South Africa has a tight regime for scientists wanting to “overwinter” in Antarctica. The 13-month assignment to an isolated research base on the top of a cliff edge is, as the environment ministry drily put it, “testing”. Average annual temperatures are -16C but drop much lower during the winter darkness. All applicants are subjected to psychometric analysis “to ensure they are able to cope with the isolation, and can work and live with others in the confined space of the bases”, said the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment. “Only candidates who do not have any negative outcomes from all the background evaluations will be considered.” But can humans ever fully prepare for long-duration remote scientific experiments? The crisis currently facing the overwintering crew at the Sanae IV station,…

WE GET IT. SOME DAYS YOU ACTUALLY feel like you’re Mother Earth and the weight of the world is on your shoulders. That’s why we came up with 29 small changes you can make that will lighten your load and your carbon footprint. From household hacks to moneysaving tips to what kids should (and shouldn’t) be bringing to school, we consulted many experts—and did plenty of product-testing and soul-searching ourselves—to present you with these (totally easy!) ways to be a little bit greener as a family. 1. Cut back on red meat. Consider swapping red meat for kid-friendly chicken or turkey recipes instead. 2. Ditch the plastic bags. Around 9 million metric tons of plastic waste fill the oceans every year, but it’s easy to do your part to reduce…

It’s hard to laugh about Trump anymore. Electing a climate denier (again) to lead the most powerful nation on Earth at a time when the climate crisis is rapidly transitioning to its global catastrophe phase – well, it doesn’t feel very amusing. But in a moment when defeat is the pervasive mood in the climate movement, the front lines of climate action are starting to look a lot … funnier? Call it the John Oliver effect. The last few years have seen a surge in satirical web series with their targets set squarely on bad actors in government and the fossil fuel sector. Foremost among them is Climate Town, a YouTube channel run by comedian Rollie Williams, whose long-form takedowns of oil and gas disinformation are deeply researched and addictively…

In 2025, AI and climate change, two of the biggest societal disruptors, will collide. The summer of 2024 broke the record for Earth’s hottest day since data collection began, sparking widespread media coverage and public debate. 2024 also happens to be the year that both Microsoft and Google, two of the leading Big Tech companies investing heavily in AI research and development, missed their climate targets. While this also made headlines and spurred indignation, AI’s environmental impacts are still far from being common knowledge. In reality, AI’s current “bigger is better” paradigm—epitomized by tech companies’ pursuit of ever bigger, more powerful large language models that are presented as the solution to every problem—comes with very significant costs to the environment. These range from generating colossal amounts of energy to power…

When integrating compost into your garden, you’ll want to consider which composting process best fits your needs. There are countless reasons people take an interest in composting. A few of the most common motivations include a desire to lessen their environmental impact, improve their garden soil’s nutrient availability, and, of course, for fun! Fall is a great time to start preparing compost for spring garden beds. From Trash-Can to Treasure Plenty of people will already have the makings of this unique composter lying around at home. The original concept was presented in the September/October 1976 issue of MOTHER EARTH NEWS, and it differs from other compost bins that simply rest on top of the ground. This composter goes subterranean by sitting in a 15-inch-deep hole surrounded by soil. Holes drilled…

In fact, even drilling to the Earth’s outermost layer, the crust, to study it turned out to be inefficient. The average thickness of the continental crust is about 40 km(1), and the oceanic crust is about 6–7 km(2)—but it lies beneath several kilometers of water. Thus, the deepest boreholes are continental. For instance, the Kola Superdeep Borehole SG-3 reached a depth of 12,262 meters(3), while the German KTB borehole, abandoned in 2001 due to excessively high temperatures, stopped at 9101 meters(4). But if we can’t drill through to our planet’s mantle, how do we know anything about the structure of the Earth’s core? 1 24.9 miles 2 3.7-4.3 miles 3 40,230 feet 4 29,859 feet 5 0-21.7 miles 6 410 miles 7 1800 miles 8 3170 miles 9 29,029 feet…

The idea is not new. For more than 50 years, scientists and far-sighted entrepreneurs have been dreaming of mining small space objects. The potential wealth is staggering: a single asteroid with a diameter of just a few hundred metres would likely contain so many valuable metals that every person on Earth could become a billionaire if the profits were shared equally (though sadly that would be unlikely to happen). Asteroid-mining dreams stalled along with the space race for a period of decades. Avoiding incoming asteroids sometimes made the agenda, but asteroid gathering never got much closer to a first step. But today the dream is alive and well – fuelled both by the great revival in space missions both private and public and also by the green transition’s demand for…

One summer day in 2018, Sam Droege lowered his net and scooped up a few small bees buzzing around the blossoms of a chinquapin, a shrubby member of the chestnut tree family. Droege, a wildlife biologist, can recognize loads of bees with a quick look, but these were strangers to him. It wasn’t until he studied them under a microscope that he realized what he’d found. “Holy crap,” he said to himself. “That’s an Andrena rehni”—a bee that hadn’t been sighted in nearly 100 years. Droege heads the United States Geological Survey Bee Lab in Beltsville, Maryland, which supports native bee research, inventory and monitoring projects. He never travels without a net, preferably the one he nick-named Philanthus after a type of wasp that hunts bees. Opinionated, funny and idiosyncratic, he…

AREAS of permanently frozen ground in northern regions are now emitting more carbon into the atmosphere than they absorb, causing the planet to heat even further, according to the first Arctic-wide estimate of all three major greenhouse gases. Frozen ground, or permafrost, which underlies 15 per cent of the northern hemisphere and contains twice as much carbon as the atmosphere, has shrunk in area by an estimated 7 per cent in 50 years as it thaws. Recent research suggests the thaw will slow but not stop if we can limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Yet scientists haven’t been sure whether the permafrost region has become a net emitter of greenhouse gases. Even as the thaw releases more carbon compounds from the once-frozen biological matter in the ground,…

RESEARCH A NEW STUDY into how climate change could affect the evolutionary strategies of birds has highlighted how both short-lived and long-lived species may struggle to adapt. Birds make strategic decisions about how they live based on their environmental conditions. Some live fast, die young and leave as many chicks as possible, whereas others live for longer and prosper by not breeding as much. The recent study of non-migratory birds has focussed on how climate change may affect the longstanding evolutionary strategies of different species. This research was published in the journal Ecology Letters and was led by Michigan State University (MSU) postdoctoral fellows of the MSU Institute for Biodiversity, Ecology, Evolution, and Macrosystems (IBEEM). The group analysed data from nearly 7,500 bird species to understand the link between the…

According to the United Nations, plastic production skyrocketed from 2 million tonnes in 1950 to about 400 million in 2024. This number is expected to triple by 2060. Only ten percent of this plastic is currently being recycled and reused. The rest will remain in our environment for centuries, polluting the planet, from oceans to mountains, contaminating food chains and human bodies, where it risks damage to our organs and brains. In 2025, we will start putting an end to plastic pollution. Since 2022, policymakers in the United Nations, representing over 170 countries, have been negotiating a legally binding Global Plastics Treaty addressing the full lifecycle of plastics, from design to production to disposal. This treaty shares many of the mechanisms present in the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which eventually led…

Lisa and I own 21.5 forested acres in western Washington state. As retirees, we maintain a small hobby farm, grow vegetables in raised beds, and care for our 20,000-square-foot garden specifically designed for the benefit of native pollinators. And although our 65-foot well taps into a shared aquifer with ample storage, collecting rainwater for non-potable use made sense for long-term sustainability. Rainwater-collection kits sold by vendors for the do-it-yourself homeowner were too small or impractical for our needs, so we decided to start from scratch with our own design. A year after our initial installation, and with a few adjustments along the way, our system works wonderfully. The only required maintenance is cleaning debris from the gutters and draining the underground pipes and pump in fall. Running the Numbers To…

FROM VLAMINGH HEAD Lighthouse one balmy evening I saw an ocean erupt with breaching whales. It brought home to me just how important it is to protect Ningaloo and Exmouth Gulf on Western Australia’s north-west coast. Perched on an isolated hill at the northern end of the Cape Range, the lighthouse stands 50m above the sea and 300m away from a foreshore, beside one of the world’s greatest humpback highways. Each evening you’ll find Ningaloo devotees standing near the lighthouse watching the sun sink into the Indian Ocean. Following this tradition, in September 2022 a small group of us went to the car park near the lighthouse to watch the sunset. We were in for a surprise. The Indian Ocean filled the horizon to the west. Waves breaking nearby marked…

With the power to topple towers and bring entire cities to their knees, earthquakes are one of the most destructive forces in nature. To understand why the ground shakes, you must first look at Earth’s outermost layer, the crust. Also known as the lithosphere, the crust is a 25-mile-thick layer of solid rock that’s split up into 15 tectonic plates that fit together in one Earth-sized jigsaw puzzle. However, the plates aren’t static and are continually on the move. Driven by heat emanating from Earth’s centre, the plates, along with everything on top of them, move at around 1.5 centimetres each year. But where are they moving to? At the boundary where two plates meet, one will subduct under the other. The heat and pressure generated by the collision cause…

THE WORD reptilian doesn’t describe just lizards and snakes. When applied to humans, it denotes an unfriendly, unfeeling type of person. That’s because for decades, reptiles have been characterized as cold, emotionless, and even primitive creatures. But scientists agree that reptiles aren’t emotionless — they’re misunderstood. Extensive research has shown that reptiles experience a wide range of emotions, and that they’re highly socially complex animals. Despite this wealth of evidence demonstrating reptiles’ emotional capacity, however, they’ve retained a reputation for being as cold-blooded emotionally as they are physically. These misconceptions can lead to a lack of awareness for reptiles’ needs in captivity and in the wild, advocates say. “They don’t follow the same sort of rules that birds or mammals follow, and so we understand them a lot less,” says conservationist…

There’s nowhere else on earth like the Americas. This vast supercontinent divides our two greatest oceans, and its head and toes reach towards both poles. It has the tallest trees, the longest continental mountain range, the biggest rainforest… the list goes on. While many parts of the Americas have been covered in countless natural history series, no one has yet told the story of the supercontinent as a whole. As a film-maker, that was an incredibly exciting prospect – but a daunting one, too. Spanning 10 episodes, this production – a collaboration between the BBC and NBC Universal – would be epic in every sense of the word. In fact, The Americas has been pretty much unprecedented in terms of its scale and ambition. The series has been almost five…

“The more melt, the more stakes you have to collect. I don’t think I could have carried any more stakes. Nearly a third. That’s the amount of ice lost from New Zealand’s glaciers since 2000. Almost 300. That’s the number of individual glaciers that have vanished forever since we started monitoring them regularly about half a century ago. According to a recent global assessment, New Zealand ranks third after the European Alps and the Caucasus, in Eastern Europe, in the proportion of glacial ice lost to rising temperatures. And the glaciers that remain are now melting at an accelerating pace. In early March, I witnessed the changing icescapes of the Southern Alps first hand when I joined glaciologists on their annual snowline survey. Each year, the team flies across the…

A Antiperspirant Some newer premium brands offer customizable deodorant in refillable containers. If that’s a bit much for you, Tom’s of Maine has a free TerraCycle recycling program for its products. B Balloons Never release helium balloons into the air, and if you have a water balloon fight, pick up and dispose of all the pieces. Broken balloons are among the most dangerous types of debris for seabirds and other animals. Better yet, opt for paper lanterns or another more earth-friendly decor. C Contacts Choose two-week or one-month disposable contacts instead of dailies, and recycle the packaging. (Dispose of lenses in the garbage, never the sink or toilet.) Bausch + Lomb is currently the only lens company with a TerraCycle program. Wearing glasses more often is an option—as is, potentially,…

Let me start with the following principle: “Energy is the only universal currency: One of its many forms must be transformed to get anything done.” Economies are just intricate systems set up to do those transformations, and all economically significant energy conversions have (often highly undesirable) environmental impacts. Consequently, as far as the biosphere is concerned, the best anthropogenic energy conversions are those that never take place: no emissions of gasses (be they greenhouse or acidifying), no generation of solid or liquid wastes, no destruction of ecosystems. The best way to do this has been to convert energies with higher efficiencies: without their widespread adoption (be it in large diesel- and jet-engines, combined-cycle gas turbines, lightemitting diodes, smelting of steel, or synthesis of ammonia) we would need to convert significantly…

Many places on Earth are becoming unlivable, and around a quarter of humanity is already dealing with drought, and associated food insecurity. By 2070, one-fifth of the planet could become too hot for normal human life, causing up to 3.5 billion people to move. Sea level rise alone could displace 410 million people globally by 2100. We are poised to see the largest and fastest movement of people in human history. New policy frameworks will be needed. In 2025, we will begin to shift from reactive to proactive, and start to embrace the imperative of climate-driven relocation. Unsurprisingly, climate-driven relocation will hit poor communities and communities of color hardest. Those with the fewest resources to adapt, who did the least to cause the climate crisis, will bear the brunt. Think…

Inside a supervolcano Many people will remember the airport chaos of spring 2010 when Eyjafjallajökull, one of Iceland’s largest volcanoes, erupted after almost two centuries of peaceful slumber. But though it might be hard to believe, considering the mammoth amount of disruption that it caused, the Icelandic eruption was tiny compared to a super-eruption’s devastating power. The Eyjafjallajökull event measured a mere 4 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI), which rates the power of eruptions on an eight-point scale. A massive VEI 8 blast, on the other hand, would threaten human civilisation. Such a super-eruption would spew out more than 1,000 cubic kilometres (240 cubic miles) of ejecta – ash, gas and pumice – within days, destroying food crops, and changing the world climate for years. A super-eruption hasn’t happened…

Adult The Crazies: The Cattleman, the Wind Prospector, and a War Out West. By Amy Gamerman. Read by Anna Sale. 2025. Simon & Schuster Audio. When a rancher endeavors to gain passive income by allowing wind turbines on his land, he sets off a decade-long battle encompassing property rights, conservation, Indigenous peoples’ rights, and climate change. Sale is a popular podcaster and her narration hits all the right points. Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun’s Rays. By Amanda Quaid. Performed by a full cast. 2025. L.A. Theatre Works. In 1865, years before the “official” discovery of carbon dioxide’s role in warming Earth, Eunice Foote—an amateur American scientist—had already proved it. This sound-rich play immerses the listener in Foote’s Seneca Falls home and laboratory during her time of investigation while…

AUSTRALIA IS FACING a waste management crisis. Litter – visible everywhere from plastic-choked oceans to degraded bushland – is just the tip of the iceberg. Each year about 75 million tonnes of waste is generated across the country, a figure that continues to rise alongside population growth. The National waste and resource recovery report 2024 reveals only 12 per cent of plastics produced in Australia are recovered, while an estimated 130,000 tonnes of plastic waste leak into local marine ecosystems annually, causing severe harm to biodiversity. In the National Waste Policy Action Plan 2024 the federal government outlines a 2030 target to reduce total waste generated by 10 per cent per person. In the meantime, waste continues to accumulate, having a detrimental impact on wildlife, biodiversity and the climate. Stronger…

If you think of wood as a building material suitable only for log cabins and tree-houses, think again. Within a few years, a wooden skyscraper should be rising 191 metres high in the Western Australian capital of Perth. Named C6, the ‘woodscraper’ will be the highest wooden structure in the world. But don’t expect the Perth record to last: engineers already have woodscrapers on their drawing boards that will climb more than 300 metres into the sky. Just as steel frames allowed the first skyscrapers to reach new heights, new construction methods are allowing wood to compete with the more traditional building materials of steel and concrete. It’s a huge potential win for the environment. And there is another reason why you might prefer to live and work inside a…

Meg Lamont and her team make their way through the swampy edges of a salt marsh that nestles in St. Joseph Bay on Florida’s panhandle. The summer sun beats down from a pale blue sky, and the shallow water is so warm it’s almost hot. The air is heavy with the ripe smell of seawater. Prickly black needlerush and cordgrass scrape against their shins as they tromp through the muck. Nevertheless, the team is chatty and upbeat, full of enthusiasm for the work ahead. They’re going to tag terrapins. Lamont, a research biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey Wetland and Aquatic Research Center, is an expert on the habitat and movement patterns of coastal and marine vertebrates in the Gulf of Mexico. The current project she is leading involves finding diamondback…

MALE BABOONS FIGHT TOOTH AND NAIL TO become alpha – the coveted position at the pinnacle of the social hierarchy that will enable them to sire the most offspring. But a recent study in Amboseli, Kenya, has found that life at the top isn’t easy. By measuring specific hormones, scientists revealed that alpha males face greater energetic challenges than their lower-ranking counterparts. The researchers assumed that the two main challenges of being alpha – guarding females against the advances of other males and fighting rivals vying for their position – would be equally taxing. Surprisingly, they discovered that guarding females appeared to be much more energetically costly than maintaining the position of alpha. This could be because, by the time males become alphas, they don’t have to do much fighting…