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Conflict/Dispossession

The Jharkhand Model of Development: Resources for investors, bullets for villagers

29th December 2016

When seven deaths have not stirred the government’s conscience, Rai is convinced that the resistance is futile. “The worst pain in the world is the pain of being displaced,” said Rai. “But the fact is neither political protests nor public demand can stop displacement. We’ll have to leave this village, our fields and our history.”…

Economy

Gail Tverberg: The energy problem behind Trump’s election

28th December 2016

To try to solve the energy problem, we use approaches that involve increasing complexity, including new technology and globalization. As we add more and more complexity, these approaches tend to work less and less well. In fact, become problems themselves, tending to redistribute wealth toward the top, increasing “overhead” for the economy as a whole….

Conserve/Resist

Special: Ten years of the Forest Rights Act

27th December 2016

The Forest Rights Act of 2006 was widely hailed as a landmark legislation, one that sought to empower some of India’s most disenfranchised communities– the Adivasis. Ten years later, only 3 percent of forest dwellers have their rights recognised, and the Act itself is increasingly being undermined by the present government. Here’s a closer look….

ECOCIDE/EXTINCTION

Watch: Fidel Castro: Tomorrow will be too late

26th December 2016

Fidel Castro, the legendary Cuban revolutionary and politician who passed away on November 25th was known for his pioneering policies in health and education, but was equally committed to environmental issues. In this short talk given at the 1992 Earth Summit, Fidel described the global environmental crisis and identified its causes more powerfully than any other delegate….

Representative pic

Development/Growth

Power plants are making thousands go blind in Chhattisgarh

25th December 2016

Catch News reports: Chhattisgarh’s Janjgir-Champa region, once famous for paddy cultivation, is now emerging as the state’s power hub with several power plants coming up in the area during the recent years. While fuelling the state’s economic growth, dust and ash emitted from these power plants are turning thousands of local people blind from cataract….

ECOCIDE/EXTINCTION

How scientists counted every tree on Earth—and the startling results

24th December 2016

From Nature Video: It’s a simple question: how many trees are there on Earth? The answer required 421,529 measurements from fifty countries on six continents. Their findings? The earth is losing 10 billion trees every year. Now this data has been combined to produce a stunning visualisation of earth as you’ve never seen it before….

Consumerism/Lifestyle

Celebrity isn’t just harmless fun – it’s the smiling face of the corporate machine

23rd December 2016

George Monbiot in The Guardian: The rise of celebrity culture did not happen by itself… It is hard for people to attach themselves to a homogenised franchise, owned by a big corporation. So the machine needs a mask. It must wear the face of someone we see as often as we see our next-door neighbours….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Study: 47 of 68 fish species in India under threat

22nd December 2016

More fish species on the east coast, especially in the waters off Odisha and West Bengal, are highly vulnerable to climate change, according to a first of its kind assessment by the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI). That vulnerability stems not only from changes in climate but also from fishing pressure and lower productivity….

NEWS ARCHIVE

NEWS UPDATE #123

21st December 2016

Common Dreams reports: For the first time, solar power is becoming the cheapest form of electricity production in the world, according to new statistics from Bloomberg. While unsubsidized solar has occasionally done better than coal and gas in individual projects, 2016 marked the first time solar power has out-performed fossil fuels on a large scale….

The Alternative

ALTERNATIVES

Tribute: Anupam Mishra, the chronicler of India’s indigenous water wisdom

20th December 2016

Noted water conservationist Anupam Mishra passed away at the age of 68 on Monday. Here’s a tribute and a video where he talks with wisdom and wit about the amazing feats of engineering from centuries ago by the people of India’s desert regions to harvest water. These ancient aqueducts and stepwells are still used today….

ALTERNATIVES

New study says solar panels have repaid their fossil fuel debt

19th December 2016

Phys.org reports: The climate friendly electricity generated by solar panels in the past 40 years has all but cancelled out the polluting energy used to produce them, a study said Tuesday. Indeed, by some calculations, the so-called “break-even point” between dirty energy input and clean output may already have arrived, researchers in the Netherlands reported….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Watch: 10 extraordinary timelapse videos show earth’s transformation in 30 years

18th December 2016

Scroll.in reports: These timelapse videos were created with images of Landsat Satellite showing massive global transformations from 1984 to 2012 via Google Earth. Timelapse events include transformations such as the coastal expansion of Dubai, the retreat of the Columbia Glacier in Alaska, Saudi Arabian desert, Amazonian forest land in Brazil and Las Vegas urban growth….

Consumerism/Lifestyle

The hipster hunger for superfoods is starving India’s adivasis

17th December 2016

Purabi Bose writes: The downside of turning quinoa, acai berries of Amazon forests, or even moringa (drumstick) into new superfoods is that urban consumers compete with indigenous peoples for food resources. Through our demand for superfoods, we push indigenous populations to eat cheaper, less nutritious, less flavourful, imported staple diets like maize, rice and wheat….

Economy

Demonetisation, not drought, behind farmers’ woes

16th December 2016

Devinder Sharma writes: After a month of demonetisation, the picture in the rural areas remains too bleak. I know of villages where the farmers had to return empty handed even after seven days of queuing up. As a TISS study points out, nearly 81 per cent of the villages do not have access to banking….

Representative pic

CLIMATE CRISIS

Unnatural disasters: how we can spot climate’s role in specific extreme events

15th December 2016

Sophie Lewis writes: We often hear people saying it’s impossible to attribute any single weather event to climate change. While this may have been true in the 1990s, the science of linking extreme events to global warming has advanced significantly since then. However, how we communicate these findings has not kept pace with the science….

ALTERNATIVES

On the most radical social movement of the twenty-first century

14th December 2016

John Foran writes: Among 21st-century movements for radical social change, those that are most likely to succeed will feature some combination of 1) stronger social movements and political cultures of opposition and creation, and 2) new kinds of parties, joined in 3) some new kind of networked structure, and 4) operating locally, nationally, and globally….

NEWS ARCHIVE

NEWS UPDATE #122

13th December 2016

Double Whammy On Farmers: On Top Of Demonetisation India Scraps Wheat Import Duties! Colin Todhunter, Countercurrents Just this week, the Indian government scrapped wheat import duty (from 10 percent to zero). The logic behind this move is questionable and will surely have a devastating effect on Indian farmers the way cheap edible oils import already have. Cheap…

Economy

The mineral pie is shrinking, and most of what’s left is in the sky

12th December 2016

Ugo Bardi writes on Cassandra’s Legacy: The essence of propaganda, as it is well-known, is not so much telling lies, but presenting only one aspect of the truth. That’s true also for the depletion debate. Saying that a certain resource will last decades, centuries, or more is not a lie, but not the truth, either….

CLIMATE CRISIS

How climate change is hitting India

11th December 2016

The National Geographic reports: Arunabha Ghosh, chief executive officer of India’s Council on Energy, Environment and Water, an environmental group, estimated that natural disasters exacerbated by climate change cost the Indian government roughly $30 billion (US dollars) between 2010 and 2015. That number will likely rise along with the global temperature, according to his research….

Culture/Cognition

Warning: this prescription may lead to spontaneous euphoria

10th December 2016

Set in the world of a spoofed prescription drug commercial, Nature Rx offers a hearty dose of laughs and the outdoors – two timeless prescriptions for whatever ails you. This award-winning comedy series is a friendly reminder to us Earthly inhabitants what feels good and what is worth protecting once we take an adventure outdoors….