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Trends/Scenarios

Charterforcompassion.org

Reform is not enough to stem the rising tide of inequality worldwide

21st April 2016

William Robinson writes: The celebrated economist Thomas Piketty has argued for a global tax on capital and redistribution through tax reform. This reformist approach to global inequality is entirely inadequate because it bypasses the questions of power and of corporate control over the planet’s productive resources that are at the very heart of global capitalism and its crisis….

The gathering storm of climate migration

16th April 2016

Michael Igo writes: Since 2008, 22.5 million people have been forced from their homes due to floods and hurricanes, twice as many as the record 11 million displaced by conflict in 2014… As global temperatures creep higher, and storms, droughts, floods, and heat waves grow more severe, we face a future of mass climate-related migration….

Special: Ringing Cedars and the new, silent revolution in Russia

10th April 2016

The Ringing Cedars of Russia series of books have sold over ten million copies in Russia, and has inspired a massive movement in earth consciousness there. Its part of a new, silent revolution in Russia, where more and more people are leaving the cities to live closer to nature. Interestingly, the Russian government actively supports it….

Frans Lanting

An infrastructure tsunami is being unleashed on the environment in the name of ‘development’

9th April 2016

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….

The Hindu

India’s looming water wars can destroy everything, from Make in India to smart cities

8th April 2016

Nikhil Inamdar writes: India has the world’s largest number of people without access to clean water. The financial burden of this has fallen on its poorest agrarian communities, but the crisis is now spilling over to industries too. In Marathwada, the tanker business is the only one booming. The rest of the economy has collapsed….

Global capitalism is facing three tipping points

5th April 2016

In this article, Sagar Dhara examines Capitalism’s crucial tipping points: The first, the impending energy and natural resource crisis, related to the sourcing of raw materials. The second, inequality, related to the production of goods and services. The third, global warming, which is related to greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) in excess of the earth’s sink capacity….

Techno-fascism in the 21st century

Jayati Ghosh writes: Fascism in the 21st century does have some new features, which are also common to at least some of the countries that are currently experiencing it. They are largely related to the possibilities generated by new technologies, especially communication and surveillance technologies, which are increasingly being used by governments with fascist inclinations….

Industrial civilisation can’t wean itself off fossil fuels painlessly

4th April 2016

Chris Martenson writes: The data seems to confirm this: Humanity is not going to painlessly wean itself off of fossil fuels. Instead, we will hit some sort of a wall: a food/population crisis, a climate crisis, or a debt/fiscal/economic crisis. Each of those candidates has its roots in our global society’s addition to fossil fuels….

Video: Climate science pioneer Hansen warns of disastrous climate shift

31st March 2016

The world may be much closer to an abrupt and catastrophic climate shift than previously thought. That’s the warning from modern climate science pioneer James Hansen. His latest research suggests that polar ice sheet disintegration may cause sea level rise enough to drown coastal cities, not in a few centuries, but in a few decades….

Video & Report: How renewable energy is already taking over the world

30th March 2016

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….

The decisions we make about climate change today will reverberate for millennia

27th March 2016

David Roberts writes: The great irony of climate change is that it’s so big we can barely care about it. We’re in a brief window of time when it is still possible to blunt the worst effects of climate change. So let’s try an imaginative exercise: connecting long-term climate consequences to our current political moment….

Book/Video: Thanatia – The destiny of the Earth’s mineral resources

24th March 2016

Is Gaia becoming Thanatia, a resource exhausted planet? For how long can our high-tech society be sustained in the light of declining mineral ore grades, heavy dependence on un-recycled critical metals and accelerated material dispersion? Thanatia presents a cradle-to-cradle view of Earth’s abiotic resources through a novel approach based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics….

Elanthemag.com

Bookshelf: When trucks stop running, so does civilization

23rd March 2016

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….

Richard Heinberg: 100% renewable energy is possible, here’s how

19th March 2016

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. …

How did Indian rivers fare in 2015?

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….

Video & Report: Is India’s 100 smart cities project a recipe for social apartheid?

9th March 2016

Shruti 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.”…

Video: Al Gore makes the case for optimism on Climate Change

7th March 2016

Al Gore, former US Vice President and Founder, The Climate Reality Project, spoke at the recently concluded 2016 TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. According to him, the future of our planet looks very different today than it did when he last spoke on the TED stage nearly a decade ago….

Sea level rise has washed away more than 50% of Ghoramara island, Sunderbans

Daesung Lee

Nationalists take note – its nature that draws borders, not nation-states

4th March 2016

If any of us have fixed geographical notions of the nation-state, the rise and fall of sea levels everywhere ought to give us pause. Not just in warnings about the future, but also lessons from the past. Once, England and France were contiguous landmass… our borders are drawn not by us, but by the oceans….

Whatever happened to Peak Oil?

25th February 2016

John Michael Greer writes: While the standard peak oil scenario did not happen, quite a bit of the economic, political, and social turmoil we’ve seen since 2005 or so was in fact driven by the impact of peak oil—but that impact didn’t follow the linear model that most peak oil writers expected it to follow….

Graphic novel: The beginning of Delhi’s water wars

20th February 2016

Everyone, deep in their hearts, is “waiting for the end of the world to come,” said Murakami. If not the end, then at least a good showdown’s definitely expected. Sarnath Banerjee‘s latest graphic novel envisions a similar war in the near future. Fittingly, the war’s going to be fought over something as elemental as water….