Prem Shankar Jha in The Wire: When nearly 350 million vehicles have to be charged every day, not only will an entire nation-wide, and therefore expensive, recharging infrastructure have to be built, but the power these vehicles will consume will have to be generated first. Nearly all of this will have to come from coal….
Read More about India has a better option than electric carsFrom Deccan Herald: There’s a great deal of disagreement between those who predict the end of oil era and those who believe in the need to look for more oil reserves. Since India’s ready to invest a huge amount in transforming its economy, there’s an urgent need to find out which scenario will pan out….
Read More about Is it the beginning of the end of oil era?
R. Jagannathan, Editor, Swarajya Magazine, writes: It is time for a mea culpa on demonetisation. This writer has been largely positive on the medium-to-long-term benefits of notebandi, as opposed to its short-term downsides. Now, especially after the farmer agitations for loan waivers, I believe the negative side is larger than the positive. It has failed….
Read More about Demonetisation has failed: Farmers’ anger is the final piece of evidence
Caglecartoons.com
From Yale Environment 360: World leaders insist Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement will not deter other nations from carrying out their commitments. But the departure of America creates new challenges. The concern is whether the rest of the world will prove as determined to abide by the Paris-accord as some analysts claim….
Read More about With the U.S. out of Paris, what is the future for the global climate fight?From People’s Archive of Rural India: From farmers being shot dead in Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh, to those across Maharashtra out on the streets, to those from Tamil Nadu on hunger strike in New Delhi not so long ago, this has been a season of agrarian discontent. Why is this happening, which way will it go?…
Read More about P. Sainath: Why are our farmers angry?
Circle of Blue
A recent article by Tim Worstall on the Forbes website states that, in effect, India’s farmers should be allowed to go bust because that’s how economic development works. This response from Countercurrents.org traces the criminal role of neoliberal policies in undermining farmer’s independence and livelihoods to favour global agribusiness. The article has since gone viral….
Read More about Forbes Magazine’s ‘Go bust’ prescription for Indian farmers is a death warrantFrom Forbes Magazine: With all of the knowledge of future mapping, do the world’s financial leaders know something we don’t? Consider how many of the richest families have been grabbing up massive amounts of farmland around the world. All property far away from coastal areas and in locations conducive to self-survival, farming and coal mining….
Read More about The shocking connection between doomsday maps and billionaire land acquisitions
A scene after violent clashes between farmers and the police at Pipliya in Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh
PTI
This series of timely reports from Hindustan Times surveys the explosive situation in Madhya Pradesh’s Mandsaur district, epicenter of the violent protests that left six farmers dead from police bullets. The lead article looks at the impact of demonetisation in creating the crisis, while another report examines the role of social media in organising farmers….
Read More about Ground Report: How demonetisation brought MP farmers onto streets
AFP
Why, please ask yourself, does the city get 24 hour electricity, schools, colleges, dispensaries, hospitals, roads, public transport, even cooking gas and the village either not at all or services that are a pale shadow of their urban selves? Why this inequality in allocation of resources, even though 68.84% of Indians live in rural areas?…
Read More about Harsh Singh Lohit: Why do farmers protest?Here are the key findings from Centre for Science and Environment’s study of how India has warmed over the years, also plotted in animation. The analysis looks at temperature trends in the country –both annual and seasonal– from 1901 till recent years. It finds that the country has been getting warmer continuously, consistently and rapidly….
Read More about Spotlight: Here’s how India has warmed from 1901 till 2017
James Fryer/ Gear Patrol
Nitin Sethi writes: Whatever a government might do to run the economic engine of the country or its politics, it has to continuously claim that it is a win-win for both the environment and development. It will talk about its moves to set up zero-effect and zero-defect industries. We all know such an idea does not exist….
Read More about World Environment Day is now little more than a greenwashing opportunity
Vehicles set on fire by agitating farmers in Madhya Pradesh on June 7, 2017.
IndiaSpend reports: A plentiful harvest in 2016 and imports drive some prices down 63%. A shortage of cash because of demonetisation. Despite Rs 3.5 lakh crore– invested over six decades to 2011, more than half of all farms depend on rains. These are the three factors agitating India’s 90 million families who depend on farming….
Read More about Why a bountiful harvest drove farmers to despair and anger
Enough! Farmers have been at the receiving end for far too long.
The Tribune
From The Tribune: Two developments seemed to have triggered the current protest. On the one hand, bumper crops have led to crashing down of crop prices for the farmer. On the other hand, the crop loan waiver announced by the newly elected BJP government in UP has reminded the famers of their long unfulfilled demand….
Read More about It’s a farmers’ movement in Maharashtra, not a strike
(From left) Johnson Jament, Lisba Yesudas and Robert Panipilla
Friends of Marine Life (FML), is a Kerala-based organisation that specialises in seabed ecosystem studies and also helps promote sustainable fishing. Three of it’s members, who hail from the state’s indigenous fishing community, the Mukkuva, were recently invited the first UN conference on the world’s oceans. The text of speeches they delivered at the conference….
Read More about Speech by representatives of indigenous fisher folk at the first UN conference on oceans
Former Union Cabinet-Secretary T.S.R. Subramanian writes: The promises of higher yield and lower pesticide usage which induced many, including myself as the then Textile Secretary, to welcome Bt cotton have now been belied… The main advantage now trotted out in favour of GM mustard is increased yield—there’s sufficient evidence that this claim is a myth….
Read More about T.S.R. Subramanian: Say no to GM mustardKen-Betwa river-linking project, if realised, will destroy livelihoods and ecology, including a portion of the Panna Tiger Reserve. Curiously enough, ground reports show that farmers in the project area are themselves not keen on it. Also included is a documentary, ‘Links of a Broken Chain’, as well as a detailed technical analysis of the project….
Read More about How the disastrous Ken-Betwa link project endangers India’s tigers, rivers and mountains
Jonathan Rutherford writes: Reducing societal consumption –degrowing the economy– need not necessarily result in chaotic economic breakdown. This is indeed an inevitable outcome within our present economic system, but possibly not others. What then would be required to contract the economy, in an orderly and fair way? A possible answer, from the ‘Simpler Way’ perspective….
Read More about How do you ‘degrow’ an economy, without causing chaos?Richard Reese writes: In ‘Scarcity: Humanity’s Final Chapter?’ Christopher O. Clugston analyses 89 key non-renewable resources that are essential to the existence of our industrial global society, and finds that 63 of them have peaked globally. His conclusion is that the only possible outcome for a society that is dependent on these resources, is collapse….
Read More about Bookshelf: Scarcity – Humanity’s Last Chapter?
A mega power plant would have eliminated Vilambur's strong local economy that includes charcoal producers
Dhruv Malhotra © Wilson
Keith Schneider writes: It is almost impossible for a single place to embody the full array of emerging factors around climate, carbon, water, finance, culture and cleaner technology that have utterly changed how India and the world view the value and risks of coal. But if such a place exists, it’s Vilambur in Tamil Nadu….
Read More about Ground Report: India’s slow but sure shift away from coalClimate Central reports: Two years after the Paris climate accord, climate policies are advancing in developing countries but stalling or regressing in richer ones. Here’s a trip around the world, assessing how pro-climate and anti-climate forces are faring in key nations and regions, showing how recent developments are affecting the languishing fight against global warming….
Read More about China, India become climate leaders as West falters
