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Culture

Sparks

COP28 and the Fleece Quotient

You know you’re at a climate event when ...

Culture

The Complicated Case for Pollotarianism

America should eat more chicken. But how many is too many?

Green
Culture

Inside the Weird World of Succulent Smuggling

A conversation with the author of The Cactus Hunters: Desire and Extinction in the Illicit Succulent Trade

Green
Culture

The Age of Inescapable Wildfire

A conversation with Manjula Martin about her new book The Last Fire Season.

Yellow

Prince William Announces the Earthshot Prize Winners

They include startups focused on protecting Andean forests, recycling batteries, and setting up a carbon market for soil.

Green

What Would You Spend to Save San Francisco’s Ferry Building?

The effort to preserve the beloved landmark from sea-level rise epitomizes an existential struggle for historic waterfronts

Blue
Sparks

‘Planet Earth III’ Is a Poignant Reminder of What We’re Fighting For

It’s back. It’s better than ever. And it’s going to break your heart.

Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

David Attenborough is not mad, he’s just disappointed.

At 97 years old, the narrator of the Planet Earth series returns to guide us through the nature docuseries’ third installment, which becomes available for U.S. audiences this weekend . Maybe I’d just forgotten how harrowing stories of animal survival can be in the seven years since the release of Planet Earth II , but other reviewers seem to agree : Planet Earth III has an especially melancholic edge.

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Economy

Is Deep-Sea Mining Really Necessary?

A conversation with Deep Rising filmmaker Matthieu Rytz about the promise and the peril of mining the ocean floor.

<p>Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images</p>

“To say, ‘Don’t harm the ocean’ — it is the easiest message in the world, right? You just have to show a photo of a turtle with a straw in its nose,” Michael Lodge, the secretary general of the U.N.’s International Seabed Authority, told The New York Times last year. “Everybody in Brooklyn can then say, ‘I don’t want to harm the ocean.’ But they sure want their Teslas.”

Canadian filmmaker Matthieu Rytz apparently didn’t get the memo. Deep Rising , his new documentary narrated by Jason Momoa, aims at one of the great contradictions of the energy transition: that deep-sea mining could provide a wealth of copper, nickel, and cobalt, the battery materials that are critically needed for EVs and clean-energy storage — and could also trigger ecological collapse in the fragile Pacific Ocean abyss.

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