Plundering the Planet

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 more copper left? The newspapers are silent. And there’s nothing about it on television. And how are we going to replace phosphorus? Perhaps we could go without gold and coal for the time being. After all, it is supposed to be getting warmer. But we’ll probably have to keep burning oil and natural gas for a while. But what are our industrial farmers going to do in 40 years’ time when the phosphorus runs out? What are WE nine billion LEMMINGS going to eat? Are we going to end up like the rabbits in the Australian bush?

This book is like the mining business itself, whether of tin, zinc, copper, iron, coal, crude oil – the chemist Ugo Bardi from Florence digs a great big hole and brings facts to light out of the darkness. In his 360-page book “Plundering the Planet”, we hold them up to the light and discover a diamond there. The book is linguistically polished and colourful in all facets. And then towards the end, we finally discover who the Red Queen is and what the future holds. You should have read this book, at some time before you turn up your toes.

About the author

Uwe Heitkamp, 53 years old, started working after university in daily newspapers and from 1984 on in public tv broadcasting companies such as WDR (Collogne), NDR (Hamburg), SDR (Stuttgart/Baden-Baden) in the ARD (first programme), wrote several books and directed the cinema movie about the anti nuclear movement in Germany in 1986 (Wackersdorf). After emigration in 1990 he founded 1995 the trilingual weekly printed newspaper “Algarve123”  and later the online edition www.algarve123.com. Heitkamp lives for 25 year in Monchique, Portugal. He loves mountain hiking and swimming in streams and lakes, writes and tells stories of success from people and their sustainable relationship between ecology and economy. His actual film “Revolutionary Roads” tells the 60 minute story of a long walk crossing Portugal. 10 rural people paint a picture of their lives in the hills of the serra and the hinterland. The film captures profound impressions of natural beauty and human life. Along which path is the future of Portugal to be found? (subscribe to ECO123 und watch the documentary in the Mediatec)