Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2021 i National Geographic Magazine - UK

WE’RE IN THE MIDDLE of one revolution—and are soon to launch another. These upheavals, both leading to a more sustainable future, are the products not of human conflict but of human ingenuity. Simply put, we’re utterly reinventing how we get from here to there. “Cars and trucks are undergoing their greatest makeover since the automobile’s inception more than a century ago,” writer Craig Welch notes in the first of this issue’s two stories on the future of transportation. Almost overnight, electric cars are proliferating, as carbon dioxide-belching internal combustion engines head for the endangered species list. In air transportation, the other mode we examine, change is more gradual. There are promising developments in sustainable aviation fuel made from waste products, planes fueled by “green” hydrogen, and aircraft with zero-emission, battery-powered…

THE ROȘIA POIENI copper mine appears like a wound on Romania’s Apuseni Mountains. An open-pit mine operated by a state-owned company, it draws from the largest copper deposit in the country. In 1978, needing somewhere to discard the mine’s waste, President Nicolae Ceaușescu initiated the removal of residents from the neighboring village of Geamăna. Water and the mine’s sludge were then released into the village and the Şesii Valley, forming an artificial, partly viscous lake. Gheorghe Popa grew up about two hours away by car, in the town of Aiud, at the base of the Apuseni Mountains. A pharmacist and nature photographer, Popa first encountered the dumping site in 2014. “To this day,” he wrote in the Romanian edition of National Geographic, “I can’t forget that chemical smell that even…

Women make up nearly half of the U.S. workforce and earn more college degrees than men, yet they are not projected to close gender pay gaps for years to come. The march to pay equity will take much longer for some women of color than others. If current trends persist, Asian women will likely achieve parity first and Black women and Latinas won’t reach parity this century. PROJECTIONS BASED ON PACE OF CHANGE FOR THE PAST 50 YEARS. DATA FOR NATIVE AMERICANS NOT AVAILABLE. GENERATION DEFINED AS A 25-YEAR PERIOD. MONICA SERRANO, NGM STAFF. KELSEY NOWAKOWSKI, IRENE BERMAN-VAPORIS. ILLUSTRATION: GERALDINE SY SOURCES: INSTITUTE FOR WOMEN’S POLICY RESEARCH; NASA; U.S. CENSUS; NOAA…

BY LAND PAGE 43 BY AIR PAGE 64 The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, has funded Explorer David Guttenfelder’s storytelling about the human condition since 2014. BY LAND THE BIG BET ON CLEAN CARS AT VOLKSWAGEN’S ASSEMBLY PLANT in Chattanooga, Tennessee, car bodies soar high above the concrete floor on conveyors, like seats on a slow-moving carnival ride. Every 73 seconds one gets lowered onto a power train, and soon body and chassis begin rising together. As I watch, workers in roller chairs carrying pistol-shaped power wrenches glide beneath a Passat sailing by at chest height. They fasten rock guards and skid plates to the undercarriage before holstering their tools to await the next car. Across 3.4 million square feet, about 3,800 workers and…

The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, has funded Explorer David Doubilet since 2012. This is the 50th anniversary of his first assignment as a National Geographic photographer. Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes document both the beauty and the devastation in our oceans. In the open ocean in the dead of night, a light-studded downline silently sinks a hundred feet into the water’s inky depths. Minutes later, there’s a splash as divers plunge in too. Equipped with scuba gear, a bevy of lights, and waterproof DSLR cameras clipped to their suits, David Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes descend into a realm of the unimaginable. “When you first get in, it is a galaxy of light,” Doubilet says of black-water diving. “You see fellow divers with their…

WHO Sala is a marine ecologist and National Geographic Explorer in Residence. WHERE San Ambrosio Island in the Pacific Ocean, some 550 miles west of Chile WHAT A Nikon D800 with a 10.5mm fish-eye lens In 2008 Sala launched the Pristine Seas project, which has helped scientists study sensitive marine habitats—and inspired the protection of more than 2.3 million square miles of ocean. He captured this moment in 2013, as cinematographer Manu San Félix emerged from a kelp forest with a baby lobster on his mask (it soon scurried off). The expedition resulted in the creation of Nazca-Desventuradas Marine Park, one of the largest such sanctuaries in the Americas. Visit nationalgeographic.org/projects/pristine-seas. This page showcases images from the Instagram accounts of National Geographic—the most popular brand on Instagram. Join more than…

As the world heats up, fashion is being forced to question a business model built on using nonrenewable resources to make short-lived garments that end up in landfills. The connection between fashion and fossil fuels in the form of plastics like polyester and nylon is an uncomfortable one, especially when it comes to adventure clothing, which tends to use specialized synthetic textiles to protect you from the elements–harming the environment in the process. Alaskan photographer Acacia Johnson is acutely aware of this irony: “Every time I’m out photographing in the wilderness, I’m very conscious of my impact. At the same time, you have to stay warm, and you have to stay safe.” The new National Geographic Apparel Collection bridges the gap between performance and sustainability, using cutting edge, bio-based, sustainable…

Many plants protect themselves by producing toxins that act as natural pesticides. But the strategy doesn’t work on whiteflies (Bemisia tabaci), because some 35 million years ago, they acquired a gene that neutralizes such toxins. The flies got this gene, scientists in China have discovered, by “stealing” it from a plant, probably when a fly ate a plant infected with a virus. This is one of the first known cases of functional gene transfer between plants and animals.…

Map shows data for the contiguous U.S. In Alaska, Juneau has the most charging stations with 15 in 780 square miles. In Hawaii, Honolulu has the most with 189 in 780 square miles. SOURCES: BLOOMBERGNEF; ALTERNATIVE FUELS DATA CENTER, U.S. DEPT. OF ENERGY VEHICLE TECHNOLOGIES OFFICE; MICAH S. ZIEGLER AND JESSIKA E. TRANCIK, MIT A market about to transform There are more than 12 million passenger EVs and one million commercial EVs on the road today. But the market is growing quickly. Annual sales of passenger EVs are expected to jump from 3.1 million in 2020 to 14 million by 2025. Lower prices, longer distances Battery prices have decreased 97 percent since 1991 and are expected to fall even further as production scales up. In 2020, the Tesla Model S…

BY AIR THE GRAVITY PROBLEM The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, has funded Explorer Davide Monteleone’s work about how transportation affects the environment. A FACT AND A FIGURE KEEP POPPING to mind as I talk with aviation experts about whether commercial flight can ever go green. The fact is this: Everything you can think of that’s spurring a green revolution on the ground will be of little help in the sky anytime soon. Solar panels, wind turbines, electric engines, high-storage batteries, hydrogen fuel cells, magnetic levitation—they are all, bluntly put, useless at present when it comes to the technological challenge of launching a few hundred people into the stratosphere and carrying them thousands of miles. Here’s the figure: More than 80 percent of humanity…

GROWING UP IN THE 1950S AND ’60S, Olney Marie Ryland enjoyed visiting her aunt’s house in Addisleigh Park, the most exclusive section of St. Albans, Queens. The neighborhood was only a mile from her family’s home, but it exposed her to an entirely new world of high society, culture, and the arts. “I used to think, That is where the rich people live,” says Ryland, now 71. Ryland’s aunt lived in a wide-line Cape Cod with a before-its-time open-concept design, customized by her architect husband. Ryland’s mother also had a friend who lived in the community, across the street from William “Count” Basie, the legendary jazz pianist and composer. Sometimes Ryland was invited to swim in Basie’s pool. In 1997, after her aunt turned frail and her home became available for…

Itsaso Vélez del Burgo held the wild baby chimp in her arms. Limp and unconscious, the female ape wasn’t much bigger than a human hand. Her tiny body and lack of teeth revealed that she was only about a month old. She was battling hypothermia and dehydration, and if something wasn’t done in a hurry, her heart would stop. “She was the youngest chimp we had ever taken in,” says Vélez del Burgo, the technical director of Lwiro Primates Rehabilitation Center, a refuge in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It was June 16, 2017, and Vélez del Burgo had facilitated a grueling, five-day rescue journey via motorcycle, speedboat, and car to get the baby chimpanzee safely to the village of Lwiro. A contact from…

LOOKING AT THE EARTH FROM EVERY POSSIBLE ANGLE In images that could be mistaken for paintings, a photographer records how mine waste has ruined a valley near his Romanian hometown.…

WAGE GAP DATA IS LACKING IN SOME STATES DUE TO INSUFFICIENT POPULATION SAMPLE SIZES. SOURCE: JASMINE TUCKER, NATIONAL WOMEN’S LAW CENTER…

Blackmagic Design is a leader in video for the television industry, and now you can create your own streaming videos with ATEM Mini. Simply connect HDMI cameras, computers or even microphones. Then push the buttons on the panel to switch video sources just like a professional broadcaster! You can even add titles, picture in picture overlays and mix audio! Then live stream to Zoom, Skype or YouTube! Create Training and Educational Videos ATEM Mini’s includes everything you need. All the buttons are positioned on the front panel so it’s very easy to learn. There are 4 HDMI video inputs for connecting cameras and computers, plus a USB output that looks like a webcam so you can connect to Zoom or Skype. ATEM Software Control for Mac and PC is also…

FACIAL-RECOGNITION SYSTEM S for humans are widely used by security services and law enforcement. Now there’s one for grizzly bears. The so-called BearID could enable researchers to track the animals across vast stretches of time and space. Identifying individual grizzlies has long been difficult because they tend to lack clearly distinguishable markings. This technology, born of a collaboration between ecologists and computer scientists, makes it possible to easily recognize bears caught by camera traps. With an accuracy rate of 83.9 percent, the software runs deep-learning algorithms to detect and map each grizzly’s facial features so the bears can be identified. Indigenous communities in British Columbia are already putting the application to work, monitoring specific bears across territorial boundaries. The developers of BearID hope to adapt their software to track other…

THE ICEBREAKER POLARSTERN floated on the trans-polar drift stream, frozen in sea ice, for nearly a year. On board were about a hundred scientists and crew members who were braving the polar winter to study climate change in the Arctic. I was there too, photographing the first leg of the MOSAiC expedition—the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate. It was the longest and largest Arctic expedition in history and, for me, a gift from the universe. Four years earlier I’d fallen under the spell of the ice and cold on my first Arctic assignment. When I returned home, I vowed to devote my photography to the fragile polar environment that had mesmerized me. Shortly afterward I heard about MOSAiC and knew I had to go. By the…

1828 Hungarian priest and physicist Ányos Jedlik invents an early version of the direct-current motor and builds a model to demonstrate its potential. 1859 French physicist Gaston Planté invents the first rechargeable battery. 1881 French electrical engineer Gustave Trouvé fits an electric motor and rechargeable battery to a tricycle, creating the first roadworthy electric vehicle. 1890s The first commercial EVs are sold; in Belgium, Henri Pieper develops one of the first hybrid cars. 1900 In this year, 40 percent of American cars are powered by steam, 38 percent by electricity, and 22 percent by internal combustion engine. 1910s to 1930s Cheaper oil and combustion models drive EVs out of the market. 1980s Lithium-ion batteries with more power are developed, reigniting interest in EVs as ranges increase. 1990 California’s mandate to…

SOURCES: DELFT UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY; BOEING; INTERNATIONAL AIR TRANSPORT ASSOCIATION; AIR TRANSPORT ACTION GROUP Curbing a climb in emissions By 2050, more than 10 billion passengers are expected to fly each year, double pre-pandemic travel numbers. If there were no improvements in technology, fuels, and operations, this would generate nearly two billion tons a year of carbon dioxide. The global industry has set a goal to cut that to 358 million tons—a third of today’s emissions. Technology and Operations Advances in materials such as carbon fiber can lead to lighter aircraft and lower emissions, as can low-tech advances including lighter weight paint and in-flight service carts. More efficient scheduling and route planning also can reduce the number of flights needed. Sustainable Aviation Fuel Airlines are now turning to fuels made…

Photographer Elias Williams spent the first 15 years of his life in and around St. Albans, the Queens enclave that would become the primary subject of his photographic pursuits. Williams, his mother, and his sister lived with his grandmother, Barbara Eubanks, on a leafy block with friendly neighbors. Later he would learn about the grand history of St. Albans, the many celebrities who lived there, and its role as a pillar of New York City’s Black middle class. “The community’s uniqueness in terms of its history was just regular to me,” Williams says. “I’ve always known one house, having a front yard and backyard, and it was always quiet. You spoke to everybody, everybody spoke to you.” When he was a freshman in high school, the idyll of his early…