CLIMATE CRISIS
Deaths due to heat waves in India have been in the thousands–in the years 1998, 2002, 2003 and 2015 in particular. Numbers, which are how the deaths are usually reported, are class- and gender-neutral. It’s one of the grave ironies of global warming that those least responsible for it are affected the most by it….
Read More about India’s heat waves spell doom for the working poorCLIMATE CRISIS
Bob Pickard writes: It is remarkable how little has actually been done to deal with climate change – and the current lack of public affairs urgency is absolutely breathtaking… There are many reasons why climate change is such a vexing communications conundrum; but as a PR professional, here is what I‘ve pieced together so far….
Read More about The climate change PR disaster
CLIMATE CRISIS
While the economy has achieved resilience from drought impact, rural communities across the country continue to face the wrath of monsoon failure, leading to distressed selling of lands, movable assets, and migration. This is aggravating poverty of the people affecting their nutritional standards rendering them more vulnerable to disease and ill-health and loss of productivity….
Read More about Warming world: Can India cope with drought?Development/Growth
In the past, water scarcity was a constraint that inspired communities to conserve water, devising locally appropriate technologies to share resources. Rajasthan’s baolis and Tamil Nadu’s eris are just two of the many traditional water harvesting systems that survive to this day. However, they have been sidelined by spectacular state projects such as large dams….
Read More about Amita Baviskar: The drought is no longer a natural disaster
Riber Hansson
CLIMATE CRISIS
A new study finds that climate change is triggering a massive reallocation of resources to the world’s wealthiest countries. Fish and other important resources are moving toward the Earth’s poles as the climate warms, and wealth is moving with them, according to a new paper by scientists at Rutgers, Princeton, Yale, and Arizona State universities….
Read More about Study: Climate change takes from the poor, gives to the rich
CLIMATE CRISIS
Shail Shrestha writes at Local Futures: Technology transfer from the North to South has long been regarded as the path to a better life in less-developed regions of the world. But even the best and the most sustainable technology proposed in Paris would make Nepal less sustainable than it is today, leading us in the wrong direction….
Read More about The Paris Climate Talks: A Nepali ViewCLIMATE CRISIS
In this essay, leading Australian public intellectual Robert Manne writes: Our conscious destruction of a planet friendly to humans and other species is the most significant development in history. No less important than the impact of climate change is the question of why human beings have so far failed so comprehensively to rise to its challenge….
Read More about Why have we failed to address climate change?
By Swedish political cartoonist Riber Hansson
CLIMATE CRISIS
Editorial cartoonists from around the world have been quick to capture the fault lines in the negotiations ‒ world leaders arriving in Paris in their gas-guzzling jets and SUVs, rich countries lecturing poor countries on climate action, the inability for political leaders to strike a climate consensus up till now. Here are the best picks….
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An image from flooded Kotturpuram
PTI
CLIMATE CRISIS
Chennai experienced exceptionally heavy rainfall in 1969, 1976, 1985, 1996, 1998, 2005 and now in 2015. Even a decadal frequency is higher than the occurrence of extreme rain events in the first half of the 20th century. It’s likely that at least some of these six extreme rain events had the fingerprint of climate change….
Read More about Climate Change Brought the Rains, Our ‘Development’ Brought the ChaosCLIMATE CRISIS
Efforts to curb climate change must be twinned with programmes to cut poverty, warns a study of the threat posed by global warming to food security View/download World Bank report pdf): Shock Waves : Managing the Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty The Guardian UK The world must pair efforts to stabilise climate change with…
Read More about World Bank warns climate change could drive millions into extreme povertyCLIMATE CRISIS
Common Dreams At least ten million of the poorest people face food insecurity in 2015 and 2016 due to extreme weather conditions and the onset of El Niño, Oxfam has reported. In Oxfam’s new report called Entering Uncharted Waters, erratic weather patterns were noted including high temperatures and droughts, disrupting farming seasons around the world….
Read More about Oxfam Report: 10 Million at Risk of Hunger Due to Climate Change and El NiñoCLIMATE CRISIS
India’s coal dependence has led to rising emissions. Now, even the Chief Economic Advisor has acknowledged that India needs to cut down on them. Sajai Jose A new global report has revealed that India’s carbon dioxide emissions growth in 2014 was not only the largest in terms of volume in its own history, but for the first time…
Read More about India is now a make-or-break nation for climate change – and the planet’s futureCLIMATE CRISIS
Sajai Jose Earlier this month, the U.N.’s climate chief Christina Figueres told the media that an Indian pledge to voluntarily cut carbon emissions is “critically important” to any meaningful agreement at a crucial UN climate summit in Paris in December. As IndiaSpend reported recently, India has bucked a global trend of declining CO2 emissions to emerge as the world’s fastest-growing…
Read More about India: Make-Or-Break Player For Climate ChangeALTERNATIVES
The Encyclical by Pope Francis is being hailed by environmentalists as the second coming. It’s hardly that, in my view. Nonetheless, I was struck within minutes of starting it, by the incisive and accurate commentary it offers on our true predicament. Here are some passages that resonated with me and that I found highly insightful. Manu…
Read More about Pope Francis’ Encyclical on Climate Change – Selected ExcerptsCLIMATE CRISIS
Contrasting outcomes of recent global warming meetings Sagar Dhara Two recent meetings on global warming, one scientific and the other political, are of great public interest as they have a bearing on human society’s future course to become a sustainable global community. The meetings contrasted each other in the clarity of their outcomes. The first…
Read More about Sagar Dhara: Keep the Climate, Change the Economy
