Jaume terradas @en

For millions of years, nature has basically been getting by with just a few elements from the periodic table. Carbon, calcium, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus, silicon, sulphur, magnesium and potassium are the building blocks of almost all life on our planet (tree trunks, leaves, hairs, teeth, etc.). However, to build the world of humans — cities, healthcare products, railways, aeroplanes and their engines, computers, smartphones — we need many more chemical elements.

Second instalment about Mesopotamia. We are now situated throughout the 20th century, political and social changes caused massive forced migrations by people of the area and the uncontrolled exploitation of marshes populated by the Ma'dam tribe.

The Poem of Gilgamesh is the oldest known fiction text, and represents brilliantly the conflict between nomadic and agricultural and urban societies; between nature and city. A conflict that lasts from 5.000 years ago Mesopotamia to the current Iraq.

The West world, with its desire for expansion and exploration of new and unknown territories, has deprived indigenous communities of their traditional methods of life and culture. The Arctic tribes have not either been an  exception.

Los Angeles and its great urban area (more than 18 million people) are in water suply problems since long time ago. At the begining of the 20th century, Owens Valley was drained among huge hiden economic interests that inspired the film Chinatown.

Jaume Terradas explains how an error in channeling the water of the Colorado River in California created a large artificial lake that, now, is endangered by the great water demand from the crop fields and nearby cities.

Birds for their feathers, but many other animals too, suffer the path to extinction because of human whims.

Which characteristics of the environment and living beings can explain the great diversity of plants and life in general on Earth?

In this new post, Jaume Terradas explains the bases of Naess' Deep Ecology, its philosophical roots and the implications in the present society.

Two paintings and one book that lead Jaume Terradas to think about how historical changes and human nature often don't coincide with art and with the preservation of the natural world.