CLIMATE CRISIS
Carbon Brief reports: Four years of current emissions would be enough to blow what’s left of the carbon budget for a good chance of keeping global temperature rise to 1.5C. That’s the conclusion of this analysis, which brings the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s carbon budgets up to date to include global emissions in 2016….
Read More about Analysis: Just four years left of the 1.5C carbon budget
Gujarat-based Amul kick-started the milk revolution in India
Consumerism/Lifestyle
Many people think that milk is normal good food. But a large part of the world until recently never consumed the milk of other animals. Even today, Eastern Asia as a rule does not use milk. So, for some, milk is the greatest food, while for others, milk is one of the five white poisons….
Read More about How Indians started drinking milk (and what it has cost us)Conserve/Resist
From TNI.org: While water privatisation continues to be imposed throughout the world, particularly in the Global South, more and more communities are demanding public management of water (also labelled remunicipalisation) and wastewater services and forcing out private actors. Here are 10 inspiring stories of communities and cities working to reclaim control over this essential resource….
Read More about 10 rousing struggles for public waterCLIMATE CRISIS
Climate Central reports: The early heat this year is due to a shift in wind patterns that has seen air flowing in from the south and west, across dry areas that quickly cause that air to warm. That heat-waves will become more common and intense is one of the clearest outcomes of human-driven global warming….
Read More about Early heat wave baking India is a sign of worse to come
Adani group chairman Gautam Adani is known to be close to PM Modi
ENERGY
I’ve come face to face with some of the world’s worst companies, but at the top of that list is mining giant Adani, which wants to develop one of the world’s largest coalmines in Australia, supposedly to meet demand from India. But the communities I work with patently do not want Adani or its coal….
Read More about Vaishali Patil: Exposing Adani’s environmental and labour abuses
A child labourer cries as he is rescued in a joint operation by Labour dept. and an NGO in Delhi
Reuters/Adnan Abidi
Education/Awareness
IndiaSpend reports: Nearly 46 million people live under conditions of slavery across the world, with 18 million (39%) of those in India, home to the world’s largest number of slaves, according to the 2016 Global Slavery Index. They have lost their freedom by way of bonded and domestic labour and sexual slavery, among other means….
Read More about ‘India has world’s best anti-slavery laws’ (and largest number of slaves)
ALTERNATIVES
From Kosmos Journal: What if we told you that humanity is being driven to the brink of extinction by an illness? That all the poverty, the climate devastation, the perpetual war, and consumption fetishism all around us have roots in a mass psychological infection? What if this infection is not just highly communicable but also self-replicating?…
Read More about Seeing Wetiko: On capitalism, mind viruses, and antidotes for a world in transition
Conflict/Dispossession
People living in villages, who are migrating in large numbers to cities, could be victims of our economic development or perhaps the dismal income growth of farm households is semi-deliberate to keep labour costs low… Are our rural brothers victims or collateral damage of economic development, of a deliberate though unstated strategy, asks Sanjiv Phansalkar….
Read More about Are farmers ‘collateral damage’ of India’s economic growth?Conflict/Dispossession
With the U.S. and Russia headed for a direct confrontation in Syria, the war in that country is moving a new, more dangerous phase. The Syrian war often seems like a big confusing mess but one factor that’s not often mentioned could be the key to unlocking the conflict: the struggle to control energy markets….
Read More about Is the fight over a gas pipeline fuelling the world’s bloodiest conflict?
NEWS ARCHIVE
BBC News reports: There are 60,065 species of trees in the world, according to a comprehensive study of the world’s plants. Botanical Gardens Conservation International, which compiled the tree list by using data gathered from its network of 500 member organizations, hopes it will be used as a tool to identify rare and threatened species….
Read More about NEWS UPDATE #137
The fishing community in Vizhinjam, Kerala, now threatened by a port being built by the Adani Group
Conflict/Dispossession
The Indian coastline no longer belongs to its traditional custodians— the small fisher people. A jamboree of development —cities, SEZs, power plants, ports, sand mining— is eating up the coastline and eroding it beyond repair. Debasis Shyamal of the National Fishworkers’ Forum speaks to Sayantan Bera on the present and future of India’s traditional fishers….
Read More about ‘If we go on like this, the entire mass of small fishers will be wiped out.’CLIMATE CRISIS
Rupert Read, a philosophy professor at the University of East Anglia, UK, recently shocked his new 1st year students with a ‘welcoming address’ that dealt with the looming dangers of climate change. Watch the video or read the transcript of his speech below to know why Prof. Read chose to dwell on this unexpected subject….
Read More about Rupert Read: Why I had to tell my students that I fear for them
P. Sainath/People's Archive of Rural India
Education/Awareness
Hari Pulakkat writes: The country’s water data has been largely hidden from public view, and what was available was poor or untrustworthy. This brings up a question rarely asked by policymakers. If scientists find it difficult to analyse the country’s water resources at the moment, how valid are the reports that forecast India’s water future?…
Read More about The precarious situation of India’s water problem
Bookshelf
This review by Alice Friedmann of Nafeez Ahmed’s new book has 3 parts: 1) Why states collapse for reasons other than economic and political 2) How Bio-Physical factors contribute to systemic collapse in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Nigeria 3) Predictions of when collapse will begin in Middle-East, India, China, Europe, Russia, North America…
Read More about Red alert: A timeline for global collapse
Rohan Chakravarty
INDIA
From The Hindu: The rights do not stem from an intrinsic identity or status of the river, but more from their use for humans; and giving them ‘personhood’ or legal status makes it very human-centred. Can rivers not be recognised as having identity, worth, dignity, and rights as intrinsic qualities, not because they serve us?…
Read More about What does it mean for a river to have rights?
Bookshelf
Now, we may disagree about the extent to which success deserves to be rewarded–but virtually all agree that wealth is created primarily at the top. In reality, it is precisely the other way around. This is one of the biggest taboos of our times– the truth that we are living in an inverse welfare state….
Read More about Rutger Bregman: Wealth isn’t created at the top; it’s only devoured there
ALTERNATIVES
Rahul Basu writes: Goa Foundation, one of the country’s best-known environmental groups, has proposed a whole new approach to mining that’s designed to tackle the colossal damage caused by rampant corruption and human greed. It can be applied globally to natural resources and commons generally, but starting with minerals as their economic values are clearer….
Read More about Goenchi Mati: A call for environmental custodianship and inter-generational equity in mining
ALTERNATIVES
Charles Eisenstein writes: We need a parallel system of technology development that can guide society as conventional systems unravel and conventional technologies fail to adequately address our problems. Imagine a worldwide archipelago of land-based institutions of learning, sanctuaries of alternative technologies of earth, mind, matter, and body that are marginal or absent within conventional universities….
Read More about Why we need ‘technologies of reunion’
Economy
The total outstanding loans of public sector banks stands at Rs 6.8 lakh crores. Of this, 70% belongs to the corporate sector, whereas only 1% of the defaulters are farmers. Why’s the banking system designed to favour the rich who already have many perks, while the poor pay a higher price to sustain their livelihoods?…
Read More about Devinder Sharma: Does the banking system really want to help farmers?ALTERNATIVES
The 2017 Center For Progressive Urban Politics Summit brought together an amazing panel that consisted of John Michael Greer, James Howard Kunstler, Chris Martenson, Frank Morris, and Dmitry Orlov. In this video, the panelists talk about global issues ranging from politics, the economy, the food we eat, immigration, labor, poverty, minorities, war, and much more….
Read More about Watch: Leading thinkers on the converging crises and alternatives
