Published

1 year ago

December 24, 2024

Alice Rush

In a whale migration of epic proportions, a humpback has been recorded making a journey of more than 8,077 miles from Colombia to Tanzania.

A team of marine ecologists says it’s the longest individual whale migration ever recorded, topping the old record of 6,214 miles.

“Humpback whales have complex behavior, but to find an adult male whale halfway around the world is unexpected,” said co-author of the research Ted Cheeseman, a whale biologist at Southern Cross University, as reported by Science.

Cheeseman explained that, while a whale will sometimes move from one group to a different one nearby, in order to get all the way to Tanzania the humpback would have had to pass through two Atlantic-based groups.

“This is more ‘foreign’ than any humpback previously documented,” Cheeseman noted.

The observation of the whale’s extraordinary journey was enabled by modified facial recognition software that was designed to identify whales by the distinct shapes of their flukes.

Photos helped identify the whale in three locations. Kalashnikova et al., Royal Society Open Science, 2024

These “flukeprints” have saved marine scientists many hours of looking over photos in the hopes of uncovering a match based on distinctive markings such as scars, notches and color patterns, said marine mammal biologist Christie McMillan with the Fisheries and Oceans Canada Cetacean Research Program, who did not participate in the study.

A flukeprint is as unique as a fingerprint.

“It’s like a five-metre banner of their ID,” said Cheeseman, as The Guardian reported.

According to McMillan, the identification of the humpback who made the incredible journey is a testament to the usefulness of Happywhale.com, a fluke-identification program co-founded by Cheeseman 15 years ago that examines photographs by biologists as well as ordinary people, reported Science.

After decades of leading nature tours in polar regions, Cheeseman found that regular citizens like his customers could be a valuable source of data.

Dr. Vanessa Pirotta, a whale scientist who was not part of the research team, said the technology could “take a single day of whale watching and turn it into something remarkable,” as The Guardian reported.

Happywhale “is an incredibly valuable tool” that “has allowed for collaboration at a scale that could not have been possible before,” McMillan said in Science.

The Happywhale software compares each fluke image with more than 900,000 photographs from all over the world. Cheeseman said the database includes images of 109,000 individuals, including an “Old Timer” first spotted in 1972 who was seen again this past summer.

In 2013 and 2017, Happywhale identified the record-breaking humpback around summer breeding grounds off the coast of Colombia. In 2022, the whale was spotted again, this time near Zanzibar — an archipelago that is part of Tanzania — off the eastern African coast. The humpback’s distinctive fluke pattern matched the previous images captured in the eastern Pacific.

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The finding was surprising since humpbacks normally stay in the same ocean basin, plus the Colombia population typically migrates from its breeding grounds in South America to Antarctica feeding grounds.

“Humpback whales undertake one of the longest known migrations of any mammal. While their migration route generally extends between latitudes, the breeding stocks are longitudinally separated and display high site fidelity to their feeding grounds,” the study published in Royal Society Open Science said.

The researchers aren’t sure where the record-setting humpback traveled between sightings, but it is likely that the whale went to Antarctica before the southwestern Indian Ocean, the home of another breeding population, according to co-author of the study Ekaterina Kalashnikova, a marine biologist with the Bazaruto Center for Scientific Studies and founder of the Tanzania Cetaceans Program.

It is “very likely the distances [the animal swam] were even greater” than the documented distance, Kalashinikova said, as reported by Science.

“This could be a simple story of a deeply confused whale,” said marine biologist Alexander Werth of Hampden-Sydney College, who was not part of the research. “But it’s more likely that this intrepid explorer is a lonely male desperately seeking mates.”

The findings demonstrate Happywhale’s potential to leverage the observations of citizen scientists to add vital data in understudied areas of cetacean research, said marine biologist Lisa Kettemer with the Arctic University of Norway, who was not involved in the research.

“We are learning way more because we have the tools in place,” Pirotta said, as The Guardian reported. “As a world we are way more connected, and that means that the stories that we can tell about whales are more connected globally than ever before.”

Researchers weren’t yet sure if the new technology was providing more information about established whale movements or if the unusual patterns indicated a changing environment impacted by climate change.

“This extreme distance movement demonstrates behavioural plasticity, which may play an important role in adaptation strategies to global environmental changes and perhaps be an evolved response to various pressures, underlining the importance of consolidation of global datasets on wide-ranging marine mammals,” the study said.

The post Humpback Whale Makes Record Migration of Over 8,077 Miles From Colombia to Zanzibar appeared first on EcoWatch.

https://www.ecowatch.com/humpback-whale-migration-record.html

Green Living

Earth911 Inspiration: Be True to the Earth — Edward Abbey

Published

3 days ago

May 22, 2026

Alice Rush

This week’s quote is from American novelist and pioneering environmentalist Edward Abbey: “I am not an atheist but an earthiest. Be true to the earth.”

Earth911 inspirations. Post them, share your desire to help people think of the planet first, every day. Click the poster to get a larger image.

This poster was originally published on January 31, 2020.

The post Earth911 Inspiration: Be True to the Earth — Edward Abbey appeared first on Earth911.

https://earth911.com/inspire/earth911-inspiration-be-true-to-the-earth-edward-abbey/

Green Living

10 Books to Counter Consumerism

Published

5 days ago

May 20, 2026

Alice Rush

We are constantly bombarded by messages that tell us we need more stuff to be happy. The average American household contains around 300,000 items. The average home size has roughly tripled since the 1950s, and we still rent self-storage units by the millions to hold the overflow.

If you are rethinking your relationship to consumer culture – whether by choice or necessity – we’ve rounded up a list of books to make breaking up with consumerism and easier to understand which of our purchases are really necessary.

(Amazon links are provided for convenience. Your local library and independent bookstore are excellent first stops.)

Empire of Things

by Frank Trentmann

Trentmann’s sweeping 2016 history follows material culture from late Ming China and Renaissance Italy through to today’s global supply chains. He shows that consumerism is not a recent American export but a centuries-long international phenomenon, one that has reshaped households, cities, and the planet.

Empire of Things is dense but never preachy, and it gives readers the long view needed to understand what we are actually pushing back against.

No Logo – 10th Anniversary Edition

by Naomi Klein

No Logo was a movement manifesto when it appeared in 1999, and its dissection of branding, sweatshop labor, and corporate cultural takeover reads as prescient now that nearly every screen on earth is an ad surface. To take the next step, pair this read with Klein’s more recent argument about capitalism and ecological collapse, How To Change Everything.

The Conscious Closet

by Elizabeth L. Cline

Cline first exposed the human and environmental costs of fast fashion in Overdressed (2012). The Conscious Closet is the practical follow-up: how to clean out, repair, swap, and rebuild a wardrobe without funding the industry that produces an estimated 92 million tons of textile waste each year. It is the most actionable book on this list for anyone with a closet.

The Myths of Happiness

by Sonja Lyubomirsky

Psychology professor Sonja Lyubomirsky brings the receipts. In The Myths of Happiness, she walks through decades of research showing that material milestones — the raise, the upgrade, the bigger house — produce short bursts of satisfaction that fade quickly. What actually sustains wellbeing is rarely for sale. A clarifying read for anyone tempted to outshop their way to contentment.

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

by Jenny Odell

Waste is coming for our minds, too. Odell argues that our scarcest resource is attention — and that the platforms we use have turned it into the raw material of a trillion-dollar industry. How to Do Nothing is not a digital-detox manual; it is a case for reclaiming attention as a political act, with consequences for everything from bird-watching to civic life. More relevant in 2026 than when it was published in 2019.

Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

by Jason Hickel

Economic anthropologist Jason Hickel makes the case that endless GDP growth is incompatible with a livable planet, and that “green growth” is mostly a marketing exercise. Less Is More (2020) traces 500 years of capitalism and lays out what a degrowth economy could actually look like — one organized around human and ecological flourishing rather than perpetual expansion. The book has helped move degrowth from the margins of academia into the mainstream of the climate debate.

The Day the World Stops Shopping

by J.B. MacKinnon

Journalist J.B. MacKinnon designed The Day the World Stops Shopping (2021) as a thought experiment — what would happen if global consumption dropped by 25%? — and then watched the pandemic run a version of the experiment in real time. He travels from Namibian hunter-gatherer communities to American big-box retail, talking to economists, ecologists, and CEOs. The result is one of the most readable accounts of why we shop, why we cannot easily stop, and what we would gain if we did.

Consumed: The Need for Collective Change

by Aja Barber

Writer and consultant Aja Barber connects fashion, colonialism, and climate in Consumed (2021), a debut that has become a touchstone for the ethical fashion conversation. Where Cline writes as a practitioner, Barber writes as a systems critic, tracing the textile trade’s roots in slavery and racial inequality and asking readers to confront why we fill emotional gaps with purchases. Pointed, generous, and built to be read in two sittings.

Wasteland: The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future

by Oliver Franklin-Wallis

If consumerism is the input, waste is the output we work hardest not to see. Award-winning journalist Oliver Franklin-Wallis follows that output across continents in Wasteland (2023) — from New Delhi’s landfills and Ghana’s secondhand clothing markets to nuclear storage sites and the corporate origins of curbside recycling. Named a Best Book of 2023 by The New Yorker, The Guardian, and Kirkus, it is essential reading for anyone who has ever wondered where “away” actually goes.

Fixation: How to Have Stuff Without Breaking the Planet

by Sandra Goldmark

Sandra Goldmark runs a pop-up repair shop in New York and serves as director of sustainability at Barnard College. Fixation (2020) is her plainspoken case for getting things fixed instead of replaced, and for building a circular economy where good design, reuse, and repair are the default. Her five-rule formula — borrowed in spirit from Michael Pollan — is the most quotable advice on this list: “Have good stuff. Not too much. Mostly reclaimed. Care for it. Pass it on.”

What You Can Do

Reading is a start, not a finish. A few next steps:

Start at the library. Most of these titles are available through WorldCat or your local branch. Borrowing keeps a book in circulation and out of a landfill.
Audit one category of stuff before adding to it. Pick clothes, kitchenware, or electronics. Inventory what you already own before the next purchase. Most of us own more than we remember.
Find a repair option in your community. Take the time to locate repair, reuse, and donation outlets near you before tossing anything broken.
Support right-to-repair policy. Several U.S. states have passed right-to-repair laws since 2023; the rest are weighing them. Individual purchasing choices matter more when manufacturers are required to make repair possible.
Read one of these books and talk about it. Anti-consumption is harder alone. Book clubs, mutual-aid groups, and faith communities have all become surprising hubs for this work.

Editor’s Note: Originally authored by Gemma Alexander on June 18, 2020, this article was updated in May 2026.

The post 10 Books to Counter Consumerism appeared first on Earth911.

https://earth911.com/inspire/10-books-to-counter-consumerism/

Green Living

Best of Sustainability In Your Ear: EarthX CEO Peter Simek on Cultivating Bipartisan Climate Strategies

Published

5 days ago

May 20, 2026

Alice Rush

Subscribe to receive transcripts by email. Read along with this episode.

For 15 years, the Dallas-based climate conference the EarthX conference has created space where fossil fuel executives and environmental activists, Republican appropriations chairs and Democratic climate hawks, find common ground. The organization targets three core stakeholders: the corporate world, policymakers, and investors seeking startups where environmental solutions are baked into the bottom line. Peter Simek, EarthX’s CEO, explains how reframing climate action around shared values—stewardship, economic opportunity, and love of the land—unlocks support that crisis messaging alone cannot reach.

The doom story doesn’t sell, Simek explained. “We’re not motivated as a species by doomsday language. It puts people in fight-or-flight mode.” He points out how climate became an identity issue, tangled up in culture-war debates over hamburgers and gas-powered trucks, when the real conversation should center on clean air, clean water, and protecting the places we love. “The EPA and the Clean Air and Clean Water Act were passed during the Nixon administration,” he notes. “There are ways to message this that appeals across lines.”

Peter Simek, CEO of EarthX, is our guest on *Sustainability In Your Ear*.

Simek bets heavily on bottom-up action as EarthX works to build bridges. States, cities, and private capital often move faster than federal mandates, he argues, and they’re harder to reverse with a single executive order. Texas leads the nation in renewable energy deployment because wind and solar make bottom-line sense. “Even as there’s a policy turn against it, there’s still the driving reality that solar and wind are viable energy sources,” he says. A new event in 2026, the EarthX Institute, will focus on two policy priorities: nuclear energy, where bipartisan consensus is growing, and urban biodiversity.

Whether conversations at forums like EarthX translate into policy velocity that matches the pace of climate impacts remains to be seen. Simek says he stays focused on tracking downstream results, specifically the investments funded, the coalitions built, and the policies incubated from the local level up. “It’s about finding those ways in which there’s common sense, common ground, common values,” he says. “Elements to talking about nature and the environment that no one can really disagree with.”

Learn more about EarthX and its upcoming April 2026 conference at earthx.org.