CLIMATE CRISIS
Sajai Jose For the first time ever, the year 2014 saw India’s carbon dioxide emissions growth accounting for the largest share of global emissions growth, according to a new global report. India’s CO2emissions from energy use had increased by 8.1% during the year, making it the world’s fastest-growing major polluter. It was the single-most significant trend…
Read More about India Is Now World’s Fastest-Growing Major PolluterCLIMATE CRISIS
G7 leaders bid ‘Auf Wiedersehen’ to carbon fuels Reuters Leaders of the world’s major industrial democracies resolved on Monday to wean their energy-hungry economies off carbon fuels, marking a major step in the battle against global warming that raises the chances of a U.N. climate deal later this year. The Group of Seven’s energy pledge…
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Conflict/Dispossession
Rohini Mohan reports: In under a year, the Modi government has begun to undo policies of fair land acquisition, undermine environmental protection and reverse the fight for tribal rights. The finance, environment and rural-development ministers, and Modi himself, have called these safeguards to protect people’s property, the environment and tribal rights “roadblocks” to economic growth….
Read More about Narendra Modi’s war on the environmentCLIMATE CRISIS
Could India’s Coal Plans Derail the Global Climate? Tobias Engelmeier, The Energy Collective If India were to grow its electricity system based on coal (as China has done), would it derail the global climate? According to our calculations, under a “coal-heavy” scenario, India would need to increase is coal-fired power generation capacity from the 156…
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Tim Jackson, The Guardian, UK Those like me who fear that the continued pursuit of economic growth on a finite planet might be neither possible nor desirable face a different kind of challenge, brought home to us by Thomas Piketty’s 700 page tome Capital in the 21st Century. The astonishing popularity of the “rock-star economist” is…
Read More about Challenging Thomas Piketty: Growth is not the answer to inequalityEconomy
The German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist Max Weber (1864-1920) is often cited, with Émile Durkheim and Karl Marx, as among the three founders of sociology. Weber is best known for his contention that ascetic Protestantism was the driving force behind market-driven capitalism and the rational-legal nation-state in the West. Against Marx’s “historical materialism”, Weber emphasised…
Read More about Max Weber on energy and industrial civilisationCLIMATE CRISIS
Incrementum ad Absurdum: Growth and Inequality in a Carbon-Constrained World David Woodward The paper seeks to assess the timeframe for eradication of poverty, defined by poverty lines of $1.25 and $5 per person per day at 2005 purchasing power parity, if pre-crisis (1993-2008) patterns of income growth were maintained indefinitely, taking account of the differential…
Read More about Growth and Inequality in a Carbon-Constrained WorldEcologise Events
Date: 21 Feb 2015 , Time: 3.00pm-6.00pm Venue: A.V Hall, Don Bosco High School, Sirsi Speakers: Mansoor Khan and Sagar Dhara Growth is considered to be the fundamental characteristic of any healthy economic system. This growth is fuelled by the easy availability of fossil fuel, which is a limited natural resource formed over millions of years. We have now reached a stage where half…
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Conflict/Dispossession
Basudev Mahapatra writes: Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar, has “delinked forest clearance from clearance by the National Wild Life Board and halved NBWL clearance requirements from 10km to 5km around forest reserves, besides emasculating the Board by replacing eminent experts and concerned NGOs with rubber stamps. He has also relaxed procedures of the Forest Conservation Act….
Read More about Rohini Mohan: The Modi Government’s war on environmentGREEN POLITICS
Ted Trainer, Social Work, University of NSW (Editor’s Note: Below is a summary of Ted Trainer’s ‘The Simpler Way‘, which he defines as “Working for transition from consumer society to a more simpler, more cooperative, just and ecologically sustainable society”. In the web page linked above, Trainer provides more information and an exhaustive set of documents arguing how environmental…
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Conflict/Dispossession
Basic protections to safeguard the environment, that were not particularly strong to begin with, are being wiped out. While in general, faster moving transparent government processes are required, the Modi government’s predilection for protecting private corporations at the expense of public welfare, does not bode well for the environment nor the well-being of India’s peoples….
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CLIMATE CRISIS
Kabir Arora writes: According to Modi, it is not climate which is changing, it is humans who have changed. And for the same reason, a meagre Rs. 100 Cr. have been set aside for climate change adaptation. Yes Mr. PM, humans have changed a lot, and have made climate far more variable than ever before….
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Development/Growth
Jay Mazoomdar writes: Narendra Modi does mean business. So his government has gone about eliminating the policy paralyses that many claimed ailed the previous regime. This meant dismantling roadblocks that hamper economic growth. But here is what also happens to be under fire: laws and rules that safeguard India’s environment, forests, wildlife, and tribal rights….
Read More about 11 environmental disasters Narendra Modi blessed in his first 100 daysCLIMATE CRISIS
If We Release a Small Fraction of Arctic Carbon, ‘We’re Fucked’: Climatologist From Vice.com Recently, scientists have made a disturbing discovery in the Arctic Ocean: They saw “vast methane plumes escaping from the seafloor,” as the Stockholm University put it in a release disclosing the observations. The plume of methane—a potent greenhouse gas that traps…
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Sagar Dhara (Note: An edited version of this article appeared in The Hindu, dated August 8, 2014, under the title ‘Building smart cities without energy’. Also read: Devinder Sharma’s article: How About Smart Villages, Mr Modi?) Recent pronouncements by the NDA ministers, when read together, provide insights into the NDA government’s ‘Acche din ayenge’ (good days ahead)…
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ALTERNATIVES
This is the concept note for the first ever symposium on ‘de-growth’ in India, held in September 2014 in Delhi. Rajeswari S. Raina (NISTADS-CSIR) & Julien-Francois Gerber (TERI University) It has become common knowledge that GDP is a simplistic and even misleading measure for an economy’s health*. In fact, two-digit GDP growth is in many…
Read More about Growth, green growth or degrowth? New critical directions for India’s sustainabilityBookshelf
(Editor’s Note: POI member Mansoor Khan is the author of the book The Third Curve: The End of Growth. As we know it! , which examines Peak Oil and the future of energy and economic growth to provide a new lens to understand our reality and the future. In this interview with The CSR Journal, he says that adapting to global energy descent…
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Conflict/Dispossession
Papri Sri Raman reports: The new environment minister, Prakash Javadekar, met Defense Minister Jaitley on June 10 and later announced a policy that would enable India’s border states with Pakistan, China and Burma to clear defense projects falling within 100kms of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), without approaching the union government for environment clearances….
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Conflict/Dispossession
Avay Shukla writes: The most disappointing and worrying aspect of the recent elections, for me, has been the almost complete absence of any debate or discussion on the environment. Some political parties, the BJP included, did make weak proforma noises about it in their manifestos but there was no mention of it in their campaigning….
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Conflict/Dispossession
The lion, tiger, turtle, butterfly, orchid, mudskipper and one-horned rhino will need every helping hand to survive the development ambitions of a nation that believes that economic ambitions can be fulfilled at the cost of its wildernesses. We know that’s not possible and hope that you will move us away from the subcontinent’s biological-climate precipice….
Read More about Bittu Sahgal: Narendra Modi’s development plan: Will it hang India’s wildlife?
