Climate change Archives | Page 3 of 6

Bicycles

World’s Largest Bike Garage in Utrecht, Netherlands

August 12, 2019 Bicycles

The Netherlands has long been known for being one of the most bicycle-friendly countries on earth. They’re doubling down on that reputation, with the opening of the world’s largest bicycle garage in Utrecht. Able to house over 13,500 bicycles (!), the sleek, modern garage makes the bike racks in the US look like a joke.

Designed by Ector Hoogstad Architects, the garage allows riders to coast underground into a sleek tunnel that directs them to the various parking spots.

In an era of rapidly changing climate, we’re encouraged to see cities like Utrecht take carbon-free transportation seriously. Via DesignBoom:

Documentary Film

Europe’s Record Heatwave Shows Us Climate Change in Action

July 25, 2019 Documentary Film

This summer’s sizzling, scorching temperatures are being felt all over Europe, with many countries smashing their previously held records. In Paris, on Thursday, it reached 108.7º Fahrenheit, or 42.6 Celcius. It’s a record that no one asked for, and no one wants, however.

People sought relief from the heat however they could, wading into pools and fountains, using misting machines, and even repurposing inflatable pools for feet cooling. Check out images below from the New York Times.

It’s the second heat wave that Europe has experienced this summer, and with all of August left to go, who knows how many more records will be broken.

It’s clear that climate change is already well underway, rapidly changing the norms, and creating less inviting weather all over the world. For those people who dismiss the seriousness of the earth’s warming, we invite you to spend a few sweltering nights in Paris without air conditioning, and get a taste of this change for yourself.

It’s a worrying trend, and one we fear will continue and only get worse, unless bold action is taken.

Misting devices setup all over Europe.

The 41º Celcius temperatures broke records throughout France.

Brave spectators for the Tour De France, in sweltering heat.

Helping a horse cool down with a bath in a lake.

A Tour De France cyclist staying cool with a special vest holding ice packs.

Design

Beautifully Thought Provoking Paper Art About Climate Change

July 12, 2019 Design

The very talented Eiko Ojala has a new series that speaks to climate change, and the feelings and perceptions around it. Based in Estonia, he has a very keen grasp on the perils of climate change, and the nuances of people’s perspectives. He paints a stark divide between the American South and the rest of the country, and the difficulty of addressing the issue in rural areas versus cities.

Not all environmentalists eat tofu: the hunters fighting climate change.

Using simple contrasting paper, and an extremely keen illustrative technique, his cut paper brings depth and introspection to the pieces. He accompanies each one with a thought provoking description. Via Behance:

Florida is drowning. Condos are still being built. Can’t humans see the writing on the wall?

What you know about the American south and climate change is wrong.

‘They chose us because we were rural and poor’: when environmental racism and climate change collide.

Why people in the US south stay put in the face of climate change.

What would Jesus do? Talking with evangelicals about climate change.

Talking about climate change in conservative places is hard. But we can’t afford not to.

Art

David Attenborough Pop-Up Shop

July 9, 2019 Art

The 93-year old British broadcaster and natural historian David Attenborough is a hero to many, including us, who have grown up with his delightful nature documentary narration. Active since the 1950s, he has helped showcase the natural world to millions of people around the planet, raising awareness, and spurring a new generation of conservationists and scientists.

As an ode/love letter to his life’s work, Jen Pyrah has created a pop-up shop in England, featuring all David Attenborough products, most of them created by her and her company, Wren and Wilson.

The cute products include hand painted portraits of Attenborough, and a delightful cartoon likeness on mugs, t-shirts, socks, and enamel pins. True to his ethos, the shop features no plastic items, and tries to be as eco/nature friendly as possible. In addition, she’s donating 10% of its sales to the World Land Trust. We think it’s a great idea, and a lovely shout out to an extraordinary man. Via BBC:

Food & Drink

Is Canned Water a Good Stepping Stone from Plastic Bottles?

July 6, 2019 Food & Drink

The pragmatist’s approach to sustainability would embrace incremental steps that leads to positive change.

It seems like canned drinking water might be that step. As easy as it is to bring and use reusable water bottles, people still consume far too many single-use plastic bottles of water, many of which end up in our oceans. We need better options.

Companies like PepsiCo are finally addressing some of these concerns, with their test rollout of canned Aquafina water. It’s not a new concept, especially in the era of sparkling water crazes, but aluminum is 100% recyclable, keeps water colder longer than plastic, and also is recycled at a rate of 70%, far higher than plastic. We hope this incremental change away from plastic water bottles is adopted, so we see less plastic polluting our oceans and killing wildlife. What do you think? Via Dieline:

“Tackling plastic waste is one of my top priorities and I take this challenge personally,” PepsiCo Chairman and CEO Ramon Laguarta said via press release. “As one of the world’s leading food and beverage companies, we recognize the significant role PepsiCo can play in helping to change the way society makes, uses, and disposes of plastics. We are doing our part to address the issue head on by reducing, recycling and reinventing our packaging to make it more sustainable, and we won’t stop until we live in a world where plastics are renewed and reused.”

3D

Cecropia – Insects Adapted for the 21st Century

May 29, 2019 3D

In this strange and beautiful series by Madrid-based NastPlas, we see insects that have been thoroughly ‘modified’ to adapt to changing climate and the changing world of the 21st century.

Entitled Cecropia, these slickly rendered insects have been mutated to include various materials to theoretically help them camouflage or adapt to their surroundings. Mostly an exercise in design and aesthetics, we find it a fascinating concept, even if we generally wouldn’t want to play with these creepy crawlers. Via Behance:

CECROPIA – is a project in which we have designed several insects mutated by geometric shapes and elements as fabrics, metallic and organic structures changing their morphology.

Design

Washington Post’s Powerful Climate Change Covers

April 19, 2019 Design

The Washington Post has a collection of their 24 recent magazine covers that all feature climate change as the top line article. Beautifully powerful and relevant.

Documentary Film

The Weather Channel Using Mixed Reality To Showcase Climate Change

April 10, 2019 Documentary Film

Climate change is here, like it or not, and cities around the world are already dealing with the effects of rising seas, changing weather, and a sense that all is not right in terms of our global climate.

Understanding some of the impacts can be difficult, however, and visualizing them harder still. The Weather Channel has begun using immersive mixed reality to showcase some of the weather scenarios we may see in the future, and they’re quite scary, to be honest.

Their reporter is shown superimposed over a number of places in the US, either many years in the future, or here in 2019. Using realistic visual effects, they’re able to give you a sense of the impacts that rising sea levels will have on cities like Charleston, South Carolina, and Norfolk, Virginia.

We are fearful about what the future holds, especially if leaders like Trump turn a blind eye to the problem. Hopefully visualizations like these will help change public opinion for good, and turn up the pressure for governments to take climate action seriously. Via The Verge:

Art

Sebastian Errazuriz to Live Stream The Earth, On Earth

March 13, 2019 Art

Artist and technologist Sebastian Errazuriz has a novel concept for showcasing the facility and beauty of our planet Earth, using a custom LED panel, and live photographs, from space, stitched together to create a seamless vision of Planet Earth.

Showcasing this March 13th, it stands to be a powerful and fascinating demonstration of technology and love of planet. Via DesignBoom:

Design

An Elegant Chair Made From Salvaged Fishing Nets

February 8, 2019 Design

This simple, unassuming plastic chair is more important than it seems. Made from collected and discarded plastic fishing nets and ocean trash, it represents an important step in the movement to salvage trash and repurpose harmful waste into useful goods.

Created by Snøhetta for the company Nordic Comfort Products, it is deep green with a marbling look to it. It’s called the S-1500, and it will retail for an affordable $100. Another small win for the planet.

Via FastCo Design:

Automotive

Large Cruise Ships Produce As Much Air Pollution In One Day As 1,000,000 Cars

January 29, 2019 Automotive

The next time you think about booking a cruise vacation, you might try to visualize a million cars. That’s the equivalent air pollution that a big Carnival or Royal Caribbean-type cruise ship emits in a single day.

It’s a stunning number, and is almost hard to fathom. But it’s the result of cruise ships using heavy fuel oil, basically the waste product of refining other petroleum or diesel. This hugely dirty fuel is cheap, and cruise ship companies thrive on offering cheap vacation packages.

The Independent has a disturbing article that exposes much of this information, including a climate scientist who measured the air pollution onboard a ship, finding that cruise participants, as well as the air in general, suffer.

cars-1-2 — A lot of cars, visualized. But this isn’t even close to a million.

We scoured the “stewardship” pages of several cruise ship websites, and they give vague promises to clean up their ship’s pollution. This includes switching to liquified natural gas, which burns much cleaner, but has major environmental issues of its own. But most of these plans are years away. And meanwhile, hundreds of cruise ships prowl the seas everyday, entering beautiful natural areas to dock.

Next time you vacation, it might be wise to consider something other than a cruise. More info via The Guardian:

Animals

Aude Bourgine’s Lungs of the Ocean

January 15, 2019 Animals

French artist Aude Bourgine has a beautifully crafted series of textile art pieces that resemble coral, set within glass containers, like specimens plucked from the ocean floor.

The title of the series, Poumons des océans, or Lungs of the ocean, pay tribute to the plight of coral, and the importance it has for life on earth.

Created in bright, eye-catching colors, we see her interpretation of healthy, lively coral, versus the bleached, destroyed-reef variety that we’ve been recently been hearing so much about. Our oceans matter. Thanks to artists like Bourgine for bringing more attention to them. Via Treehugger:

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Automotive

Rivian Comes out of Stealth Mode to Reveal Electric Pickup, SUV

November 28, 2018 Automotive

https://vimeo.com/301410788

There have been a number of electric-car startups in the last decade, yet the only established new brand is Tesla. That means most of the others either went bankrupt, or are still toiling away at the complexity of building a new car company.

Rivian, a company that has been in ‘stealth-mode’ for the last nine years, has finally broken their silence, unveiling the R1T pickup truck, and the R1S SUV at the Los Angeles Auto Show. The sleekly-styled vehicles are filling a hugely important gap in the market, where trucks and SUVs loom large, but currently no electric options exist. Rivian’s hope is that their vehicles hit the road at the end of 2020, with a similar rollout to Tesla, releasing their higher-spec version first, and the lower-priced versions later.

The vehicles are bristling with technology, including cameras, as well as LIDAR, radar, ultrasonic, and “high-precision” GPS technologies, which should allow for self-driving capability.

We are excited for new, zero-emission options in the SUV and truck realm, especially since those existing vehicles are among the dirtiest on the planet.

The Rivian truck has three tiers of electric range, with pricing accordingly. The price for the R1T truck starts at $69,000, and the SUV starts at $72,000. Learn more on The Verge:

All three versions of the truck have a top speed of 125 miles per hour. The midrange battery pack version is the quickest, according to Rivian, hitting 60 miles per hour in three seconds flat, thanks to a total power output of 562kW (about 750 horsepower). The 400-mile battery version of the truck sends 522kW (about 700 horsepower) to the gearbox and will hit the 60 mph mark in 3.2 seconds. The cheaper short-range version will go from 0 to 60 mph in 4.9 seconds, with 300kW of power (about 400 horsepower) on offer.

Art

Only One

November 26, 2018 Art

In the wake of the alarming, shocking, and very real climate report that came out last Friday, we’re reposting this original. We have no backup planets, no spares. This is the only one. The only one we can call home. This is earth. Please protect it. Original.

Art

Nature and Us by Jing Zhang

November 9, 2018 Art

Often times people don’t remember that they too are part of nature. It’s all around us, it binds us, and despite our built environments, nature still touches all things. Artist Jing Zhang has a really nice series of posters exploring Nature and Us, using human body shapes to illustrate some of the ways our environments are changing, and the ways humans are effecting them. The beautiful illustrations also include many call-outs about how we can be better stewards of the natural world. Via Behance:

Nature and Us, is a personal study and graphical project that I have been working on, started in the background of 2018 summer, the hottest joint summer in UK’s record. We’re facing the biggest environmental challenge our generation has ever seen. Climate change is impacting on many of the things we love and cherish. It’s changing the seasons, upsetting the crops that feed us, and affecting precious species. The following are several topics on Water resources, Forest, Agriculture, Ecosystem, Biodiversity, Green Footprint, how human activities and the nature impact each other.

Art

Rueben Wu’s Terminus

October 5, 2018 Art

We’ve been following Reuben Wu as an artist, sharing his beautiful and exciting work that pairs natural landscapes with geometric light-art ‘drawn’ with the use of drones. It’s a fascinating way to showcase the natural world, and with his latest project, Wu attempts to tackle the disappearing beauty of Peru’s glaciers.

We say attempts because on his Behance page, he admits the project had a number of weather and technical-related problems, from extreme cold to elevation issues, to fleeting battery life on his drones. At 17,000 feet, Cordillera Blanca is a stunning mountain range, yet with shrinking glaciers, a clear sign of climate change in action. Photographing the glaciers at night, Wu uncovers deeply beautiful depth and color in the ice’s form. And though he only had one successful ‘light painting’ with his drones, he was able to capture some truly impressive perspectives on nature’s icy creations.