Walk No. —
Each morning, one short card from the living world. Sixty seconds of attention. A real creature, a real place, a real claim.
Awe Walks is not an app to argue with. It is not a feed to scroll. It is one short card, once a day, about something specific and alive.
The form is small on purpose. The point is not information. The point is attention.
Every morning, one short card. Around sixty words. Often less. A particular creature, a particular place. A claim you can verify and a source you can follow.
Sixty seconds. No streaks. No notifications you didn't ask for. No social feed. You can swipe through past walks any time, or not.
Each card ends with a small thing. A place to look. A name to remember. A patch of ground to leave alone. Not a moral. A door.
Dacher Keltner's lab at Berkeley has, over twenty years, mapped a specific emotion: awe — the response to vastness that requires the mind to make room for something larger than itself. They've found that even fifteen-minute walks oriented toward awe — looking at trees, sky, a small living thing — produce measurable changes. People come back more generous, more patient, more inclined toward long-term thinking, more willing to act collectively. They report feeling small in a way that feels good rather than bad.
A card is not a walk in the woods. But it can be a sixty-second walk for the mind — a small piece of vastness brought close enough to fit a coffee break. That is the wager Awe Walks is making.
See: Berkeley Greater Good Science Center on awe walks · Sturm et al., Emotion, 2020.
In 2020, David Attenborough laid out a witness statement and a plan. Renewable energy. Protected oceans. Lighter diets. Space for nature to return. Awe Walks is the daily, granular companion to that bigger picture — but the bigger picture matters too.
We keep an honest scorecard. The energy pillar is outpacing forecasts. The oceans pillar is moving but late. The diet pillar is barely moving. Rewilding is slow and durable where it is funded. No spin. Just the numbers and the sources behind them.
Read the reckoning →The same four numbers Attenborough put on screen in A Life on Our Planet. Updated.
— David Attenborough, 2020
The first 2050 column is the path we're currently on (IPCC SSP5-8.5 + UN demographics). Click If we follow the plan to see the same counter under the four-pillar trajectory Attenborough lays out: renewable energy at scale, 30% of oceans protected, lighter diets, space for nature to return.
These are the same metric definitions, projected under IPCC SSP1-1.9 (Paris-aligned), IEA Net Zero Emissions, the 30-by-30 ocean target, and a rewilding ramp that gives roughly seven points of wilderness back by mid-century. The population number doesn't change much — by 2050 it's already baked in. The other two are entirely ours.
| Year | Population | CO₂ | Wilderness |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1937 | 2.3 billion | 280 ppm | 66% |
| 1954 | 2.7 billion | 310 ppm | 64% |
| 1960 | 3.0 billion | 315 ppm | 62% |
| 1978 | 4.3 billion | 335 ppm | 55% |
| 1989 | 5.1 billion | 353 ppm | 49% |
| 1997 | 5.9 billion | 360 ppm | 46% |
| 2011 | 7.0 billion | 391 ppm | 39% |
| 2020 | 7.8 billion | 414 ppm | 35% |
| → 2026 | 8.2 billion | 428 ppm | 33% |
| 2030 | 8.5 billion | ~437 ppm | ~31% |
Sources: UN World Population Prospects 2024 · NOAA Mauna Loa CO₂ record · Watson et al. (Nature, 2018) wilderness methodology. Pre-2020 rows are the values shown in A Life on Our Planet. 2026 row is the same methodology, current data.
The 2050 numbers above aren't fate. They're the consequence of four choices, made at scale. Attenborough's witness statement names them. Six years in, here's where each one actually stands.
92% of new global power capacity in 2024 was renewable. Solar and wind are now the cheapest new generation on most grids. The pillar is moving faster than the film projected.
The reckoning →Marine protected areas have grown from ~3% to ~8% of ocean since the film. The 30-by-30 target is for 2030, and the high-seas treaty is finally in force.
The reckoning →Global per-capita meat consumption is roughly flat. The plant-shift the plan requires hasn't yet happened — and land use is the consequence.
The reckoning →Beavers in the River Otter. Wolves in Yellowstone. Bison in Oostvaardersplassen. The pieces are real — the funding is the open question.
The reckoning →Status assessments from our Six Years On reckoning, updated as the data does.
The cards point to a longer view. Here is where to find it, on the house: decades of footage from the people who spent their lives looking.
Planet Earth, Blue Planet, Frozen Planet, Dynasties — the BBC's official channel hosts hundreds of free clips from the Attenborough catalogue. A 90-second walk for the eyes.
Watch free →Netflix released the entire Our Planet series, in full, on YouTube — every episode, every ecosystem, narrated by Attenborough. Most people don't know it's there.
Watch free →The 2020 film where Attenborough lays out what he has seen and what he believes can still be done. The reason the Six Years On reckoning exists.
Watch on Netflix →All links go to the official source. No affiliate codes, no tracking. If a link breaks, tell us and we'll fix it.
It is a progressive web app. No App Store, no tracking, no account. The first card is free. The second card is free. Every card will always be free.
One email each morning. Just the card. Unsubscribe in one click whenever you like.
Awe Walks is a daily witness card from the living world. Each card is around sixty words: a real creature, a real place, and one citable claim. Read it in under a minute. The form takes its name from Dacher Keltner's research on awe walks, the short outdoor walks shown to produce measurable wellbeing change. Each card is a sixty-second awe walk for the mind.
Yes. The cards are free, and will always be free. There are no ads, no sponsored cards, and no paid tiers. The project is not a business.
The cards are written and curated by a small team using a four-role production pattern adapted from BookForge: a Witness Architect selects the moment, an Editor shapes the language, a Visual Director decides what the card looks like, and a Quality Assurance pass checks each card against the Heath brothers' SUCCESs framework and Dacher Keltner's awe-trigger taxonomy. AI assists in sourcing and shaping; final judgment is human.
Awe Walks is a Progressive Web App. On iPhone, open awewalks.com in Safari, tap the Share button, then "Add to Home Screen." On Android, open awewalks.com in Chrome, tap the menu, then "Install app" or "Add to Home Screen." Once installed it works offline and behaves like a native app.
Every card carries a citation to a primary source: peer-reviewed research, government data, or wildlife trust field reports. Sources include USDA, DEFRA, US Fish & Wildlife Service, Devon Wildlife Trust, FONAFIFO, World Resources Institute, IEA, IRENA, UN Environment, and academic journals. Sources are visible on every card.
AI is used as part of the production pipeline — surfacing material, shaping drafts, fact-checking — but the editorial taste and final word are human. We hold a firm line against generic AI-generated nature content. Specificity, citable claims, and human judgment are how we defend against drift.