Will green technology kill Atacama desert?

The Atacama in northern Chile is the driest desert in the world and may be the oldest. It also holds 40% of the world's lithium – an essential ingredient in the rechargeable batteries used in green technology. Indigenous leaders and scientists say Chile's plans to feed a global green energy boom with Atacama lithium will kill the desert. As violent protests rock the country, they are fighting for the mining to stop.

School strike for climate - save the world by changing the rules | Greta Thunberg | TEDxStockholm

Samba da Utopia - Jonathan Silva

La Lucha es Eterna y Permanente - José Mujica

Hernán Casciari: El móvil de Hansel y Gretel

Porque nos estamos convirtiendo en héroes perezosos...

One Strange Rock by National Geographic

First ever 3D Virtual Reality film shot in space! Featuring Astronauts Chris Hadfield, Mae Jemison, Mike Massimino and Nicole Stott. Enjoy!

The Mammoth Pirates by Amos Chapple

In Russia's Arctic north, a new kind of gold rush is under way.

With the sale of elephant tusks under close scrutiny, “ethical ivory” from the extinct woolly mammoth is now feeding an insatiable market in China. This rush on mammoth ivory is luring a fresh breed of miner – the tusker – into the Russian wilderness and creating dollar millionaires in some of the poorest villages of Siberia.

On condition that he not reveal names or exact locations, RFE/RL photographer Amos Chapple gained exclusive access to one site where between bouts of vodka-fueled chaos and days spent evading police patrols, teams of men are using illegal new methods in the hunt for what remains of Siberia's lost giants.   

Full story: https://www.rferl.org/a/the-mammoth-pirates/27939865.html

 

The Decolonial Atlas

The Decolonial Atlas is a growing collection of maps which help us to challenge our relationships with the land, people, and state. It’s based on the premise that cartography is not as objective as we’re made to believe. The orientation of a map, its projection, the presence of political borders, which features are included or excluded, and the language used to label a map are all subject to the map-maker’s bias – whether deliberate or not. 

Because decolonization is a process of unlearning and rediscovering, this volunteer-run project is especially committed to indigenous language revitalization through toponymy. Click on the link to explore! 

https://decolonialatlas.wordpress.com/

El florecimiento de los Guayacanes

En Zapotillo, provincia de Loja, se encuentran las poblaciones de Mangahurco, Bolaspamba y Cazaderos, rodeadas por un extenso bosque cálido seco de guayacanes, el más grande de Ecuador. 

El Festival por el Florecimiento de los Guayacanes es un espectáculo natural único que tiene lugar en el mes de Enero y en el que participa toda la comunidad, que ha desarrollado un modelo de turismo sostenible para evitar su sobreexplotación en el comercio de maderables.

The inspiring story of Yvonne Dowlen

Yvonne Dowlen discovered a lifelong love of figure skating the moment she stepped on the ice. Her passion led to a career as a touring performer with the Ice Capades that lasted almost 50 years. Still skating competitively at the age of 90, Dowlen shares her inspiring story in this touching short from Balcony Nine Media and reminds viewers that, “what you do with your life and what you find enjoyable with your life is up to you.”.

Credit: Katie Stjernholm and Jonathan Hiller.
Learn more about the film Edges from Balcony Nine Media on Vimeo.

How Neoliberalism Threatenes Democracy - Wendy Brown

Construyendo la España Federal

We'll Never Turn Back - Mavis Staples

La carrera musical de la gran Mavis Staples abarca más setenta años de gospel y rhythm and blues, míles de conciertos y decenas de discos. Una vida intensa marcada por su amor a la música y su compromiso social contra el racismo junto a Martin Luther King. Viendo lo que está pasando en Virginia, sus canciones suenan hoy más actuales que nunca. 

 

Chris Burkard: The joy of surfing in ice-cold water

Traveling to pursue the farthest expanses of Earth, C. Burkard works to capture stories that inspire humans to consider their relationship with nature and promote the preservation and value of wilderness. 

Salish Sea: A Legacy Moment

Since 2014, SeaLegacy has worked with grassroots partners to protect some of the most precious marine environments. Today, together with Salish Sea residents and neighbours, they pledging to protect this inner sea of outstanding universal cultural and environmental value.

 

Salish Sea - A Legacy Moment from Sea Legacy on Vimeo.

Let's Talk Trash

Only we humans make waste that nature can't digest.

Enoughness: Cristina MIttermeier

Have you ever asked yourself how much is enough? Cristina MIttermeier's stunning images of indigenous peoples shine lights on conservation issues, culture and tradition to remind us that we are all part of an interconnected world where happiness is only due to 10% of material stuff.

Brexit

All of Europe’s history since the second world war tells us that the political class on the continent totally reject this view and will fight to the last breath to keep Europe together. Unlike the British Brexiteers, they know that the real alternative to the EU is the centuries-old curse of European civilisation: nationalism. As the former French president, Francois Mitterrand, put it in 1995 in his farewell speech to the European parliament: “le nationalisme: c’est la guerre’. In five simple words, that is the case for Europe. — Roger Liddle.

How Navigation Makes Us Human

Living implies change and thus movement, and since navigation is the art of computing where we are, where we’ve been, and where we are going, it's not an exaggeration to say that navigation in its myriad forms is not only a crucial survival tool but the prime expression of living. Our brains evolved by navigating (...) GPS and similar technologies over the last twenty years have rendered the hard-won navigational skills of individual humans obsolete. For the price of a smartphone or an internet connection, we can be led with astonishing precision to any point on the globe, and we don't need to know a single detail about how it's done. But does such ease come at a cost? Will putting all our faith in GPS and related technologies diminish us in some way? Does the ensuring inability to get lost somehow sap our ability to seek and find new directions geographical and otherwise?

George Michelsen Foy –Finding North: How Navigation Makes Us Human.

Atlas for the End of the World

"Cartography is never merely about the drawing of maps: it is the making of worlds." — Brian Harley

Coming almost 450 years after the world's first Atlas, this Atlas for the End of the World audits the status of land use and urbanization in the most critically endangered bioregions on Earth. 

It does so, firstly, by measuring the quantity of protected area across the world's 36 biodiversity hotspots in comparison to United Nation's 2020 targets; and secondly, by identifying where future urban growth in these territories is on a collision course with endangered species. 

By bringing urbanization and conservation together in the same study, the essays, maps, data, and artwork in this Atlas lay essential groundwork for the future planning and design of hotspot cities and regions as interdependent ecological and economic systems.

http://atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world.com/