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Contributor

Consumerism/Lifestyle

We are addicted to convenience, and it’s fatal both for us and the planet

21st February 2017

Ashish Kothari writes: Convenience is trashing the earth. Unlimited motorised transport, electrical and electronic gadgets, chemicals and packaging for increased shelf-life mean carbon emissions, pollution, chemical contamination, mining. Other species and other people (whose homes happen to be above the mining deposits) are just collateral damage for a society drunk on the technologies of convenience….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Man points camera at ice – then captures the unimaginable on film

20th February 2017

Newsner reports: During a National Geographic-commissioned photo expedition to the Arctic, photographer James Balog and his team were examining a glacier when their cameras caught something out of the ordinary. This rare footage has gone on record as the largest glacier calving event ever captured on film, and presents a dire warning of things to come….

Culture/Cognition

Irada: a well-intended expose of pollution and graft from Bollywood

Debutant director Aparnaa Singh’s Irada is said to have been inspired by real events –the pollution of groundwater by a chemical manufacturer with the blessings of a state’s ruling party. Set in Punjab, Irada advocates solutions that viewers will be hard-pressed to replicate, but its concerns are timely, character sketches memorable, and its empathy unmistakable….

Conflict/Dispossession

Kaziranga: The park that shoots people to protect rhinos

18th February 2017

In Kaziranga national park, rangers shoot people to protect rhinos. The park features in a new BBC investigation, which highlights some of the conflicts that characterise contemporary conservation, as the need to protect endangered species comes into contact with the lives and rights of people who live in and around the increasingly threatened national parks….

CLIMATE CRISIS

The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration

17th February 2017

The Great Acceleration marks the phenomenal growth of the global socio-economic system, the human part of the Earth System. It is difficult to overestimate the scale and speed of change. In little over two generations –or a single lifetime –humanity (or until very recently a small fraction of it) has become a planetary-scale geological force….

ALTERNATIVES

Is Costa Rica the world’s happiest, greenest country?

15th February 2017

Ariana López Peña writes: Costa Rica was the most environmentally advanced and happiest place on earth last year, followed by Mexico, Colombia and Vanuatu, according to the Happy Planet Index, which measures life expectancy, well-being, environmental footprint and inequality to calculate nations’ success– all areas where Costa Rica’s government has made significant effort and investment….

Finance & Debt

The terrible truth behind the wave of farmer suicides in India

14th February 2017

Nikita Sattiraju writes: Farmer suicides in India have largely been attributed to debt, drought, crop failure or poor returns. However, farmers have been taking the drastic step regardless of a good rainfall year or bad, a good price year or a disappointing one. Why? Questions arise on the exact nature and reasons behind the deepening problem….

INDIA

Environ-Mental? The bizarre ‘green’ ideas of our netas

12th February 2017

India Water Portal reports: The year 2016 was an abysmal year in terms of environmental policy and conservation in India. There were also many initiatives worth talking about. Any initiative, however, is only as good as those managing it. Here we talk about four people in the country who made news for their water-related actions….

Development/Growth

Why the 2017 Union Budget is deceptively ‘pro-farmer’

10th February 2017

Kirankumar Vissa writes; Everyone in the media has been talking about the slew of pro-farmer measures included in Budget 2017, how it is a Budget for the ‘have nots’ and one that will give a big fillip to agriculture. It is time to call this Budget what it is–a big prank on India’s farming community….

Economy

George Monbiot: The Golden Arches Theory of Decline

8th February 2017

A wave of revulsion rolls around the world. Approval ratings for incumbent leaders are everywhere collapsing. Symbols and slogans trump facts and nuance. One in six Americans now believes that military rule would be a good idea. From all this I draw the following, peculiar conclusion: no country with a McDonald’s can remain a democracy….

People’s Climate, 2014

CLIMATE CRISIS

So you want to be a climate campaigner? Here’s how

7th February 2017

The planet is getting hotter, leaving people hungry and fuelling wars around the world and you want to do something about it. But with a green movement to cater for every age, location, and type of plastic recycling, how to turn your enthusiasm into action? Maeve Shearlaw’s tips for getting started as a climate activist….

Conflict/Dispossession

Some of the world’s wealthiest are preparing for the crackup of civilisation

6th February 2017

The New Yorker reports: Survivalism, the practice of preparing for the collapse of civilization, tends to evoke a certain picture: eg. the religious doomsayer. But in recent years survivalism has expanded to more affluent quarters, taking root in Silicon Valley and New York City, among technology executives, hedge-fund managers, and others in their economic cohort….

ALTERNATIVES

The Enlivenment Manifesto: Politics and Poetics in the Anthropocene

5th February 2017

Enlightenment thinking is coming to an end… But our civilization still operates as if reality is about organising inert, dead matter in efficient ways. It is impossible to achieve sustainability with our prevailing ‘operating system’ for economics, politics, and culture if the underlying ‘bios’—our unconscious assumption about reality—remains tied to an ideology of dead matter….

Conserve/Resist

Humans are killing the marine ecosystem. But this man is trying to reverse that

4th February 2017

Catch News reports: Siddharth Chakravarty worked for a decade in the merchant navy. It was a lucrative job, but one day, he realised it was not for him. He walked out of the merchant navy in 2011. The reason? Because the merchant navy’s goal was to maximise profits, and let the marine ecosytem be damned….

Uncategorised

The saga of Indian mining: A long lineage of illegality

2nd February 2017

India has seen more than a handful of mining-related scams unravel in the last decade. The 2014 coalgate scam is perceived as the nemesis of the UPA government. The powerful but now infamous Reddy Brothers made headlines for the illegal operations in Bellary. Goan citizens confronted by mine-related pollution through successive governments nicknamed their…

CLIMATE CRISIS

How the world passed a carbon threshold and why it matters

Yale Environment 360 reports: Last year marked the first time in several million years that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 passed 400 parts per million. Frighteningly, this modern rise of CO2 is also accelerating at an unusual rate. By looking at the Earth’s climate history, scientists are getting a sobering picture of where we are headed….

Sea level rise has washed away more than 50% of Ghoramara island, Sunderbans

Daesung Lee

CLIMATE CRISIS

Women bear the brunt of climate-forced migration

29th January 2017

Manipadma Jena reports: An ActionAid report released last month warns of the devastating and increasing impact of climate change on women in South Asia, stating how “Young females from neighbouring Nepal and Bangladesh who migrate to India as well as internal migrants from rural areas moving to cities are increasingly vulnerable to abuse and trafficking.”…

Bookshelf

Brace for the coming oil, food and financial crash

Nafeez Ahmed writes: A new research study by HSBC on global oil supply shows that the bulk of the world’s oil production has peaked and is now in decline. Welcome to a new age of permanent economic recession driven by our ongoing dependence on dirty, expensive, difficult oil — unless we choose a fundamentally different path….

ALTERNATIVES

Daripalli Ramaiah: The man who planted (ten million!) trees

28th January 2017

Daripalli Ramaiah, recently awarded the Padmashri, India’s third highest civilian honour, has dedicated his life to increasing the country’s green cover and in the process has been credited with planting one crore saplings. The fight of Ramaiah to plant trees was not alone, as his wife Janamma has also made significant contribution to tree planting….