Media

about the milk and the meat that nourishes us, that we don’t want to give up. It’s about grazing animals, intensive livestock farming and about global animal agriculture. It’s actually a nice film, this 90-minute, American documentary. It surprises us with its research conclusion, and with the question why environmental organisations such as Greenpeace, WWF, Oceana, Amazon Watch and others actually bypass the subject of meat, quietly ignore it, and gently hush it up. They simply don’t tackle the topic because it doesn’t fit into their business model. Have the green environmental groups got cold feet and found conflicts of …

At the beginning, we can see a bald-headed white man in heavenly images as he cautiously moves barefoot through the steaming jungle. The camera fixes onto the back of his head. This is overlaid with strangely familiar singing, the music of a primitive people. Then, with the music continuing, the director cuts to the street canyons of a megacity, a stone desert of concrete, glass and asphalt. One cut further takes us back to the jungle. Flashback. In 1985, while living in Holland and after a failed marriage, a young white American by the name of Louis Sarno (born in …

Nothing about the film is dry or boring or false. All the same, the topic of climate change, peak oil and dwindling resources, alternative ecological agriculture and the cooperation of a movement that is getting ready to ‘evolutionise’ our planet, is an important, political topic. It is just that the film does not wait for politicians, nor does it arouse the expectation that politicians could somehow be of any use. Crisis or no crisis: communal living should once again be a pleasure. That’s why shaggy-haired Englishman Mike Feingold stands there in his back yard, refreshingly irreverent with a cigarette in …

This is one of the best books about our sea, its creatures and local cuisine that has ever been written in Portugal: it is a blend of biology book, history book and cookbook, a collection of essays and anecdotes covering 150 illustrated pages; published in German and English, the book is a culinary survey of the seas and the kitchens of the Algarve kingdom. The two authors Andrea Siebert and Nico Böer (posthumously) deserve recognition and respect, because they have turned the knowledge they gathered from fishermen, fishmongers and cooks into the very useful format of a book. Now it …

This small big book is an economic and philosophical guide for all those who can slow down and would like to find out about economics from the other side: smaller, slower, less – in other words “less is more” – or simply sustainable. E. F. Schumacher, the German Englishman, was a wanderer between worlds. Born in Bonn in 1911, he studied economics in Bonn and Berlin, before going to study in Oxford and New York in 1930. England became his second home. He emigrated from Nazi Germany and later worked as a journalist, farmer and advisor in economic matters. And …

A book written by Stephen Emmott, a renowned British scientist, that can be defined as an anthropological essay of terror. In the course of the first 150 pages, the author analyses the growth in human population, consumption habits and their ecological impact. He argues for a return to subsistence consumption, from foodstuffs to clothing, to drastically reduce CO2 emissions from goods transport and the consumption of water connected with the production of almost everything. He goes as far as suggesting population controls although he doesn’t explain how. Without this, in 2050, the population will increase from its current 7 billion …

Really good books can only claim a justification for publication when their authors explore topics that seem to us to be irrefutable wisdom set in stone. Until recently, Pavan Sukhdev worked as a top manager at a European bank. Then he took some time out to focus on ecological issues within economics at the UN. Does he write anything really new in Corporation 2020? Yes. The book rightly asks the question why the legal form the limited company excludes comprehensive, complete liability. Yes, why, when every person is responsible for their actions in accordance with the originator principle: parents are …

So, let’s forget the telenovela for today. If you’re trying to track down the secret of the Red Queen, you’ll get a bit of help here. In seven chapters, Ugo Bardi gives us true adventure stories about our planet’s mineral resources. The language is clear, the writing gripping and it’s informative right to the last page. Sixteen international colleagues from different scientific disciplines supported him in the process. Do you know by any chance how much copper there is left waiting to be extracted from the earth’s crust? I for one didn’t. And what happens when, before long, there’s no …

Could happiness be a matter of geography? Eric Weiner, National Public Radio correspondent from New Delhi, Jerusalem and Tokyo, travelled through the world in search of an answer. The author wanted to check in practice the scientific information from the happiness rankings which are part of the World Database of Happiness, and he chose to visit happy and unhappy countries alike in search of the reasons for such (un)happiness. He visited a total of ten countries, starting in Holland and ending in the USA. On the way, he passed through Switzerland, Bhutan, India, Qatar, Iceland, Moldova, Thailand and Great Britain. …

If a Tree Falls – A Story of the Earth Liberation Front Directors: Marshall Curry, Sam Cullman Year: 2011 Genre: Documentary Length: 85 min Official website: www.ifatreefallsfilm.com   In the USA in December 2005, a police operation resulted in the dismantling of a cell of the radical environmental group Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and the capture of all of its fourteen members, described by the FBI as “the biggest internal terrorist threat” to the country. For a number of years, the ELF – operating in anonymous cells and without a centralised leadership – carried out multiple acts of sabotage, with huge …