https://www.scmp.com/rss/510162/feed Peter Christie is a science journalist and author who writes frequently about conservation, climate change, and other pressing issues in environmental science. A former reporter and editor with newspapers in Asia and North America, he is the author of more than half a dozen books about wildlife and climate change for adults and children. His most recent book is “Unnatural Companions: Rethinking Our Love of Pets in an Age of Wildlife Extinction.” en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet by George Monbiot, pub. Penguin Books The week Russia invaded Ukraine, bread prices in Yemen jumped 35 per cent. In Lebanon, flour-deprived bakeries were suddenly forced to close, and cooking oil in Kenya all but disappeared from store shelves. The war – in a region that supplies about a third of the world’s wheat and three-quarters of its sunflower oil – hit the pause button on the global food supply, and billions around the planet felt... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3187749/food-without-farms-blueprint-feeding-world-and-saving?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3187749/food-without-farms-blueprint-feeding-world-and-saving?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 05 Aug 2022 22:15:18 +0000 Ways of Being by James Bridle, pub. Farrar, Straus and Giroux When it comes to predicting earthquakes, sheep know something we don’t. For centuries, Italy’s shepherds have claimed that their flocks become agitated days or hours before a tremor – stories long dismissed as superstition. Recently, however, German scientists attached GPS devices to Italian sheep, goats, cows and dogs and tracked their behaviour via signals beamed to the International Space Station. The data, analysed by a complex... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3182059/how-we-can-tap-non-human-intelligence-other-animals?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3182059/how-we-can-tap-non-human-intelligence-other-animals?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 17 Jun 2022 11:15:20 +0000 The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires That Run the World By Oliver Milman, pub. W.W. Norton & Co If the downside to a world without bugs could be summed up in an image, it might be a picture of Sichuan’s orchard workers behaving like bees. High on ladders or clinging to branches, farm workers in one of China’s premier apple- and pear-growing regions use long wands with feathery ends to dab pollen from a can into one fruit tree blossom after another. Years ago, the bees that once did... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3171803/how-wipeout-insects-butterflies-flies-bees-risks-food?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3171803/how-wipeout-insects-butterflies-flies-bees-risks-food?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 25 Mar 2022 11:15:11 +0000 Circular Design for Fashion by Ellen MacArthur Foundation Creative designers give me hope. The imaginative people whose job it is to dream up striking images, fantastic furniture or beautiful clothing solve problems differently from the rest of us. While most, including businesspeople, politicians and even engineers, typically look to practical, economical solutions, designers consider something else as well, something more human: they think about how things look and how we feel about... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3169373/gucci-gap-stella-mccartney-how-fashion-trying-be?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3169373/gucci-gap-stella-mccartney-how-fashion-trying-be?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 05 Mar 2022 10:15:16 +0000 A tornado of falcons is something to see. Many years ago, I watched six young peregrine falcons whip themselves into one over a lake in the Canadian wilderness. Back then, peregrines were at risk of extinction from decades of chemical pollution. I worked for three summers releasing captive-bred young ones back into the wild to help save the species. Peregrines – called shaheen falcons in some parts of Asia – occur on almost every continent and are the planet’s fastest-moving animals, diving... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3163365/why-humans-need-rediscover-sense-wonder-nature-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3163365/why-humans-need-rediscover-sense-wonder-nature-and?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 15 Jan 2022 11:45:11 +0000 How to Love Animals in a Human-Shaped World by Henry Mance, pub. Viking Rob Puddicombe’s alleged crime was trying to save rats. Two decades ago, the animal activist was arrested for scattering an antidote to rat poison across a small island park off the coast of California. He was hoping to spare thousands of rats, invaders to the island, from being poisoned. Park authorities wanted the rodents dead to save native animals, such as Xantus’ murrelets and Anacapa deer mice, from extinction.... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3143986/cognitive-dissonance-adoring-pets-while-eating-meat?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3143986/cognitive-dissonance-adoring-pets-while-eating-meat?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 07 Aug 2021 11:45:04 +0000 Planet Palm by Jocelyn C. Zuckerman, pub. The New Press The first time my mind turned to the problem of palm oil was during the summer of 2015, when international headlines described a greasy, black cloud improbably covering much of Southeast Asia. Billowing, acrid smoke from Indonesian wildfires cloaked the region, choking cities and people from Sumatra to Singapore, up the Malaysian peninsula as far north as southern Thailand. The infernos swallowed more than 2.6 million hectares of jungle and... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3138856/palm-oil-poster-child-globalisations-wrongs-and-its?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3138856/palm-oil-poster-child-globalisations-wrongs-and-its?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 28 Jun 2021 06:45:16 +0000