CLIMATE CRISIS
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….
Read More about The scientists who predicted Australia’s bushfire emergency decades ago
Conflict/Dispossession
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….
Read More about Bolivia, Brazil and South America’s never-ending resource curse
Conflict/Dispossession
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…
Read More about The Great Water Grab: Wall Street is buying up the world’s water
'Skeleton Arresting Masqueraders', 1891 painting by James Ensor
CLIMATE CRISIS
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….
Read More about Catabolism: The final phase of Capitalism
ALTERNATIVES
Padma Rigzin writes: Ladakh’s folk religion teaches that humans do not form the centre of the natural world but are merely inhabitants. So much so that my ancestors would not move a rock to build a house. Unfortunately, people in Leh are shouting the tune of the mainstream. Ambani has already started knocking our doors….
Read More about The fate of Ladakh in the Age of Ambani
ALTERNATIVES
Thanks to the capitalist propaganda machine, we’ve forgotten the difference between ‘conscious’ and ‘compulsive’ consumption. Frugality, which once used to be the essence of responsible living has been labelled as ‘shame’. Though rarely discussed, this was the beginning–and now the core–of the climate crisis. And it has begun to control all aspects of our lives….
Read More about Compulsive consumption: The malaise at the core of the climate crisis
Education/Awareness
We don’t seem to have decisive answers to simple questions like how polluted is Delhi, what are its main sources, and where to start controlling it. Here, Dr. Sarath Guttikunda attempts to answer one perpetual question, what are the sources of air pollution in Delhi? Interestingly, this commonly asked question is also the most confusing and unanswered….
Read More about What’s polluting Delhi’s air?
CLIMATE CRISIS
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….
Read More about Arabian Sea: The new cradle for deadly tropical cyclones
ALTERNATIVES
In 1973, Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss coined the concept of ‘deep ecology’, arguing that only a “deep” transformation of modern society could prevent ecological collapse. Næss criticized one-sided technological approaches in dealing with environmental problems, an attitude he called ‘shallow ecology’. A tribute to the visionary thinker, including a documentary-film on his life and work….
Read More about Tribute: Is your ecology deep or shallow?
ALTERNATIVES
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….
Read More about Rojava: The radical eco-anarchist experiment betrayed by the West, and bludgeoned by Turkey
ALTERNATIVES
From The Hindu: More fuel-efficient cars usually mean that car owners take many more trips, in effect nullifying the saving of fuel from the technical innovation. This simple example shows why any advocacy of a lasting technological solution to ecological challenges is only destined to set the stage for the next generation of ecological problems….
Read More about Why technological solutions cannot combat ecological challenges
Economy
Sanjay Reddy writes: The administration of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) – which Nobel prize winners Duflot and Banerjee helped pioneer – has suffered from more than a whiff of neocolonial attitudes. Arguably, all of the difficulties of RCTs stem from a single source: a failure to recognize the full personhood of those who are affected by interventions….
Read More about The ‘Economics Nobel’ winners’ triumph is at the expense of the world’s poor
ALTERNATIVES
Ratheesh Pisharody writes: While we pretend to have weaved in a “justice angle” into the climate emergency narrative, we conveniently veto-ed ourselves back in. Thus we ensure we represent the perpetrators and also the victims. By taking away a large part of that victim-hood-bank we seem to want an unfair share of “climate justice” too….
Read More about Climate justice is injustice, if partial
Mayank Aggarwal/Mongabay
Conflict/Dispossession
From Mongabay India: First envisaged in the early 2000s, Lavasa was touted as independent India’s first privately owned hill city. But over the years, the project faced numerous legal cases of usurping the land of villagers and violating environmental conditions. It’s now a ghost town with empty, unfinished construction or buildings vacated by their occupants….
Read More about The invisible victims of an unfinished city
CLIMATE CRISIS
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….
Read More about This is not the Sixth Extinction. It’s the first Mass Extermination Event.
CLIMATE CRISIS
Hello. Allow me to introduce myself. I am a Carbon atom, writing in the hope that the intelligence operating here might be able and willing to come to our aid. In particular, I am acting on behalf of the many Carbon atoms – who are contently resting in peace, unaware that they’re in great danger….
Read More about A carbon atom’s plea
ALTERNATIVES
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….
Read More about How the ‘Gujarat model’ is devouring Gujarat (and not just Gujarat)
ALTERNATIVES
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….
Read More about War on Earth: US military is a bigger polluter than as many as 140 countries
ALTERNATIVES
We’re mindful of what we provide for her. She has a relationship to the Land in a way that most Indigenous children do. She’s untangling the idea of growing food, of what it means to eat the food that we grow, and how to give thanks to the Land for growing the foods she eats….
Read More about How the land cured my daughter’s eczema
Retd. Justice Jasti Chelameswar of the Supreme Court of India delivering the keynote address
ALTERNATIVES
From The Wire: The SAPACC campaign rests on two pillars: climate science and mass mobilisation. Large organisations coming together on an issue considered too abstract for a movement only a few years ago is a significant shift. It reflects the climate’s intensifying impact in South-Asia and how the issue has exploded in the public consciousness….
Read More about SAPACC: A big step forward for South Asia’s climate justice movement
