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
Gulrez Shah Azhar writes: This summer’s shaping up to be especially bad in India. Satellite images show large areas dried up from lack of water. Without access to water, heat waves become particularly deadly. But heat deaths are preventable and simple measures could save lives. Here are three actions that would make an enormous difference….
Read More about Heat waves are getting worse, but these simple measures can save many livesIn his new book, Why Are We Waiting? The Logic, Urgency and Promise of Tackling Climate Change, Nicholas Stern explains why, notwithstanding the great attractions of a new path, it’s been so difficult to tackle climate change. He makes a compelling case for climate action now and sets out the forms that action should take….
Read More about Nicholas Stern: Why are we waiting?Michael Snyder writes: What in the world are we going to do with billions of human workers around the globe that are no longer needed when technology takes virtually all of our jobs? Some have suggested that society will evolve into a socialist utopia; others see a dystopian future with greater inequality than ever before….
Read More about Here come the robots – And they’re going to take our jobsFrom The Daily Conversation: This video shows the top 10 countries threatened by the 6 meter sea level rise we are almost guaranteed to see in the not-too-distant future, according to the projected pace of global warming and ice melt in Greenland and Antarctica. India is No. 3 on the list, and China No. 1….
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Amit Dave/Reuters
From The Wire: The planned ten-fold increase in solar energy will add on an average only 20% of the total capacity, making little difference to India’s emissions. The government has not reduced its coal output targets and plans to raise coal output from the current 550 million tonnes to nearly a billion tonnes by 2022….
Read More about Why increasing India’s solar energy capacity won’t work
Rupert Read writes: In financial parlance, a ‘black swan’ is a radically unexpected event. Ever-worsening man-made climate change (that is, barring a system change) is not a potential ‘black swan’ event. It’s a white swan, an expected event. It is, quite simply, completely what anyone with a basic understanding of the situation should now expect….
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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.”…
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A Jarawa tribal receiving handout from tourist - a scene from the Andaman Trunk Road
Scmp.com
Excerpt from Islands in Flux, by Pankaj Sekhsaria: These communities of thousands of individuals with a living lineage going back thousands of years have been brought to this sorry state in a mere 150 years. It began with the British and their policies, which have been kept up with clinical efficiency by modern, independent India….
Read More about How a statist vision of development has brought Andaman’s tribals close to extinction
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
Gopal Aggarwal/Wikimedia Commons
Andrew Russell writes: The most undervalued forms of technological labour are also the most ordinary: those who repair and maintain technologies that already exist. This shift in emphasis involves focusing on the constant processes of entropy and un-doing– and the work we do to slow or halt them, rather than on introduction of novel things….
Read More about Innovation is overrated; it’s maintenance that matters moreCarbon Brief reports: Four years of current emissions would be enough to blow what’s left of the carbon budget for a good chance of keeping global temperature rise to 1.5C. That’s the conclusion of this analysis, which brings the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s carbon budgets up to date to include global emissions in 2016….
Read More about Analysis: Just four years left of the 1.5C carbon budgetFrom 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 waterClimate Central reports: The early heat this year is due to a shift in wind patterns that has seen air flowing in from the south and west, across dry areas that quickly cause that air to warm. That heat-waves will become more common and intense is one of the clearest outcomes of human-driven global warming….
Read More about Early heat wave baking India is a sign of worse to come
People living in villages, who are migrating in large numbers to cities, could be victims of our economic development or perhaps the dismal income growth of farm households is semi-deliberate to keep labour costs low… Are our rural brothers victims or collateral damage of economic development, of a deliberate though unstated strategy, asks Sanjiv Phansalkar….
Read More about Are farmers ‘collateral damage’ of India’s economic growth?
The fishing community in Vizhinjam, Kerala, now threatened by a port being built by the Adani Group
The Indian coastline no longer belongs to its traditional custodians— the small fisher people. A jamboree of development —cities, SEZs, power plants, ports, sand mining— is eating up the coastline and eroding it beyond repair. Debasis Shyamal of the National Fishworkers’ Forum speaks to Sayantan Bera on the present and future of India’s traditional fishers….
Read More about ‘If we go on like this, the entire mass of small fishers will be wiped out.’Rupert Read, a philosophy professor at the University of East Anglia, UK, recently shocked his new 1st year students with a ‘welcoming address’ that dealt with the looming dangers of climate change. Watch the video or read the transcript of his speech below to know why Prof. Read chose to dwell on this unexpected subject….
Read More about Rupert Read: Why I had to tell my students that I fear for them
P. Sainath/People's Archive of Rural India
Hari Pulakkat writes: The country’s water data has been largely hidden from public view, and what was available was poor or untrustworthy. This brings up a question rarely asked by policymakers. If scientists find it difficult to analyse the country’s water resources at the moment, how valid are the reports that forecast India’s water future?…
Read More about The precarious situation of India’s water problem
This review by Alice Friedmann of Nafeez Ahmed’s new book has 3 parts: 1) Why states collapse for reasons other than economic and political 2) How Bio-Physical factors contribute to systemic collapse in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Nigeria 3) Predictions of when collapse will begin in Middle-East, India, China, Europe, Russia, North America…
Read More about Red alert: A timeline for global collapse
Rohan Chakravarty
From The Hindu: The rights do not stem from an intrinsic identity or status of the river, but more from their use for humans; and giving them ‘personhood’ or legal status makes it very human-centred. Can rivers not be recognised as having identity, worth, dignity, and rights as intrinsic qualities, not because they serve us?…
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