Aerial photographer J Henry Fair finds beauty in oil spills and open-pit mines, but he prefers we lessen our industrial footprint on Earth. At a TED Talks conference in Berlin, he discusses how to do so, with pretty pictures, of course.
From aircraft flying high above Earth, photographer J Henry Fair captures the industrial footprint humans leave behind from unique angles. His beautiful and startling aerial photography was the centerpiece of a talk given last fall at the TEDxBerlin. The conference was aptly themed “High Energy.”
Fair, a frequent contributor to OnEarth, is best know for his “Industrial Scars” photo series, which exposes landscapes destroyed by the actions of extractive industries, such as mountaintop removal coal mining, clearcutting forests, or the Gulf oil spill.
In his talk, Fair draws a connection between the actions of individuals and the blighted — yet surreally beautiful — scenes depicted by his photography. But really, the images speak for themselves.
Just five months after Chevron lost its drilling rights for causing the largest oil spill in recent memory off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, they’ve gone and done it again. According to Brazil’s National Petroleum Agency (ANP), Chevron has reported that a new leak of indeterminate size has been detected near the site of last November’s spill — and it could present a a major setback for the U.S. oil company’s ambitions to drill in the region’s oil-rich Frade Field.
One of the coolest element’s of PopTech’s recent Climate Resilience Lab was the introduction of a new game that forces participants to consider gender’s role in climate adaptation:
To help shake things up on the first day of the gathering, Pablo Suarez, of the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre, and Janot Mendler Suarez, who created the Games for a New Climate Task Force at Boston University, debuted a new game designed to help players consider the role of gender in decision-making, specifically in decisions about how best to adapt to a changing climate.
“The law is the same for the poor and the rich, but the rich have the best lawyers,” he says. “Lawsuits against them drag on in court for years.”
Up to 900 tropical bird species could ‘go extinct’
“The finding is modelled on the effects of a 3.5C Earth surface temperature rise, a Biological Conservation Journal paper shows.
Species may struggle to adapt to habitat loss and extreme weather events, author Cagan Sekercioglu says.
Mountain, coastal, restricted-range, and species unable to get to higher elevations could be the worst affected.
Depending on future habitat loss, each degree of surface warming could affect between 100-500 species, says Mr Sekercioglu, assistant professor of biology at the University of Utah.”
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Thanks Lizzie for finding this.
This website is great for case studies. The website presents interviews with over 300 people who live in mountain and highland regions round the world. Their testimonies offer a personal perspective on change and development. Click on ´Themes´ or the country you need.
