My daughter Sofia Dimick’s picture shows me at National Geographic in Washington DC as we retrieved the June 2007 NGM cover that had graced my office for years.
This “Big Thaw” cover picture of melting Greenland ice by James Balog helped launch his Extreme Ice Survey at Earth Vision Institute and was one of several projects we created together to raise awareness of climate change and its impacts.
A great run for me as a picture editor and environment editor at National Geographic ends this month after more than 35 years as a staff member, with more than a dozen books edited, and an uncounted number of National Geographic magazine stories that I originated and/or picture-edited. Some recent highlights: Can Coal Ever Be Clean?, Western U.S. snow failure, the U.S. Wilderness system at 50, the future of the world food supply, the effect of rising seas, and what we learn from remote sensing images.
Some earlier major projects included global warming, world freshwater, and world population. A National Geographic PROOF blog post of mine from December 2013 details many environmental stories produced since 1996 in team with photographer Peter Essick. A recent PROOF post highlights a favorite picture of mine by Jim Richardson of two farmers facing a looming Great Plains storm.
In the past year or so I also wrote online pieces on a range of environmental issues: vanishing aquifers, drought as an underrated crisis in media narrative, shrinking western snowpacks, world population and natural resources, carrying capacity in the anthropocene, and the need for more agricultural research to feed a hungry world.
It's been an awesome and humbling experience collaborating with so many of you to document and report on the great environmental issues of our time. Thank you for your amazing contributions and passion, none of this would have occurred without you.
Now it is time to go. Not to "retire," but time for new adventures. 🌎
(This is an expansion and revision of an original posting at my Instagram account from December 18, 2015.)
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