The English journalist John Diamond, shortly before his death from throat cancer in 2001, wrote that ‘there is really no such thing as alternative medicine, just medicine that works and medicine that doesn’t’. Ecological knowledge might be thought of as similarly indivisible. There are no alternative birds, non-traditional plants, complementary ecologies. More often than not,… Read More Richard Smyth: Nature does not care
Our excrement is a natural, renewable and sustainable resource – if only we can overcome our visceral disgust of it… Grandpa had a system of sludge distribution. He never filled the buckets fully so that, when he carried them, the sloshing goop wouldn’t spill over onto his boots. Sometimes he carried the buckets by hand,… Read More Lina Zeldovich: The power of shit
The Associated Press reports that the Conger/Glenzer ice shelf in East Antarctica has collapsed. The event was caught on satellite video, and it is the first such collapse known to have occurred on the east coast of Antarctica, which had been thought to be more stable and less affected by human-caused global heating than the west.… Read More Human-Driven Climate Crisis: East Antarctica Ice Shelf collapses for First Time in Human History
Nature is a tricky term. It can refer to the quality of things, to what moves things into existence or to the world as a whole. Read and heard, from political debate to food labelling, it is in constant use: back to nature, 100% natural, natural order, unnatural acts, natural ways of living, wisdom of… Read More Adele Dipasquale: Careless mothers, sterile goddesses and ungrateful offspring
Imagine that several state legislators decide that Yellowstone National Park is too big. Also imagine that, working with federal politicians, they change the law to downsize the park by a million acres, which they sell in a private auction. Outrageous? Yes. Unheard of? No. It happens routinely and with increasing frequency in the Brazilian Amazon. The most… Read More The great Amazon land grab: how Brazil’s government is turning public land private
The regent honeyeater is an endangered native Australian songbird, with only a few hundred left in the wild. A few years ago scientists noticed something odd – they were mimicking other birds, and unable to sing their own song. Environment reporter Graham Readfearn and Dr Joy Tripovich explain how this species lost its song, and whether teaching it how… Read More Could bringing back its love song save one of Australia’s rarest songbirds?
The production and release of plastics, pesticides, industrial compounds, antibiotics and other pollutants is now happening so fast and on such a large scale that it has exceeded the planetary boundary for chemical pollution, the safe limit for humanity, a new study claims. We asked Patricia Villarrubia-Gómez, a PhD candidate at Stockholm University and one… Read More Chemical pollution exceeds safe planetary limit
A cool breeze sweeps through the Dhamma Sakyamuni Monastery. Sitting cross-legged on the polished stone floor, monks meditate silently under the gaze of a Buddha painted gold. Above them, stalactites hang from the rough limestone ceiling. This is one of the last remaining limestone cave temples in Malaysia. It sits nestled into the foot of Mount Kanthan, one of… Read More Malaysia: Buddhist monks fight to protect mountain home
The epic wilderness of Greenland – in pictures. From Inuit hunters to the vast expanses of snow and ice, Danish photographer Carsten Egevang’s images spring from a three-decade fascination with the planet’s least-populated country https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2022/jan/12/freeze-frames-the-wilderness-of-greenland-in-pictures
The climate crisis is set to profoundly alter the world around us. Humans will not be the only species to suffer from the calamity. Huge waves of die-offs will be triggered across the animal kingdom as coral reefs turn ghostly white and tropical rainforests collapse. For a period, some researchers suspected that insects may be… Read More Oliver Milman: How the speed of climate change is unbalancing the insect world
