When William R. Catton Jr., American sociologist and author of Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change, passed away on January 5th, it went unnoticed by the mainstream media, or even the alternative press. This was expected, too. His work shaped the views of many activists and writers on issues like Peak Oil, resource depletion…
Read More about Obituary: William R. Catton Jr. (Jan 15, 1926 – Jan 5, 2015)Contrasting outcomes of recent global warming meetings Sagar Dhara Two recent meetings on global warming, one scientific and the other political, are of great public interest as they have a bearing on human society’s future course to become a sustainable global community. The meetings contrasted each other in the clarity of their outcomes. The first…
Read More about Sagar Dhara: Keep the Climate, Change the EconomySample a selection of audio & video recordings from the ‘teach-in’ on Techno-Utopianism & The Fate of the Earth: Why Technology Will Not Save the World, held on October 25-26 in New York. More than 45 leading scholars, authors & activists participated in this event, including such well-known names as Jerry Mander, Wes Jackson, Richard Heinberg John Michael…
Read More about Teach-In: Techno-Utopianism & The Fate of the EarthAuthor and filmmaker Mansoor Khan has been doing a series of short video interviews with experts in various fields from ecology to energy to economics. The interviews take off from the themes covered in his book, The Third Curve: The End of Growth. As We Know It!. Some of the prominent names interviewed so far are…
Read More about Video: The Third Curve interviews by Mansoor Khan(click to enlarge. right click to save.) Resources are running low. The Born in 2010: How much is left for me? infographic puts the amount of each energy resource, metals used in renewable energy solutions, and other industrial metals left in perspective and which country to find them in. The infographic was created by Plan C. Courtesy: Randy…
Read More about Born in 2010: How much is left for me?(Editor’s Note: Some of the most important academic research into mankind’s present and future is being conducted at the Melbourne Sustainability Society Institute at the University of Melbourne. Here are links to some of their most important papers) Is Global Collapse Imminent? by Graham Turner. Dr Turner gathered data from the UN (its department of economic and social…
Read More about Melbourne University research on Energy, Climate Change, Collapse, Resilience and TransitionBy Johnson Dantis, POI member I have been reading many posts on the Peak Oil India website about various events related to environment, sustainability, climate change, energy etc. I often find that such conferences and seminars do not have the seriousness these issues deserve. I sometimes visualize the importance of these as a sort of kitty…
Read More about Peak Complexity, Peak Ignorance and Peak SelfishnessSagar Dhara (Note: An edited version of this article appeared in The Hindu, dated August 8, 2014, under the title ‘Building smart cities without energy’. Also read: Devinder Sharma’s article: How About Smart Villages, Mr Modi?) Recent pronouncements by the NDA ministers, when read together, provide insights into the NDA government’s ‘Acche din ayenge’ (good days ahead)…
Read More about Is the NDA government’s “Good days ahead” promise old wine in a new bottle?
This is the concept note for the first ever symposium on ‘de-growth’ in India, held in September 2014 in Delhi. Rajeswari S. Raina (NISTADS-CSIR) & Julien-Francois Gerber (TERI University) It has become common knowledge that GDP is a simplistic and even misleading measure for an economy’s health*. In fact, two-digit GDP growth is in many…
Read More about Growth, green growth or degrowth? New critical directions for India’s sustainability(Editor’s note: On Ecologise.in, we usually carry relatively abstract, ‘big picture’ articles or technical pieces on energy and the related topics of climate change, development and sustainability. In contrast, this hard hitting, extensively researched piece by Madhusree Mukherjee brings out the human cost involved in these issues. It’s essential reading if you want to understand the true…
Read More about Madhusree Mukerjee: How to Colonize Your Own Country(Editor’s Note: POI member Mansoor Khan is the author of the book The Third Curve: The End of Growth. As we know it! , which examines Peak Oil and the future of energy and economic growth to provide a new lens to understand our reality and the future. In this interview with The CSR Journal, he says that adapting to global energy descent…
Read More about Interview: Mansoor KhanENERGY STRATEGY FOR INDIA BY 2035 Presenting a new vision for a totally clean and green, fossil fuel-free energy strategy for our COUNTRY (by Concerned Members of NGOs) There is a pressing need to think about a fossil fuel-less future, because according to many experts, fossil fuels have already peaked, and may be exhausted by 2030…
Read More about Proposal: An Alternative Energy Strategy for IndiaJohnson Dantis on the multiple crises that threatens industrial civilisation, and the many handicaps that prevents us from dealing with them effectively. The piece is also in part a response to recent articles by T. Vijayendra and George Monbiot. Let me give you my own idea of hope in life. Hope propels change and change is constant….
Read More about All Well Aboard The Titanic
Avay Shukla writes: The most disappointing and worrying aspect of the recent elections, for me, has been the almost complete absence of any debate or discussion on the environment. Some political parties, the BJP included, did make weak proforma noises about it in their manifestos but there was no mention of it in their campaigning….
Read More about Mr Modi and the environment – A green vision or a grey area?
Jay Mazoomdar writes: In its “classified” report titled ‘Impact of NGOs on Development’ sent to a host of government offices including the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), on June 3, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) has named a long list of organizations and activists under its watch, from well-known environmental and anti-nuclear groups to little-known localized outfits….
Read More about IB’s NGO Report: Not a time for intelligence or dissentPOI Editor’s Note: This piece by environmental writer and The Guardian columnist George Monbiot eloquently sums up our present predicament – the converging catastrophes of climate change, biodiversity collapse, the depletion of water, soil, minerals, oil. Monbiot also looks at why we are unable to deal with, or even discuss its possibility. We thought it…
Read More about George Monbiot: The Impossibility of Growth
Aditya Nigam, Kafila.org I saw men on television (trade union stars, Cabinet Ministers, left-wing think tank advisers) visibly hystericized by talking economics: eyes would glaze, shoulders hunch, lips tremble in a sensual paroxysm of ‘letting the market decide’, ‘making the hard decisions’, ‘levelling the playing field’, ‘reforming management practices’, improving productivity’…those who queried the wisdom…
Read More about May Day – Let us talk ‘Degrowth’An excerpt from Mansoor Khan’s new book The Third Curve: The End of Growth. As we know it! as well as a link to a TEDx talk he gave at the KCG College of Technology, Chennai. The Third Curve A New Lens to Understand our New Economic Reality Financial markets are under threat. Growth rates are dropping. The…
Read More about The Third Curve: Book excerpt and TEDx videoPeak Oil and Implications for India While it is dicey to predict oil reserves and production rates, one can accurately compute and collate past figures. Experts have been predicting peaking since 1995 but because of energy-efficient machines, substitution and use of natural gas and electricity for heating and so on, the dates have been shifting….
Read More about Special: Peak Oil and IndiaDevelopment and sustainability – the debate Sagar Dhara (founder member of Peak Oil India group), raises important issues for a discussion on development and sustainability. This piece is based on Aseem Shrivastava and Ashish Kotharis’ book, Churning the Earth, published last year, which discusses the growing economic inequity and environmental degradation in India in the last…
Read More about Sustainability and Collapse – Two Debates
