4 . Issues such as global warming and sustainability have become passionate concerns for many of the concert industry’s fans and increasingly for the musicians. Coldplay, a pop band whose members scored their first big hit in 2000 with a song called Yellow, announced in November that it wouldn’t go on tour to promote its latest album, Everyday Life, until it could find a way to make concerts more sustainable and greener to the environment.

It’s not always easy to walk the talk. A growing number of artists, including Peggy Gou, have environmental demands built into their contracts when they tour, such as bans on plastic tableware. But there’s almost no way of avoiding carbon emissions produced by a tour, which involves moving hundreds of people and tons of equipment across large distances.

Lisa Pomerantz, who books travel for acts says that real change will require action by venue owners, concert promoters, and the fans. Major acts like Coldplay can afford to stop touring while figuring out how to lessen their environmental impact. But lesser-known artists can’t stay off the road, since streaming earnings haven’t been able to compensate (弥补) for the collapse in CD and downloaded music sales. Even when concerts are aggressive about being more sustainable, the impact of audience travel can easily swamp (淹没) their efforts. For bigger acts, this can represent as much as 80% of the carbon footprint, according to a 2015 study. Another analysis showed that roughly a third of the tour’s carbon footprint came from a venue’s power consumption.

Still, even the most green-conscious bands must balance their desire to be more sustainable against the financial necessity of touring. “I absolutely think you can go on tour and have a concern about the environment. It’s a matter of just keeping our carbon footprint as low as possible,” says Flavian Graber, lead singer of We Invented Paris.

5 . Let’s say you’re in the far future and you’re looking for evidence of previous civilizations. Where would you look? The first place would be in the rocks. Rocks keep time. Recently, the discovery of rocks made from plastic debris (碎片) in Brazil’s volcanic Trindade Island is sparking alarm. Melted plastic has become twisted with rocks on the island, which researchers say is evidence of humans growing influence over the Earth’s geological cycles.

Plastic rocks have been previously found in various parts of the world. Researchers documented plastiglomerates-rock, sand and other debris fused together by melted plastic-in Hawaii in 2014, for instance. Another human-made and plastic-based rock is pyroplastics. Described in 2019 from the shores of Cornwall in southwest Britain, pyroplastics form from burned plastic waste. In laboratory experiments with white or colored plastic pieces, if burned, the plastic melts and forms a gray or black mass. resembling at first glance a rocky pebble. According to geophysicist Douglas Jerolmack, “all around the world where there’s trash being openly burned in mass quantities, you can imagine there are even larger melted plastic deposits” where plastiglomerate could form.

Plastic pollution making its way into the formation of rocks suggests humans are having an effect on what was previously considered a natural occurrence, said Santos, who along with others is continuing research into plastic pollution on Trindade Island. “This is new and terrifying at the same time, because pollution has reached geology, ”Santos told Reuters. The finding of plastic rocks also suggests, some experts say, that a new geological epoch has begun: The Anthropocene epoch. Regardless of whether this represents a new epoch, Santos said, “the pollution, the garbage in the sea and the plastic dumped incorrectly in the oceans are becoming geological material preserved in the Earth’s geological records.”

The researchers are yet unsure of the environmental impacts of plastic rocks. Burned plastic can contain high concentrations of potentially toxic elements, like lead and chromium, derived from the pigments used to dye the plastic material. Buried in the ground, plastic has the potential to survive millions of years and even enter the geological record.

6 . In Japan, the new year began with disaster as a 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck the Noto Peninsula (能登半岛) on the country’s western edge on Monday. More than 2,000 active fault lines (断层线) lie beneath Japan, making it one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world.

Many scientists have long considered earthquake forecasting to be impossible. But given recent improvements in artificial intelligence, some researchers have been studying whether that could change.

Last fall, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin increased such hopes for earthquake prediction with a seven-month trial in China. In all, the algorithm (演算法) successfully forecast 14 earthquakes, each within about 200 miles of its actual epicenter (震中). Meanwhile, it missed one quake and predicted eight that never happened. The trial was part of an international A.I.-design competition, one of a few such events held in recent years to advance earthquake prediction technologies.

Sergey Fomel, a geoscientist at UT Austin and a member of the research team, says in a statement. “We’re not yet close to making predictions for anywhere in the world, but what we achieved tells us that what we thought was an impossible problem is solvable in principle.”

Additionally, machine learning could help detect hidden patterns in data or collect more data to better inform earthquake forecasting, Hutchison writes for MIT Technology Review. For example, some researchers are showing how A. I. might use recordings from a specific seismic site to anticipate an earthquake’s magnitude. One team has built and trained neural networks to predict where aftershocks may occur after an initial strike. And others are using machine learning to identify and extract seismic waves—the vibrations that spread through the earth during tectonic activity (构造活动)—from other noises in the ground.

7 . In 2007, when Felix Finkbeiner was nine, he had to give a report on climate change as a fourth grade school assignment. To his nine-year-old worldview, that meant danger for his favorite animal, the polar bear. As he researched his report, Felix learned about Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan woman who started the United Nations tree-planting program, the Billion Tree Campaign, and whose heroic campaign to recover barren land with trees resulted in the planting of 30 million trees.

“I realized it’s not really about the polar bear, it’s about saving humans.” Felix was inspired. He told his classmates, “Let’s plant a million trees in every country of the world!”. His tree-planting project, “Plant-for-the-Planet”, began.

Sharing the idea is almost as important as planting the trees. Felix went to other schools and encouraged them to plant trees. Plant-for-the-Planet also offers training for students. The group hopes the students will not just plant trees, but will also talk to adults in government and businesses to try and get even more trees planted.

Word of Felix’s project spread rapidly. He spoke to the European Parliament and attended UN conferences. By the time he delivered his speech at the UN in New York in 2011, at the age of 13, Germany had planted its millionth tree. At this time, Plant-for-the-Planet was officially launched. The project had a website and more people were willing to join it to be full time employees. By 2014, the environmental cause had expanded into a global network of children activists working to slow the Earth’s warming by reforesting the planet.

In 2015, Plant-for-the-Planet bought 52 square miles (135 square kilometers) of land in the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Most of the trees there had been cut down. The group planted millions of new trees on the land.

Plant-for-the-Planet’s slogan has been, “Stop Talking. Start Planting.” They want to plant 1,000 billion trees, which could absorb an additional 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year.

8 . Traditionally, it has been assumed that cultivating food leads to a loss of biodiversity and negative impacts on an ecosystem. In a recent study, researchers looked at 28 urban community gardens across California over five years and quantified biodiversity in plant and animal life, as well as ecosystem functions such as carbon sequestration (碳封存), food production, pest control and human well-being.

“We wanted to determine if there were any biodiversity and impacts on ecosystem function in those unban gardens,” says Shalene Jha, the lead author of the study in Ecology Letters. “What we found is that these gardens, which are providing tremendous nutritional resources and increasing well-being for gardeners, are also supporting incredibly high levels of plant and animal biodiversity. It’s a win-win.”

Previous assumptions by scientists about the negative effect of food production on bio diversity have been almost entirely based on intensive rural agriculture enterprises that tend to grow on one or two types of crops, often at a massive scale. Urban community gardens, private gardens, and urban farms and orchards tend to grow more types of plants in smaller areas. The new study is the first to explore the effects of urban gardens across a wide range of biodiversity measures and ecological services.

“It’s estimated that by 2030, about 60% of the world’s population will live in cities,” Jha says. “And urban farms and gardens currently provide about 15%-20% of our food supply, so they are essential in addressing food inequality challenges. What we’re seeing is that urban gardens present a critical opportunity to support both biodiversity and local food production.”

The study also found that the choices that gardeners make can have a large impact on their local ecosystem. For instance, planting trees outside crop beds could increase carbon sequestration without decreasing food production from too much shade. And covering only within crop beds could help improve soil carbon services, while avoiding negative effects on pest control.

10 . Construction of Project Nexus is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2023. The 5-megawatt project will consist of three sites along canals in central California with widths ranging from 20 feet to 100 feet.

If the pilot project proves solar canopies(檐篷) are a cost-effective way to produce clean energy and save water, scores of similar installations could be built atop California’s canal network-one of the world’s largest water distribution systems.

“This is a really exciting project,” California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot said last month. “It connects our efforts in California to improve water conservation and build drought resilience(抗旱能力) with the clean energy transition we're driving across California.”

Project Nexus was inspired by a 2021 study by University of California researchers that was published in the journal Nature Sustainability. Typically, 1%to 2% of the water that circulates through California's canals evaporates(蒸发), a number that is expected to increase due to the climate crisis.

Using data from satellites, climate models, and automated weather stations, the peer-reviewed study estimated that covering all of the approximately 4, 000 miles of California’s canals could extremely reduce evaporation, saving 63 billion gallons of water annually —comparable to the amount of water required to irrigate 50, 000 acres of farmland or meet the water needs of more than 2 million people.

Governor Gavin Newson has allocated additional funds to help local communities cope with water scarcity and encourage Californians to use less water. “Research and common sense tell us that in an age of intensifying drought, it's time to put a lid on evaporation,” said Jordan Harris, CEO of Solar AquaGrid, the company that is building the solar canopies.

The study found solar canals would be able to generate 13 gigawatts of clean power, equal to approximately one-sixth of the state's current installed solar capacity. This additional generation could help California achieve its goal of supplying at least 60% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030 and 100% by 2045.