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One photo of climate change should be more persuasive than a thousand words of political bias. How about 100 pictures?
Nature lovers — as well as open-minded residents of planet earth — should mark their calendars for the annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition as it makes its way from Natural History Museum of London (its current location) to various European capitals. Many of the mammals, reptiles, insects, invertebrates, and environments portrayed in these 100 stunning photographs are in danger, threatened directly by man or indirectly by climate change, or both.
Since I live in Milan, Italy, not London, I caught the tail end of the 2018 exhibition . . . and it was plenty distressing. Emblematic was The Golden Couple, the overall prizewinner of the 2018 competition, showing two snub-nosed monkeys from the Qinling Mountains of China. Dutch photographer Marsel van Oosten took this shot, which earned him the title of Wildlife Photographer of the Year for 2018 and also earned him £10,000.
He captured the blue-faced primates with glowing golden fur — an endangered species — as they watched a fight between two males in their troop, but their troubled expressions could just as easily have been a reaction to the continuing destruction of their environment, the only habitat in which they can exist.
