The Core

21:02

Plastics have transformed how we live, but progress comes at a high price: 7.8 billion tons of waste. Are plastics a miracle or a catastrophe?

S1E4 • History 101 • 2000 • Environment

18:47

The global water crisis is at an inflection point. How do we price our most valuable resource, while also ensuring access to it as a human right?

S01E19 • Explained • 2018 • Environment

4:51

Earthquakes have always been a terrifying phenomenon, and they’ve become more deadly as our cities have grown — with collapsing buildings posing one of the largest risks. But why do buildings collapse in an earthquake? And how can it be prevented? Vicki V. May explains the physics of why it is not the sturdiest buildings, but the smartest, that will remain standing.

TED-Ed • Environment

22:48

How has a small place in northern Finland managed to become Europe's most eco-friendly town? Ii has slashed its CO2 emissions by 80% and is producing 10 times more renewable energy than it consumes. This community project could be an inspiration for us all - but such rapid change is not without opposition.

Our World • 2019 • Environment

44:54

Scotland is a ground zero for some of the most significant geologic cataclysms in Earth's history. Understanding of these titanic shifts was prompted by a mysterious lake known as Loch Ness.

S1E4 • How the Earth Was Made • 2009 • Environment

53:16

All over the world, scientists are discovering traces of ancient floods on a scale that dwarfs even the most severe flood disasters of recent times. What triggered these cataclysmic floods, and could they strike again? In the Channeled Scablands of Washington State, the level prairie gives way to bizarre, gargantuan rock formations: house-sized boulders seemingly dropped from the sky, a cliff carved by a waterfall twice the height of Niagara, and potholes large enough to swallow cars. Like forensic detectives at a crime scene, geologists study these strange features and reconstruct catastrophic Ice Age floods more powerful than all the world’s top ten rivers combined. NOVA follows their efforts to uncover the geologic fingerprints of other colossal megafloods in Iceland and, improbably, on the seabed of the English Channel. There, another deluge smashed through a land bridge connecting Britain and France hundreds of thousands of years ago and turned Britain into an island for the first time. These great disasters ripped through terrain and transformed continents in a matter of hours—and similar forces reawakened by climate change are posing an active threat to mountain communities throughout the world today.

NOVA PBS • 2017 • Environment