Many parts of India is in the grip of severe drought, some for the third consecutive year, leading to growing hunger, mass migration, water conflicts and farmer suicides. We present four well-known voices – Yogendra Yadav, Jean Dreze, Sunita Narain and the late Anil Agarwal – on India’s perennial drought problem, its causes and possible solutions….
Read More about Four critical voices on India’s perennial drought problem
Mashable.com
George Dvorsky writes: Last year, SpaceX co-founder Elon Musk warned that Artificial Intelligence could “take over the world”. The day when machines become smarter than humans has never appeared closer— yet we seem no closer in grasping the implications of this epochal event. Indeed, we are clinging to some serious—and even dangerous—misconceptions about artificial intelligence….
Read More about Everything you know about Artificial Intelligence is wrong
"The Logic of Neo-Liberalism"
John Ledger
George Monbiot writes: So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom recognise it as an ideology. We accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power….
Read More about Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems
Amit Verma/Forbes India
Debarshi Das writes: The neoliberal State seeks to cut down welfare expenditure, hence it is against PDS. It also relies on the market. Although contemporary advocates of free market are not motivated by extraction of colonial revenue, in terms of policy prescription they do not differ from the advocates of free market of colonial era….
Read More about Famines and Public Distribution System in India
Vidhyadhar Date writes: A developed country is not one where the poor drive cars, but one where the rich use public transport. Building more roads to reduce congestion is like trying to put out a fire with petrol. India has failed to learn from developed countries’ mistakes and is on a disastrous path of motorization….
Read More about Cars, Capitalism and India
Frans Lanting
Bill Laurance writes: Some 25 million km of new paved roads, thousands of dams, and hundreds of thousands of new mining, oil and gas projects, are being planned, roughly 90% of them in developing nations. Their environmental impacts could easily dwarf climate change as thousands of projects penetrate into the world’s last surviving wild areas….
Read More about An infrastructure tsunami is being unleashed on the environment in the name of ‘development’Juan Cole writes: In 2015 energy companies invested more in new renewables power plants than in fossil fuel plants for the first time in history. The majority of these plants were planned for developing countries, a sign that the technology is now viewed as less expensive. It is clear there is a secular trend upwards….
Read More about Video & Report: How renewable energy is already taking over the worldTechno-economic fixes do not address the underlying “zero-sum game” nature of water resource use. Ultimately, the problem is that of allocating the water available each year among users — both people and the ecosystem. Without understanding how much water is available, how much is used and by whom, solving India’s water crisis will be impossible….
Read More about Why we must have water budgetsThe high water intensity of global energy generation is leading to water-coal conflict caused by coal power production. Greenpeace International has prepared a groundbreaking analysis of the impacts of the world’s coal power plants on global water resources. The world’s coal power plants are consuming water that could meet the basic requirements for nearly 1 billion people….
Read More about How the coal industry is deepening the global water crisis
Wccftech.com
In the Union Budget, the government has decided to exempt the new-age cesses on electric and hybrid cars. But are these green cars really green? They do not pollute the areas that they are being used in because all they are doing is move the pollution from the point of movement to the source of electricity….
Read More about In spite of cool advertising, electric cars (also) damage the environment
Elanthemag.com
Virtually everything in our homes, everything in our stores, got there on a truck. Prior to that, 90 percent of those items were transported on a ship and/or a train. If trucks, trains, and ships stopped running, our global economy and way of life would stop too. Alice Friedemann’s new book examines precisely this prospect….
Read More about Bookshelf: When trucks stop running, so does civilization
Famouseconomists.net
Author Mark Weisbrot says: “Behind almost every prolonged economic malfeasance there is some combination of outworn bad ideas, incompetence and the malign influence of powerful special interests”. Unfortunately, such nightmares are repeated in other places because even if the lessons are learned, they are not taken to heart, by “the people who call the shots”….
Read More about Bookshelf: Failed – What the “experts” got wrong about the global economy
Shail Shrestha writes at Local Futures: Technology transfer from the North to South has long been regarded as the path to a better life in less-developed regions of the world. But even the best and the most sustainable technology proposed in Paris would make Nepal less sustainable than it is today, leading us in the wrong direction….
Read More about The Paris Climate Talks: A Nepali View
Since the renewable energy revolution will require trading fossil fuels for alternative ones (mostly wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and biomass), there will be some hefty challenges along the way. Therefore, it makes sense to start with the low-hanging fruit and with a plan in place, then revise our plan frequently as we gain practical experience. …
Read More about Richard Heinberg: 100% renewable energy is possible, here’s how
Swati Bansal writes: The waters of many rivers were declared as unfit for human consumption. This included rivers in Goa with fecal coliform bacteria, and rivers in Karnataka where none were suitable for drinking. But pollution was just one factor, the other was hydropower power projects which continue to choke rivers such as the Chenab….
Read More about How did Indian rivers fare in 2015?
We are hitting something similar to “Peak Oil” right now, but the major symptoms are unexpected. There is a glut of supply, and prices are far below the cost of production. Perhaps we should call it “Limits to Growth,” rather than “Peak Oil,” because it is a different type of problem than most people expected….
Read More about Gail Tverberg: We are at Peak Oil now; we need very low-cost energy to fix itShruti Ravindran reports: In a monograph for a conference on smart cities, the economist and consultant Laveesh Bhandari described smart cities as “special enclaves” that would use prohibitive prices and harsh policing to exclude “millions of poor Indians… For if we do not keep them out, they will override our ability to maintain such infrastructure.”…
Read More about Video & Report: Is India’s 100 smart cities project a recipe for social apartheid?
Unlimited growth and consumerist culture is incompatible with a finite world. We call for an urgent paradigm shift, from the currently dominant model of consumption-led development, to creating frameworks of human and ecological well being. This transition should be defined by the principles of sustainability, equity, and justice. (Adopted at the Bijli Vikalp Sangam, Bodh Gaya)…
Read More about Towards Energy Democracy: A Vision Statement
Over the past three decades, average income of the farmer has increased by only 19%, while that of the government employee has by 370% and that of the corporate sector by more than a thousand per cent… Hidden in the rhetoric of being “pro-farmer and pro-poor” are the continued logic of being “pro-investor and pro-business”….
Read More about A.R. Vasavi: The bitter reality behind the ‘pro-farmer’ budget
Shanker Chakravarty/The Hindu
The Union Budget 2015-2016 will be presented in amid dwindling fortunes of the NDA government. Agriculture is already on a downswing while the economic slowdown is perceptible – all this when nine states are going to polls in 2016-17. Down to Earth presents a series of analyses of the Union Budget from the environment and development perspectives….
Read More about Make (Or Break) In India: Down to Earth special issue ahead of the Union Budget
