Phasing out diesel trucks; capturing carbon through rocks; diet tweaks that could help the Earth.
| In today’s newsletter, phasing out diesel trucks; capturing carbon through rocks; diet tweaks that could help the Earth. | |
 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY BIANCA LAVIES | |
By David Beard, Executive Editor, Newsletters
He resisted joining his parents in the world of paleontology and anthropology, yet his fossil discoveries ended up providing a massive chunk of evidence of early human evolution.
At the same time, Richard Leakey could not help but consider humanity's future. “As we peer back through the fossil record, through layer upon layer of long extinct species, many of which thrived far longer than the human species is ever likely to do, we are reminded of our mortality as a species,” he once wrote.
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 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBERT I.M. CAMPBELL, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION | |
The legendary bone digger and Nat Geo Explorer, who died Sunday at age 77, moved from archaeological sites to conservation and the political arena in later decades, writes Andrea Stone in this must-read remembrance.
A proud Kenyan, he insisted in his 20s that the country’s treasures stay within its borders, and he worked to stop poaching and to make the nation a world-class research center.
He founded the conservation group Wildlife Direct and worked with the group‘s CEO, Paula Kahumbu, to preserve ecosystems like the Serengeti. Leakey had a natural leadership style, said Kahumbu, who wrote of these conservation efforts in National Geographic‘s December issue.
Leakey, like Jane Goodall, graduated from fieldwork to advocacy to help the planet and its beings.
(Pictured at top, Leakey with his future wife, zoologist and Nat Geo Explorer-At-Large Meave Epps, on a dig in their youth; above, in 1972, Leaky and field aide Bernard Ngeneo, at right, pack fragments of a hominin skull found along the eastern shore of Kenya‘s Lake Turkana.)
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 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREA FRAZZETTA, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION | | | A smart way to help the Earth: Did you know that switching out just a few food items—say, 10 percent of a person’s caloric intake, can cut their food-based environmental footprint by over 30 percent? That’s according to a new study covered by Nat Geo’s Alejandra Borunda. And the more environmentally friendly foods also are better for you. So what kind of difference does that make? Food production makes up about one-fifth to one-third of all annual greenhouse gas emissions globally, Borunda writes. (Pictured above, peeling a potato over a plate of vegetables.) | | | |
 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY FRANS LANTING, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION | | | Beautiful—and stinky: The world’s largest, and perhaps smelliest flower, grew for decades only in its Southeast Asian rainforest habitat. But an Indonesian botanist’s efforts to plant the Rafflesia keithii in Borneo have finally blossomed, Shi En Kim reports for Nat Geo. Above, Nat Geo Explorer Frans Lanting’s image of the giant flower in Indonesia’s Mount Kinabalu National Park. | | | |
 | | It’s only in community, in connection, that we’re able to come together to try & solve some of our planet’s most pressing problems, that we’re able to further reach our dreams for our world—for our future. | | | | Issa Barte | Nat Geo Young Explorer
Meet the young leaders inspiring global change | | |
 | PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL SSWAT, GEOMAR
| | How to suck up carbon with rocks: Did you know that rocks naturally capture about one gigaton of carbon dioxide a year? That’s about 1/36 of the CO2 that humans pump into the atmosphere every year. Scientists believe that crushing up rocks and mixing them in ocean water could jump start the carbon-sucking process by as much as a hundred fold, Peter Yeung writes for Nat Geo. (Pictured above, divers off the Canary Islands are tending to a project to deposit large amounts of pulverized silicate or carbonate rocks into the sea to stabilize alkalinity levels.)
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| We hope you liked today’s Planet Possible newsletter. Today's newsletter was edited and curated by Monica Williams, Heather Kim, and David Beard. Have an idea or link for us? Let us know at david.beard@natgeo.com. | | | |
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