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Animals

Species We Will Lose Due to Climate Change

June 1, 2017 Animals

We all know that climate change is real, is happening, and that we as humans are responsible. What you might not know, however, are the species that are already being severely affected by rising temperatures, melting sea ice, and deforestation and habitat loss. Some of the most iconic animals on our planet are on a course for extinction, in the next few decades. These aren’t strange, unheard of animals. These are some of the big, obvious, gorgeous creatures that we learn about as children, and have been a beautiful part of our planet for millennia.

Does this list make you sick to your stomach? Does it bother you that your children or grandchildren may never know some of these beautiful, intelligent, special animals? It surely should. We know the stakes, we know the culprits, we know how to clean up our planet and protect the habitats that wild animals depend on. It’s a question of willpower, of bravery, and of heart. Which side of history do you want to be on?

amur leopard moss and fog — Due for Extinction: Amur Leopard

panda moss and fog — Due for Extinction: Panda

Thanks to the World Wildlife Foundation for their photographs, and the great work they’re doing to bring attention to these species, and what efforts are being done to protect them. Hint- they need your help.

orangutan moss and fog — Due for Extinction: Orangutan

polar bear moss and fog — Due for Extinction: Polar Bear

rhino moss and fog — Due for Extinction: Rhino

tiger moss and fog — Due for Extinction: Tiger

Art

Stunning Climate Initiative Poster

May 31, 2017 Art

In response to our joke of a president pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, we’re going to post stories this week about climate change, and the ways in which protecting our planet is good for everything. If you’re smart, green investments can be highly lucrative, while also protecting our fragile planet, as it goes through it’s toughest test in millennia.

Luckily, there are smart and talented people from all over the world working to solve this enormous problem. Artist Florent Hauchard from Paris has a beautiful poster for the Fondation BNP PARIBAS. Dynamic and full of great colorful detail, Hauchard pays tribute to air, land, and sea. Below you can see some of the poster’s aspects in greater detail, and get a sense for how the whole thing came together. Via Behance.

Automotive

Industrial Scars on the Earth

May 24, 2017 Automotive

Photographer and activist J. Henry Fair has a chilling series of photography that is beautiful on first glimpse, but is actually all images of industrial pollution scars left on our fragile planet.

The places of such pollution and industrial waste come from tailing ponds, oil spills, and other areas where heavy metals are processed. Fair manages to get access to these areas and showcase the way that industrial recklessness scars Earth in ways that won’t heal for generations. It’s all part of his book, Industrial Scars: The Hidden Costs of Consumption a sobering and eye opening project. Important and sobering work. Via MyModernMet, all photos by J. Henry Fair.

Beautiful upon first glance, but closer inspection shows spilled oil at Fort McMurray, Canada, where oil sands are wreaking havoc on the environment.

Advertising

Destroying Nature is Destroying Life

April 27, 2017 Advertising

A gorgeous and powerful campaign for environmental group Robin Wood features brilliantly rendered scenes of habitat destruction, superimposed in the form of the creatures they’re hurting. The agency Grabarz & Partner created the posters using painstakingly rendered 3D forms, and adding in details like oil rigs, fires, and industrial machinery. Their tagline: Destroying nature is destroying life. The result is a painfully effective look at what happens to the natural world when humans act with indifference and greed toward nature. Beautiful and sad work, Via Behance:

Art

Earth Day 2017

April 21, 2017 Art

Mother Earth is our one and only habitable planet. It’s a precious, living gem in a cold and airless solar system. Those hoping to live on Mars might reconsider, when they realize they’d have to be in a bubble the entire time. Regardless, we’re treating our planet like it’s our own personal plaything, a carefree toy we can chew up and spit out. Just when the USA was on the brink of a positive turning point on climate, we took a giant step backwards, electing an orange-faced child with money for a brain, and a smoldering lump of coal for a heart. We mean it, he’s a terrible, terrible person to put in charge of anything, let alone the richest country on earth.

Earth Day 2017 marks a time when we should reflect on our natural world, and the vast riches it provides us with, for free. Economists put an estimate of $55 trillion dollars a year in value that the natural world bestows on us every single year. So this Earth Day, give a little reflection and appreciation towards our brilliant earth, and all it provides for us. This beautiful illustration is by Brian Miller for REI.

Animals

Endangered Tropical Fish in Bold Color

April 14, 2017 Animals

It’s no secret that our oceans are in trouble. With the collapsing Great Barrier Reef, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and decades of pollution and overfishing, it’s a wonder that the oceans are alive at all. We MUST as a species start caring for our planet, if we want it to continue providing for us. In a collaboration for the Endangered Wildlife Project, Matt W. Moore has a series of brightly illustrated tropical fish, all of which are endangered.

The beautifully clean and colorful illustrations should capture our collective attention, so we can start thinking about earth’s creatures in a more protective light. Via Behance:

Animals

National Parks 2050

April 13, 2017 Animals

In a grim yet horrifyingly accurate portrayal, artist Hannah Rothstein beautifully creates dystopian future versions of classic National Park posters. The designs for the 2050 versions are set next to their classic counterpoints, showing the devastation that very well may occur unless we start waking up to the realities of climate change. And our very horrible president isn’t going to be doing any favors to our parks, in that regard. Rothstein is selling her work in poster form, with 25% of profits going to climate related causes.

From the artist’s website:

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” -Aldous Huxley

National Parks 2050 is a call to action. Drawing upon the classic National Parks posters, this series shows how climate change will affect seven of America’s most beloved landscapes. In doing so, it makes climate change feel close to home and hard to ignore.

Animals

Two Thirds of the Great Barrier Reef Now Bleached

April 10, 2017 Animals

Considered one of the true treasures of Planet Earth, the Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral system on the planet, able to be seen from space. And now, due to human caused climate change, it’s been severely, severely damaged, possibly forever. Coral bleaching, caused by high water temperatures, has been happening on the reef for the last several years. But a severely hot summer there this year has increased the bleaching to reach two thirds of the entire reef system. This means bright, colorful, living coral has now been killed, leaving white skeletons of the coral behind. The chart below show the amount of bleaching from 2016 to 2017. Sadly, the trend is not going in the right direction. Via James Cook University:

With such a huge area of bleaching, what can be done to stem the tide? Well, cutting emissions is the first critical step. And judging by current politics, that seems uncertain. For reference, a healthy, beautiful section of the Great Barrier Reef looks like the below photo:

Documentary Film

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power

March 29, 2017 Documentary Film

Was Al Gore prescient? Was he lucky? How did he predict all of these catastrophes related to extreme weather? He didn’t predict it. He knew it. Because the signs were there. Because the science was there. Most of the world, on the other hand, seemed to shrug, in the early 2000s, because….it was inconvenient. Hmm…..

Fast forward to today, where we have a child as president. A buffoon portraying a businessman portraying a president, surrounded by hapless creeps who would rather profit off of their today than worry about the tomorrow. That’s the truth. Like it or not, we are in trouble.

Al Gore has gathered footage from unprecedented storms and catastrophes over the last fifteen years, and edited it into his new film, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power. It’s most definitely a must-see, a film that will scare and anger you, and hopefully, just hopefully, push you to do something about it. Because as we like to say here on Moss and Fog, this is our only planet.

Future

World’s Biggest Solar Farm

March 9, 2017 Future

China has recently completed construction of the world’s biggest solar farm. Called Longyangxia Dam Solar Park, the operation generates 850 Megawatts of electricity, which for the uninitiated, is enormous. Containing over four million solar panels, the plant can generate enough power from the sun to run nearly a quarter of a million homes.

The Guardian has a good look at the new solar park, part of China’s giant effort to clean up their electrical generation. As solar prices get cheaper, look for more of these giant installations to help take our planet out of the age of coal, oil and gas.

In terms of personal solar, paying for residential solar installation is going to help you to be a part of a more sustainable future for you and your family. You can save money, do more for the planet and benefit from the power of the sun – what’s not to love?

Giant solar installation as seen from satellites

Art

All We Have in Common is Earth

February 17, 2017 Art

all-we-have-in-common-moss-and-fog

Bigger than any human concern, far more important than social current events, is the health of our planet. Humans have pushed Mother Earth to the brink, and we’re starting to see the effects of our unchecked arrogance, greed, and disrespect.

wake-up-moss-and-fog

I find a small amount of solace in these lovely watercolor pieces by Yevheniia Hlova of Spain. Entitled Wake Up, they give soft yet obvious wake up calls to us, as humans.

forests-lungs-moss-and-fog nature-treasure-moss-and-fog oceans-life-support

Animals

Humans Tangled in Ocean Trash

January 30, 2017 Animals

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Trash in our oceans is a huge problem. Wildlife routinely gets caught and snarled in our careless plastic, debris and other junk. While most of us are aware of this issue, it’s easy to turn a blind eye, removing ourselves from the problem, and the solution. Jeremy Carroll has a series of photos showing humans ensnared in ocean junk, trying to bring a sense of humanity to the issue, while showing how destructive our careless actions are.

“Today’s state of ocean pollution is affecting marine wildlife in a dramatic way. [We] humans are responsible for this disaster and we are yet to suffer the consequences. This photographic work translates the issues marine wildlife is facing in regards to marine pollution by creating a human analogy on plastic ingestion and entanglement.”

entanglement_01-jpg-644x0_q70_crop-smart entanglement_02-jpg-644x0_q70_crop-smart entanglement_03-jpg-644x0_q70_crop-smart entanglement_04-jpg-644x0_q70_crop-smart entanglement_05-jpg-644x0_q70_crop-smart

Future

Idiots at the Helm

November 9, 2016 Future

I don’t care what party you belong to, or where your beliefs lay: November 8, 2016 was a disaster for our natural world.

President-elect Trump is by far the least qualified, most dangerous candidate to ever be elected to the highest office in the world, and he brings with him an enormous amount of miseducation, deceit, and outright lies when it comes to climate change and the natural world.

In electing Trump, the non-college-educated in this country have sent a message, although I don’t think they know what that message is, or what it means. What those of us with college educations and advanced degrees know, is that the next president of the United States has incredibly important decisions to make when it comes to the health of planet earth.

Trump’s vision for America is one of the early 1900’s, where we exploited resources at any cost, planet be damned. Burn all the coal you want, offshore oil wells, the more the merrier! “A Chinese hoax”, he says, when describing climate change.

What most Americans don’t know, and possibly don’t care about, is the global ramifications of a superpower like us, flouting science and ignoring the perils all around us. Increasing floods, hurricanes, landslides, as well as droughts and wildfires, are all to accelerate under a reality-denying administration like Trump’s.

In an age where knowledge is at your literal fingertips, people would rather elect a narcissistic, reality-TV star to power than a woman with decades of incredible experience. That alone creates a lot of cynicism. But combine that with incredible global peril, and a man who has promised to roll back President Obama’s hard-fought environmental achievements, and your head wants to explode.

At a time when the earth’s biological systems are failing, an absolute disaster of a man gets elected President, thanks to swarms of ignorant, uneducated white people.

So go ahead, blow your mountains apart for coal, Appalachia. C’mon, Wisconsin, let’s see more of your “rollin coal”, it’s fun to angrily pollute and offend!

I am truly scared for our future, and those of you with any type of education should be, too. The planet is in for dire days ahead.

Thanks, Trump.

Design

Saros, A Desalination Device Powered By The Waves it Rides On

October 30, 2016 Design

3065006-poster-1280-saros

Much of the world faces the problem of water scarcity, despite being surrounded by our massive, saltwater oceans. SAROS is a groundbreaking new device that harnesses the power of waves to produce drinkable water through desalination. Designed as a buoy, SAROS gathers it’s power from the swells and movements of the ocean waves, and creates freshwater through reverse osmosis. Currently fundraising on IndieGogo, SAROS is one of the first zero-emission desalination technologies to be deployed.

Animals

Vibrant Coral

September 28, 2016 Animals

Around the globe, coral is in danger. Ocean acidification, warming temperatures, and pollution have all caused huge damage to reefs, and slow growing corals. Antonio Rodríguez Canto spent a year photographing coral to capture these colorful time-lapse movements. Biodiversity on the planet is crucial, and videos like these help illustrate the beauty of planet earth, and hopefully spur action to save these fragile ecosystems.

Art

Ice Watch Paris

December 7, 2015 Art

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In a dramatic and poignant fashion, twelve giant blocks of ice from Greenland’s melting glaciers were placed outside of the Place du Panthéon in Paris. The very real and fleeting installation by artist Olafur Eliasson coincides with the second week of the Paris Climate Talks, or COP21. These enormous, 10-ton blocks represent the urgent nature of the climate talks, and are a reminder that time is indeed, melting away. And not to worry, these blocks were salvaged after already calving off their glacier, into the waters of the Nuuk Fjord. Very impactful stuff. Via onEarth:

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