What People Will be Killed for in This Century

What are the greatest dangers of our time? A new book by Harald Welzer tries to find out.

Apparently, the climate will play a big role in defining who lives and who dies in the future. In a summary in the Global Journal they describe Welzer as “a sociologist, measures climate change by the amount and extent of violence, as societies search for strategies to adapt to new realities.” The book, published in 2008 in German and now available in English looks deeper into these outbreaks of violence.

Phony Business

Yet again it was time to look inside the products we buy and discover the ugly truth about them.

Luckily, I hadn’t planned to buy a new phone anytime soon before watching the documentary Blood in the Mobile. In that documentary I learnt about Blood Minerals and how big companies don’t care about small boys working in mines. Here’s the story:

I’d Just Be Happy to Have a Future

That’s what Brittany Trilford says about the future speaking for a whole generation.

A generation who will bear the consequences of what today’s leaders do (or rather not do) – our generation and the ones coming after.

What Shall We Do?

Let’s find together a way in which we want to change the world.

One activity every year which we carry out all over the planet. That’s the idea the people from Barcelona Consensus had and they are in the middle of making it happen with ACT!

What’s the Future Like?

My mother told me the other day: it looks as if the world is coming to an end.

She had just read about the new report issued by the Club of Rome which indeed does sound rather scary. But the makers of Limits to Growth are not the only ones who believe that the world is going down if we don’t act.

The Tellus Institute is asking similar questions.  The Boston based research institute is driven by the idea of a different world. According to the project called Great Transition Initiative there are three main perspective for the future of our planet,

The People in Africa are Starving

Development organisations and charities like to shock us with their images. They want us to feel bad and most of all they want us to give them money.

How this practice distorts our view of a rich and multifaceted continent seems not to matter. The latest Stride edition writes that

Why not Co-operate?

The fordist model is dead, long live co-operatives? An alternative way to do business.

Robert Murray discusses in a new Red Pepper article the prospects of co-operatives as a solution to the current economic crisis. It stands out for its focus on accountability and social-driven long-term focus.

Diversity Pays Off

Today is the International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia. Unfortunately, that is still necessary.

In Britain, according to Stonewall “nearly one in five lesbian and gay people, almost 350,000 employees in Britain, have experienced bullying from their colleagues because of their sexual orientation.” Other numbers coming from Australia say that 52.8% of the participants of the servey “have been the subject of harassment or discrimination in their current employment. ” Now these’s are definitely not the most homophobic countries in the world which means we have a problem here.

The Sword of Damocles

Why Rio+20 will not solve the environmental challenges the international community is facing and why the Green Economy is not the solution.

“We are currently living in a civilization that, as far as we can determine future risk, looks unsustainable” (Giddens 2010, p. 10). A look at the news confirms this: islands are disappearing, monsoon patterns are changing and deserts are growing. Pandora’s box has been opened. Solutions to this energy-environment conundrum exist. But hydropower-dams, biofuels and nuclear energy bring, according to my view, more harm than good. What we need are political solutions which accept and act upon the following:

Chocolat – Sinfully Delicious

Chocolate is a compliacted sin. And for once this is not about the weight we might gain from enjoying it – this is about the dark side of our favourite sweet.

Most of the chocolate we consume is produced in Africa – strangely enough we like to call it “Swiss” or “Belgian” Chocolate. I can tell you that there’s no chocolate plantations in either of those countries. Rather, chocolate grows in Western Africa in countries like Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire or Liberia – rather conflict-struck countries.