Unlike Attenborough’s other films, which mostly celebrate the wonders of life’s diversity, Ocean (2025, 1 h 35 min) focuses on the devastating destruction of our world’s vital marine ecosystems. The film rightly addresses the main problem: overfishing and the fishing industry’s destructive techniques. The film advocates marine protected areas (MPAs), fishing techniques that do not involve discarding three-quarters of the catch, and highlights the importance of the ocean in binding carbon dioxide.

Sound artist Ludwig Berger (based in the Palatinate Forest-North Vosges Biosphere Reserve, Germany) wants us to listen to our surroundings: to the insects, the trees and the mud volcanoes. In his latest film, Crying Glacier (2023, 14 min), film director Lutz Stautner (from Cologne, Germany) documented Berger. Like so many others, the Morteratsch glacier in the Swiss Alps is dying. Berger’s sound recordings of the creaking, cracking and rippling are his way of preserving sounds that could soon disappear from this world forever. The shortfilm can watched in the Op-Docs section of the New York Times.

Former US president Jimmy Carter placed 32 solar pannels, a novel technology at that time, on the rooftop of The White House. Seven years later they were removed by Ronald Reagan. With Donald Trump now withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, many historic parallels can be seen.

After many years of devastating wildfires in California, the latest blazes hit Altadena and Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles, the first to hit a major city, causing thousands to flee. In the wildfire-prone landscape, it was only a matter of time before one reached the city, echoeing @PerthshireMagsce’s description in the (now deleted) 2022 viral tweet. The term pyrocene, proposed in 2015 to describe an epoch “characterised by the influence of human-caused fire activity on Earth”, is becoming increasingly apt. The widely shared photos by Ethan Swope (Instagram) show the terrifying scenes of burning landscapes and cityscapes, but at the same time have a beauty that calls into question the adequacy of these photos.

An often overlooked fact is the disastrous environmental impact of Russia's war on Ukraine. So far it has caused more than 180 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent emissions. The displacement of more than 6 million Ukrainian citizens has added another 3.3 million tonnes.  
Ukraine’s long agricultural tradition and its famous fertile Chernozem soil, which feeds people in 100 countries, has also been severely affected by Russian aggression. With the devastation of Ukrainian territory, 30% of which is now covered with deadly mines, the war can be described as ecocide.

The quote is from Greta Thunberg, during a magnificent speech in the House of Parliament, United Kingdom, in April 2019.

The Pew Research Center released a chart (page 9) illustrating the percentage of people who perceive global climate change as a major threat to their country, segmented by political orientation: left, center, and right. This reveals intriguing differences among countries. In nations like South Korea, France, and Italy, climate change is widely regarded as common sense, almost irrespective of political affiliation. Conversely, in the United States, Australia, and Canada, views on this issue are heavily influenced by political orientation. Another noteworthy finding is Israel, which stands out as the only country where neither side of the political spectrum views climate change as a major threat. Additionally, it is unique in that the center demonstrates more concern about climate change than the left and right, whereas in other countries, the perceived threat tends to increase from right to left.

The results can be viewed as part of the broader phenomenon of the politicization of science. The graphic, also available on Wikimedia Commons, has been utilized in several other Wikipedia articles.

The study itself also examined numerous other factors such as gender and age, and compared people’s views on climate change to the spread of false information, cyberattacks, the global economy, and infectious diseases.

Elizabeth Kolbert, author of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize winning “The Sixth Extinction” and “H is for Hope”, writes about the devastating effects of climate change on the Greenland ice sheet. The consequences of its melting will be global, ranging from the obvious rise in sea levels to difficult-to-model effects on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) (also listen to "The Hole in the Map of the World" from the September–October 2024 issue of Wired at New York Times Audio). The gripping (and long) article tells the story of Eismitte, explains the mechanism of feedback loops and ice cores.

Thomas Flight, who usually analyses films on his wonderful YouTube channel, lives in Asheville, North Carolina, USA, which was hit by Hurricane Helene in late September 2024. In his most recent video, Flight reflects on the depiction of disasters in social media, news and documentaries. While these images may inform and raise awareness, they all fail to do so adequately.