Magazine Highlights April 2020

The issue provides comprehensive lessons and opportunities for our planet fifty years after the first Earth Day.

Look for the first ever flip cover and dual mini-magazine online now at natgeo.com/earthday and on print newsstands.

THE ROAD TO 2070

By Craig Welch; photos by David Guttenfelder

• ROAD-TRIP: There are few more distinctly American past times than the road trip. Writer Craig Welch and photographer David Guttenfelder drove 4,000 miles from the Santa Monica Pier to the east coast, in rented electric cars to visit as many places and thoughtful people as they can, all in search of signposts toward a green, carbon-free 2070. This feature explores the quest to find out if we truly can wean ourselves from fossil fuels.

• AVAILABLE:
  
  1. Interviews with environment writer Craig Welch & photographer David Guttenfelder
  2. Stunning photos from across the country of sustainable efforts in local communities to go green by 2070
  
  

FIGHTING FOR THEIR FUTURE

By Laura Parker

• YOUTH MOVEMENT: As the effects of climate change occur with increasing regularly, we focus on the new generation of youth activists—the biggest population group to helm a social movement in a long while— and what they consider to be their generation’s mission: to save the Earth. This feature profiles youth activists around the world including Greta Thunberg, Delaney Reynolds, Ghislain Irakoze and more who are taking action and demanding more from their elders.

• AVAILABLE:
  
  1. Interviews with environment writer Laura Parker
  2. Inspiring portraits of youth activists from around the world
  
  

THE CASE FOR RENEWAL

By Emma Marris

• EARTH DAY 2070: Through human ingenuity and innovation, as well as a new youth movement focusing less on individual solutions like refusing plastic straws and more on climate as a matter of social and intergenerational justice, there is an optimistic, best-case vision for 2070 and how we can save the planet. This essay explores the case for renewal and an optimistic outlook for Earth Day in 2070.

• AVAILABLE:
  
  1. Interviews with environment writer Emma Marris
  
  

A Pessimist’s Guide to Life on Earth in 2070

How We Lost the Planet

A WORLD LOST

Story and photographs by Pete Muller

• SOLASTALGIA: As climate change greatly alters environments the world over—from sea ice and glaciers, and wildfires (Paradise, California)—this feature examines how this new sense of loss has affected our humanity, and how we can better understand and confront environmental challenges.

• AVAILABLE:

1. Interviews with writer, photographer and National Geographic Explorer Pete Muller
2. Heartbreaking images of communities around the world that have been effected by climate change

THE CASE FOR CATASTROPHE

By Elizabeth Kolbert

• EARTH DAY 2070: With so much damage already done—since Earth Day 1970, we’ve burned more fossil fuels than in our entire previous history—it’s extremely unclear how things will continue even for our own species—whether we’ll be able to continue feeding ourselves and supplying ourselves with fresh water. This essay explores what will happen if we don’t take action resulting in this pessimistic view of Earth Day 2070.

• AVAILABLE:
  
  1. Interviews with Pulitzer-prize winning author Elizabeth Kolbert
  
  

CLIMATE VS. CRAVINGS

By Daniel Stone

• WORLD’S FAVORITE FOODS - GONE : Everything about the world’s favorite foods - from how they’re grown to when we eat them - could be subject to change in a warmer world. From coffee to salmon to bananas and more, this essay looks at seven popular foods and explains how they our consumption of them could change due to climate change.

• AVAILABLE:

1. Interviews with writer Daniel Stone
   
   National Geographic magazine’s April Earth Day issue: natgeo.com/earthday
   Link to Editor-in-Chief Susan Goldberg’s Editor’s Letter about the special issue: here
   Link to cover image: here