The Gobi Desert is deathly hot during the day, bitterly cold at night, mostly devoid of vegetation, and nearly waterless. By any common metric, the land can be seen as worthless. So why does a billionaire think a desert that he called “useless” can provide the world with bountiful, cheap, clean energy?
Lei Zhang, the founder and CEO of Envision Energy, hosted a TED Talkexplaining how implementing and investing in high-tech, high-yield solar and wind power generation in the Gobi Desert and other similar largely uninhabited desert areas could provide “more energy than we need” for laypersons and businesses alike.
“I believe this could be the new space of our civilization,” said Zhang in his TED Talk. “When people see ‘useless,’ ‘barrenness,’ ‘emptiness,’ I see ‘abundance.’”
Zhang sees green in the Gobi Desert, in terms of both energy and money. His company specializes in green tech, creating smart wind turbines and batteries. Envision Energy is responsible for the EV batteries for car brands such as BMW, Mercedes, Honda, and Renault among others. In short, he knows how to harness clean energy and how to make it profitable.
Zhang believes the “strong wind and the shining sun” of the Gobi Desert can power up fields upon fields of solar panels and windmill electric generators. Incorporating that with A.I.-driven orchestration, he believes we could develop large-scale, off-grid renewable energy systems without the need for costly long-distance transmission lines. To maximize the use of locally generated electricity, Zhang proposes the creation of net-zero industrial parks that produce batteries, green hydrogen, green ammonia, and other energy-intensive products that can power us. He believes that this type of investment could bring “next-level prosperity” to the world.
Zhang’s claim of green energy being less costly holds significant weight. While some argue that the cost of electricity would increase if we were to rely exclusively on solar and wind power, the International Renewable Energy Agency found evidence to suggest that 90% of renewable energy sources are less costly than fossil fuels, both in terms of price and environmental impact. There is also an active solar power plant in the Mojave Desert that also incorporates wind farms to provide energy to parts of California, backing up the practicality of Zhang’s vision on a smaller scale.
A possible drawback would be the removal of government incentives that encourage utility companies and businesses to invest in green energy over fossil fuels, which would make initial investments more expensive in the short term and delay any long-term benefits to their bottom line. That said, a 2022 report from the United Nations noted that investment in renewable energy sources resulted in $55 billion in global energy cost savings worldwide.
It will be interesting to see if Zhang’s vision gains momentum and investment from those who want to invest in a better climate outlook, along with a more favorable financial future.
This article originally appeared on 8.29.25. It has been updated.
East Lawn Cemetery in Ithaca, New York is “home” for dozens people who’ve been laid to rest. However, it is not just the home for departed humans. It is also the underground burrow housing over five million bees.
While there have been records of bees emerging from the grounds of East Lawn Cemetery since 1935, it wasn’t until 2023 that a study of its scale was measured. In April of that year, a team at Cornell University began fieldwork by setting up 10 emergence traps made of tents over the bees’ nest. These traps collected insects in a plastic jar with a 70% ethanol solution.
There Are 5.6 Million Bees Living Beneath This Cemetery Beneath a quiet cemetery in New York, scientists discovered millions of bees living underground, building tunnels, pollinating, and surviving completely unnoticed for decades. While everything above changes, generations come and go, this hidden world continues without interruption, a reminder that life moves forward with or without us. #NatureMystery#DidYouKnow#HiddenWorld#ScienceFacts#creatorsearchinsights
By analyzing the number of bees caught in these traps along with other data, they calculated that as many as 5.56 million bees live in the cemetery’s ground. To put it in perspective, the typical honeybee hive contains around 30,000 bees.
“I was completely floored when we did the calculations,” Cornell University entomologist Bryan Danforth said to Scientific American. “I have seen published estimates of bee aggregations in the hundreds of thousands. But I never really imagined that it would be 5.56 million bees.”
Many might be puzzled about bees living underground rather than in a typical hanging hive. In actuality, though, the majority of bees live underground. The miner bees (Andrena regularis) found in the cemetery actually live solitary lives within burrows. They nest there during the winter months and emerge in the spring to pollinate, mate, and dig burrows for their larvae. For New Yorkers who enjoy apples and blueberries, these bees are responsible for helping them bloom and grow in the spring.
“This species overwinters as adults, which is relatively rare, and that’s part of the reason why they come up out of the ground so early in spring, timed to the apple bloom,” said study author Steven T. Hoge.
What are bees doing living at a cemetery?
But why is the cemetery a popular living space for these bees?
“The peacefulness, the lack of pesticides, and the fact that, overall, the ground is rarely disturbed, all make cemeteries good habitat for bees,” Danforth told Science Alert.
Given the huge population, the Cornell University researchers state that the cemetery is actually very important for the area’s ecosystem. Should the cemetery grounds be disturbed or altered, it could impact the vegetation and crops in the surrounding areas. In fact, there are some cemeteries partnering up with beekeepers and other bee conservationists.
Keeping the bees (and the dead) in peace
Danforth and his colleagues have encouraged a global community science project to help the bees. The purpose is to study, protect, and conserve these ground-dwelling bees and their habitats.
“These populations are huge, and they need protection,” Danforth said. “If we don’t preserve nest sites, and someone paves over them, we could lose in an instant 5.5 million bees that are important pollinators.”
If you notice a bee coming out of the ground, leave it be and spread the word. It could be helping restock your grocery store or farmers market with quality produce.
The urban monkeys in New Delhi are so bold they’ll steal the lunch right off your plate. If you’ve spent time in New York, you’ve probably seen squirrels try to do the same. Sydney’s white ibises got the nickname “bin chickens” for stealing trash and sandwiches.
This brazen behavior isn’t normal for most species in the countryside, yet it shows up in urban wildlife, and not just in these cities.
Studies show that animals living in urban environments around the world exhibit common sets of behaviors. At the same time, these urban animals are losing traits they would need in the wild. This process of urban animals’ behavior becoming more similar is known as “behavioral homogenization,” and it accompanies the loss of species diversity with urbanization.
Squirrels in New York’s Central Park have no qualms about rifling through your belongings and stealing your food. Keystone/Getty Images
Cities, despite their local differences, share many of the same features worldwide: They are warmer than the surrounding countryside, noisy, polluted by light and, most importantly, dominated by people.
Cities drive evolution as well. Humans and the changes we’ve brought to cities have led to the survival of bolder animals, and those bolder animals pass on their traits to future generations. In genetics, scientists refer to this as the environment “selecting” for those traits.
It’s not just sandwich-stealing that is more common among city wildlife; urban birds also sound more alike.
Why? Cities are loud and filled with traffic noise, so those who can effectively communicate in that environment are more likely to survive and pass on those traits.
Animals may behave similarly in cities because they learn from each other how to exploit novel human food sources. For instance, the cockatoos in Sydney have learned to open trash bins. In Toronto, the raccoons are in a race to outwit humans as urban wildlife managers try to design animal-proof trash bins.
The buildings and bridges in cities become home to bats, birds, and other urban dwellers, at the cost of learning to use more natural nesting sites. Roads and culverts modify how and where animals move.
While rural animals may forage at a variety of places and eat a variety of foods, urban animals may concentrate on garbage bins or rubbish dumps where they know they can find food, but they end up eating a potentially unhealthy diet.
Consequences of similar behaviors
The loss of behavioral diversity is happening everywhere that humans increase their footprint on nature. This is worrisome on several levels.
At the population level, behavioral variation may reflect genetic variation. Genetic variation gives species the ability to respond to future environmental change. For example, for animals that have evolved to breed at a specific time of the year, urban heat islands can select for earlier breeding.
Reducing genetic variation leaves populations less able to respond to future changes. In that sense, having genetic variation resembles a diversified investment portfolio: Spreading risk across a variety of stocks and bonds lowers the risk that a single shock will wipe out everything.
Moreover, as animals become tamer, new conflicts between animals and humans may emerge. For instance, there may be more car crashes, animal bites, property damage and zoonotic disease transmission. Such conflicts cost money and may harm both the animals and humans.
Losing behavioral diversity is also troubling for conservation.
When a species loses behavioral diversity, it loses resilience against future environmental change in the wild, making reintroducing urban animals to the wild harder.
Losing behavioral diversity also risks erasing socially learned, population-specific behaviors, such as local migration routes, foraging techniques, tool-use traditions or vocal dialects.
For example, Australia’s regent honeyeater populations have been shrinking and are critically endangered. The isolation of having fewer of their own species around has disrupted normal song-learning behavior, making it harder for male birds to sing attractive songs that help them find mates and breed successfully.
Ultimately, behavioral homogenization is making wildlife in cities such as Los Angeles, Lima, Lagos and Lahore behave in similar ways despite living in different environments and having different evolutionary histories.
Many of these behaviors influence survival and reproduction, so understanding this form of diversity loss is important for successful wildlife conservation, as well as future urban planning.
Since 2015, the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards, created by photographers and conservationists Paul Joynson-Hicks and Tom Sullam, have been delivering laugh-out-loud moments through the lens of nature. With a mission to entertain while raising awareness about wildlife conservation, the competition celebrates the charming and comical side of the animal kingdom.
Let’s take a joyful stroll down memory lane with some of the most funniest entries from the 2019 contest (and if you’re feeling inspired, you’ll also learn how to submit your own wild and witty shots for future competitions).
OVERALL WINNER, CREATURES OF THE LAND WINNER: “Grab Life By the…”
You don’t think about how hard it would be to be the parent of a small, curious creature with massive, sharp claws. Let’s all take a moment to be grateful that even though it’s very hard to have a human baby, they don’t have super sharp claws. That would make things ten times worse.
CREATURES IN THE AIR WINNER: “Family Disagreement”
I think if I were an otter, I too would constantly clutch my face in disbelief. “I can’t possibly be this cute, can I? Cute nose, fuzzy head, tiny little eyes? That can’t be! Oh, but it is! I really am this adorable! I am! I am!”
Have you seen those videos of foxes diving headfirst into the snow to catch prey? It’s hilarious and fascinating, and I think this fox forgot that there was no snow. His friend is really trying to help him not hurt himself, but his buddy insists on being dumb. Oh, foxes!
“And then Carol was like, ‘You otter come over for dinner sometime!’ Get it? Get it? Man, Carol’s hilarious. So I went over for dinner and she had like, this whole seafood spread. Crabs, clams, mussels…the whole shebang. Anyway, I think I’m going to marry her.”
Just think about how much poise it took for this photographer to take this photo. Not only is the shark sneaking up on this poor fish, but there’s a person behind that camera! Presumably, the photographer escaped unscathed, since he was able to enter this photo in the contest.
It’s clearly not just human women who have to put up with the incessant nagging conversation from dudes we have no interest in talking to. See the look on that bird’s face? Staring straight out just willing him to go away? Tell me you haven’t made that face. Yeah, that’s what I thought.
“O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?” No one really knows this, but squirrels are generally huge Shakespeare fans. They saw him put up a play in Europe centuries ago and have just carried that love for his words through generations and generations of squirrels.
I relate to this bear hard. Anyone who has had to get up and go to work after a long weekend knows this feeling. Sometimes, you just don’t want to deal with anything. Sometimes, you just want to lie on the ground, cover your face with your hands, and nap for a little while longer.
I love this photo so much. Because not only is it a picture of a penguin farting, but it’s a picture of a penguin who is clearly trying to hide the fact that he’s farting and play it off like he’s doing absolutely nothing. He’s just standing there twiddling his wings. He has no idea what that big bubble under his butt is.
There seems to be a whole genre of “Small rodents holding flowers” photos, and I am a sucker for every single one of them. I’m pretty sure this comes up when you look up “cute” in the dictionary. It’s just so pure.
“Hi there! Welcome to my flower. So glad you could make it! It’s a little cold and wet right now, but once the sun comes up we’ll be in business. Help yourself to a dewdrop. They’re especially fresh this morning.”
“And then my friend Steve, the otter, told me that Carol said to him, ‘You otter come over for dinner!’ Get it? Get it? Because they’re otters! So it’s funny. Hey, where’d you go?”
These poor monkeys were just trying to get it on. Their kids were finally out of the tree, they had some peace and quiet, and then they were so rudely interrupted by a photographer. Although mom looks like she was kinda zoning out anyway.
This little chimp is living the life! He’s got it all figured out, and from the looks of him, he’s still a tiny baby. He’s just looking out at the jungle, thinking about all that milk he’s going to drink later.
I bet that when you’re a Snowy Owl and it finally snows, you are just so ecstatically happy. I mean, it’s right there in your name. Look at her face! It’s full of such pure joy.
Like this little monkey, I, too, usually save my existential crises for bath time. There’s something about the weightlessness of floating in the water that makes you question everything you know to be true about yourself and the world.
Who’s calling this snapping turtle slow? He’s just “taking his time.” On another note, I think turtles are probably the most prehistoric-looking creatures that still exist. If you really take the time to look at them, they’re so crazy.
Imagine playing hide and seek on a block of ice as a polar bear. On one hand, there aren’t too many places to hide. On the other hand, you’re looking for white on white, and that’s not easy.
I don’t know if you knew this, but rodents love ABBA. Here is one getting down to “Dancing Queen.” Because they’re so small, they really feel the music down to their bones. Raise your hand if you would watch an all-rodent adaptation of Mamma Mia! Yeah, me too.
If you want to enter next year’s competition, follow the link here to sign up for mailing list updates!
This article originally appeared six years ago. It has been updated.
