Support Of Protest

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Insulate Britain supporters protesting in London this month. Photograph: Daniel Leal/AFP/Getty Images

Strange that this requires a protest, but that’s how it is. Our thanks to Damien Gayle of the Guardian for this coverage:

Top lawyers defy bar to declare they will not prosecute peaceful climate protesters

Six KCs among more than 120 mostly English lawyers to sign pledge not to act for fossil fuel interests

Leading barristers have defied bar rules by signing a declaration saying they will not prosecute peaceful climate protesters or act for companies pursuing fossil fuel projects. Continue reading →

Sailing Cargo Ships, Again

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An illustration shows a wind-powered car and truck carrier ship that a Swedish consortium is developing and aiming to launch late 2024. Photograph: Wallenius Marine/Reuters

Old school (sailing cargo ships) becoming the new trend is as good as news gets these days:

Cargo ships powered by wind could help tackle climate crisis

Shipping produces much of the world’s greenhouse gases but new technology offers solutions to cut fuel use

Cars, trucks and planes get plenty of blame for helping drive the climate crisis, but shipping produces a large portion of the world’s greenhouse gases, as well as nitrogen oxides and sulphur pollution because ships largely use cheap heavy fuel oil. Continue reading →

Ever-Evolving Puppetry

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Foreground, from left: Fred Davis, Scarlet Wilderink and Finn Caldwell. Behind the tiger, from left: Andrew Wilson and Rowan Ian Seamus Magee. Nina Westervelt for The New York Times

Puppetry is a rare topic in these pages, but as cultural heritage goes, this ever-evolving form is worth at least a few minutes of reading time related to this new production:

Puppetry So Lifelike, Even Their Deaths Look Real

Members of the puppetry team for “Life of Pi” discuss making the show’s animals seem all-too-real on a very crowded lifeboat.

Richard Parker, the Royal Bengal tiger in “Life of Pi” takes three puppeteers (including Celia Mei Rubin, bottom left) to operate in the production opening at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater on March 30. Nina Westervelt for The New York Times

Fair warning: This article is riddled with spoilers about puppet deaths in “Life of Pi,” the stage adaptation of Yann Martel’s best-selling novel about a shipwrecked teenager adrift on the Pacific Ocean. He shares his lifeboat first with a menagerie of animals from his family’s zoo in India — large-scale puppets all, requiring a gaggle of puppeteers — and eventually just with a magnificent, ravenous Royal Bengal tiger named Richard Parker that takes three puppeteers to operate.

Now in previews on Broadway, where it is slated to open on March 30 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater, the play picked up five Olivier Awards in London last year. Puppetry design by the longtime collaborators Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell was included with Tim Hatley’s set in one award, and, unprecedentedly, a team of puppeteers won an acting Olivier for playing Richard Parker. Continue reading →

The Birds Of Australia, Interactive Exhibition Of John & Elizabeth Gould’s Illustrations

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A new exhibition showcasing the incredible world of Australia’s birdlife will launch in Newcastle. Presented on STORYBOX, an interactive storytelling cube, The Birds of Australia, brings to life the iconic bird illustrations of John and Elizabeth Gould together with First Nations storytelling and knowledges.

We have linked to stories about both John Gould and his wife Elizabeth, and now there is a museum exhibition honoring both together, so if you happen to be in Australia:

Touring exhibition: The Birds of Australia

Trace the journey of English ornithologist John Gould and his wife Elizabeth, as they travelled across New South Wales in the 1800s on one of the most significant birding expeditions in history, helping inform contemporary knowledge and conservation of Australian birds. The Goulds described and illustrated over 300 birds that were completely new to science, including the Pied Butcherbird (Cracticus nigrogularis) and the now extinct Paradise Parrot (Psephotellus pulcherrimus). It was an astonishing record of observation and sustained hard work. Continue reading →

Golden Oldies

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People perform a die-in on Third Avenue in New York during a protest in 2021.

People perform a die-in on Third Avenue in New York during a protest in 2021. Photograph: Michael M Santiago/Getty Images

Thanks to Oliver Milman, as ever:

‘We have money and power’: older Americans to blockade banks in climate protest

Demonstrations at 90 sites are billed as first major action by older activists: ‘It’s not fair to ask 18-year-olds to solve this’

Climate activists across the US will on Tuesday blockade branches of banks that finance fossil fuels, cutting up their credit cards in protest and holding rallies featuring everything from flash mobs to papier-mache orca whales. Unusually for such a spectacle, the protests won’t be led by young activists but those of a grayer hue. Continue reading →

Leveraging Guarani Knowhow For Reforestation

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A Guarani man walks through a cleared patch of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest that the local Indigenous community is trying to reforest. DIEGO HERCULANO / NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES

Thanks to Jill Langlois and Yale e360:

How Indigenous People Are Restoring Brazil’s Atlantic Forest

The Guarani Mbya people are working to restore the once-vast Atlantic Forest, which has been largely lost to development. Gaining official tenure of their lands, they hope, will boost their efforts, which range from planting native trees to reintroducing pollinators.

It was 2016 when Jurandir Jekupe noticed the bees were gone.

Their nests were once common in Yvy Porã, the Guarani Mbya village where Jekupe grew up and still lives. Continue reading →

The Nature Book, Reviewed

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Neither the author of the book,  nor Cara Blue Adams who reviews it in the essay below, is familiar in our pages. But it is an essay that evokes familiar themes, so here goes:

Searching for Unfamiliar Terrain in “The Nature Book”

We go to the wilderness to test ourselves against an environment indifferent to our presence. Can this experience be re-created in fiction?

The Wilderness Act, passed in 1964, established the National Wilderness Preservation System to safeguard federally owned land, beginning with 9.1 million acres, called “wilderness areas,” to be “designated for preservation and protection in their natural condition.” Continue reading →

Seaweed, Seafood, Plastics & Fodder

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Globally, seaweed production has grown by nearly 75 percent in the past decade.

After news of the blob coming our way, here is another useful seaweed story in excellent interactive format:

Seaweed Is Having Its Moment in the Sun

It’s being reimagined as a plastic substitute, even as cattle feed. But can seaweed thrive in a warming world?

For centuries, it’s been treasured in kitchens in Asia and neglected almost everywhere else: Those glistening ribbons of seaweed that bend and bloom in cold ocean waves. Continue reading →

The Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt

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A worker removing sargassum with machinery at a resort in Cancun, Mexico, last year. Alonso Cupul/EPA, via Shutterstock

We have seen its beauty and otherwise tended to feature its positive uses, but not all seaweed is created equal; so, our thanks to Livia Albeck-Ripka and Emily Schmall for this news and analysis:

A Giant Blob of Seaweed is Heading to Florida

The mass, known as the great Atlantic Sargassum belt, is drifting toward the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists say seaweed is likely to come ashore by summer to create a rotting, stinking, scourge.

For much of the year, an enormous brown blob floats, relatively harmlessly, across the Atlantic Ocean. Its tendrils provide shelter and breeding grounds for fish, crabs and sea turtles. Spanning thousands of miles, it is so large that it can be seen from outer space. Continue reading →

Libraries Old & New

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Adults and children in a room of a library with bookshelves, an orange light in the ceiling and an orange wall.

The Adams Street Library in Dumbo, Brooklyn, has a children’s space with hues reminiscent of a Creamsicle. Justin Kaneps for The New York Times

The name Michael Kimmelman is rare in these pages, but in covering one of our favorite topics he gets our full attention again today:

As New York Weighs Library Cuts, Three New Branches Show Their Value

Facing a giant budget deficit, Mayor Eric Adams proposed cuts to New York libraries. But they play an outsize role in the city, offering services and safety.

Adults and children gather in a well-lit children’s room in a library that is filled with bookshelves. One child sits on a color-blocked rug, drawing.

The children’s room at the Macomb’s Bridge branch in Upper Manhattan; below, the entrance and canopy outside refer to the original landmarked architecture. Justin Kaneps for The New York Times Image

A city is only as good as its public spaces. The Covid-19 pandemic was another reminder: For quarantined New Yorkers, parks, outdoor dining sheds and reopened libraries became lifelines.

But now Mayor Eric Adams wants to slash funds for parks ($46 million) and for libraries ($13 million this fiscal year, more than $20 million next), and the City Council is debating the dining sheds. The sheds need regulation and the city budget needs to be cut by perhaps $3 billion. That said, if you don’t find the current political conversation shortsighted, you might want to do what I recently did and check out some of the library branches that have opened since the start of 2020. I visited three of them — each one a boon for its neighborhood, and money well-spent. Continue reading →