Green Matters: Agriculture, Rising Seas, Zoo Life (2007)

More than a billion plant seeds are housed at the Millennium Seed Bank in Britain. It is said to have inspired ancient art and literature on China’s dragon, but today the Chinese Alligator itself is almost past history. New energy efficient greenhouses in the Netherlands could dramatically cut energy consumption and even generate power to go into the national grid. In Java’s Tabuhan Cave local musicians gather every weekend to create by playing the stalactites and stalagmites of the cave. It was all cheers at Germany’s Berlin Zoo when beloved polar bear Knut turned one. For the Brazilian town of Atafona, global warming and rising seas are not future possibilities, but are the grim reality as it disappears into the ocean. With a mandate to preserve the U.K.’s areas of natural beauty, the National Trust, Britain’s largest landowner, is examining strategies for dealing with climate change, which it says is already having an impact.