We are coming into an era of huge uncertainty–climate change is a reality, resources are becoming more scarce and I this will eventually lead to armed conflict. While my partner and I are in the extremely fortunate position, I feel that it would be unfair of me to bring a child into a precarious future….
Read More about I want children – but my fears for the planet’s future fill me with doubt
Wildlife biologist Nisarg Prakash writes: After a flare-up in my depression and increasingly erratic behaviour, I was shunted out from a landscape that I once knew like the back of my hand. It was here that I’d retreated to the land, to the hills, valleys and streams as a poultice for the cuts and bruises….
Read More about The mind’s river: How a life along the Cauvery stilled my anxieties
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….
Read More about We are addicted to convenience, and it’s fatal both for us and the planet
File pic of a cycle ride organised by Hyderabad Bicycling Club
The Hindu
Cycle enthusiasts from across the city of Hyderabad gathered on January 29, 2017, to celebrate the bicentenary of the invention of the bicycle. The event was organised by Ecologise and included a film screening and a talk by T. Vijayendra, a founding member of Ecologise Hyderabad, on the relevance of the bicentennial year of bicycle….
Read More about Ecologise Hyderabad celebrates 200 years of the bicycleThe 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….
Read More about Some of the world’s wealthiest are preparing for the crackup of civilisation
The digital economy is a design for atomisation, for separation… Imposing the digital economy through a “cash ban” is a form of technological dictatorship, in the hands of the world’s billionaires. Economic diversity and technological pluralism are India’s strength and it is the “hard cash” that insulated India from the global market’s crash of 2008….
Read More about Vandana Shiva: Beware of digital dictatorshipRahul Chandran writes: A resident, who did not wish to be identified, talks about certain benches where the maids and drivers were not allowed to sit. “We had one more rule earlier— now its scrapped— the maids are not supposed to travel in the passenger lift, they were supposed to travel in the service lift.”…
Read More about This gated community in Bangalore epitomises urban India’s class divide
George Monbiot in The Guardian: The rise of celebrity culture did not happen by itself… It is hard for people to attach themselves to a homogenised franchise, owned by a big corporation. So the machine needs a mask. It must wear the face of someone we see as often as we see our next-door neighbours….
Read More about Celebrity isn’t just harmless fun – it’s the smiling face of the corporate machine
Purabi Bose writes: The downside of turning quinoa, acai berries of Amazon forests, or even moringa (drumstick) into new superfoods is that urban consumers compete with indigenous peoples for food resources. Through our demand for superfoods, we push indigenous populations to eat cheaper, less nutritious, less flavourful, imported staple diets like maize, rice and wheat….
Read More about The hipster hunger for superfoods is starving India’s adivasisLeo Hickman writes: Oscar-winning actor Leonardo DiCaprio has spent the past three years asking a wide variety of people around the world about climate change. His collection of interviews in the film–ranging from Barack Obama and the Pope through to Elon Musk and Sunita Narain– cover the science, impacts, vested interests, politics and possible solutions….
Read More about Watch: 7 key scenes from Leonardo DiCaprio’s climate film Before the Flood
Felix Padel writes: An Adivasi economy, in its traditional or pre-globalization form at least, was based in many ways on ecological principles. In the words of a Kond elder in Kandhamal district, Odisha, “Where are the saints in your society? In this village we are all saints. We consume little, share everything, and waste nothing.”…
Read More about Felix Padel: Adivasi economics and re-awakening the indigenous mind
The agreement limits the future use of chemical refrigerants used in ACs, fridges and cars
The agreement has been welcomed because it would slow down what many fear would be an exponential rise in the greenhouse gases called hydrofluorocarbons, what with the increased use of refrigerators, ACs and cars in China and India in the years to come. But, IPCC data suggests we need to keep our excitement in check….
Read More about The Kigali Agreement on HFCs is nothing to celebrate; here’s why
To fight climate change, a war-like mobilization a la McKibben is not necessary. Actually we are not at war at all. If we are, then it is we who are the aggressors, we are the enemy of nature. Then the first task for the transition is to end our aggression. We need only to withdraw….
Read More about Saving the planet, American style: A critical review, and some thoughts and ideasWatch video recordings of keynote presentations of the just concluded 5th International Degrowth Conference. They cover a range of subjects from critiques of economic growth and capitalism and green economy, to radical alternatives on economic, political, social and cultural fronts; alliances between global north and south; climate justice; the nature and future of work, etc….
Read More about Video: Keynote presentations from the recent International Degrowth Conference
Acclaimed novelist Amitav Ghosh‘s non-fiction take on climate change and our collective inability to acknowledge its danger – titled The Great Derangement – has been hailed as a landmark, which promises to change the conversation around this crucial issue. In this series, we’re re-publishing interviews which feature the writer at his forceful and articulate best….
Read More about The Great Derangement: Conversations with Amitav Ghosh – 4
Gaurav Sangwani writes: Permaculture tries to utilise the existing elements in the land to take human freedom further, with a far lower ecological effect. Primitivism is the perennial belief in the need to go back to where we started, the lost Golden Age of freedom and guiltlessness which is at the heart of all the world’s religions….
Read More about Permaculture and Primitvism: Two alternatives to the technological destruction of nature
C.P. Chandrasekhar writes: Even the kind of economic growth that liberalisation actually delivered is proving unsustainable. So, the belief that growth would remain high for years to come, delivering benefits even to those at the bottom of the income pyramid and those steeped in poverty and deprivation, has now revealed itself to be a myth….
Read More about 25 years of ‘economic reforms’: The myth of growth
Representational pic
Ananda Banerjee reports: Chizami village, located in Phek district of eastern Nagaland, has 600 households with a population of 3,000. Chizami is considered a model village for the quiet revolution it has led in the past decade in terms of socioeconomic reforms and environment protection. The village council imposes strict fines on those violating norms….
Read More about The Chizami model of development
All pics by P. Sainath/People's Archive of Rural India
From Ruralindiaonline.org: Rampant deforestation, extensive damming of the rivers, huge diversions of water for industrial projects and even elite resorts can be seen across the state. All these underlie Maharashtra’s terrible water crisis. They won’t get washed away by the monsoon, even if the media coverage of it dries up with onset of the rains….
Read More about P. Sainath: The sacred waters of a tanker
A view of the Sangatya farm
The New indian Express profiles ‘Sangatya’ commune, and its co-founder, Shreekumar a chemical engineer turned organic farmer and activist and Ecologise.in author. Sangatya, located in Nakre village near Karkala in south Karnataka, is experimenting with creating spaces for sustainable living. The commune is also a place to gain hands-on experience in many areas, including community-building….
Read More about Sangatya Commune: An experiment in sustainable living
