Mandala-Phudung Forest, Arunachal Pradesh
Icelandic Elf-Curious Attitudes
Toni Demuro
In a world that is full of climate denial nonsense, where responsibilities to nature are abandoned by many, what harm could possibly come from Icelanders believing their own peculiar sort of nonsense? We will take any help we can get if it helps us and helps our protection of nature:
In “Looking for the Hidden Folk,” Nancy Marie Brown makes a strong case for everyday wonder.
For 70 summers, children have boated to an island in the Adirondack wilderness to seek out a cluster of tiny wooden houses and leave messages for the fairies who are said to live there. Sometimes the fairies write back — on slips of birch bark, tucked into the crevice of a log for children to find and exult over. The adult go-betweens behind the letters can’t resist feeding the children’s faith that the natural world reciprocates their interest.
Of course, they don’t believe in fairies themselves. In “Looking for the Hidden Folk,” the cultural historian Nancy Marie Brown asks: Why not? “Why should disbelief be our default? Why should we deride our sense of wonder? Why do we allow our world to be disenchanted?” Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Long-tailed Shrike
Savalsang Grasslands, Vijayapura, Karnataka
Embracing Anthropocene
Image credits: Alamy; David Guttenfelder for The New York Times; Getty Images; Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times; Michael Probst/Associated Press; Getty Images; NASA
We have been using this terminology already for more than a decade, thinking it was apt enough to be official:
For Planet Earth, This Might Be the Start of a New Age
A panel of experts has spent more than a decade deliberating on how, and whether, to mark a momentous new epoch in geologic time: our own.
The official timeline of Earth’s history — from the oldest rocks to the dinosaurs to the rise of primates, from the Paleozoic to the Jurassic and all points before and since — could soon include the age of nuclear weapons, human-caused climate change and the proliferation of plastics, garbage and concrete across the planet. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Grace’s Warbler
Davis Mountain Preserve, TX
Tokyo’s Rooftop Solar
A rooftop solar installation in Yokohama, near Tokyo. COCREATR VIA FLICKR
Our hats off to Japan’s largest city for this requirement:
Tokyo to Mandate Rooftop Solar Panels on New Homes
Tokyo is mandating that all new homes in the city be built with rooftop solar panels starting in 2025. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Whistling Cisticola
Nguila, Cameroon
Fusion Hoopla
A reason that the breakthrough is causing such hoopla is that it implicitly promises that we could use fusion to run the world in almost its current form. Photograph courtesy Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Without the expertise to fully appreciate the science, the hoopla can be overlooked too easily. McKibben’s comment helps clarify:
The Fusion Breakthrough Suggests That Maybe Someday We’ll Have a Second Sun
In the meantime, we need to use the sun we’ve already got.
On Tuesday, the Department of Energy is expected to announce a breakthrough in fusion energy: according to early reports, scientists at the government’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in California, have succeeded for the first time in making their complex and expensive machinery produce more power than it uses, if only for an instant. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Eurasian Collared Dove
Vijayapura, Karnataka
Biodiversity, Montreal & Us
The opening plenary of the U.N. biodiversity conference in Montreal. Photograph by Andrej Ivanov / AFP / Getty
We continue, as a species, to document our impact on other species. The warning signs keep getting clearer. It is not pleasant reading, but it is documented for a reason; it is about us. It is about our responsibilities. Our thanks, as always, to Elizabeth Kolbert:
Can the U.N. Save the World from Ecological Collapse?
At this week’s summit, delegates will consider ambitious new conservation targets—even though the old ones have yet to be achieved.
The Red List of Threatened Species might best be described as a lack-of-progress report. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Long-billed Curlew
Willis Creek Wildlife Area, TX
Big Cats Need Space
Big cats at the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park, a private sanctuary featured in the Netflix documentary series Tiger King. FIGHT4ANIMALRIGHTS VIA WIKIPEDIA
Big cats do not belong in cages, and certainly do not deserve to be treated as domestic pets. We assumed there were already clear and strict rules in place:
U.S. to Curb Private Ownership of Big Cats
The U.S. is set to enact a new law that prohibits private citizens from obtaining lions, tigers, jaguars, leopards, and other big cats as pets. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Buffy-crowned Wood-Partridge
Puerta del Cielo, Huehuetenango, Guatemala
India’s Zero Sum Game
When Pradip Krishen began creating Jaipur’s Kishan Bagh Desert Park, it was a wasteland of dunes and bald hillocks, strewn with trash. Looking at the landscape, he said, “Now, this is something I’d love to work on. ”Photographs by Bharat Sikka for The New Yorker
If I had to bet, based on our period living in India from 2010 to 2017, I would bet on the prime minister winning. That implies the country making less progress on conservation, if any, and more on development. As Dorothy Wickenden‘s article implies, it may be a zero sum game:
The Promise and the Politics of Rewilding India
Ecologists are trying to undo environmental damage in rain forests, deserts, and cities. Can their efforts succeed even as Narendra Modi pushes for rapid development?
Krishen’s first major restoration job was reclaiming the landscape around Mehrangarh Fort, in the Thar Desert.
On May 12, 1459, the Rajput warrior ruler Rao Jodha laid the first foundation stone of an impregnable fort, atop a jagged cliff of volcanic rock in the Thar Desert of Marwar. He called the citadel Mehrangarh, or “fort of the sun”—and, legend has it, he insured a propitious future by ordering a man buried alive on its grounds. Over time, as the royal clan secured its power, the compound grew to colossal proportions, with soaring battlements, ornately furnished palaces, and grand courtyards enclosed by intricate sandstone latticework. Four hundred feet below, the capital city of Jodhpur became a flourishing trade center. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Red-vented Bulbul
Vijayapura, Karnataka
Climate Science Is Getting Old
Scientist Roger Revelle, an adviser who warned Lyndon Johnson about climate change in 1965, greets the president in the Oval Office. Roger Revelle papers/Special Collections Archives/UC San Diego
In keeping with a theme–that the science of climate risk has been around for a couple generations now–we have linked to each time there are new revelations:
What Big Oil Knew About Its Products’ Climate Risks—and When
A long-forgotten report sheds light on a high-stakes liability question.
Carroll Muffett began wondering in 2008 when the world’s biggest oil companies had first understood the science of climate change and their product’s role in causing it. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Yellow-billed Magpie
San Benito, California
The Little Countries That Could
The atoll nation of Vanuatu is threatened by rising seas. “We had to learn how to manage our unimportance,” its president said. Mario Tama/Getty Images
This story has a familiar ring to it, if you are familiar with the history of Costa Rica going back to colonial times. Never a particularly “important” part of the empire, it thereby avoided many pitfalls typical of other countries in Latin America, and evolved into a stable democracy with progressive ideas and goals and achievements. We wish this little country in the Pacific comparable success by thinking outside the box, as its president says:
Emergency supplies being distributed after Cyclone Harold in 2020. International Federation of Red Cross, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Tiny Vanuatu Uses Its ‘Unimportance’ to Launch Big Climate Ideas
It wants a top international court to weigh in on whether nations are legally bound to protect against climate risks.
Nikenike Vurobaravu presides over a tiny country with a large hand in climate diplomacy.
Rising sea levels threaten the very existence of his Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu and its population of just over 300,000 people. Its best defense, he says, it to raise its voice creatively in international diplomatic talks. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Long-eared Owl (juvenile)
The Invention Of Books
We are happy to have reason to return to our love of books, reading, as well as the history and importance of libraries.
Our thanks to Kathryn Hughes at the Guardian for giving us a look into the most recent work of Irene Vallejo:
Papyrus by Irene Vallejo review – how books built the world
From Alexandria to Oxford, a kaleidoscopic history of the written word
Reading between the lines … Tianjin Binhai Library in China.
What do you give the queen who has everything? When Mark Antony was wondering how to impress Cleopatra in the run-up to the battle of Actium in 31BC, he knew that jewellery would hardly cut it. The queen of the Ptolemaic kingdom of Egypt had recently dissolved a giant pearl in vinegar and then proceeded to drink it, just because she could. In the face of such exhausted materialism, the Roman general knew that he would have to pull out the stops if he was to win over the woman with whom he was madly in love. So he arrived bearing 200,000 scrolls for the great library at Alexandria. Continue reading
