2 . Conservationists go to war over whether humans are the measure of nature’s value. New Conservationists argue such trade-offs are necessary in this human dominated epoch. And they support “re-wilding”, a concept originally proposed by Soule where people curtail economic growth and withdraw from landscapes, which then return to nature.

New Conservationists believe the withdrawal could happen together with economic growth. The California-based Breakthrough Institute believes in a future where most people live in cities and rely less on natural resources for economic growth.

They would get food from industrial agriculture, including genetically modified foods, desalination intensified meat production and aquaculture, all of which have a smaller land footprint. And they would get their energy from renewables and natural gas.

Driving these profound shifts would be greater efficiency of production, where more products could be manufactured from fewer inputs. And some unsustainable commodities would be replaced in the market by other, greener ones — natural gas for coal, for instance, explained Michael Heisenberg, president of the Breakthrough Institute. Nature would, in essence, be decoupled from the economy.

And then he added a caveat: We are not suggesting decoupling as the paradigm to save the world, or that it solves all the problems or eliminates all the trade-offs.

Cynics (悲观者) may say all this sounds too utopian, but Breakthrough maintains the world is already on this path toward decoupling. Nowhere is this more evident than in the United Sates, according to Iddo Wernick, a research scholar at the Rockefeller University, who has examined the nation’s use of 100 main commodities.

Wenick and his colleagues looked at data carefully from the U.S. Geological Survey National Minerals Information Center, which keeps a record of commodities used from 1900 through the present day. They found that the use of 36 commodities (sand, iron ore, cotton etc.) in the U. S. Economy had peaked.

Another 53 commodities (nitrogen, timber, beef, etc.) are being used more efficiently per dollar value of gross domestic product than in the pre-1970s era. Their use would peak soon, Wernick said.

Only 11 commodities (industrial diamond, indium, chicken, etc.) are increasing in use (Greenwire, Nov.6), and most of these are employed by industries in small quantities to improve systems processes. Chicken use is rising because people are eating less beef, a desirable development since poultry cultivation has a smaller environmental footprint.

The numbers show the United States has not intensified resource consumption since the 1970s even while increasing its GDP and population, said Jesse Ausubel of the Rockefeller University.

“It seems like the 20th-century expectation we had, we were always assuming the future entailed greater consumption of resources,” Ausubel said. “But what we are seeing in the developed countries is, of course, peaks.”

3 . Steven Stein likes to track garbage trucks. He says, “It’s hard to resist.” Stein’s strange habit makes sense when you consider that he’s an environmental scientist who studies how to reduce litter, including stuff that falls off garbage trucks as they run down the road. What is even more interesting is that one of Stein’s current plans is defending an industry behind a source of trash: plastic shopping bags.

Americans use more than 100 million plastic bags every year. So many end up in tree branches or along highways that a growing number of cities are banishing (排除) them from checkout lines. The bags are outlawed in some places in the USA.

Facing these situations, plastic-bag manufacturers are hiring scientists like Stein to make the case that their products are not as bad for the planet as most people assume. “It’s important to base your decisions on facts,” says Stan Bikulege, CEO of Hilex Poly, which has hired Stein.

Among the bag makers’ argument: many cities with bans still allow shoppers to purchase paper bags, which are easily recycled but require more energy to produce and transport. And while plastic bags may be ugly to look at, they represent a small percentage of all garbage on the ground today.

The industry has also taken aim at the product that can take the place of plastic bags: reusable shopping bags. The sturdier a reusable bag is, the longer its life and the more plastic-bag use it cancels out. But this plan has another side. Longer-lasting reusable bags often require more energy to make.

Environmentalists don’t agree with these points. They hope paper bags will be banned someday too and want shoppers to use the same reusable bags for years. So are reusables our destiny? The answer is probably yes. And Andy Keller, inventor of reusable polyester (聚酯纤维) bags, says, ”If you can carry it out in your hands or put it back in your car, you don’t need a bag.”

4 . On November 7, Lewis Pugh completed a one-kilometer swim in the freezing waters of King Edward Cove, off South Georgia in Antarctica. He was wearing only his swimming glasses, cap and Speedos!

Pugh is an advocate for our oceans and seas, working to protect these ecosystems with their large diversity of marine (海洋的) life. When asked why he doesn’t wear a wetsuit (防寒泳衣), Lewis says, “I ask world leaders to do everything they can to protect our oceans. Sometimes the steps they need to take are difficult and unpopular. If I’m asking them to be courageous, I must also be. Swimming in a wetsuit would not send the right message.”

It took Pugh about 19 minutes to complete the one-kilometer swim in Antarctica where the water averaged about 1. 6℃. He says that his body can only tolerate about 20 minutes in the freezing waters before it starts shutting down. As he swims, his body temperature steadily drops, which in turn causes his muscle control to drop, slowing him down. When he is done with his swim, his support team rushes him to a hot shower and it takes almost an hour for his body temperature to return to normal.

Doctors and Pugh caution that one must receive months of training to swim in such cold waters. Even expert swimmers who are unused to freezing water can drown within minutes because of the physical shock experienced by the body. Pugh says he trained for six months before this swim.

This is not the first time that Lewis has swum in dangerous conditions. In 2007, he swam one kilometer in the North Pole to draw attention to the melting Arctic ice due to climate change. In 2015, he swam in the Bay of Whales in Antarctica’s Ross Sea as part of his successful campaign to help set up a marine reserve there.

5 . A wildfire in New Mexico, a state in the southwestern US, has burned for nearly two months, consuming more than 315, 000 acres of land — an area about the size of the city of Los Angeles.

“With climate change, it seems like the dominoes are beginning to fall,” NASA hydrologist JT Reager told the BBC. “We get warmer temperatures, we get less rain and snow. The reservoirs (水库) start drying up, then in a place like the West of the US, we get wildfires.”

In recent years, wildfires have wreaked havoc across countries including the US and Australia.

These fires destroy homes and businesses, claim lives and also negatively impact the environment. As climate change worsens, global temperatures increase and so does the risk of wildfires. A recent report from the United Nations Environment Programme and GRID-Arendal, a partner organization in Norway, reveals that wildfires are becoming more frequent and severe.

This is harmful to people around the globe. According to the joint UN report, it is estimated that the yearly “economic burden from wildfire for the United States is between $7. 1 billion and $347. 8 billion”.

Another article published in Nature journal on April 19 found that wildfires have created seasonal pollution patterns in the northwestern US. Between 2002 and 2018, carbon monoxide (一氧化碳) levels increased every year for the month of August in the area.

In 2019 and 2020, Australian bushfires displaced millions, filled the air with deadly clouds of smoke and killed thousands of koalas.

Forest fires are common in China too. In the recent decade, the total number of forest fires in the country every year has increased to more than 2,000 cases, according to The Paper.

Greater Hinggan Mountains (大兴安岭) is one of the important forestry bases in China. The National Forestry and Grassland Administration adopted mountain watchtowers, forest cameras and aerial drones (无人机) to prevent forest fires in the summer.

Trees are useful to man in three very important ways: they provide him with wood and other products; they give him shade; they help to prevent drought and floods.

Unfortunately, in many parts of the world, man has not realized that the third of these services is the most important. To make money from the trees, he has cut them down in large numbers, only to find that without them he has lost the best friends he had.

Two-thousand years ago, a rich and powerful country cut down-its trees to build warships, with which to gain itself an empire. It gained the empire, but since the trees were cut down, its soil became hard and poor. When the empire fell to pieces, the home county found itself faced by floods and hunger.

Even where a government realizes the importance of an enough supply of trees, it is difficult for it to let the villagers see this. The villagers want wood to cook their food with, and they can earn money by selling wood to the townsmen. They are usually too lazy or too careless to plant and look after new trees. So, unless the government has a good system of control or can educate the villagers, the forests will not get protected. This does not only mean that the villagers’ sons and grandsons will have fewer trees. The results are even more serious. Where there are trees, their roots break the soil up, allowing the rain to sink in, which makes the soil stick together and prevents it being washed away easily. Where there are no tree, the rainfall son hard ground and flows away on the surface, causing floods and carrying away with it the rich top-soil, in which crops grow so well. When all the top-soil is gone, nothing remains but worthless desert.

Twenty-four trains, nine countries, 13,500 miles.

They are the numbers behind a train journey one man took from Southampton in the UK to eastern China. Roger Tyers, 37, spent a month on board trains and over $2,500 — almost three times the cost of a return flight — to travel to the Chinese port city Ningbo for academic research in May, 2019. It was the climate crisis that drove this socialist to choose this complex route. Tyers told CNN that he felt it necessary to stop flying when UN climate experts warned last year that the world has less than 11 years to avoid disastrous levels of global warming.

Tyers is not the sole person to avoid air travel in response to climate change. Thousands of people worldwide have publicly promised to stop flying, including teenage activist Greta Thunberg, who has inspired youth climate protests around the world. Activist Maja Rosen started the “Flight Free” campaign in Sweden in 2018 with the aim of encouraging 100,000 people not to fly for one year.

Rosen, who stopped flying 12 years ago, says the “Flight Free” campaign helps fight the sense of hopelessness many people feel when it comes to dealing with climate change. “One of the problems is that people feel there’s no point in what you do as an individual. The campaign is about making people aware that if we do this together, we can actually make a huge difference,” she said.

A passenger’s footprint from an individual flight depends on a number of factors, including how far he flies, how full the plane is, and what class he travels in: First class passengers are given more space than economy passengers, meaning they’re responsible for a bigger part of the plane’s emissions. Tyers said that his train journey to China produced almost 90% less emissions than a return flight.

Are you aged between 14 and 19 years old? Do you care about your local environment? Would you like to help make the area you live in better, cleaner, safer and friendlier? If your answers are ‘yes’, ‘yes’ and ‘yes’, then read on! A local organization is carrying out a project, giving money to groups of teenagers who want to become active citizens. Here are a few easy things you could do to get started.

Meeting the neighbors. Everybody needs good neighbors. Knock on people’s doors and find out what they would like to improve in your area. Set a date for a meeting and then make some plans together. If you don’t want to go round to their houses, then you could always put a note through their doors.

Neighborhood watch. It is very popular in the UK. If you go away on holiday and leave your house, it’s very nice to know that a neighbor is keeping an eye on it. It’s a good way to make the area you live in safer.

Lending a hand. There are often elderly people living in the neighborhood who may not be able to do the things that you can. Offer to do their shopping once a week, look after their gardens for them or maybe walk their dogs!

No littering. Nobody likes picking up other people’s rubbish, but a clean street can make all the difference. Go out once or twice a week and see what you can find. You never know, one day you might find something valuable!

Just tell us what you want to do. Then we’ll send you more information.