Maryland, 1988. Junior high. Our task in Mr. M’s class: author a dispatch to a pal on Phobos, a moon of Mars, communicating highlights about our world. This task had a catch: ABC’s fifth and most common mark was off limits — for, as Mr. M told us, this symbol didn’t occur on Phobos. This […]
At our On the Brink event, artist, poet and environmental activist Judy Ling Wong related the story of a magical encounter with a snow leopard, speaking out against the threat of extinction to these wondrous creatures. Video edited by Ben Crabb. […]
As Christmas approaches, Clare Druce, founder of Chickens’ Lib, reminds us of the damage done by factory farming chickens and turkeys. Factory farming promised plentiful cheap food. Instead, it has given us giant corporations where the profit motive reigns supreme, while ‘food animals’ suffer on an unprecedented scale. Treating animals like machines goes hand in […]
From micro-plastics in the snows of Everest and Antarctica, to carrier bags at the bottom of the 11km-deep Marianas Trench, and the billions of particulates infesting the brains of our children, nowhere and no-one on our planet remains uncontaminated by the polluting by-blow of early 21st century human activities. The atmosphere too is tainted, it’s […]
The marvellous Dame Emma Thompson gave a melancholy and mischievous call out to the Puffin for our On the Brink event when she found herself unable to “research puffins amidst the musty stacks” of the London Library “prevented by this latest lockdown.” She relies, instead on her “straggling and intermittent memory” to give us “everything […]
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The real beauty of a coral reef is in the way it renews itself and creates the strongest of structures in the world with the most delicate of life forms. If the fragile polyps are damaged, the reef crumbles. You could say the same of us, and our world: that which is most fragile […]
What do we do when climate change threatens more than just a species and its habitat, but puts at risk thousands of years of relationships between land-based cultures and their most sacred plants? When Adla Massoud and her friends invited me to join them for a pilgrimage to the northernmost stands of Cedars of Lebanon […]
Tell us about what’s happening at Ardee bog, and why you are campaigning to stop it. Ardee Bog, in Ireland’s County Louth, is threatened by an absurd infrastructure project. If a proposed road, the N52 Ardee Bypass, is allowed to proceed in its current form it will cut through Ardee Bog and its […]