shipping containers

Book review – Adrift: The Curious Tale of the Lego Lost at Sea

6-minute read
keywords: oceanography, popular science

In 1997, the coast of Cornwall was invaded by an unlikely armada. Thousands of octopuses armed with cutlasses and spear guns threw themselves onto the beach. In their wake followed dragons sporting flippers and scuba tanks. Fortunately for the Cornish people, these invaders could be held in the palm of your hand. What was going on?

In Adrift, writer and beachcomber Tracey Williams tells the story of an unlikely cargo spill that came to litter England’s beaches. A beautifully presented book, it manages to entertain without making light of the very serious problem of plastic pollution.

(more…)

Book review – The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene Since 1945

7-minute read

Something happened to the world sometime after 1945. Something that included the end of World War II and post-war recovery, but was far more fundamental than that.

Humanity went into overdrive.

In my reading on the Anthropocene, this book and this phrase keep cropping up. The Great Acceleration gives a bird’s-eye view of the environmental history of our world since the 1950s. A period when multiple factors—technological, medical, and demographical—converged to propel the human species onto a trajectory of unprecedented growth.

(more…)