1 . Imagine being able to pop to your local park and pick some tomatoes, potatoes or even bananas to take home for dinner. Sounds too good to be true, right? For residents of Andernach, German, it’s not just a dream—it’s their reality.

In 2010, Andernach began its edible(可食用的)city project, planting 101 varieties of tomatoes in public green spaces around the city centre. Its 30,000 residents are free to help themselves to whatever grows, as are any other visitors.   The town’s motto of sorts is “Picking is encouraged—help yourself!” Every year a new type of plant is highlighted. In 2011, 100 types of beans were planted, while 2012saw the introduction of 20 onion varieties.

It’s a community effort, as local citizens are encouraged to help plant and maintain the gardens. This offers an opportunity to socialise as well as to learn about planting, cultivating and harvesting food.

An Andernach resident spoke to DW,“I often drop by to pick some herbs that I’m missing at home. Everything is easily accessible. There aren’t any fences. You just take what you need. The only thing is that you have to be quick once the fruits are ripe or they’ll all be gone!”

Andernach may have been the first in German, but it isn’t the only edible city. It’s part of the Edible Cities Network, a project funded by European Union to connect green urban foot initiatives around the world. Other cities include Carthage in Tunisia, Havana in Cuba and Sempeter-Vrtojba in Slovenia. In February 2022, the first Edible Cities Network Conference took place. Dr Ina Saumel, principal investigator of the Edible Cities Network, called it “a unique opportunity to invite researchers of edible city solutions and practitioners to the same table.”

Ultimately, the Edible Cities Network aims to give people “greener, more edible and, above all, more livable cities.” It is a response to the pressures of global climate change, and a significant cause full of hope.

2 . Several days of unusual warm weather in northern Greenland have caused rapid melting(融化). “Temperatures have been running around -12.2 ℃-15.5 ℃. It is warmer than normal for this time of year,” scientists said. The amount of ice that melted in Greenland between July 15 and July 17 alone—6 billion tons of water per day—would be enough to fill 7.2 million Olympic-sized swimming pools, according to the report from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Put another way, it was enough to cover the whole state of West Virginia with a foot of water.

For the scientists out on the ice sheet(冰盖), the warmth has been alarming. “It really makes me anxious,” said Kutalmis Saylam, a scientist who is now working in Greenland. “Yesterday, we could hang about in our T-shirts, which was not really expected. Since Greenland holds enough ice, sea level would rise by 7.5 meters around the world if ice all melted.”

In 2020, scientists found that Greenland’s ice sheet had melted beyond the point of no return. “No efforts to prevent global warming can stop it from finally breaking into small parts,” said researchers.

Aslak Grinsted, a climate scientist, said that they were trying to get flights into the camp so they can ship out the ice cores(冰芯) they had recently collected. But the warmth is destabilizing the landing site. “The weather we are seeing right now is too hot for the ski-equipped planes to land,” Grinsted said. “So we store the ice cores in large caves we have made into the snow to protect it from the heat of the summer.” Scientists made use of the abnormal warmth while they were waiting, playing volleyball in their shorts on an ice sheet at the top of the world.

Grinsted referred to the temperatures as a heat wave, and noted that the possibility of temperatures getting this hot was clearly connected to global warming.

3 . When the monthly electricity bill came home, parents always couldn’t believe their eyes, as the amount was much more than needed.     1     Here are some tips for parents to educate their children on how to save energy.

Switch off the lights. Assign one day in a week for a “turn off” practice, for a few hours. Tell the kids the significance of using less electricity and how it impacts the environment.     2    

Use energy-efficient transportation. When parents and their children are out on vacation, have a cycling outing. When the whole family rides bicycles together, it not only serves as a great bonding exercise, but it also teaches the children about eco-friendly transportation options.     3    

Play a game.     4     Engage them in a game instead. Ask the little ones to walk around the house with pen and paper, and make a note of all the equipment that consumes energy. Let them suggest what measures can be taken within the home to reduce consumption of electricity and go green. Parents can stick small notes near these appliances to give them interesting information on conservation.

    5     Create a theatre-like experience at home on a Sunday and gather everyone in the family, especially the kids, to watch an informative film about environmental issues or climate change. If parents have slightly older children, they can discuss the film and ask them what they think.

4 . In an area that’s surrounded by Scotland’s coal mining past and its industrial present, there’s a transformation happening beneath our feet. Just three years ago this area was re-engineered to bring the coastal wetland back to its natural state.

Allison Leonard, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, “We tear down the coastal defenses and let the water back in. But within a year or two we were seeing saltmarsh plants reappear. And we’re now three years down the line and you know, it’s all saltmarsh. And at that point we kind of just stepped back and let nature do its thing, and we’re really seeing the wildlife respond. So birds are using it at high tide and we see lots of deer, hares in the spring.”

As well as a diverse wetland habitat, this marsh has become a natural tool in our fight to reduce emissions of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. Marshland plants absorb one of those key planet-warming gases, carbon dioxide, which then becomes buried in the mud. Lucy Miller, Research technician, University of St Andrews, said “This is some of the most organic-rich soils we find in the UK, compared to agricultural land, forest, forestry land. So we’ll wrap this up in cling film and then just to keep it, hold its shape and then we take it back to the University of St Andrews. We have a laboratory there. We will just perform a couple of experiments using a couple of different machines to measure the different layers, different levels of carbon within the layers of the core here.”

Allowing the sea to reclaim this stretch of land has provided a glimpse of how we can help nature to help us deal with the climate crisis.

8 . Earthquakes are a natural disaster—except when they're man-made. The oil and gas industry has forcefully used the technique known as hydraulic fracturing (水力压裂法) to destroy sub-surface rock and liberate the oil and gas hiding there. But the process results in large amounts of chemical-filled waste water. Horizontal drilling (水平钻孔) for oil can also produce large amount of natural, unwanted salt water. The industry deals with this waste water by pumping it into deep wells.

On Monday, the US Geological Survey published for the first time an earthquake disaster map covering both natural and “induced” quakes. The map and a report show that parts of the central United States now face a ground-shaking disaster equal to the famously unstable terrain (不稳定地形) of California.

Some 7 million people live in places easily attacked by these man-made quakes, the USGS said The list of places at highest risk of man-made earthquakes includes Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Arkansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Ohio and Alabama. Most of these earthquakes are relatively small, in the range of magnitude (震级) 3, but some have been more powerful, including a magnitude 5.6 earthquake in 2011 in Oklahoma that was connected to waste water filling.

Scientists said they do not know if there is an upper limit on the magnitude of man-made earthquakes; this is an area of active research. Oklahoma has had prehistoric earthquakes as powerful as magnitude 7.

It's not immediately clear whether this new research will change industry practices, or even whether it will surprise anyone in the areas of newly supposed danger. In Oklahoma, for example, the natural rate of earthquakes is only one or two a year, but there have been hundreds since hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, with the waste water filling, became common in the last ten years.