CLIMATE CRISIS
A new group called Extinction Rebellion, has called for mass civil disobedience in the UK starting next month and promises it has hundreds of people – from teenagers to pensioners – ready to get arrested in an effort to draw attention to the unfolding climate emergency. The group is backed by almost 100 senior academics….
Read More about Extinction Rebellion: The green movement making waves in the UK
NEWS ARCHIVE
HIGHLIGHTS: *EU approves sweeping ban on single-use plastics *Spain to close most coal mines; Canada passes carbon tax *Yemen in danger of massive famine *Great Barrier Reef forecast warns of coral-death this summer *India Tax data shows shocking increase in corporate concessions * Ganga more polluted under Modi’s watch *75,000 tribals oppose Statue of Unity…
Read More about NEWS UPDATE #198
Bookshelf
From The Millions: When human leaders fail us as role models, we should look to animals, says Sy Montgomery. “I can tell you that teachers are all around to help you: with four legs or two or even eight. All you have to do is recognize them as teachers and be ready to hear their truths.”…
Read More about How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals, by Sy Montgomery
ECOCIDE/EXTINCTION
From The Guardian: Humanity’s ongoing annihilation of wildlife is cutting down the tree of life, according to a stark new analysis. More than 300 different mammal species have been eradicated by human activities. The new research calculates the total unique evolutionary history that has been lost as a result at a startling 2.5 billion years….
Read More about Extinction is now outpacing evolution; humans are ‘cutting down the tree of life’, warn scientists
Education/Awareness
From The Sunday Guardian: The Delhi metropolitan area has one of the world’s highest concentrations of population, and suffocating people here on an annual basis should be treated as a crime against humanity, especially when it can be controlled. Arvind Kumar writes on the connection between USAID, Monsanto and Delhi’s nightmarish annual air pollution spike….
Read More about USAID, Monsanto and the real reason behind Delhi’s horrific smoke season
ALTERNATIVES
We’re on track for four degrees of warming, more than twice as much as most scientists believe is possible to endure without inflicting climate suffering on hundreds of millions or threatening at least parts of what we call, grandly, “civilization.” The only thing that changed is that the scientists, finally, have hit the panic button….
Read More about David Wallace-Wells: UN says climate genocide is coming. It’s actually worse.
NEWS ARCHIVE
HIGHLIGHTS: *NITI Aayog proposes green cess for the Himalayan region *Maharashtra heads towards a drier drought *Met dept calls Titli, Luban cyclones “rarest of rare” occurrences *Clean energy may save 11 mn life-years in India: Study *Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions, study says *Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Nestlé worst plastic polluters globally…
Read More about NEWS UPDATE #197
Bookshelf
Most people have passed through some kind of initiation; a crisis that defies what you knew and what you were. Societies can also pass through a similar initiation. That is what climate change poses to the present global civilization. A key element of this transformation is from a geomechanical worldview to a Living Planet worldview….
Read More about Charles Eisenstein: Initiation into a living planet
ALTERNATIVES
Jason Hickel, Foreign Policy: Many policymakers have responded to ecological breakdown by pushing for what has come to be called “green growth.” It sounds like an elegant solution to an otherwise catastrophic problem. There is just one hitch: New evidence suggests that green growth isn’t the panacea everyone hopes for. In fact, it’s not even possible….
Read More about Why growth can’t be green
CLIMATE CRISIS
From Frontier Weekly: The flood in Kerala, created by an overdrive in construction activities, which gave enormous profits to corporate capital, now demands reconstruction work on a giant scale, which only expands the market for corporations further. It is obvious that this is not what is required. The requirement is an alternative model of reconstruction….
Read More about T.G. Jacob: The genesis and political economy of the Kerala floods
CLIMATE CRISIS
A Special Report on Global Warming has been released today by the IPCC, considered the international benchmark on climate change. Ahead of it, Donald Brown reviewed three independent studies which show that climate change is a much more urgent and serious threat than indicated by past IPCC reports, and examines the ethical questions they raise….
Read More about The IPCC systematically underestimates climate risks: here’s the proof
NEWS ARCHIVE
HIGHLIGHTS: *India’s massive land grab in the name of Compensatory Afforestation *India eases green norms for realty *Russia signs pact for six nuclear reactors in India *Maharashtra slaps Rs 1,200 crore fine on Monsanto, others *Crucial IPCC report on climate change expected on Monday *‘Climate wrecker’ United States pushes its regressive agenda at IPCC talks…
Read More about NEWS UPDATE #196
Development/Growth
Ten years after the global financial crisis, a debt-fuelled world economy is headed towards another crash, the IMF has warned. With the Rupee at a record low, unemployment at a 20-year high, and 78 of its largest corporations defaulting on massive debts, India’s rapidly emerging as the epicentre of a crisis that could dwarf 2008….
Read More about Red Alert: India and world hurtling towards financial meltdown
ALTERNATIVES
From Mainstream Weekly: Dr. G. D. Agrawal (now Swami Gyan Swaroop Sanand) is one of India’s most distinguished environmental engineers, who served as the first Member-Secretary of India’s Central Pollution Control Board. Fasting for almost 100 days now to save the river Ganga, he’s now on his sixth, and in his own words, final “fast-unto-death”….
Read More about Why is the Indian govt silent on this 86-year-old’s fast for the river Ganga?
CLIMATE CRISIS
A research-paper concluding that climate-induced collapse is now inevitable, was recently rejected by an academic journal, citing the emotional impact that it might have on readers. The paper offers a new framing to make sense of the disaster we face, called “deep adaptation.” It has now been released online by the author, Prof. Jem Bendell….
Read More about The study on climate-collapse they don’t want you to read – yet
Development/Growth
To the shock of greens everywhere, Indian PM Modi, whose government has absolutely the worst environmental track record in the country’s history, has been declared a UN “Champion of the Earth”. However, coming from Erik Solheim, the UN environment chief facing a string of corruption allegations himself, this ‘honour’ may not be all that surprising….
Read More about Presenting Narendra Modi, ‘Champion of the Earth’ (Disclaimer: This is not a joke)
NEWS ARCHIVE
HIGHLIGHTS: *Ganges runs out of water; potential food shortage looms *Over 519 developmental projects cleared over 4-yrs threaten last wild areas in India *Report: India choked on 929 million tonnes of CO2 from thermal sector *Worst drought in a generation deepens in the Greater Horn of Africa *Monsanto’s glyphosate linked to global decline in honeybees…
Read More about NEWS UPDATE #195
Representative pic
ALTERNATIVES
From The Indian Express: The residents of St. Estevam say they took to farming more due to fear of gated communities encroaching upon farmland. Nine months after the idea was mooted at the community level, this pilot project is now being tracked by the state government, which plans to take this experiment to every village….
Read More about Wary of real estate boom, a Goa village revives farming after 30 years
CLIMATE CRISIS
From The New Republic: Climate scientists predict deadly tropical cyclones will become rainier; that they may move more slowly and venture further into the northern hemisphere; and the hurricane season may become longer. The developed world’s emissions will be responsible for these changes. But it is the developing world that may suffer the most from it….
Read More about The less you did to cause climate change, the more likely you are to pay its price
Tagore in an open-air classroom at Shantiniketan, the university he founded
ALTERNATIVES
Aseem Shrivastava writes: Tagore’s play Mukta-Dhara foretells the manner in which people across the country have been losing their freedom— those uprooted by development quite obviously so, those ‘benefitting’ from it (mostly living in cities) more subtly and invisibly. This is the ecologically fatal price of ‘progress’, which Rabindranath anticipated in much of his work….
Read More about Re-reading Tagore in the age of development gone mad
