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Education/Awareness

The 2019 Nobel Prize shows why we need to dump conventional economics

21st December 2019

Ted Trainer writes: The prize has gone to three people studying how the poor can derive more benefit from existing “development” practices. It sees no reason to question the existing market and growth-driven economy and its derivative, development theory. It doesn’t threaten the massively unjust and environmentally destructive global systems that keep billions in poverty….

Blip: Humanity’s 300 year self-terminating experiment with industrialism

15th December 2019

In his new book ‘Blip’, Christopher Clugston synthesizes the evidence produced by hundreds of research studies to quantify the causes, implications, and consequences associated with industrial humanity’s predicament. He presents compelling evidence to show how industrial civilisation’s enormous and ever-increasing utilisation of nonrenewable natural resources will lead to global societal collapse in the near future….

Courtesy of Union of Concerned Scientists

“Humanity’s mortality moment”: Scientists’ restate climate warning

12th December 2019

Earlier this year, over 11,000 scientists from around the world issued a signed warning stating “clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency”. At the ongoing CoP-25 climate talks at Madrid, Dr. William Moomaw, one of the report’s co-authors, explains the nature of that emergency, and what we must do about it….

What America lost when it lost the bison

9th December 2019

From The Atlantic: In the 18th century, European colonizers virtually eliminated the American bison. When we lose animals, we also lose everything those animals do. When insects decline, plants go unpollinated. When birds disappear, pests go uncontrolled and seeds stay put. When bison are exterminated, springtime changes in ways that we still don’t fully understand….

Representative pic

Beggars as choosers: Why India’s poor opt to beg

6th December 2019

Beggars are usually ignored on the streets and questions are asked about why they don’t work. But many have indeed worked as paid labour and have chosen begging as the primary activity, finds Sabina Yasmin Rahman. As India’s urban and rural poor reel from a state-made economic crisis, this revealing study takes on an urgent relevance….

55 ways to ‘starve the beast’

26th November 2019

Big Agri, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Food, Big Banking, Big Oil and Big Government aren’t there to make our lives better. They’re there to control us and make as much money as possible; and they’ll run you over if you’re in their way. Daisy Luther on how to fight back and starve the Beast….

What’s polluting Delhi’s air?

5th November 2019

We don’t seem to have decisive answers to simple questions like how polluted is Delhi, what are its main sources, and where to start controlling it. Here, Dr. Sarath Guttikunda attempts to answer one perpetual question, what are the sources of air pollution in Delhi? Interestingly, this commonly asked question is also the most confusing and unanswered….

Arabian Sea: The new cradle for deadly tropical cyclones

3rd November 2019

From Down to Earth: Findings by Hiroyuki Murakami of Princeton University suggest that 64% of the cyclone risk in the Arabian Sea was due to climate change. The study further warns that the coastal areas surrounding the Arabian Sea are at specific risk since the geographical location offers cyclones nowhere to go but the land….

Tribute: Is your ecology deep or shallow?

30th October 2019

In 1973, Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss coined the concept of ‘deep ecology’, arguing that only a “deep” transformation of modern society could prevent ecological collapse. Næss criticized one-sided technological approaches in dealing with environmental problems, an attitude he called ‘shallow ecology’. A tribute to the visionary thinker, including a documentary-film on his life and work….

Rojava: The radical eco-anarchist experiment betrayed by the West, and bludgeoned by Turkey

27th October 2019

Four million people, thousands of communes, a non-hierarchical social structure based on gender equality and a cooperative economy based on ecological principles. So why is the world silent when the greatest contemporary alternative political-economic experiment—achieved against impossible odds—is thrown under the bus? Here’s a closer look at Rojava as Turkey invades the Kurdish autonomous zone….

The ‘Economics Nobel’ winners’ triumph is at the expense of the world’s poor

21st October 2019

Sanjay Reddy writes: The administration of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) – which Nobel prize winners Duflot and Banerjee helped pioneer – has suffered from more than a whiff of neocolonial attitudes. Arguably, all of the difficulties of RCTs stem from a single source: a failure to recognize the full personhood of those who are affected by interventions….

This is not the Sixth Extinction. It’s the first Mass Extermination Event.

12th October 2019

Justin McBrien writes: The planetary atrocity of ecocide has no geological analogue. To call it the “sixth extinction event” is to make an active, organized eradication sound like some kind of passive accident. We’re in the midst of the First Extermination Event, wherein capital has pushed all life on Earth to the brink of extinction — extermination by capitalism….

A carbon atom’s plea

9th October 2019

Hello. Allow me to introduce myself. I am a Carbon atom, writing in the hope that the intelligence operating here might be able and willing to come to our aid. In particular, I am acting on behalf of the many Carbon atoms – who are contently resting in peace, unaware that they’re in great danger….

War on Earth: US military is a bigger polluter than as many as 140 countries

3rd October 2019

From The Intercept: Industrialized militaries are a bigger part of the climate emergency than we know. If the US-military were a country, its fuel usage alone would make it the world’s 47th largest greenhouse gas emitter, says a new study. Another study found that America has spent an astonishing $5.9 trillion on wars since 2001….

Retd. Justice Jasti Chelameswar of the Supreme Court of India delivering the keynote address

SAPACC: A big step forward for South Asia’s climate justice movement

27th September 2019

From The Wire: The SAPACC campaign rests on two pillars: climate science and mass mobilisation. Large organisations coming together on an issue considered too abstract for a movement only a few years ago is a significant shift. It reflects the climate’s intensifying impact in South-Asia and how the issue has exploded in the public consciousness….

‘Hothouse Earth’ and possible trajectories for humanity and the planet

24th September 2019

Ayushi Uppal writes: While the concept of Anthropocene remains contested, there is consensus on the human-led changes to the climate and the need for intervention. Humanity must create a pathway from a possible ‘Hothouse earth’ to a ‘Stabilized Earth’ state, where human activities create biogeophysical feedbacks that sustain the Earth System within the planetary threshold….

Catastrophic climate change is not a problem for Fascists — It is a solution

23rd September 2019

Umair Haque writes: The tables have turned. The problem isn’t climate change anymore, and the solution isn’t global cooperation — given today’s implosive politics. The problem is you — if you are not one of the chosen, predatory few. And the solution to the problem of you is climate change. To the fascists, that is….

Vaclav Smil: ‘Growth must end. Our economist friends don’t realise that’

17th September 2019

Over more than 40 years, Vaclav Smil has grown in influence, and is now seen as one of the world’s foremost thinkers and a master of statistical analysis. Bill Gates says he waits for new Smil books the way others wait for the next Star Wars movie. Smil’s latest is Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities….

It’s not just about the bees – earthworms need love, too

14th September 2019

From The Guardian: A recent scientific study has found that 42% of fields in Britain surveyed by farmers were seriously deficient in earthworms; in some fields they were missing altogether. Particularly hard-hit were deep-burrowing worms, which are valuable in helping soil collect and store rainwater, but were absent from 16% of fields in the study. Jules…

From Andhra to Kashmir – The Return of the East India Companies

11th September 2019

From Great Game India: At least two of the Big Four global corporate consultancies are reported to be directly involved in the big-ticket Kashmir Development Plan – Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers. A pilot project was initiated in 2017 for the creation of a ‘Model Village’ in Kathua, Kashmir, based on a blueprint by PricewaterhouseCoopers…