To mark the bicentenary year of the bicycle, and to promote cycling among children, Ecologise Hyderabad and Ride A Cycle, Bangalore has published book on bicycle maintenance entitled ‘You and Your Cycle: A Guide to Maintenance’. The fully illustrated 40-page book is authored by Lavanya K and Shamala Kittane and is priced at Rs. 50/….
Read More about Ecologise book: You and Your Cycle: A Guide to Maintenance
Brayan Caicedo
We must rethink the question of states, market and society. We have dismembered the state; grown the market and believed that we’ve empowered society. Slowly, the circle closed— state, market and aspiring, consuming society merged. They became one. Anyone outside this circle stopped getting counted. This cannot work. This is our future’s most important agenda….
Read More about Sunita Narain: The future is in our hands
Lionel Anet writes on Countercurrents.org: The ultimate way to reduce our footprint on the planet is to reduce our population, a near impossible task in any civilisations but particularly capitalist ones. That’s the reason it’s shelved before it’s planned, except for the cruel Chinese example. Nevertheless, it must be done if we are to survive….
Read More about Regardless of lifestyles we’re too numerous to be sustainable
A new modeling study published in The Lancet suggests that India’s agricultural need for water can be met if Indians introduce minor diet changes. Research team leader Alan Dangour tells Down to Earth that “dietary change is a potential way to improve resilience of the Indian food system in the face of future groundwater decline.”…
Read More about Study: A minor change in your diet can reduce water use for agriculture
www.degrowth.de
Jason Hickel writes: Growth isn’t an option any more–we’ve already grown too much. Scientists are now telling us that we’re blowing past planetary boundaries at breakneck speed. The hard truth is that this global crisis is due almost entirely to overconsumption in rich countries. Rich countries must “catch down” to more appropriate levels of development….
Read More about Forget ‘developing’ poor countries, it’s time to ‘de-develop’ rich countries
Gujarat-based Amul kick-started the milk revolution in India
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)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 water
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
Global Environmentalist writes: Your blog post has given every urban Indian a free pass to continue to devour animals as it pleases their taste buds, all in the name of ‘saving the farmers’. The question is, will these people be able to save themselves when we don’t have enough clean water, air and good health?…
Read More about Meat-eating and the environment: An open letter to Sunita Narain
Illustration by Jasper Rietman
Florence Williams writes: Unfortunately for city dwellers, the closer we live to roads, the higher our risk of autism, stroke and cognitive decline in ageing, although the exact reasons haven’t been teased out. Scientists suspect it has something to do with fine particles causing tissue inflammation and altering gene expression in the brain’s immune cells….
Read More about Warning: living in a city could seriously damage your health
CBC News reports: A new report has calculated the total mass of all manmade things-from buildings to cars and computers- to be an astounding 30 trillion tons, seven times more than the total amount of living matter on Earth. It shows the sheer magnitude of the human impact on our planet, which is still growing….
Read More about Earth’s ‘technosphere’ now weighs 30 trillion tons, research findsFarmers need options to take care of animals that are not producing milk. Or they will be forced to let them stray, to eat the plastic cities throw away and die. By banning meat we are literally taking away half the potential income the livestock owner possesses. It is stealing from the poor, nothing less….
Read More about Sunita Narain: Why I would not advocate vegetarianism
Sandeep Anirudhan addresses the audience at an Aikyam event
On the first anniversary of Bangalore’s Aikyam Community for Sustainable Living, founder Sandeep Anirudhan travels back in time to recollect the journey that led to a different approach to building sustainability awareness. ‘The biggest realisation was that there was no isolated solution for any of the problems we face, because everything is connected’, he writes….
Read More about How I became a bankrupt monk: My journey towards building an eco-conscious community
Paul McDivitt writes: Making wind and solar seem like they’re doing better than they really are could come back to bite proponents —and the climate. If people think we are about to replace fossil fuels with renewables, they will be less likely to demand new policies and take actions to lower their own carbon footprints….
Read More about How renewable energy advocates are hurting the climate cause
Countercurrents.org
K.P. Sasi writes: Swaminathan along with Mylamma were the initial foundations of the historic struggle at Plachimada, Kerala. The struggle initiated by a small group of these Adivasis with Dalits and farmers forced one of the largest corporate powers in the world to back down and quit Plachimada. Swaminathan passed away on March 14, 2015….
Read More about Obituary: Veloor Swaminathan, who led a legendary fight against Coca Cola that’s finding new resonanceTheNewsMinute reports: About a half-hour distance from the Tiruvannamalai government bus depot lies the Marudam Farm School in Kanathampoondi… It was in 2009 that the idea for the farm school was born when Govinda and his wife Leela came here for an afforestation project. It was then the couple dreamt of building a sustainable community….
Read More about Five families that gave up city life for the rural dreamThe pioneering American economist who helped found the discipline of Ecological Economics, and presently a leading theorist of ‘steady-state economics’, muses on Pope Francis’ ground-breaking encyclical on environment and justice. “At a minimum, he’s given us a more truthful, informed, and courageous analysis of the environmental and moral crisis than have our secular political leaders.”…
Read More about Herman Daly: Thoughts on Pope Francis’ Laudato SiThe Transition movement refers to grassroot community projects that aim to increase self-sufficiency to reduce the potential effects of energy depletion, climate destruction, and economic instability. The UK-based Transition Network, founded in 2006, inspired the creation of many of the projects. Here, Rob Hopkins, one of its founders, looks back to when it all began….
Read More about 10 years of Transition Network: A look back at the early daysNityanand Jayaraman writes: Coke and Pepsi are the best-known agents of commodification of water. It’s unethical and immoral for a resource that is so vital to life to be commodified. So, every nail in the coffins of companies involved in selling water –like Coke, Pepsi, Nestle, Tata and so on– is a nail well driven….
Read More about Why the Coke-Pepsi boycott in Tamil Nadu is a good thingDeepa Bhasthi writes in The Guardian: The illegal dumping of waste mixed with mass untreated sewage in Bangalore is creating a water crisis which threatens residents’ health–and is causing the city’s famous lakes to catch fire. This is the new story of the city, which some scientists believe will be “unliveable” in a few years….
Read More about City of burning lakes: experts fear Bangalore will be uninhabitable by 2025
