Exoteric environmentalism

Hello. This is my main blog in which I attempt to communicate my thoughts and feelings about my passion and main work interest: how environmental issues affect people, wildlife and the planet.

If viewing a single post, click on the heading above to access my full blog. You can also select the links below:

'What is my blog all about?'- for more info on this blog.

'Photography'- to see my (and other people's) photographic posts of Scotland and elsewhere.

'Interconnected nomad'- for my side blog on my cycling experiences.

'Porridge of knowledge'- for my throwaway blog about everything.

I'm on twitter as @jamesbonner82

Beautiful and informative- ‘Water in the Anthropocene’

Two interrelated weblinks caught my eye on social media this week- Time magazine’s ‘Timelapse’, which integrates Google Maps’ satellite imagery over the last 30 years- and the piece ‘When Earth is Scarred Forever’ by i09 (linked to via the ever insightful Stockholm Resilience Centre). Both highlight an array of images from our planet, in which human development and its impacts (from resource extraction, agricultural land use change, urbanisation, etc) can be seen in pretty significant, and dramatic, manifestations. Combining the two tools, and searching for some of the i09 examples using the Timelapse application, unearths (an appropriate term, considering the mining theme…) some quite remarkable examples of human generated global physical environmental impacts resulting from our recent, and ongoing, exploitation of the planet on an industrial scale in the era of the ‘anthropocene’.   Image- Mirny Mine, Russia: via aforementioned i09 article.

Two interrelated weblinks caught my eye on social media this week- Time magazine’s ‘Timelapse’, which integrates Google Maps’ satellite imagery over the last 30 years- and the piece ‘When Earth is Scarred Forever’ by i09 (linked to via the ever insightful Stockholm Resilience Centre).

Both highlight an array of images from our planet, in which human development and its impacts (from resource extraction, agricultural land use change, urbanisation, etc) can be seen in pretty significant, and dramatic, manifestations. Combining the two tools, and searching for some of the i09 examples using the Timelapse application, unearths (an appropriate term, considering the mining theme…) some quite remarkable examples of human generated global physical environmental impacts resulting from our recent, and ongoing, exploitation of the planet on an industrial scale in the era of the ‘anthropocene’.  

Image- Mirny Mine, Russia: via aforementioned i09 article.

Landscapes of colour on Earth Day

Landscapes of colour on Earth Day

Mountain valley at dawn, somewhere over the Icelandic highlands

Mountain valley at dawn, somewhere over the Icelandic highlands

Godafoss waterfall at dusk, North-East Iceland

Godafoss waterfall at dusk, North-East Iceland

Lake Myvatn before dawn, North-East Iceland

Lake Myvatn before dawn, North-East Iceland

Myvatn Nature Baths, North-East Iceland

Myvatn Nature Baths, North-East Iceland

Sulphuric pools and steaming vents, near Hverir, North-East Iceland

Sulphuric pools and steaming vents, near Hverir, North-East Iceland

Following up from my last post on the National Geographic’s Space Picture of the Year, the Guardian’s Travel Photographer of the Year 2012 is another compilation of beautiful, and evocative, photographic images taken over the last 12 months.  Similarly, many of the photographs convey a story of humanity’s interaction and interconnection with nature, wildlife, and the wider environment- from an Indonesian fisherman, a young Kenyan boy guarding his family’s cows, to a stunning desert nightscape in Namibia. While I have to acknowledge the winning photographer Craig Easton’s effort ‘Dreich’- beautifully capturing dark and foreboding rain clouds off the west coast of Scotland (as having spent my life living in this part of the world, I am well aware of such weather that often, quite literally, comes with the territory)- I think my favourite has to be the above picture, taken by Alessandra Meniconzi, of a young Siberian girl collecting wood from the forest. I’ve undertaken the Trans-Siberian railway through mid-winter Siberia and Mongolia- and exactly 3 years since I was there, this image really brings back some memories of the landscape and environment. Like the space photographs from National Geographic, the wide open expanse of the Siberian terrain, particularly in the deep freeze of mid-winter, are an unforgettable reminder of your own insignificance, in scale, to the wider natural world.  

Following up from my last post on the National Geographic’s Space Picture of the Year, the Guardian’s Travel Photographer of the Year 2012 is another compilation of beautiful, and evocative, photographic images taken over the last 12 months. 

Similarly, many of the photographs convey a story of humanity’s interaction and interconnection with nature, wildlife, and the wider environment- from an Indonesian fisherman, a young Kenyan boy guarding his family’s cows, to a stunning desert nightscape in Namibia.

While I have to acknowledge the winning photographer Craig Easton’s effort ‘Dreich’- beautifully capturing dark and foreboding rain clouds off the west coast of Scotland (as having spent my life living in this part of the world, I am well aware of such weather that often, quite literally, comes with the territory)- I think my favourite has to be the above picture, taken by Alessandra Meniconzi, of a young Siberian girl collecting wood from the forest. I’ve undertaken the Trans-Siberian railway through mid-winter Siberia and Mongolia- and exactly 3 years since I was there, this image really brings back some memories of the landscape and environment.

Like the space photographs from National Geographic, the wide open expanse of the Siberian terrain, particularly in the deep freeze of mid-winter, are an unforgettable reminder of your own insignificance, in scale, to the wider natural world.  

The approaching end of a (western) calendar year is always an opportunity for a number of the ‘best of the year’ photographic collections/awards to be put together- and the National Geographic’s ‘Best Space Pictures of the Year 2012’ is one of my favourites I have seen this year. The pictures above are taken from the collection- which I have chosen because of the different perspectives and scales they capture (and also because of their individual beauty) on the subject.

From a perspective of space from Earth (of the Milky Way over a Turkish landscape), of a counter view of Earth from space (of phytoplankton blooming in the South Atlantic Ocean), and of a photograph depicting a nebula in a star constellation (an image appropriately named ‘Thor’s Helmet’)- each captures, and are a reminder of, the cosmological interconnectedness of the natural environment in which we, as humans, are a tiny part of- from micro organic phytoplankton in our planet’s seas, to immense interstellar nebula.