News

Bloomberg View reporter Justin Fox publishes an excellent piece “We might be near peak environmental impact” that reports on our Nature Rebounds essay and the new Breakthrough Institute’s “Nature Unbound: Decoupling for Conservation.”

The IIASA blog 9 Sept 2015 includes a 500-word interview with Jesse Ausubel about his recent essay Nature Rebounds and his experiences as a young researcher at the Institute near Vienna way back during 1979-1981.

The new film of Jacques Perrin and Galatee Productions, The Seasons, is scheduled for release 27 January 2016.  A 1-minute promotional segment is available at

https://vimeo.com/133827355

See also https://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm_gen_cfilm=228541.html

The Richard Lounsbery Foundation helped launch the project, and Jesse Ausubel has assisted with some expertise on re-wilding.  The film chronicles the birth of the four seasons after the end of the last ice age and the related history of forest animals in a European setting.

A 5-minute retrospective of the work of Galatee is at

https://vimeo.com/75089412 .

 

The Science Plan of the International Quiet Ocean Experiment (IQOE) has been published and is available in pdf (see https://www.scor-int.org/IQOE/IQOE_Science_Plan-Final.pdf) and printed formats.   Thanks to Peter Tyack, George Frist, Ed Urban, Sophie Seeyave and others who contributed to this excellent document, now endorsed by the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) and Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans (POGO).

We are also pleased to note the debut of the IQOE Web site (see https://www.scor-int.org/IQOE.htm).

Project sponsors are working to form a Steering Committee for the IQOE and to raise support for its activities.  Until funding is raised for an international project office, the project sponsors (SCOR and POGO) will provide administrative support for the project.  RU’s Program for the Human Environment is helping out as part of its Marine Research and Policy Initiative with Monmouth University, initiated by Jesse Ausubel and Vice Admiral Paul Gaffney II, USN (Ret.) .

Science magazine 1 August ran an Op-Ed by Mande Holford and Rod Nichols, with whom Jesse teaches The Rockefeller University course on Science & Diplomacy.

Galatee’s Oceans film featured a haunting song by Bruno Coulais with lyrics by Gabriel Yacoub.  The song with images from the film is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3K1GnGEmPo

Ocean Will Be

Even though voices be quiet
Slumbering in deep-sea trenches
One can hear a rumbling thunder
Merging into the endless skies
Dancing for joy
In a wind of splendor
That will keep blowing
Forever more
Crawling through waves, pebbles and seaweed
Entwined amongst the sand
Shades of the unknown with no equation
Shells on the wasteland
From the floor of the ocean, fathoms of greatness,
A place where no man can be
The truth of the ocean
The open space
Light out, wanderlust
Forever more
Restless souls of sailors of days gone-by
Keep Wandering in liquid peace
Deep in the dark, plowing the sea
Reach out to eternity
And none of them will call the beasts
Other than by their own true name
The widow will wait
For the sun to come out
The ocean will be
Forever more
Ancient monsters, fairy fish
Will arise from the dawn of time
Some of them threatened
Some extinct, dissolved in mystery
Shipwrecks and prayers
Banners of old
Storms and man
Forever more
Ancient monsters, fairy fish
Will arise from the dawn of time
Some of them threatened
Some extinct, dissolved in mystery
Many more will be spared
To tell the endless tale of water and man
Of giving and taking, teaching and learning
Of hunters and of prey
Dancing for joy
In a wind of splendor
That will be blowing
Forever more

The new 18″ video “Perspectives on Ocean Exploration” includes comments by Jesse Ausubel as well as Robert Ballard, Sylvia Earle, Paul Gaffney, Walter Munk, and others. Jerry Schubel of the Aquarium of the Pacific led the preparation of the video, aimed at school programs and other groups unfamiliar with ocean exploration.

Jacques Perrin’s environmental films will be featured 21-24 May 2015 at a festival organized by the Vineyard Conservation Society and Martha’s Vineyard Film Society.  Jesse Ausubel will do Q&A after the great film Oceans on the 21st and 24th.

Good articles about the festival appeared in the Martha’s Vineyard Times and the Vineyard Gazette.

In March 2006 we helped with the Washington DC festival in honor of the films of Jacques Perrin.

The Return of Nature, a lightly edited version of Jesse Ausubel’s Nature Rebounds SALT talk, has been published in The Breakthrough Journal.

A pdf version of the paper with more figures and photos, titled “Nature Rebounds”, can be found here.

Thanks to editors Dale Langford and Jenna Mukono, to Iddo Wernick for careful work on the figures, and to Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus for Breakthrough’s hospitality.