Suhrkamp Verlag Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-518-42385-1 There are many writings about environmental issues. But Stephen Emmott's "Ten Billion" is unique. They deserved to be the book of the year! Emmott's stage play "Ten Billion" was also a sensational success in London. Stephen Emmott teaches at Oxford and runs a research laboratory for computational science. So has [...]
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"Showdown" by Dirk Müller
The battle for Europe and our money Droemer, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-426-27605-1 What's wrong with Europe? Bank crash, debt crisis, bailouts, mass unemployment in the southern countries, protest movements... How could the European economy, after the much acclaimed introduction of the common currency EURO in seventeen countries (of currently 28 member states of the European Union), get into this turbulence, which is far from [...]
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The view over the threshold
Published in Grail World Special Issue 24 In the life of a human being there is one certainty: that the earthly life cycle is limited. Living beings are - from a physical point of view - unstable systems which have to be maintained by continuous energy supply. In the process, they change continuously and at some point come to their inevitable end. The maximum lifetime of a living organism on [...]
Why we should erect a monument to the earthworm (Published in GralsWelt 78/2013) It is surprising, almost dismaying, to learn how ignorant many people still were in the 19th century. How little, for example, farmers knew about their arable land with its soil life, on the fertility of which depended the crop yields and thus the well-being of many people. We are not talking here [...]
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Do we need a second planet?
Ecological Turnaround or Catastrophic End Günter Albert Ulmer (Published in GralsWelt 76/2013) Our world is suffering from multiple exponential growth: the population is growing exponentially, consumption per capita is growing exponentially, and the big capital owners want their profits to grow exponentially as well. They must, it seems, in order to further increase their influence over politicians and governments [...]
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2052
The new report to the Club of Rome by Jorgen Randers. Oekom, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-86581-398-5, 430 pages. (Published in Grail World 76/2013) In 1972, 40 years ago, the first report to the Club of Rome appeared under the title: "The limits of growth", which wanted to draw attention to the fact that the earth is limited and therefore that [...]
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The end of normality
Obituary of our lives as they have been (Published in Grail World 76/2013) By Gabor Steingart, Piper, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-492-27489-0, 182 pages. Have politics, the economy, the environment, life, the world ever changed faster than in the last few decades? It is only today that we are becoming quite aware of the fact that the years of the so-called [...]
The discovery of the oldest high culture in Europe By Harald Haarmann CH Beck, Munich 2011 ISBN 978-3-406-622106 286 pages. (Published in GralsWelt 76/2013) In the general sense of history, the cradle of European civilization can be found among the ancient Greeks. Their much admired culture was then adopted by the Romans. When the Teutons established the Roman Empire for centuries [...]
Witnesses to prehistoric cultures in the Alps (Published in Grail World 76/2013) Anyone who hikes through the Alps with open eyes will be reminded again and again that the history of the Alpine region did not begin with the invasion of the Roman conquerors. For despite their forbidding climate, the valleys of the Alps have been populated for millennia. Hunters, shepherds and traders crossed [...]
By Colin Crouch Suhrkamp, Berlin, 2011, ISBN 978-3-518-42274-8, 148 pages (Published in GralsWelt 75/2013) Have you also wondered how it was possible "that a crisis caused by the reckless greed of the banks was transformed into a problem of state budgets. While bankers' bonuses are returning to pre-crisis levels, thousands are losing their jobs in the public sector." [...]
