Difference between revisions of "The Big Picture"
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[http://earthtrends.wri.org/ World Resources Institute]. | [http://earthtrends.wri.org/ World Resources Institute]. | ||
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[http://www.postcarbon.org/ The PostCarbon Institute] has great resources about how to build a resilient future, including [http://www.postcarbon.org/media-library videos on fracking] etc. | [http://www.postcarbon.org/ The PostCarbon Institute] has great resources about how to build a resilient future, including [http://www.postcarbon.org/media-library videos on fracking] etc. | ||
Revision as of 18:29, 9 November 2013
Here you can get a quick but comprehensive overview of the current state of the planet.
Contents
Overviews/News
David Christian teaches an ambitious world history course that tells the tale of the entire universe -- from the Big Bang 13 billion years ago to present day. TEDtalk video. Other TEDtalk Big Picture videos (beware Lomborg BS).
Powerful video: She's Alive... Beautiful... Finite...Hurting...
300 Years of FOSSIL FUELS in 300 Seconds and what to do now ***
Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" video.
Big Picture, Small Planet excellent short video overview by Medard Gabel, creator of online World Game by Buckminster Fuller. Short animated video on hunger. Miniature Earth: what if the world were 100 people.
Advertising & the End of the World is a brilliant Big Picture analysis of how the culture of consumption drives eco-degradation. 2010 Update: Adverstising & the Perfect Storm: Global Warming, Peak Oil & Consumer Debt presented by Sut Jhally, Umass and Founder/Exec Director of the Media Education Foundation (MEF). See also Oil and Global Warming.
Surviving Progress very smart big picture overview (BBC).
Climate change and resource scarcity (including food and water) will lead to war (again). 4/13
Global Issues presents numerous global issues, aiming to show how they are inter-related. UN list and overviews (and reports).
How do we set ourselves on the path to a truly sustainable future? State of the World 2013, the latest in the Worldwatch Institute's annual series, offers the latest and most comprehensive picture of how we can achieve it.
2009 State of the Planet from National Geographic (video).
4.5 billion years in 2 minutes, by Mitchell Moffit, claymation/magic marker video that compresses this lengthy history into a 24-hour period.
130 years of climate change in 30 seconds video. Global Warming page
Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds (audio). Climate change is having impact even more and faster than predicted, will lead to political instability. Military is concerned eg here. We overshot earth capacity a while back.
Environmental History timeline see also Eco-Elders.
The basics, good overviews and intros to various green topics from Grist, such as Keystone XL pipeline, sea level rise and Geo-engineering.
Interactive Data Visualization/Infographics
U.S. Wildfire Interactive Shows Rising Temperatures, Less Snowfall Are Leading To More Fires infographic 7/13.
Gapminder brilliantly allows you to visualize world demographic trends. ****
If the earth were 100 people video.**
Dashboard for the planet *** Realtime CO2.
Sea Monsters has hundreds of millions of years and cheesy but fun 3D] ***
Maps and Images
AAAS Atlas of Population & Environment
UCSC Atlas of Global Inequality
List of US environmental laws and versions in plain English, for example, Clean Air Act.
Earth at night more Earth from space (video).
The basics, good overviews and intros to various green topics from Grist, such as Keystone XL pipeline, sea level rise and Geo-engineering.
Reports
Earth Policy Institute's excellent Eco-Economy Indicators
How do we set ourselves on the path to a truly sustainable future? State of the World 2013, the latest in the Worldwatch Institute's annual series, offers the latest and most comprehensive picture of how we can achieve it.
List-o-mania
5 worst US cities for pollution 11/13.
Top 10 polluted places Time Magazine version. Top 10 eco-disasters.
Top 10 Most and Least Green States.
Eco-disaster slideshow . Time Magazine's Top 20 green ideas.
List of CO2 emissionsby country. Top 10. In a new study, University of Michigan researchers accounted for both climate and GDP when looking at total emissions from each country. 7.12
Greenest U.S. cities and companies 6.12
The Cultural Landscape Foundation list of 12 threatened or at-risk landscapes 10/12
Anthropocene
The term refers to a geological period in time in which humans are the controlling factor: Human activities increasingly dominate and endanger nine crucial planetary systems. Along with the familiar ones---climate, biodiversity, and chemical pollution---we have to add atmospheric aerosols, ocean acidification, excess nitrogen from agriculture, too much land sacrificed to agriculture, freshwater scarcity, and ozone depletion. To secure what scientists are calling "a safe operating space for humanity" on Earth requires considerabe finesse to work within those systems. How we collectively step up to that responsibility will determine whether "the Anthropocene" (the geological era shaped by humans) will be a tragedy or humanity's greatest accomplishment. 5 min audio intro in gamer show style by Stanford.
Welcome to the anthropocene (video)
Excellent video overview of our current status: Human growth has strained the Earth's resources, but as Johan Rockstrom reminds us, our advances also give us the science to recognize this and change behavior. His research has found nine "planetary boundaries" that can guide us in protecting our planet's many overlapping ecosystems. TEDtalk. This LongNow talk builds on Rockstrom. 3/12. Rio Summit talk 6/12 (audio). We overshot earth capacity a while back.
Related: A seminal study last fall in Nature put climate in perspective of 10 biophysical systems crucial to human health -- and it found biodiversity loss more troubling than any other Link.
Eric Berlow and others ask if the earth has a tipping point. Some science says no.
British environmentalist Mark Lynas is the author of one of the finest climate books, Six Degrees, and a new work, The God Species: How the Planet Can Survive the Age of Humans, which spells out a cohesive Green program for this century guided by the nine boundaries. "The Nine Planetary Boundaries: Finessing the Anthropocene," Mark Lynas, Long Now talk on 3/6 link and video
Edward O. Wilson “The Social Conquest of Earth” (video)
Charles Mann, "Living in the Homogenocene: The First 500 Years" (video). audio interview. State of the Species: Does success spell doom for Homo sapiens? Orion magazine.
In Why Corporation 2020, Pavan Sukhdev examines the many critical planetary boundaries that we are approaching, from greenhouse gas emissions to the nitrogen cycle, freshwater and land use, and food security, and argues that sweeping changes are needed to reform the way we deal with the earth’s resources. Sukhdev makes an arresting case for including the private sector in these changes, arguing that a new corporate model is needed in the next decade to avert irreparable ecological harm. (free e-book).
History: "Complex civilizations have a bad habit of destroying themselves. Anthropologists including Joseph Tainter in “The Collapse of Complex Societies,” Charles L. Redman in “Human Impact on Ancient Environments” and Ronald Wright in “A Short History of Progress” have laid out the familiar patterns that lead to systems breakdown. The difference this time is that when we go down the whole planet will go with us. There will, with this final collapse, be no new lands left to exploit, no new civilizations to conquer, no new peoples to subjugate. The long struggle between the human species and the Earth will conclude with the remnants of the human species learning a painful lesson about unrestrained greed and self-worship." Hedges.
== Earth == (see also Land)
Video overview Click on State of the Earth link in left navigation bar. 2009?
Soil
Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations by David R Montgomery (book trailer) professor of geomorphology, University of Washington discusses the problem of global soil degradation and soil erosion and why it is one of the most significant environmental crises that face our species and planet for the next 400 years to come. another talk.
Update on soil 8/12.
Peak Farmland is here 12/12.
What is Land? big picture.
Soil: From Dirt to Lifeline Fred Kirschenmann TEDx.
Allan Savory fights desertification. TEDtalk.
Discovering a whole new universe in the soil 6/13.
== Air == (More in-depth content)
== Fire (climate change and wildfires) == (metaphorically, Global Warming)
The basics, good overviews and intros to various green topics from Grist, such as Keystone XL pipeline, sea level rise and Geo-engineering
10 Best US Cities to ride out global warming and 10 worst 5/13.
Climate change and resource scarcity (including food and water) will lead to war (again). 4/13
Bottom line, we have about five years, unless we've already hit hit the tipping point
Al Gore TEDTalk 20 min. video.
Wildfires See also Forests
Explained in 90 Seconds: How Climate Change Fuels Wildfires: Higher temperatures, prolonged drought, and fire suppression policy combine to make fires worse. video.
Yosemite Is Burning...Here's How Climate Change Makes Wildfires Worse 8/13. virtual flythrough
Nation on Fire: Climate Change and the Burning of America 8/13.
U.S. Wildfire Interactive Shows Rising Temperatures, Less Snowfall Are Leading To More Fires infographic 7/13.
Wildfire Activity Is Heating Up In The Yukon Flats Of Alaska
Actual fire and forests (will be an effect of global warming). See Scorched Earth.
Tar balls from wildfires worsening global warming 7/13
Climate Change And Wildfires: Bigger, Fiercer Blazes Expected In West 7/13 not unrelated, 19 brave hotshots die. context on how fires have changed (op-ed).
Wildfire season is 2 months longer, two times more destructive now than in the 1970s due to global warming.
U.S. Wildfires: Burn Area Expected To Double By 2050 12/12.
NASA images and info [global tour video].
Native American use of wildfire (audio).
Life in fire country (audio). 2013.
== Water == (More in-depth content)
Video overview, another one, a video infographic, and one from National Geographic. The Cycle of Insanity: The Real Story of Water is a short, animated film made by the Surfrider Foundation on the broken water cycle. Greenpeace on rivers.
Brock Dolman (College Eight '92, Environmental Studies/Biology), Director of The WATER Institute Ecologist Permaculture Program. Bioneers interview video. Bio TEDx video: Watershed City 2.0 (Re-thinking and Retrofitting for Resilience). ***
Earth Policy Institute overview/stats/status Link 2006
Extensive coverage of the California drought and climate change.
CBS News segment 1/10
video overview Click on State of the Earth link in left navigation bar, then water.
How farms create Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico (good overview)
== E-waste == (see also Consumption and Chemicals)
11/08 CBS 60 Minutes segment (video)
Overview from the National Resources Defense Council
General Environmental Websites
Some environmental organizations.
What the World Could Be has short videos that explain our daunting challenges and shows that they can be countered by simple decisions by all of us.
Environmental Defense Fund works to preserve the natural systems on which all life depends, focusing on the most critical environmental problems.
Natural Resources Defense Council
United Nations environmental info, as well as UN list of global problems and overviews (and reports).
Environmental Clearinghouse has info on a variety of topics.
Worldwatch Institutehas yearly State of the Planet reports
The PostCarbon Institute has great resources about how to build a resilient future, including videos on fracking etc.
Books
Ecosystems and human well-being By Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Program et al. 2005 Very detailed
Humanity's Footprint : momentum, impact, and our global environment / Walter K. Dodds New York : Columbia University Press, c2008 McHenry Stacks - GF75 .D65 2008 Link
Magazines/Journals
Yes Magazine ***
Time Magazine on science and environment.
(must be logged into UCSC computer to access:)
OnEarth from NRDC.
Online Courses
Environmental Health from Johns Hopkins University gives a good overview of different kinds of exposures to different toxins and their effects.
