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Trends/Scenarios

Blip: Humanity’s 300 year self-terminating experiment with industrialism

15th December 2019

In his new book ‘Blip’, Christopher Clugston synthesizes the evidence produced by hundreds of research studies to quantify the causes, implications, and consequences associated with industrial humanity’s predicament. He presents compelling evidence to show how industrial civilisation’s enormous and ever-increasing utilisation of nonrenewable natural resources will lead to global societal collapse in the near future….

Courtesy of Union of Concerned Scientists

“Humanity’s mortality moment”: Scientists’ restate climate warning

12th December 2019

Earlier this year, over 11,000 scientists from around the world issued a signed warning stating “clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency”. At the ongoing CoP-25 climate talks at Madrid, Dr. William Moomaw, one of the report’s co-authors, explains the nature of that emergency, and what we must do about it….

Oil is the new data: How Big Tech and Big Oil collaborate

3rd December 2019

From Logic Magazine: Despite the climate crisis, Big Oil is doubling down on fossil fuels. At over 30 billion barrels of crude oil a year, production has never been higher. Now, leading oil companies are forging a lucrative partnership with tech giants like Microsoft, building a new carbon cloud that just might kill us all….

Representative pic

Welcome to the global rebellion against neoliberalism

30th November 2019

Massive protests have been roiling through Algeria, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, France, Germany, Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Spain, Sudan, the UK, and Zimbabwe—and that’s only since September. As distinct as the protests seem, the uprisings rocking scores of countries all share a common theme, argues Ben Ehrenreich….

The Hindu

How caste shapes water conflicts in drought-ridden Maharashtra

27th November 2019

Anuj Ghanekar writes: Drought affects everyone, but the Dalits are the worst affected. They often become targets of threats and violence in different ways if they try to access water or demand rights for water, with several atrocities on record. One study noted several instances where water sources used by Dalits were deliberately contaminated with human excreta….

The scientists who predicted Australia’s bushfire emergency decades ago

23rd November 2019

From The Guardian: Now, as more dangerous fire weather is forecast, they’re being asked: why did the science not lead to action? “I would blame most of that on the lobbying”,” says Pearman, now 78. “That lobbying has been extremely powerful in a country driven by the resource sector that includes uranium, coal and gas….

Bolivia, Brazil and South America’s never-ending resource curse

20th November 2019

From The Intercept: Anthropologist and Bolivia scholar Bret Gustafson offers a nuanced analysis of how the coup in Bolivia unfolded, who benefits from the present crisis, and what is at stake for the overwhelmingly indigenous population. Also, Glenn Greenwald talks about his recent conversation with Brazil’s former president Lula, who was recently released from prison….

The Great Water Grab: Wall Street is buying up the world’s water

17th November 2019

Jo-Shing Yang reports on how Wall Street banks like Citigroup and multibillionaires are buying up water sources all over the world at unprecedented pace. Simultaneously, governments are moving fast to limit citizens’ ability to become water self-sufficient. Also read an investigative report from The Guardian: Liquid assets: how the business of bottled water went mad…

'Skeleton Arresting Masqueraders', 1891 painting by James Ensor

Catabolism: The final phase of Capitalism

14th November 2019

From Counterpunch: In a contracting, growth-less economy, the profit motive can have a powerful catabolic impact on capitalist society. In biological terms, “catabolism” refers to the condition whereby a living thing feeds on itself. Catabolic capitalism is a self-cannibalizing system whose insatiable hunger for profit can only be fed by devouring the society that sustains it….

Arabian Sea: The new cradle for deadly tropical cyclones

3rd November 2019

From Down to Earth: Findings by Hiroyuki Murakami of Princeton University suggest that 64% of the cyclone risk in the Arabian Sea was due to climate change. The study further warns that the coastal areas surrounding the Arabian Sea are at specific risk since the geographical location offers cyclones nowhere to go but the land….

Rojava: The radical eco-anarchist experiment betrayed by the West, and bludgeoned by Turkey

27th October 2019

Four million people, thousands of communes, a non-hierarchical social structure based on gender equality and a cooperative economy based on ecological principles. So why is the world silent when the greatest contemporary alternative political-economic experiment—achieved against impossible odds—is thrown under the bus? Here’s a closer look at Rojava as Turkey invades the Kurdish autonomous zone….

This is not the Sixth Extinction. It’s the first Mass Extermination Event.

12th October 2019

Justin McBrien writes: The planetary atrocity of ecocide has no geological analogue. To call it the “sixth extinction event” is to make an active, organized eradication sound like some kind of passive accident. We’re in the midst of the First Extermination Event, wherein capital has pushed all life on Earth to the brink of extinction — extermination by capitalism….

How the ‘Gujarat model’ is devouring Gujarat (and not just Gujarat)

6th October 2019

From The Hindu: The perverse ‘achievements’ of those relentless in their advocacy of the Sardar-Sarovar dam are now evident. The riches of Gujarat—shown as a model to the rest of India—are the result of such violent extraction, exploitation and destruction that benefit a few while victimising many. Any protest is being beaten into the earth….

War on Earth: US military is a bigger polluter than as many as 140 countries

3rd October 2019

From The Intercept: Industrialized militaries are a bigger part of the climate emergency than we know. If the US-military were a country, its fuel usage alone would make it the world’s 47th largest greenhouse gas emitter, says a new study. Another study found that America has spent an astonishing $5.9 trillion on wars since 2001….

Catastrophic climate change is not a problem for Fascists — It is a solution

23rd September 2019

Umair Haque writes: The tables have turned. The problem isn’t climate change anymore, and the solution isn’t global cooperation — given today’s implosive politics. The problem is you — if you are not one of the chosen, predatory few. And the solution to the problem of you is climate change. To the fascists, that is….

Vaclav Smil: ‘Growth must end. Our economist friends don’t realise that’

17th September 2019

Over more than 40 years, Vaclav Smil has grown in influence, and is now seen as one of the world’s foremost thinkers and a master of statistical analysis. Bill Gates says he waits for new Smil books the way others wait for the next Star Wars movie. Smil’s latest is Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities….

It’s not just about the bees – earthworms need love, too

14th September 2019

From The Guardian: A recent scientific study has found that 42% of fields in Britain surveyed by farmers were seriously deficient in earthworms; in some fields they were missing altogether. Particularly hard-hit were deep-burrowing worms, which are valuable in helping soil collect and store rainwater, but were absent from 16% of fields in the study. Jules…

From Andhra to Kashmir – The Return of the East India Companies

11th September 2019

From Great Game India: At least two of the Big Four global corporate consultancies are reported to be directly involved in the big-ticket Kashmir Development Plan – Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers. A pilot project was initiated in 2017 for the creation of a ‘Model Village’ in Kathua, Kashmir, based on a blueprint by PricewaterhouseCoopers…

Helena Norberg-Hodge: The promise and pitfalls of localism

8th September 2019

The fact that the language of localism is being increasingly co-opted by authoritarians around the world is itself a sign of localism’s appeal. Left uprooted and adrift by the globalized economy, people are desperate for a sense of connection: to one another, to the living world, to a place and culture that’s familiar to them….

Jaunti Live: The first Green Revolution village now has a farm crisis

2nd September 2019

From Down to Earth: India is going through one of the worst farm crisis in its history. To understand about this crisis we have to investigate the roots of the celebrated Green Revolution and what happened after that. This is the story of Jaunty, the village which was once the flagbearer of the Green Revolution….