Global Cooling

The projected growth of the plastics industry would require the carbon from nearly half of today's crude oil production. This alone would make all climate targets unattainable. But there is another way. Instead of sourcing it from fossil sources, the necessary carbon can also be drawn down from the atmosphere. This would not only help to save the climate but also make nations more independent of raw material...

The secret of Terra Preta lies not solely in its use of biochar, but rather in a societal system that has internalized the importance of closed nutrient cycles in nature. Only by means of conscious recycling of all accumulating waste matter could the otherwise nutrient poor tropical soils allow for population densities which exceed present-day Bangladesh, the Netherlands or Japan.

Many thousands of clay houses crumbled during the recent earthquakes in Nepal. But that did not happen because of insufficient strength of the clay as a building material, but rather because basic construction rules were disregarded. Gernot Minke, an international expert on clay building, explains in this interview how to build clay houses that resist earthquakes even better than many concrete buildings. He also...

Glyphosate is the main active substance used in most commercial herbicides. It poisons not only plants, but also animals and humans. When testing for glyphosate contamination in an urban population, a German university found significant contamination in all urine samples with levels 5 to 20 times above the legal limit for drinking water.