To keep this kind of growth going, we need to tap more resources, which is beyond the Earth’s capacity. Till now the growth was possible because we thought resources are abundant. But today we know that we will have to experience a serious crisis in the next half century, depending upon how we use resources….
Read More about Can the economy grow forever?
The Green New Deal seeks to generate growth and reduce emissions. The problem is that growth and emissions are profoundly correlated. The Green New Deal thus risks becoming a sort of Sisyphean reform, rolling the rock of emissions reductions up the hill each day only to have a growing, energy-hungry economy knock it back down….
Read More about Jasper Bernes: Between the Devil and the Green New Deal
This series by Cory Morningstar charges Greta Thunberg—the face of the youth climate activism, and an inspiration to millions—with being a pawn of a ‘Non-Profit Industrial Complex’ seeking to hijack the movement to usher in the next stage of global capitalism, dubbed the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’. Also included here is Thunberg’s response to her critics….
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Wendell Berry and Helena Norberg-Hodge discuss human nature, experiential knowledge, technology, happiness, wildness, and local food systems — topics which they have always commented on, but which have taken on a new urgency. They offer a critique of our economic system and show how the caretaking of the natural world and local communities are one and the same….
Read More about Caretaking: A conversation
Ron Patterson writes: Jay Hanson was the founder of multiple energy resources or peak oil lists from the 1990s, starting with the incredibly popular Dieoff website and Dieoff list which looked at peak oil, population numbers, and scarcity. He was probably more responsible for starting the whole Peak Oil Awareness Movement than any other person….
Read More about Obituary: Jay Hanson, early populariser of the converging crises
Rahul Gandhi, President of Indian National Congress, along with Jairam Ramesh
“Carbon tax” is a tax on fossil fuels to reduce their consumption. A revenue neutral carbon tax is “the fairest, most effective, most efficient single policy tool in the fight for a habitable climate,” says Charles Komanoff. The term “revenue neutral” simply means the tax revenue is returned back to the public in some form….
Read More about Rahul Gandhi’s cash transfer scheme could be a revenue neutral Carbon Tax
Thunberg, the face of school climate-strikes, writes, “Either we go on as a civilization, or we don’t”. But who said we must go on with this civilization? If we drop this idea, then the survival of the human species (not of the current Western civilization) is possible – with a different, yet to be fully described, kind of civilization….
Read More about Greta Thunberg’s problem. A problem without a solution?
We commit, and ask all political parties, people’s movements, civil society organisations, and other relevant groups to commit to an India that is just, equitable, and sustainable for today’s and coming generations. The above commitment (and related steps) is urgently required in the context of the multiple crises we are facing today. (Courtesy Vikalp Sangam)…
Read More about Elections 2019: People’s Manifesto for a Just, Equitable, and Sustainable India
The National Mineral Policy 2019 lays a foundation for the systematic implementation of intergenerational equity in India with reference to natural resources. However, the question is whether it will be implemented and implemented quickly. Will future generations see us as the generation that consumed the planet, or the generation that changed the course of history?…
Read More about Rahul Basu: What the National Mineral Policy 2019 does and doesn’t get right
Nupur Chowdhury writes: The ‘polluter pays principle’ is seen as an effective remedy to address environmental degradation. The PPP allows the polluter to evade punitive action by paying for environmental damage, the presumption being that the monies collected would then be used for restoring the environment. We’ve failed to understand that environmental damage is irreversible….
Read More about Why the ‘polluter pays’ principle should be abandoned
From Science Magazine: Cuba has become the latest country to enshrine the fight against climate change in its constitution. A team of Cuban experts has just finished drafting a $100 million proposal that the government plans to submit early this year to the Global Climate Fund, an international financing mechanism set up by the U.N….
Read More about Cuba embarks on a 100-year plan to protect itself from climate change
Ted Kaczynski, known to the FBI as the Unabomber, sent parcel bombs from his shack to those he deemed responsible for the promotion of the technological society he despises. Is it possible to read someone like Kaczynski and be convinced by the case he makes, even as you reject what he did with the knowledge?…
Read More about Paul Kingsnorth: Dark ecology
Rebecca Solnit writes: I want to say to all the climate strikers: thank you so much for being unreasonable. You may be told that what you are asking for is impossible. Don’t listen. Don’t stop. Don’t let your dreams shrink an inch. Don’t forget; this might be the year when you rewrite what is possible….
Read More about Thank you, climate strikers. You are the force of possibility that runs through the present like a river through the desert.
Over the years, ‘development’ has undergone multiple modifications, such as sustainable development, participatory development, development with gender equity, integrated rural development, and so forth. All these approaches stay within the conventional understanding of development: they don’t constitute a radical departure from the prevailing paradigm. What we need to do is get rid of ‘development’ itself…
Read More about Arturo Escobar: Farewell to Development
The most disquieting thing wasn’t the disappearance of certain insect species; it was the deeper worry that a whole insect world might be quietly going missing, a loss of abundance that could alter the planet in unknowable ways. “We notice the losses,” says David Wagner. “It’s the diminishment that we don’t see.” (New York Times)…
Read More about The Insect Apocalypse: What does it mean for the rest of life on Earth?
The crisis in democracy is much discussed these days, but almost entirely in political terms that ignore its deeper causes. It’s the continuing failure to have this deeper discussion that has led to the democratic crisis we have. In this sense, the mainstream news media can be considered ‘enemies of the people’, peddling ‘fake news’….
Read More about Getting to the heart of democracy’s decline
Many of these battles were fought not because people understood how these projects affected the environment but because they saw the loss of their land and livelihoods as the loss of security and dignity. As a woman adivasi farmer succinctly put it, “I wish to be a farmer, and not a housemaid in someone’s home.”…
Read More about Indian environmental movements: Why they failed or succeeded, and the challenges ahead
Jason Hickel writes: Many people were thrilled when they heard that the Economics Nobel went to William Nordhaus, known for his work on climate change. But many climate scientists and ecologists believe that the failure of the world’s governments to pursue aggressive climate action is in large part due to arguments that Nordhaus has advanced….
Read More about The Nobel Prize for climate catastrophe
People in older cultures, connected to community and place, held close in a lineage of ancestors, woven into a web of personal and cultural stories, radiate a kind of solidity and presence that I rarely find in any modern person. Whatever the measurable gains of the Ascent of Humanity, we have lost something immeasurably precious….
Read More about Our new, happy life? The ideology of development, by Charles Eisenstein
Michael Löwy writes: Capitalism, driven by the maximization of profit, is incompatible with a just and sustainable future. Ecosocialism offers a radical alternative that puts social and ecological well-being first. Attuned to the links between the exploitation of labor and the exploitation of the environment, ecosocialism stands against both reformist “market ecology” and “productivist socialism.”…
Read More about Why Ecosocialism: For a Red-Green future
