A poem by Mary Oliver (b 1935) 1. Welcome to the silly, comforting poem. It is not the sunrise,which is a red rinse,which is flaring all over the eastern sky; it is not the rain falling out of the purse of God; it is not the blue helmet of the sky afterward, or the trees,… Read More Flare
I believe in the life of the grasses and spring without end — Steinunn Sigurdardóttir NB: Having just visited this surreal land, sitting atop the continental rift line separating the American and Eurasian tectonic plates, whose volcanoes are erupting as we speak, and whose northern coast sits aside the Arctic Circle, I can only wonder… Read More My Iceland
George Monbiot According to Google’s news search, the media has run more than 10,000 stories this year about Phillip Schofield, the British television presenter who resigned over an affair with a younger colleague. Google also records a global total of five news stories about a scientific paper published last week, showing that the chances of simultaneous crop… Read More With our food systems on the verge of collapse, it’s the plutocrats v life on Earth
A trickle of studies warning that the enormous variety of living things on Earth is diminishing has turned into a flood. The evidence for these losses within regions and globally is undeniable. But data on biodiversity, and what is causing its decline, is still patchy – restricted to some causes, some places and some species.… Read More Europe has lost more than half a billion birds to pesticides
Laura Paddison, CNN More than half of the world’s largest lakes and reservoirs have lost significant amounts of water over the last three decades, according to a new study, which pins the blame largely on climate change and excessive water use. Roughly one-quarter of the world’s population lives in the basin of a drying lake, according to the study… Read More Why the world’s largest lakes are shrinking dramatically
It takes the expansive perspective of an astrobiologist and theoretical physicist who ponders the origins and unfolding of the universe to place today’s parochial debates over intelligent technology in the context of planetary evolution. BY NATHAN GARDELS In Noema, Sara Walker bends the modern mind to link the coming future to the primordial past. “The technologies we are… Read More From Biosphere To Technosphere
Mark Cocker Have we time enough and opportunity, we can attune ourselves to one of the greatest events of every April morning on our planet, since birdsong unfolds across all Eurasia and North America as daylight processes over those lands too. Think of it as the Earth rejoicing at the sun’s cyclical return. Mistle thrush… Read More Look up, listen, and be very concerned. Birds are vanishing – and their crisis is our crisis
By Jonathan Amos Scientists have filmed a fish swimming at an extraordinary depth in the ocean, making it the deepest observation of this nature that has ever been made. The species – a type of snailfish of the genus Pseudoliparis – was filmed swimming at 8,336m (27,349ft). It was filmed by an autonomous “lander” dropped into the… Read More Deepest ever fish caught on camera off Japan
Oscar Holland, CNN In her striking images of the Faroe Islands, a remote archipelago between Iceland and her native Norway, photographer Andrea Gjestvang depicts islanders and livelihoods that are as tough and unforgiving as the windswept landscape. Fishing trawlers travel through frigid seas. Clouds roll over craggy mountains and cliffside villages. Clothes and boots are stained… Read More Cold, remote and short of women: A portrait of life on the Faroe Islands
Patrick Barkham Non-native house mice are to be removed from Marion Island in the southern Indian Ocean to protect the wandering albatross and other endangered seabirds, in the world’s largest eradication programme of its kind. Mice accidentally introduced on to the remote island by 19th-century seal hunters have thrived in warmer and drier conditions over… Read More Rescuing endangered seabirds: world’s biggest single operation to remove mice from island
