Category: Planet

Activism, Eco, Health, Planet, Politics, UnbelievableLeave a comment

DEFORESTATION OF BRAZILIAN AMAZON RAINFOREST SURGES TO RECORD HIGH, FURTHER DEVASTATION LOOMS

Fernando Kaskais

by Elias Marat, TMU Waking Times The Brazilian Amazon rainforest has suffered a surge in deforestation in recent months, reaching unprecedented levels in May as Brazil’s far-right government under President Jair Bolsonaro continues to grant free license to illegal logging, farming and mining activities in once-protected lands.According to data from the government’s satellite monitoring agency, the Brazilian Amazon lost about 285 square miles in May, which is equivalent to two football fields every minute, the Guardian reports. May marks the beginning of the dry season, when most forest clearance and burning takes place. May’s 285 square miles adds to a loss of over 837 … Continue reading DEFORESTATION OF BRAZILIAN AMAZON RAINFOREST SURGES TO RECORD HIGH, FURTHER DEVASTATION LOOMS

Brain, Eco, Literature, Media&Culture, Philosophy, Planet, PsychologyLeave a comment

Robinson Jeffers on Moral Beauty, the Interconnectedness of the Universe, and the Key to Peace of Mind

Fernando Kaskais

Robinson Jeffers by Edward Weston “One may contribute (ever so slightly) to the beauty of things by making one’s own life and environment beautiful, so far as one’s power reaches. This includes moral beauty.” BY MARIA POPOVA “Happy people die whole,” Robinson Jeffers (January 10, 1887–January 20, 1962) wrote in one of his poems. “Integrity is wholeness,” he wrote in another. For Jeffers, whose verses became revered hymns of the environmental movement as Rachel Carson was making ecology a household word, this meant wholeness not only within oneself but also wholeness with the rest of the natural world, with the integrity of the universe … Continue reading Robinson Jeffers on Moral Beauty, the Interconnectedness of the Universe, and the Key to Peace of Mind

Australia, Eco, Future, Globalization, Living, Planet, Science1 Comment

The Climate Change Apocalypse Has Arrived. You Can Hear It on the New South Wales Country Hour.

Fernando Kaskais

OPINION – Bloomberg/Getty In New York, it’s easy to forget about climate change when there’s not a Sandy-level catastrophe. Across the globe, it’s an everyday reality now. by Josh Nathan-Kazis Late last year, looking for something new to listen to while doing chores around the apartment, I dove deep into podcasts and resurfaced in southern Australia, where the world is ending. This was at the end of December, during a warm weekend in New York City. The high in Central Park that Saturday was 13 degrees above the historical average. In Bellata, a small village in the interior of New … Continue reading The Climate Change Apocalypse Has Arrived. You Can Hear It on the New South Wales Country Hour.

Brain, Curiositys, Eco, Health, Living, Planet, PsychologyLeave a comment

The Healing Power of Gardens: Oliver Sacks on the Psychological and Physiological Consolations of Nature

Fernando Kaskais

Art by Violeta Lopíz and Valerio Vidali from The Forest by Riccardo Bozzi “In forty years of medical practice, I have found only two types of non-pharmaceutical ‘therapy’ to be vitally important for patients with chronic neurological diseases: music and gardens.” BY MARIA POPOVA “I work like a gardener,” the great painter Joan Miró wrote in his meditation on the proper pace for creative work. It is hardly a coincidence that Virginia Woolf had her electrifying epiphany about what it means to be an artist while walking amid the flower beds in the garden at St. Ives. Indeed, to garden — even merely to be … Continue reading The Healing Power of Gardens: Oliver Sacks on the Psychological and Physiological Consolations of Nature

Curiositys, Eco, Living, Planet, ScienceLeave a comment

Flash!

Fernando Kaskais

A lightning storm over the Taravo Valley on the French island of Corsica, 15 August 2018. Photo by Pascal Pochard Casabianca/Afp/Getty It ignited life on Earth, propelled evolution, and now signals climate change. Yet what sparks lightning remains a mystery Sidney Perkowitz is a science writer and has been emeritus professor of physics at Emory University. He is the author of Hollywood Science: Movies, Science, and the End of the World (2007) and his latest books are Physics: A Very Short Introduction(2019) and Real Scientists Don’t Wear Ties(forthcoming, 2019). He lives in Atlanta. Edited by Pam Weintraub Lightning flashes through the sky millions of times a … Continue reading Flash!

Buddhism, Eco, Living, Media&Culture, Philosophy, Planet, PsychologyLeave a comment

Wilderness Birthed the Mind

Fernando Kaskais

Photo by Robert Bye | https://tricy.cl/2UM6DeH As the Earth radically changes, what happens to the wisdom that it has to offer us? By Matthew Gindin Once a monk asked Changsha, Zen Master Jingcen, ‘How do you turn mountains, rivers, and the great earth into the self?’ Changsha said, ‘How do you turn the self into mountains, rivers, and the great earth?’ —“Valley Sounds, Mountain Colors” by Dogen Zenji, from Treasury of The True Dharma Eye, ed. Kazuaki Tanahashi and Peter Levitt Wilderness birthed the mind, whose deep roots and flowering branches evolved not in the cities of our invention but in nature’s … Continue reading Wilderness Birthed the Mind

Curiositys, Eco, Globalization, Health, Media&Culture, Planet, UnbelievableLeave a comment

Where does all the ocean garbage go?

Fernando Kaskais

Plastic waste on a remote beach in Sri Lanka. Author provided The southern Indian Ocean receives more plastic waste than anywhere else in the world, but no one knows where it goes – until now. Mirjam van der Mheen and colleagues explain. Great areas of our rubbish are known to form in parts of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. But no such “garbage patch” has been found in the Southern Indian Ocean. Our research – published recently in Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans – looked at why that’s the case, and what happens to the rubbish that gets dumped in this particular area. … Continue reading Where does all the ocean garbage go?