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education & awareness

Michael Safi

CLIMATE CRISIS

How India’s battle with climate change could determine the planet’s fate

2nd December 2017

From The Guardian: Of all the most polluting nations –United States, China, Russia, Japan and the EU bloc– only India’s carbon emissions are rising: they rose almost 5% in 2016. India’s population and emissions are rising fast, and its ability to tackle poverty without massive fossil fuel use will decide the fate of the planet….

Education/Awareness

“Gaia is a tough bitch”: Remembering Lynn Margulis, scientific pioneer

1st December 2017

Ridiculed when she first proposed it; biologist Lynn Margulis‘ theory of symbiosis in cell evolution is now considered one of the great scientific breakthroughs. A co-developer of the ‘Gaia hypothesis’ and a sharp critic of the Richard Dawkins-led school of Neo-Darwinist biology, Margulis was also a remarkable personality, as this interview with Edge.org clearly demonstrates….

Development/Growth

Incredible India? GDP is growing, yet hunger getting worse

30th November 2017

From Down to Earth: GDP does not reveal the ground truth about progress in development. The top 10% of Indians control the wealth basket while the common people—more than one billion—slide down along ‘Hunger Index’. While the government flaunts a surging economy, prevalence of hunger in India is at the “high end of serious category”….

Consumerism/Lifestyle

George Monbiot: Why ‘conscious consumption’ won’t save the world

29th November 2017

Recent studies show that those who identify themselves as conscious consumers use more energy and carbon than those who do not. Why? Because, environmental awareness is higher among wealthy people. It’s not attitudes that govern our impacts on the planet, but income. The richer we are, the bigger our footprint, regardless of our good intentions….

ALTERNATIVES

This student’s epic legal battle can have a big impact on global climate action

27th November 2017

From Greenpeace International: In June this year, a courageous 26-year old Hamilton law student, Sarah Thomson, spent five days in court challenging the New Zealand government over climate change targets she called “unambitious and irrational”. Now, she’s made history, after the country’s High Court issued a game-changing verdict that has implications for climate legislation worldwide….

ALTERNATIVES

The Wishing Tree: A tale for our times

26th November 2017

The Wishing Tree is an inspirational film that tells the story of five children in a hill-station who come together to save their ‘wishing tree’ from being cut by vested interests. According to director Raajaysh Chetwal, “It gently nudges people to think about, and restore, the organic and utterly magical relationship between humans and nature.”…

CLIMATE CRISIS

Easter Island: A sustainable society falsely blamed for its own demise

25th November 2017

Catrine Jarman writes: Recently, the Easter Islands have become the ultimate parable for humankind’s selfishness; a moral tale of the dangers of environmental destruction. But 60 years of archaeological research and recent genetic data shows that this dark tale of ecocide and Malthusian collapse has more to do with Western ignorance and prejudice than facts….

ALTERNATIVES

“We should be on the offensive” – ‘Father of climate awareness’ calls for wave of lawsuits

19th November 2017

From The Guardian: James Hansen, former Nasa scientist and one the most respected names in climate science, has called for a ‘litigate-to-mitigate’ strategy, a wave of lawsuits against governments and fossil fuel companies for delaying action on the mortal threat of global warming. Hansen himself is involved in a 2015 climate lawsuit against the US-government….

Development/Growth

Credit Suisse report: World’s richest 1% of own half of global wealth

17th November 2017

The world’s top 1 percent held 45.5 percent of all household wealth in 2000. Now, they hold 50.1 percent, according to research by Credit Suisse. The Mukesh Ambani family, the only Indian family in Asia’s top 10 families, is also the richest in the continent, as its net worth rose $19 billion to $44.8 billion….

ALTERNATIVES

Sulak Sivaraksa on the structural violence of the global economy

13th November 2017

Sulak Sivaraksa, the 85-year-old Thai Buddhist monk, thinker and peace activist, is currently facing the prospect of a fifteen-year jail sentence, for criticising his country’s royal family and military junta. Here, he speaks on the global economy’s built-in inequities and biases. Also included is ‘Heavenly Messengers,’ an excerpt from his book, ‘The Wisdom of Sustainability.’…

ALTERNATIVES

7 Days of Rest: A global event for healing the planet and its inhabitants

9th November 2017

7 Days of Rest, 1 – 7 January 2018, is a global unifying event, dedicating 2018 and beyond to the healing and replenishment of the planet and its inhabitants. It seeks to initiate coordinated, unified global action to catalyse mass awareness about the earth’s looming ecological and civilisational crises, in an immediate and effective way….

ALTERNATIVES

Narsanna Koppula: The man behind the upcoming Permaculture Convergence

8th November 2017

Narsanna Koppula, a pioneer of permaculture in India, founded Aranya Agricultural Alternatives, with an aim to provide alternate solutions to the present chemical agricultural practices. Later this month, Aranya, which has impacted thousands of farmers in Telangana and Andhra, is playing host to the International Permaculture Convergence, the biggest event on the permaculture calendar globally….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Memo to Trump: US president Lyndon Johnson acknowledged global warming 52 years ago

5th November 2017

Dana Nuccitelli writes: On 5 November 1965, US president Lyndon Johnson’s science advisory committee sent him a report on the environment, which included a section on atmospheric carbon dioxide and climate change, written by prominent climate scientists. Reviewing it today, one can’t help but be struck by how well they understood climate change back then….

ALTERNATIVES

Noam Chomsky: Indigenous people are our only hope for survival

4th November 2017

According to the legendary scholar Noam Chomsky, the world is “facing potential environmental catastrophe and not in the distant future,” and the only communities standing between humankind and catastrophe is the world’s Indigenous people. Here we present a selection of articles & essays on indigenous people and their fight to defend nature from ‘civilised’ humans….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Kadwi Hawa: A harsh wind is blowing

31st October 2017

Set in a village in Bundelkhand, which hasn’t seen rain in the last 15 years, the soon-to-be-released Hindi film Kadvi Hawa is a stark story about how climate change affects us all. Instead of capturing the socio-economic impact, director Nila Madhab Panda says, he is interested in looking at the emotional impact of climate change….

Conserve/Resist

The insect ecosystem is collapsing due to humans. It’s a catastrophe

26th October 2017

From The Guardian: Insects are multitudinous beyond our imagining, and have triumphed for hundreds of millions of years, in every habitat. This makes all the more alarming the great truth now dawning upon us: insects as a group are in terrible trouble and the remorselessly expanding human enterprise has become too much, even for them….

Sarus Cranes in Etah, Uttar Pradesh

Gopi Sundar

Culture/Cognition

Being human, in a more-than-human world

22nd October 2017

David Abram writes: I am dazzled, yes, by the creativity of the human mind, but I’m also struck dumb by the ability of various aspen groves to maintain and replenish themselves, through their common root system, for eighty thousand years and more. Are we humans unique? Sure we are. But then, so is everyone else around here….

A documentary on Mali, where agribusiness is turning local farmers into labourers

ALTERNATIVES

Who feeds us? The Peasant Food Web vs. the Industrial Food Chain

20th October 2017

Industrial farming, which gets all the attention (and most of the land), accounts for more than 80% of fossil fuel emissions and uses over 70% of the water supply in agriculture, actually produces only about 30% of the world’s food. It’s the diverse network of small-scale producers-the ‘Peasant Food Web’-that feeds 70% of the world….

Culture/Cognition

Blade Runner 2049 gets it wrong: Technology cannot defeat nature and still exist

18th October 2017

James Kunstler writes: I watched Blade Runner 2049, the latest from Hollywood’s dream-shop. It was an excellent illustration of the over-investments in technology with diminishing returns that are dragging us into collapse and of the attendant techno-narcissism that afflicts the supposedly thinking class in this society, who absolutely don’t get what this collapse is about….

ALTERNATIVES

Bookshelf: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis by George Monbiot

14th October 2017

George Monbiot‘s powerful new book looks at how democracy and economic life can be radically organised from the bottom up. He argues against the “society-crushing system of neoliberalism”, and for a political agenda “that isn’t destined to destroy the living planet”, power given back to people so that wealth isn’t continually distributed to the rich….