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CLIMATE CRISIS

A ‘People’s Report’ on Climate Change in Karnataka

14th June 2015

Shankar Sharma On World Environment Day, Karnataka’s chief minister Siddharamaiah released a people’s report on the action plan needed to ‘mitigate’ and ‘adapt’ to Climate Change issues in the state of Karnataka. This report was prepared because of the efforts of Karnataka State Pollution Control Board. The report is termed as “people’s report” because it is based…

Economy

Peak Oil from the Demand Side: A Prophetic New Model

13th June 2015

Avery Morrow, Peak Oil Barrel The most attention-grabbing attempts to predict oil futures have come from geologists and environmental activists, who tend to look solely at production. An overlooked doctoral thesis by Christophe McGlade, Uncertainties in the outlook for oil and gas, in contrast, focuses on how both supply and demand might be constrained in the coming…

CLIMATE CRISIS

News update

9th June 2015

G7: End of fossil fuel era? BBC News The G7 has called for a transformation of electricity generation towards renewables and nuclear by 2050. And they said fossil fuel should not be burned in any sector of the economy by the end of the century. Their targets are not binding – but they send a clear message…

Education/Awareness

Prayas looking for Energy Policy Researchers at Pune

5th June 2015

Prayas (Energy Group) Prayas (Energy Group) or PEG is a leading energy policy research and advocacy organization based in Pune, known for its analysis based policy advocacy. Based on a rigorous analytical approach backed by policy and institutional innovation, PEG actively intervenes in regulatory and policy spheres in the energy sector with the objective of promoting public interest…

CLIMATE CRISIS

The IMF’s “shocking” estimate of fossil fuel costs: There’s more to the story

4th June 2015

Sajai Jose Credit: CGP Grey/Flickr, CC-BY 2.0 Recently, when an International Monetary Fund research paper revealed that the actual cost of fossil fuel usage for 2015 was a staggering US$ 5.3 trillion (approx. 340 lakh crore rupees), it made headlines worldwide, though it went largely unreported in India. What accounts for the bulk of this figure are the hidden…

CLIMATE CRISIS

News update

2nd June 2015

The heat and the death toll are rising in India. Is this a glimpse of Earth’s future? The Guardian UK India is struggling to cope with one of the deadliest heatwaves to hit the subcontinent. And its attempt to do so is raising a question for the whole planet – how can humans cope with…

Development/Growth

Letter to concerned ministers on fossil fuel subsidies

31st May 2015

To Sri. Piyush Goyal Union Minister for Coal, Power and Renewable Energy Govt. of India, New Delhi Copy with complements: Sri. Prakash Javadekar Union Minister for Environment, Forests and Climate Change Govt. of India, New Delhi Sri. Arun Jaitely Union Minister for Finance Govt. of India, New Delhi Sri Naredra Modi Prime Minister Govt. of…

Development/Growth

Sustainable Development: Stories from those making it possible

30th May 2015

A publication by FLEDGE, Chennai From the Preface: While a large amount of time and energy is spent on deciding the future of sustainability using the Rio+20 outcome document ‘The Future We Want’, limited space is available for local communities to tell their stories on how simple, on-the-ground initiatives are being pursued enabling them to…

CLIMATE CRISIS

News update

27th May 2015

Heatwave to worsen over the years: Study Times of India Hyderabad suffers a maximum of five heatwave days’ in a year. According to experts, this number will go up to as many as 40 days per year in the future. This prediction has been made in a paper titled Climate change scenarios for Hyderabad: Integrating uncertainties…

RECOMMENDED

More video interviews by Mansoor Khan

26th May 2015

Here are some more additions to Mansoor Khan’s ongoing series of video interviews with experts in various fields from ecology to energy to economics. The interviews take off from the themes covered in Mansoor’s book, The Third Curve: The End of Growth. As We Know It!. View more videos at: The Third Curve YouTube channel Claude Alvarez…

ENERGY

Bhamy Shenoy: Do we really know where oil prices will go?

23rd May 2015

(This article was first published in Industrial Economist) Brent crude oil price after reaching a high of $110 per barrel in June of 2014, seems to have reached a floor price of $45/b this January. It has gone above $60/b. Despite earlier failure to predict oil prices, oil experts are again at it to predict where oil…

CLIMATE CRISIS

News update

20th May 2015

Fossil fuels subsidised by $10m a minute, says IMF The Guardian UK Fossil fuel companies are benefitting from global subsidies of $5.3tn (£3.4tn) a year, equivalent to $10m a minute every day, according to a startling new estimate by the International Monetary Fund. The IMF calls the revelation “shocking” and says the figure is an…

Education/Awareness

Peak Oil: A Graphic Story

19th May 2015

Australian artist Stuart McMillan has spent over 700 hours creating this amazing cartoon of the life and work of M.King Hubbert. McMillan writes on his blog about what he aimed to do with this cartoon: I knew that I couldn’t produce the definitive account of Peak Oil, through the medium ofcomics. I could simply never…

CLIMATE CRISIS

Why Greenpeace is first on the chopping block

17th May 2015

Sajai Jose As Greenpeace India struggles to stay afloat, the real reason why the government wants to shut down the global environmental NGO hasn’t got much attention: Coal, the single biggest source of primary energy in India, is at the heart of the Narendra Modi government’s ambitious plans to ramp up industrial production in the country. Source: World Resources Institute…

CLIMATE CRISIS

News update

14th May 2015

It’s Official: Global Carbon Levels Surpassed 400 ppm for Entire Month Common Dreams Marking yet another grim milestone for an ever-warming planet, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration revealed that, for the first time in recorded history, global levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere averaged over 400 parts per million (ppm) for an entire…

VIDEOS

Video: Why New Coal

12th May 2015

Switch ON India Coal today meets 54.5% of India’s energy needs and 61.5% of the installed power generation capacity, and plays a key role in industries like steel and cement. India is set to more than double its coal consumption by 2035 and become the world’s largest coal importer by around 2020, according to the International…

Development/Growth

Breakthrough Institute: An Ecomodernist Manifesto

8th May 2015

The Breakthrough Institute From the Introduction: To say that the Earth is a human planet becomes truer every day. Humans are made from the Earth, and the Earth is remade by human hands. Many earth scientists express this by stating that the Earth has entered a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene, the Age of Humans….

CLIMATE CRISIS

News update

5th May 2015

Will Tesla’s home battery really transform our energy infrastructure? The Guardian UK “The goal is complete transformation of the entire energy infrastructure of the world,” Tesla founder Elon Musk told reporters as he launched the electric car company’s new home power storage battery. “This is actually within the power of humanity to do. It is…

Education/Awareness

Mihir Mathur: Local Exchange Systems

3rd May 2015

Local Exchange Systems: Designing Community Initiatives A discussion paper on Alternate Economics to Strengthen Local Economy and Facilitate Sustainable Adaptation Mihir Mathur & Mithika D’Cruz – Watershed Organization Trust, Pune Abstract Economic Globalization in its current form is a centralising juggernaut which often causes large-scale resource depletion in remote eco-systems, unpredictable price variations in essential commodities…

Education/Awareness

Three Leading Think-tanks Studying Global Crises

30th April 2015

The Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University The Future of Humanity Institute is a leading research centre looking at big-picture questions for human civilization. The last few centuries have seen tremendous change, and this century might transform the human condition in even more fundamental ways. Using the tools of mathematics, philosophy, and science, we explore…