ALTERNATIVES
The revised version of a talk given by Soujanya Mantravadi at the Future of Energy for Hyderabad workshop held at La Makaan, Hyderabad on 24. 07. 2016, organized by Ecologise Hyderabad. It explores the implications of the end of the fossil fuel era and ways in which residents of Hyderabad can start preparing for it….
Read More about The end of the fossil fuel era and Hyderabad’s energy future
ALTERNATIVES
Bill McKibben writes: Unlike Adolph Hitler, the last force to pose a planetwide threat to civilization, our enemy today is neither sentient nor evil. But before the outbreak of World War II, the world’s leaders committed precisely the same mistake we are making today—they tried first to ignore their foe, and then to appease him….
Read More about Bill McKibben: It’s time to declare war on climate change
ALTERNATIVES
The renowned American ecological economist, Gandhian thinker and author Prof. Mark Lindley will be delivering a series of lectures in Bangalore, starting from 25th. Academic institutions hosting him in the city include IISc, NIAS, Azim Premji University, ATREE and Gandhi Bhavan. The lecture tour is being organised by the Ecologise network and Graama Seva Sangha….
Read More about Ecologise Event: Lecture tour by Prof. Mark Lindley in Bangalore
Food/Farming
Devinder Sharma writes: The real cost of economic reforms is being borne by rural India. The first-ever Socio Economic Census has now clearly brought out this stark reality… The economic wealth of 15 families in India equals that of 600 million people… On the other hand, 60-crore farmers are paying the price for unjust economic reforms….
Read More about India has sacrificed agriculture on the altar of GDP
NEWS ARCHIVE
Down to Earth magazine reports: The Himalaya-Hindu Kush mountain range and the Tibetan Plateau is referred as the ‘Third Pole’, which directly supports 120 million people through irrigation systems. Recent findings suggest that temperatures there have increased by 1.5 °C in the last 50 years and 509 glaciers have disappeared in the last 50 years….
Read More about NEWS UPDATE #108
Conflict/Dispossession
Gladson Dungdung writes: With the CAMPA bill being passed, the forest department has regained its lost hegemonic power over Adivasis. Many past and present instances suggest that the CAMPA amounts to the return of a British Raj-like regime to the forest, aggravating resource based conflict and the enmity between the State and forest dwelling communities….
Read More about CAMPA: The return of British Raj to the forests
Culture/Cognition
Suprabha Seshan writes: Modern education serves a version of Gulag, by forcing our young to suffer unspeakable conditions in their most vulnerable years. It ultimately breaks them, in order to refashion them into a pliable workforce. This psychic predicament goes hand in hand with the destruction of life, with the catastrophic end of the biosphere….
Read More about How modern schooling is aiding the destruction of the biosphere
Bookshelf
Acclaimed novelist Amitav Ghosh‘s non-fiction take on climate change and our collective inability to acknowledge its danger – titled The Great Derangement – has been hailed as a landmark, which promises to change the conversation around this crucial issue. In this series, we’re re-publishing interviews which feature the writer at his forceful and articulate best….
Read More about The Great Derangement: Conversations with Amitav Ghosh – 4
German author Peter Wohlleben has written a bestseller on the 'social networks' of trees
Education/Awareness
Robert Macfarlane reports: Individual plants are joined to one another by an underground hyphal network: a dazzlingly complex and collaborative structure that is often called the Wood Wide Web. It allows plants to distribute resources —sugar, nitrogen, and phosphorus— between one another. Even more remarkably, the network also allows plants to send one another warnings….
Read More about The secrets of the Wood Wide Web
The White Rhino - one of many endangered large animals
Conserve/Resist
40 scientists from across the world have recently announced that megafauna – large animals like elephants, lions, tigers, cheetahs, rhinoceroses – will not survive much longer if we don’t act fast. Examining population trends, the scientists said that human activities like deforestation and hunting can wipe out their populations by the end of this century….
Read More about Warning from 40 top scientists: Tigers, elephants may go extinct by 2100
Dongria Kondh boy Kalia stands in front of the Niyamgiri hill range
Lewis Davids/Survival
Conflict/Dispossession
India is home to about 700 tribal groups with a population of 104 million, as per 2011 census, constituting the second largest tribal population in the world after Africa. Down to Earth magazine examines the many grave threats they face from government, corporations and phenomena like climate change, and our continuing indifference to their plight….
Read More about Spotlight: India’s adivasis and the web of indifference
NEWS ARCHIVE
Darryl D’Monte reports: As many as 160,000 people will die every year in India by 2050 due to decreased food production because of climate change, an Oxford study predicts. India ranks second in the mortality forecast after China, where as many as 248,000 are expected to die for this reason. Surprisingly, the US ranks fifth….
Read More about NEWS UPDATE #107CLIMATE CRISIS
John Michael Greer writes: I’ve had any number of well-meaning climate change activists ask me, in tones of baffled despair, why they can’t get ordinary people to take climate change seriously. My answer is not one they want to hear, because I tell them that it’s because well-meaning climate change activists don’t take climate change seriously….
Read More about Why climate change activism is dead in the water
Economy
Dennis Coyne writes: I expect World Fossil fuel output to peak in 2025. If the World economy continues to grow, a gap between Energy produced (including non-fossil fuels) and the demand for Energy will grow. If the gap is not filled by growth in non-fossil fuel energy demand will reduce due to reduced economic growth….
Read More about Why the world’s fossil fuel output will peak by 2025
Representational pic
CLIMATE CRISIS
Chelsea Harvey reports: It’s increasingly clear that the consequences of climate change won’t stop at just heatwaves and sea level rise. A new study suggests that violence, war and other forms of human conflict may be driven or worsened by the effects of climate change — specifically in countries with high levels of ethnic divides….
Read More about How climate disasters can drive violent conflict around the world
Resource Use
Chelsea Harvey reports: The human footprint on the environment may have affected drinking water in a major way throughout the last century, new research shows. The researchers estimated that declines in water quality —because of human activity— caused water treatment costs to rise by 50 percent in nearly a third of all large cities worldwide….
Read More about What we’re doing to the environment may be costing us our drinking waterBookshelf
Acclaimed novelist Amitav Ghosh‘s non-fiction take on climate change and our collective inability to acknowledge its danger – titled The Great Derangement – has been hailed as a landmark, which promises to change the conversation around this crucial issue. In this series, we re-publish interviews which feature the writer at his forceful and articulate best….
Read More about The Great Derangement: Conversations with Amitav Ghosh – 3CLIMATE CRISIS
George Monbiot writes: If humanity fails to prevent climate breakdown, the industry that bears the greatest responsibility is not transport, farming, gas, oil or even coal. All of them can behave as they do, shunting us towards systemic collapse. The problem begins with the industry that, wittingly or otherwise, grants them this licence: the media….
Read More about The climate crisis is already here – but no one’s telling us
Economy
Kurt Cobb writes: It used to be that oil prices and economic growth were somewhat like distant cousins who disliked each other rather than a happily married couple always seen nuzzling together in public. Nowadays, as the oil price dips into the low $40 range again and global economic growth weakens simultaneously, we must re-evaluate….
Read More about Oil price and economic growth get marriedEducation/Awareness
“A forest is much more than what you see,” says forest ecologist Suzanne Simard. Her 30 years of research in Canadian forests have led to an astounding discovery—trees talk, often and over vast distances. Learn more about the harmonious yet complicated social lives of trees and prepare to see the natural world with new eyes….
Read More about Video: How trees talk to each other
