GST Original Articles
By Robert Hunziker / 06 May 2019
Rachel Carson’s famous and brilliant book Silent Spring (1962), which single-handedly ignited the environmental movement, has never been more relevant than it is today.
A mimeo of Silent Spring is scheduled for publication by the UN as the most comprehensive study of life on the planet ever undertaken, an 1,800-page study by the world’s leading scientists that spells out in detail the results of a massive study of the world’s ecosystems.
The conclusion: Nature is in “steep decline.” ... Read more
By Robert Hunziker / 01 May 2019
The world is in the throes of an extinction crisis unlike any throughout paleoclimate history: the Sixth Mass Extinction, keeping in mind that the normal “background rate” for extinction is 1
to 5 species gone per year. But, what if it’s five every 24 hours? Answer: It’s a lot more than that. The current worldwide extinction rate is more than 1,000 times the normal background rate, or, in the simplest of terms, instead of 1 to 5 species extinct per year, it’s alarmingly somewhere... Read more
to 5 species gone per year. But, what if it’s five every 24 hours? Answer: It’s a lot more than that. The current worldwide extinction rate is more than 1,000 times the normal background rate, or, in the simplest of terms, instead of 1 to 5 species extinct per year, it’s alarmingly somewhere... Read more
By Robert Hunziker / 20 April 2019
Sometime in the near future it is highly probable that the Arctic will no longer have sea ice, meaning zero ice for the first time in eons, aka: the Blue Ocean Event.
Surely, the world is not prepared for the consequences of such an historic event, which likely turns the world topsy-turvy, negatively impacting agriculture with gonzo weather patterns, thus forcing people to either starve or fight. But the problem may be even bigger than shortages of food.
Still and all, it’s somewhat... Read more
By Robert Hunziker / 12 April 2019
Public health experts have been warning for decades that overuse of antibiotics reduces the effectiveness of drugs that cure bacterial infections. At least 2,000,000 Americans get antibiotic-resistant infections per year.
Notably, gluttonous overuse of antimicrobial drugs to combat bacteria and fungi via hospitals, clinics, and farms is backfiring and producing superbugs or “Nightmare Bacteria,” which is especially lethal for people with compromised immune systems and autoimmune disorders that... Read more
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More Reading Recommended by GST
By Lisa Song / 23 May 2019
The appetite is global. For the airline industry and industrialized nations in the Paris climate accord, offsets could be a cheap alternative to actually reducing fossil fuel use.
But the desperate hunger for these carbon credit plans appears to have blinded many of their advocates to the mounting pile of evidence that they haven’t — and won’t — deliver the climate benefit they promise.
I... Read more
By Nick Pemberton / 22 May 2019
Kollibri makes a convincing argument against farming and agriculture (and for wildtending). Kollibri effectively debunks myths about what he calls gatherer-hunters (he explains the reason for the reversal of the name). He points to not only their technical knowledge of plants, but argues that the all-knowing Western subject simply cannot grasp the feeling of what it was like to live in that time—... Read more
By Peter Bolton / 21 May 2019
Topic:
In November 2013, then-Secretary of State John Kerry declared: “The era of the Monroe Doctrine is over.”1 The reality of Obama administration policy did not entirely support this assertion; there was the executive order against Venezuela in 2015, support for the coup in Honduras in 2009, and ominously close ties with right-wing governments across the region. But with other more encouraging steps... Read more
By Richard Greeman / 20 May 2019
Topic:
Dear Friends, Colleagues, Comrades,
I am writing you from France, where I am a participant-observer in the Yellow Vest movement, which is still going strong after six months, despite a dearth of information in the international media. My report follows.
This unique, original social movement has enormous international significance. It has already succeeded in shattering the capitalist myth of “... Read more
By JASPER BERNES / 20 May 2019
Topic:
We cannot legislate and spend our way out of catastrophic global warming.
...nearly every renewable energy source depends upon non-renewable and frequently hard-to-access minerals: solar panels use indium, turbines use neodymium, batteries use lithium, and all require kilotons of steel, tin, silver, and copper. The renewable-energy supply chain is a complicated hopscotch around the periodic... Read more
By Dean Baker / 19 May 2019
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Economists pride themselves on being the serious social science, the one most deserving of status as an actual science. I will let others make the comparative assessment, but there is an awful lot of nonsense that passes as serious analysis within economics.
By Vishwas Satgar / 16 May 2019
Topic:
We have a crisis of climate leadership among all South Africa’s political parties and none are committed to ensuring South Africa, the region and the continent is on a climate emergency footing. Being on a climate emergency footing means advancing a deep just transition/s to ensure regulated, purposive, ambitions and planned reductions in carbon emissions to prevent a 1.5°C overshoot and the... Read more