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environmentalism

James Fryer/ Gear Patrol

Consumerism/Lifestyle

World Environment Day is now little more than a greenwashing opportunity

11th June 2017

Nitin Sethi writes: Whatever a government might do to run the economic engine of the country or its politics, it has to continuously claim that it is a win-win for both the environment and development. It will talk about its moves to set up zero-effect and zero-defect industries. We all know such an idea does not exist….

Paresh Nath/The Khaleej Times

Conserve/Resist

Why the fight for environmental justice is also a fight for social justice

6th June 2017

Nityanand Jayaraman writes: June 5 was World Environment Day. Over the last few days, this author, an environmental activist, has been asked by many people to lay out things that people can do without really straining their daily schedules. These simple things may not exist anymore. Instead, here are six things for everyone to consider….

Atulya Bingham at the mud home she built in Turkey

ALTERNATIVES

A relation of love with the land

30th May 2017

If I were into species research, I would declare the discovery of Atulya Bingham as that rare new species that the world desperately needs. If I were a birder she’d be that exotic bird whose sight delights one every time. She is rare because she writes about nature in a way no one else does….

Conserve/Resist

The Bishnois, India’s original environmentalists, who inspired the Chipko movement

28th May 2017

The Bishnois may be considered as India’s first environmentalists. The famous ‘Chipko Movement’ was inspired by the true story of Amrita Devi Bishnoi, who refused to let the king’s men cut trees in her village. Her head was severed. More than 300 people who did the same were killed for trying to protect the trees….

ALTERNATIVES

Charles Eisenstein: A New Story of the People

4th May 2017

From TEDxWhitechapel: “Our hearts know that a more beautiful world is possible; but our minds do not know how it’s possible”. In this intelligent and inspiring talk, writer and visionary Charles Eisenstein explores how we can make the transition from the old story of separation, competition and self-interest to a new Story of the People….

Brayan Caicedo

ALTERNATIVES

Sunita Narain: The future is in our hands

3rd May 2017

We must rethink the question of states, market and society. We have dismembered the state; grown the market and believed that we’ve empowered society. Slowly, the circle closed— state, market and aspiring, consuming society merged. They became one. Anyone outside this circle stopped getting counted. This cannot work. This is our future’s most important agenda….

Paresh Nath/The Khaleej Times

Culture/Cognition

Earth Day and the phantoms of a pathological culture

2nd May 2017

Kenn Orphan writes: Earth Day has morphed into an opportunity for corporations and politicians to tout empty gestures at “saving the planet” while they mercilessly plunder it. It neutralises public outrage at the world’s dire state and spreads an all-pervasive “feel goodism” to a situation that’s truly existential, for countless other species, and our own….

Kalpataru, the divine tree of life, depicted at the 8th century Pawon temple, Java

Indiafacts.info

ALTERNATIVES

What modern ecology can learn from ancient Hinduism

19th April 2017

Viva Kermani writes: Hinduism is the world’s largest nature based religion that recognises and seeks the Divine in nature and acknowledges everything as sacred. A loss of this understanding that earth is our mother, or rather a deliberate ignorance of this, has resulted in the abuse, and the exploitation of the earth and its resources….

ALTERNATIVES

Seeing Wetiko: On capitalism, mind viruses, and antidotes for a world in transition

15th April 2017

From Kosmos Journal: What if we told you that humanity is being driven to the brink of extinction by an illness? That all the poverty, the climate devastation, the perpetual war, and consumption fetishism all around us have roots in a mass psychological infection? What if this infection is not just highly communicable but also self-replicating?…

ALTERNATIVES

Court issues ruling in world’s first “Rights of Nature” lawsuit

6th March 2017

Intercontinentalcry.org reports: On January 11, 2017 Ecuador’s Esmeraldas Provincial Court handed down its decision on the world’s first constitutionally-based Rights of Nature lawsuit. Amazingly, this historic demand for justice—which simultaneously begs for a shift in merely human rights-based paradigms—was made by people who literally and figuratively live in Ecuador’s margins: The Canton of San Lorenzo….

Conflict/Dispossession

Tribute: Berta Cáceres, an outspoken voice for nature that was silenced

3rd March 2017

This day a year ago, Honduran indigenous and environmental organizer and Goldman Environmental Prize winner Berta Cáceres was assassinated in her home. She and her associates had faced death threats for standing up to mining and dam projects that threatened to destroy their community. A tribute to her fighting spirit on her first death anniversary….

Dylan Glynn

ALTERNATIVES

William H. Kotke: Civilization falls; a new culture emerges

28th February 2017

We must invent a whole new human culture. The human species cannot exist in perpetuity on the earth unless it lives in biological balance with the life around it. Running a net deficit drawdown of the earth’s fertility will not work. Is it not strange that children can understand this statement but world leaders cannot?…

People’s Climate, 2014

CLIMATE CRISIS

So you want to be a climate campaigner? Here’s how

7th February 2017

The planet is getting hotter, leaving people hungry and fuelling wars around the world and you want to do something about it. But with a green movement to cater for every age, location, and type of plastic recycling, how to turn your enthusiasm into action? Maeve Shearlaw’s tips for getting started as a climate activist….

ALTERNATIVES

The Enlivenment Manifesto: Politics and Poetics in the Anthropocene

5th February 2017

Enlightenment thinking is coming to an end… But our civilization still operates as if reality is about organising inert, dead matter in efficient ways. It is impossible to achieve sustainability with our prevailing ‘operating system’ for economics, politics, and culture if the underlying ‘bios’—our unconscious assumption about reality—remains tied to an ideology of dead matter….

Jemima Rohekar

Conserve/Resist

Sounds of silence: a forest that survived ‘development’

20th January 2017

Jemima Rohekar writes: So secluded is Silent Valley that there is no written record of any human habitation in its core area. It is also the site of the first and most bitterly fought ‘environment vs development’ debate in India. Silent Valley reinforces the fact that forests and their resident biodiversity are our greatest wealth….

Development/Growth

Charles Eisenstein: Development in the Ecological Age

5th November 2016

Development is more than an ideology; it is an ideology in service to an economic necessity which, in turn, is not a real necessity but contingent on a growth dependent debt-based financial system. Until that system changes, the pressure to develop— to convert natural resources into commodities and social relationships into services— will not abate….

ALTERNATIVES

Charles Eisenstein: Fear of a living planet

30th October 2016

Does the concept of a living planet inspire and uplift you, or is it a disturbing example of woo-woo nonsense that distracts us from practical, science-based policies? While no amount of evidence can prove it false, we must acknowledge that the science that militates against an intelligent, purposeful, living universe is ideologically freighted and culturally-bound….

Dr Jill Stein, the U.S. Green Party's candidate for the 2017 presidential elections

ALTERNATIVES

The case for the green state

26th July 2016

William Hawes writes: Critiques of the modern nation-state have been growing, due to the abysmal failures of the capitalist, neoliberal order. On the other side, the leftism of social-democratic reforms promote endless government spending. Neither of these models address the many crises our world faces. Green political theory offers a way out of this impasse….

GREEN POLITICS

Green activist arrested, beaten in custody, NGOs demand release

17th July 2016

On 8th July 2016, environmental activist Piyush Sethia and two colleagues were arrested in Salem, Tamil Nadu during protests against the construction of an over-bridge. On 14th July 2016, the Magistrate’s court dismissed Piyush’s bail application while granting conditional bail to the other two activists. Sethia has been kept in solitary confinement since his arrest….

ALTERNATIVES

Video: In Defence of Life: Stories of community resistance to mining

3rd June 2016

In Defence of Life follows the struggles and triumphs of four rural communities resisting large-scale mining projects in Colombia, Philippines, South Africa and Romania. Courageous environmental and human rights defenders from these communities describe how they have suffered and why they are standing firm to protect their families, land, water and life from destruction by mining….