Planet Earth doesn’t exactly have a birthday. But every year on April 22, we celebrate Earth Day — the anniversary of the moment the environmental movement went mass.
According to EarthDay.org, Earth Day was founded in 1970 by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson, who called for a “national teach-in on the environment” after witnessing the terrible effects of the 1969 oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. The first Earth Day brought major actions to the streets of many major U.S. Cities. For fun, check out this vintage newscast from after that first Earth Day.
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Earth Day went global in 1990 and, today, is celebrated in an estimated 192 countries. Which makes today the perfect day to take time to appreciate the land, air, oceans and wildlife that sustain us — and to think about how our lives, both individually and as a group, affect the environment. To that end, here are 12 talks — some reflective, some terrifying, some beautiful, some galvanizing — to watch today.
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Al Gore: New thinking on the climate crisis Former vice president Al Gore flipped the way so many think about global warming in the documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Two years after the doc’s release, he returned to the TED stage with a new presentation … showing that the impact of climate change may be even worse than scientists had predicted. |
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Louie Schwartzberg: Nature. Beauty. Gratitude. Louie Schwartzberg is a master of time-lapse photography, and his images of flowers dancing as they bloom will pierce your heart. In this talk from TEDxSF, he invites Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast to lead a meditation on gratefulness for the beauty and bounty that surrounds us. |
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Sylvia Earle’s TED Prize wish to protect our oceans Ocean researcher Sylvia Earle knows that the waters of the deep contain amazing wonder. And yet, she worries that they are quickly becoming a “paradise lost.” Watch Earle accept the TED Prize at TED2009 and unveil Mission Blue, an initiative to protect our oceans. As she puts it, “No blue, no green. If you think the ocean isn’t important, imagine Earth without it. Mars comes to mind.” |
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John Doerr sees salvation and profit in greentech Silicon Valley legend John Doerr had an ‘aha’ moment when his 15 year old daughter accused him and his generation of ruining the planet. In this talk from TED2007, he gives a personal, heartfelt call for investors to look at clean energy, and for big companies to make the little changes that will add up over time. |
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Vicki Arroyo: Let’s prepare for our new climate As our climate changes, many areas of the world — including major cities like New Orleans — are at risk of flooding and drought. In this talk from TEDGlobal 2012, Vivki Arroyo calls on use to prepare now, by sharing examples of cities that are planning ahead and implementing big projects that take these risks as a given. |
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Karen Bass: Unseen footage, untamed nature Karen Bass shoots incredible wildlife footage for National Geographic and the BBC. In this talk from TED2012, she shares awe-inducing video — from the tube-lipped nectar bat feeding on a flower to grizzly bears emerging from hibernation. |
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James Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change Scientist James Hansen saw it as his moral imperative to speak out about the rapidly changing planet he saw in his work. In this talk from TED2012, Hansen explains why global warming is happening (“Adding CO2 to the air is like throwing another blanket on the bed”) and calls on us to start reversing it. |
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Capt. Charles Moore on the seas of plastic We recycle a “diddly-point-squat” percentage of the plastics we use. The result — they end up in the oceans. In this talk from TED2009, Captain Charles Moore shows us the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — an endless floating wasteland of plastic. His call to all of us: to stop our throwaway mentality and stop the plastic on land. |
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David Keith’s unusual climate change idea Environmental scientist David Keith bemoans the fact that we’ve been reading the same headlines about the environment since the 1950s, while achieving very little to change them. In this talk from TEDSalon 2007 Hot Science, he shares a bold idea: What if we released a huge cloud of ash into the atmosphere to deflect sunlight and heat? |
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Cesar Harada: A novel idea for cleaning up oil spills When TED Senior Fellow Cesar Harada heard about the BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico, he quit his job and set about designing an efficient way to soak up oil. At the TEDxSummit, he shares his creation — a highly-manueverable boat that is capable of cleaning large tracts of oil quickly. |
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Alex Steffen: The route to a sustainable future If people across the globe had the ecological footprint of those in the United States, we’d need 5 to 7 planets to sustain it all, says Alex Steffen at TEDGlobal 2005. But of course, we only get one. Here, he asks us to actively reduce our footprint, especially as the consumer lifestyle spreads across the globe. |
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James Balog: Time-lapse proof of extreme ice loss Thanks to photographer James Balog’s Extreme Ice Survey, we can actually see glaciers recede before our eyes — the process of several years condensed into a few seconds. In this talk from TEDGlobal 2009, Balog shares how he brings together art and science to deepen all our understanding of how quickly ice is disappearing. (See also: Camille Seaman’s haunting photos of polar ice.) |
This piece originally posted on April 22, 2013 and was resurfaced on April 22, 2015.
]]>If you haven’t seen the TED-Ed Lesson “A rare, spectacular total eclipse of the sun,” you should really check it out. Not only will you learn a good deal about the science behind these extraordinary events, you’ll also get to soak in some beautiful and detailed artistry from animator Bevan Lynch. We caught up with Lynch for a quick, behind-the-scenes look at what it was like to create an entire universe from scratch, with a few Earth-shattering pitfalls along the way.
How do you come up with the ideas for your animations?
Pre-production for me is often the most fun and also the most challenging part of the animation process. There are so many fun choices to make, but knowing which are the right ones can be tough.
Visual ideas come to me in many different ways. Sometimes I’ll read a script and know exactly how I want to represent it. If inspiration doesn’t come to me right away, I like to watch every film I can think of in a similar or relevant subject and have a massive late-night movie marathon. That usually does the trick. Knowing that I have landed on the right idea is another matter. I know what I like, but people often have very different aesthetic tastes. So, after interpreting the initial brief as best I can, I tend to rely on gut instinct in conjunction with constructive criticism from other key creatives on the project.
I usually try to start a conversation about the visual treatment of an animation by creating several “style frames” or mockups of what a final frame might look like in a variety of visual styles. For the solar eclipse lesson, I created three very different visual looks to choose from. You can see them below.
The first two looks required only digital painting to achieve. The last look — the one we ultimately chose for the final animation—required the creation of physical models of the Earth and Moon and the filming of smoke elements for the Sun’s corona. This look seemed to get people making happy noises, and I really liked the kitschy, ’50s B-movie, sci-fi feel of it. So I went with that.
How did you build the models?
The models I created for the style frames were plaster of Paris painted over a polystyrene ball and then details were sculpted and painted on top. Each one took about a day to make. Unfortunately, the second I took the photo of the Earth, the wind blew it over, and it smashed all over the floor.
I set about making a new Earth, a better Earth—an Earth sculpted in Plasticine, molded in silicone and cast in UltraCal (a very hard-wearing plaster). I had the mold, so if I dropped this one, I could easily make another. This second Earth took almost four days to make. The loss of the first model was definitely the biggest challenge I encountered in this lesson. Not only did it set me back almost a week in the schedule, but it was utterly demoralizing to see it smash all over the ground. Although, it did make for a good photograph.
I shot the models in several different lighting conditions depending on the shot, including a flat-lit version that could be post lit for shots where the light needed to change over time. The photos were cleaned up in Photoshop and the elements composited in After Effects.
Did you know much about solar eclipses before you started working on the lesson? Learn anything fun?
I knew a fair bit about solar eclipses before starting this lesson, but what I didn’t realize was that the corona is only going to be visible to us on Earth for a certain amount of time, and then eclipses will never look the same again. I find that a bit sad, but also very lucky that we haven’t already missed it!
This post originally ran on the TED-Ed Blog. More great stories from our education initiative:
- May the Fourth be with you: A TED-Ed Lesson on the birth of the lightsaber
- Students go silent to raise awareness for those with no voice
- 5 TED-Ed Lessons that are out of this world
Also, check out the lessons “How atoms bond” and “What is the shape of a molecule?” for more of Bevan’s animations.
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This mosaic view of Saturn was taken while Cassini was about 500,000 miles away from the planet. Images shot on October 17, 2012. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI.
In her 2007 TED Talk, “This is Saturn,” planetary scientist Carolyn Porco blew some minds with images taken by Cassini, the robot spaceship launched in October 1997 to study and photograph Saturn and its accompanying moons.
Carolyn Porco: This is Saturn
Gleaning “oohs” and “aahs” from the assembled TED audience, she concluded with a stunning shot of a backlit picture of Saturn and its rings — with Earth in the background. It was quite a moment.
“People erupted to their feet. Obviously we Earthlings resonate with seeing ourselves as this dot in the distance,” Porco remembered of the moment in a recent telephone call. “And then I realized it was such a wasted opportunity. If people had known in advance that their picture was being taken, there would be an opportunity for high-fiving all over the planet!”
That time is now. Between 9:27 pm and 9:42 pm GMT on July 19th, Cassini will again be positioned to take another photograph of Saturn and its entire ring system during a total eclipse of the Sun. Once again, Earth will show up in the background. And this time, Porco is calling for everyone to take 15 minutes to step outside, gaze up into the blackness of space, be grateful for our existence, and maybe even wave. “Take a moment to reflect on our cosmic whereabouts and the significance of the accomplishments that allow this interplanetary photo session to happen,” she urges. “Think about how precious life is, about our place in the cosmos. Look up and smile.”
Porco is dubbing this “The Day The Earth Smiled,” and there are ways to get involved beyond waving and smiling. With an advisory board including many other TEDsters — like physicist Brian Cox and the so-called “Father of SETI,” Frank Drake — Porco is also organizing two contests calling for Earthling participation. Check them out — and get involved:
Message to the Milky Way: On July 19th, create an original image that best represents Earth. Porco explains: “If you were to sit down with an alien and you wanted to show him/her/it one picture that says it all about what is unique about your home planet, what would that picture have in it?” The winning image will be included in a message broadcast to the Milky Way using a large radio telescope (likely, the Arecibo telescope.)
A Musical Celebration: Are you a composer? Create an uplifting composition to celebrate The Day The Earth Smiled.
Porco hopes to raise funding that will allow winning sounds and images to be composited and released in a multimedia presentation that will celebrate the “gasp-worthy, goosebump-raising day Earthlings knew their picture was being taken from a billion miles away.” She adds: “It will be a splendid interplanetary moment of cosmic self-awareness.”
Are you in?
]]>The vast tail of a Southern right whale, photographed near Argentina in 2004.
Ask photojournalists to name a peer they admire, and Sebastião Salgado’s name is sure to crop up. The Brazilian is renowned for the long-term projects he undertakes, devoting years at a time to documenting the story of a particular people or the evolution of a certain place.
Sebastião Salgado: The silent drama of photography
As he describes in the talk he gave at TED2013, his attention to detail and his personal attachment to his subjects caused health problems that nearly killed him.
Thankfully, he didn’t give up. His most recent project is Genesis, which he describes as “my love letter to the planet” and for which he spent eight years traveling the world to photograph humans, animals and nature in their native glory. (To read more details about Salgado’s process, see this rather lovely Q&A with TED photographer Ryan Lash.) The resulting black-and-white images include the astonishing shot, above, of a Southern right whale, which he photographed in the Valdés Peninsula in Argentina in 2004. Together, the series forms the focus of a book (including a vast, two-volume edition that costs $9,000 and comes complete with a wooden stand designed by the Japanese architect Tadao Ando; mere mortals can pick up a hardcover version for $69.99). There’s also a documentary, Shade and Light, filmed by Salgado’s son and Wim Wenders, and exhibitions in cities around the world.
The scale is appropriate. This is truly breathtaking work. And, for all that the scenes Salgado captures will likely feel alien to most of us, the images are imbued with no less than the spirit of humanity. If that sounds overblown, seriously, check these out:
An iceberg photographed on the Antarctic Peninsula. Note the “castle tower,” at top right, apparently carved in the ice by wind erosion. (2005.)
Waura Indians fish in the Puilanga Lake near their village in the Upper Xingu region of Brazil’s Mato Grosso state. (2005.)
The Mursi and the Surma women in Ethiopia are, Salgado says, the last women in the world to wear lip plates. It’s unclear precisely why or how this custom evolved, but it is a mark of women of high birth. (2007.)
Teureum is the leader of the Mentawai clan, which lives on Siberut Island in West Sumatra. The shaman is preparing a filter for sago. (2008.)
Women of the Zo’é village of Towari Ypy in Brazil. (2009.)
Look, ma! No hands! Salgado photographed these chinstrap penguins on icebergs between the Zavodovski and Visokoi islands in the South Sandwich Islands, near Antarctica. (2009.)
Shot from Navajo Native American territory, this breathtaking image captures the junction of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers, at the gateway to the Grand Canyon National Park, in Arizona in the United States. (2010.)
Light streams across an elephant disappearing into the bush. Kafue National Park, Zambia. (2010.)
The Nenet people, living deep within the Yamal peninsula in Siberia, inside the Arctic Circle. (2011.)