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An aerial view of Welspun's giant solar park in Neemuch, Madhya Pradesh

Conflict/Dispossession

India’s dispossessed confront a new threat: solar parks

10th August 2017

Frontline reports: Across the country, large tracts of land are being earmarked for exclusive solar power parks. The rocky terrain of Madhya Pradesh’s Neemuch district has emerged as the largest solar power-generating hub in India, but the nomadic communities that have lived there for generations find themselves dispossessed of land and reduced to abject poverty….

ALTERNATIVES

Richard Heinberg: Ecological collapse? There’s no app for that

Even when we question the personal impacts of modern technology, how many of us consider how our dependence on technology might be harming us? Or question the belief that technological advances will save us from our most pressing environmental and societal challenges? Richard Heinberg tackles this thorny issue in this brilliant essay and animation feature….

Development/Growth

Anandi Sharan: There are no pros; only cons to nuclear energy

9th August 2017

From Patna Daily: A nuclear power plant can be imported lock stock and barrel and all local people need to do is watch the plant and the fence around it get erected, charge their mobile phones to watch videos all day, stay out of trouble. They have no work in the creation of the asset….

Economy

Gail Tverberg: The next financial crisis is not far away

We should expect financial collapse quite soon – perhaps as soon as the next few months. Our problem is energy related, but not in the way most experts have claimed. It’s much more related to the election of President Trump and to the Brexit vote. Most people don’t understand how interconnected the world economy is….

ALTERNATIVES

Rooted Truth: On India’s only private wildlife sanctuary

7th August 2017

From Infinite Windows/Eartha Mag: 23 years ago, the passionate conservationist couple Pamela and Anil Malhotra bought 55 acres of land in Coorg, which they have since converted into a beautiful forest of over 300 acres. This is the story of how SAI Sanctuary came to host animals like the Bengal Tiger, Sambhar and Asian Elephants….

Culture/Cognition

Art Eco 1: The ethereal beauty of ‘Bioluminescent Forest’

Nature has always inspired art, but in our own age of ecological crisis, it’s taking on a special significance for many contemporary artists. This series looks at path-breaking artists and works that reflect this growing awareness. Here, watch artist-filmmakers Friedrich van Schoor and Tarek Mawad turn trees, mushrooms, and even toads into pulsing, projection-mapped creatures….

Subhash Palekar in his farm

ALTERNATIVES

Interview: Subhash Palekar and the holy cows of natural farming

6th August 2017

From The Wire: Spurred by his firsthand observation of the havoc wrought by chemical fertilisers and pesticides, Subhash Palekar developed his own alternative method of farming, dubbed ‘Zero Budget Natural Farming’. The widely influential Padma Shri awardee tells Manas Roshan about his methods and the agrarian crisis, also expressing his controversial views on cow slaughter….

ALTERNATIVES

This Swiss company aims to capture 1% of global CO2 emissions by 2025

CarbonBrief reports: On the roof of a waste incinerator outside Zurich, the Swiss firm Climeworks has built the world’s first commercial plant to suck CO2 directly from the air. They claim that their direct air capture process –a technology often considered too expensive– aims to capture 1% of global CO2 emissions each year by 2025….

Conserve/Resist

Bees are disappearing in India – and we are slowly learning why

5th August 2017

From Scroll.in: Honeybees, which play a vital role in pollinating food crops, are declining at an alarming rate in India. It is not just pesticides that are contributing to their decline. Ironically, it might be the very efforts to promote bees in India that could be leading to a further decline in their diversity and prevalence….

ALTERNATIVES

On rewilding the imagination

Rob Hopkins writes: The Wild Network’s mission is “to support children, parents and guardians to roam free, play wild and connect with nature”. According to their ‘Chief Wild Officer’ Mark Sears, mental well-being is proven to be clearly linked to time spent outdoors in natural environments, but this is neglected by modern schooling and parenting….

Development/Growth

India’s massive corporate bad debts and natural resource auctions

4th August 2017

India’s former energy secretary E.A.S. Sharma writes in The Wire: Everyone knows that the NPA problem is due to the lack of due diligence on the part of banks. If banks were to refuse new loans to some of these indebted companies, nearly 40% of the coal blocks assigned to them would not get developed….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Can you feel capitalism dying?

Joe Brewer writes: There is a reason only 5 men have the same aggregate wealth as half the human population. And that the Earth’s climate is ramping up for a phase transition that threatens our entire civilization. It’s because the 500 year old Global Architecture of Wealth Extraction is designed to produce exactly these outcomes….

ALTERNATIVES

Bookshelf: Indira Gandhi: A Life in Nature, by Jairam Ramesh

3rd August 2017

Former environment minister Jairam Ramesh tells IndiaSpend about his latest book ‘Indira Gandhi: A Life in Nature’, why you can’t leave the environment to market forces, the current government’s policies, the erosion of the National Green Tribunal’s autonomy, the recent commercial approval for GM mustard and the poor implementation of environmental laws in the country….

Education/Awareness

Obituary: P.M. Bhargava: Man of science who never bowed down to authority

2nd August 2017

From The Indian Express: One of the most outstanding biological scientists in India and the founder director of CSIR-Centre for Cellular Molecular Biology (CCMB), Pushpa Mitra Bhargava was a perennial and powerful dissenter and never bowed down to authority. He was suffering from multiple health problems. He is survived by a son and a daughter….

Carol Van Strum prepares to work on her property with her dogs Maybe and Mike

Risa Scott/RF Scott Imagery

Conserve/Resist

The Poison Papers: Carol Van Strum vs The chemical industry

From The Intercept: In a lifetime spent battling the chemical industry while enduring extreme personal tragedy, 72-year-old Carol Van Strum amassed disturbing evidence about the dangers of industrial chemicals —and the practices of the companies that make them, including Dow and Monsanto. Now, her archive, dubbed ‘The Poison Papers’, is finally in the public domain….

Conserve/Resist

A birder gives wings to three centuries of South Asian ornithology

31st July 2017

From The Hindu: Aasheesh Pittie has single-handedly indexed a monumental bibliographic database of everything that has been published on the birds of South Asia in the printed or electronic form since the mid-eighteenth century, searchable with keywords. This little-known labour of love by Pittie, founding editor of the bi-monthly Indian BIRDS, is available at www.southasiaornith.in….

ALTERNATIVES

Light, bright or dark – what shade of green are you?

Kari McGregor writes: The green movement is no longer unified, if it ever really was. Bright Green, Lite Green, Bright Green and Dark Green tribes form around divergent worldviews, theories of change, an accepted range of tactics. Each tribe vies for attention to its message in a world of time-constrained news cycles and manufactured consumerism….

ALTERNATIVES

Tribute: Murray Bookchin and the ecology of freedom

30th July 2017

Here’s a thinker, who in the 1960s, declared climate change as a defining problem of the age. Who accused his fellow environmentalists of advocating mere “technical fixes” of capitalism, instead of addressing root causes. But today, his ideas are enjoying an unexpected revival. Damian White pays tribute to Murray Bookchin, who died on this day in 2006….

AFP

Bookshelf

How govt policies are recklessly threatening India’s wildlife reserves

29th July 2017

From Scroll.in: While the UPA government had been steadily weakening safeguards for India’s environment, forests and wildlife, the present NDA government is carrying forward this agenda in an even more aggressive and systematic manner. A new book by Prerna Singh Bindra details how ‘ease of doing business’ has become an excuse to ignore wildlife protection….