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Pollution/Toxicity

The hidden connection between air pollution and heat spikes: India’s lethal double bind

1st June 2016

India has an extreme air pollution problem, which kills up to 400,000 people every year. This pollution, made up of fine particles called aerosols, also has the effect of cooling the local climate by reflecting or absorbing sunlight before it reaches the ground. It is feasible that India’s pollution problem has been “hiding” extreme heat spikes….

National Waterways Bill: Digging our rivers’ graves?

22nd May 2016

Nachiket Kelkar writes: This Bill plans to convert 106 rivers and creeks across India into waterway canals, purportedly for ‘eco-friendly transport’ of cargo, coal, industrial raw materials, and tourism. Unfortunately there is no debate on the high ecological and social risks the NWB poses to riverine biodiversity and local resources through such irreversible engineering controls….

What other cities can learn from Delhi’s experiments with public transport

17th May 2016

Sonal Shah writes: Cities have concentrated on bettering vehicle and fuel technologies and building bus rapid transit or metro rail systems. However, they need to focus on managing demand, augmenting their bus transport systems, improving last mile connectivity and enabling compact development. This will shift people towards non-motorised and public transport and avoid motorised trips….

Special: A look back at Kerala’s endosulphan disaster

2nd April 2016

Valiya Chirakula Pakshikal (Birds With Large Wings), directed by Dr. Biju, has been declared 2015’s Best Film on Environment. It explores the disastrous environmental and public health consequences of pesticide use, based on real-life events in Kasargode, Kerala. On this occasion, here’s a look back at the manmade disaster that continues to haunt Kasargode residents….

Wccftech.com

In spite of cool advertising, electric cars (also) damage the environment

23rd March 2016

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….

On burning ground: The human cost of India’s push to produce more coal

20th March 2016

Fred Pearce reports: As part of India’s modernization program, Prime Minister Narenda Modi has called for doubling the nation’s coal production by 2020. If it moves forward, India seems set to create a mounting tide of victims — from the cycle-wallahs and refugees of Jharia’s coal fires, to the country’s air quality, to the planet’s climate….

Human impact has pushed Earth into the Anthropocene, scientists say

8th March 2016

A new study provides one of the strongest cases yet that Earth has entered a new geological epoch. The question of whether humans’ environmental impact has tipped Earth into an “Anthropocene” – ending the current Holocene which began 12,000 years ago – will be put to the geological body that formally approves such time divisions….

NEWS UPDATE #85

3rd March 2016

Sukumar Muralidharan reports on Catch News: This year’s economic survey is a catalogue of crises. For one thing, it records that the situation in agriculture has been dismal on account of two successive years of poor monsoons. This is only the fourth time in 115 years that such a misfortune has hit the Indian economy….

NEWS UPDATE #84

24th February 2016

January was the globe’s most unusually warm month ever recorded, and the past three months have been the most unusually warm three-month period on record as well, according to NASA. It is the combination of manmade global warming and a record strong El Niño that’s bumped up temperatures to never-before-seen levels since at least 1880….

NEWS UPDATE #83

17th February 2016

Common Dreams reports: A new analysis, published in Science Advances journal, reveals that global water scarcity is a far greater problem than previously thought, affecting 4 billion people—two-thirds of the world’s population. Previous analyses looked at water scarcity at an annual scale, and had found that water scarcity affected between 1.7 and 3.1 billion people….

NEWS UPDATE #82

8th February 2016

Decision On GM Mustard Deferred *Mining interests and tribal rights on collision course *Former atomic energy regulator says India needs to pause nuclear plans *Lesser water recorded in Indian reservoirs than last year *Sikkim Organic Mission: We Need To Dig Deeper *Hydro dam boom threatens freshwater fish *Radioactive Water From Fukushima Leaking Into the Pacific…

NEWS UPDATE #81

30th January 2016

India, Colombia and Nigeria have the most cases of conflict caused by climate change and environmental disputes, according to a map of global ecological conflict. The Environmental Justice Atlas, released last month, shows that more than 200 conflicts in India are caused by ecological disputes and scarcities of basic resources such as water and forests….

The sixth mass extinction and chemicals in the environment

25th January 2016

Colin Todhunter writes: A new paper by Rosemary A. Mason in the Journal of Biological Physics and Chemistry, titled ‘The sixth mass extinction and chemicals in the environment’ indicates that a ‘sixth extinction’ is presently under way (The Sixth Extinction, describes the ongoing extinction of species during the present Holocene epoch – since around 10,000 BCE). Download paper: The sixth mass extinction and chemicals in the…

Frans Lanting

New book: Elemental India : The Natural World in Crisis

24th January 2016

From the blurb: Around the world, people are increasingly facing a future that is crowded and hot, subject to violent weather extremes and a changing climate, where the rich and poor inhabit separate spheres and governments are unable or unwilling to confront these most vital challenges. For India, this reality is the very tangible present….

NEWS UPDATE #80

22nd January 2016

The Economic Times reports: The Central government has unveiled a new Crop Insurance Scheme with the premium to be paid by farmers as low as 1.5 per cent of the sum assured for all rabi crops and 2 per cent for kharif crops. The scheme comes without any cap on overall premium rate to ensure full claims….

Indianexpress.com

Special: Delhi’s alarming pollution problem

19th December 2015

According to a recent survey, air pollution in Delhi is one-and-a-half times worse than in Beijing, which has always been among the world’s most polluted cities. This feature looks at Delhi’s unprecedented air pollution, which is endangering the health of its citizens, especially young children, and making the city a textbook example of urban dysfunction….

A few reflections on the galloping environmental degradation

25th November 2015

AUTHOR Prof. Mark Lindley, University of Hyderabad School of Economics DESCRIPTION/EXCERPT The galloping environmental degradation is complicated. Let me distinguish seven aspects of it, as a step toward developing a comprehensive understanding of it. (Some of these seven are closely linked to each other in a cause-and-effect or overlapping way.): 1. Renewable natural resources being…

NEWS UPDATE #73

18th November 2015

Overheated Planet Entering ‘Uncharted Territory at Frightening Speed’ Common Dreams With new evidence that the concentration of greenhouse gases broke yet another record in 2014, the head of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned on Monday that the warming planet is hurtling “into uncharted territory at a frightening speed.” The United Nations weather agency’s latest…

News update

21st September 2015

Global Harming: India’s rich have a bigger ecological footprint than the world average Nihar Gokhale, Catch News It is no secret that there’s a growth in luxury goods in India. A 10-minute walk in any big city would attest to this. Over the last few generations, lifestyles have changed significantly, and a culture of consumerism…

News update

5th September 2015

NASA: World ‘Locked Into’ at Least 3 Feet of Sea Level Rise Common Dreams New research underway indicates that at least three feet of global sea level rise is near certain, NASA scientists have warned. That’s the higher range of the 1 to 3 feet level of rise the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change…