Erasmo Calzadilla’s Diary

Statistics demonstrate what was already evident: the issue of environmental damage has significant media impact, while next to no one is worried about the energy crisis. The UN has several institutions devoted to the study of environmental problems but none dealing with the energy dilemma.

Cancer has been spreading quickly in Cuba for several decades now. In 2012, it became the chief cause of death in the country, and not precisely because the incidence of other causes went down. Today, I want to focus on a poison that has come to settle in our guts: glyphosate.

Fixing a given problem by doing more of the same and doing so more intensely is retreating in a forward direction. In a finite and nearly exhausted world like ours, doing this is surest path to failure.

I would love to know when, how and why the metamorphosis took place. This is not idle, historical curiosity. At one point, we will have to go back to the time everything went wrong and try again, with or without a worldwide crisis.

In September of 2010 – exactly five years ago – I wrote my first post about peak oil. I started delving into the issue after reading some articles by Ramon Fernandez Duran that a Spanish friend left me.

On Monday, August 24, the world’s main stock markets suffered their worst trading in years. What I would like to focus on, however, is the collapse of my own “company” a mere week later.

I’m shaken up. In less than a year, three friends of mine have been diagnosed with and treated for cervical cancer (CC) – three young women saved from a slow and horrible death. I dedicate this post to all those battling this condition. (9 graphs)

Today, I want to revisit another thorny issue in Cuba: the process of cultural and social degradation that continues to spread across our cities and countryside. I am not the only one who’s noticed it – it is a rather recurrent topic of discussion down here.

This past July, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published its much-awaited State of the Climate report. Below is a summary of its findings along with some of the risks posed to Cuba.

Over the past ten years, reggaeton singers have changed the idea we’d long had about Latin American music. Their music videos are full of adrenaline, aggressiveness, sexual arousal, speed, fast motorcycles, sport cars, luxurious yachts and lascivious young men. One of Daddy Yankee’s popular pieces (where the title of this post comes from) offers us a clue as to the underpinnings of all this.