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green politics

ALTERNATIVES

The Revolution is Love: A missive from Charles Eisenstein

14th March 2016

This is why so many seasoned activists succumb to despair after decades of struggle. Do you think we can beat the military-industrial-financial-agricultural-pharmaceutical-NGO-educational-political complex at its own game? But the modern environmental movement, and most especially the climate change movement, has attempted just that, risking defeat but also often worsening the situation even in its victories….

ENERGY

Towards Energy Democracy: A Vision Statement

6th March 2016

Unlimited growth and consumerist culture is incompatible with a finite world. We call for an urgent paradigm shift, from the currently dominant model of consumption-led development, to creating frameworks of human and ecological well being. This transition should be defined by the principles of sustainability, equity, and justice. (Adopted at the Bijli Vikalp Sangam, Bodh Gaya)…

ECOCIDE/EXTINCTION

Marine parks in India – a case for maritime environmentalism

22nd February 2016

Aarti Sridhar writes: It is in the ordinary everyday life of fishers and in the political strategies of their leaders that one finds the outlines of a new kind of environmentalism which’s fluid and defies water-tight categorisations. This ethic suggests that it is futile to remain wholly preservationist or utilitarian, or entirely biocentric or anthropocentric….

Dongria Kondh protest against the Vedanta mine appeal.

Bikash Khemka/Survival

ALTERNATIVES

Power in India: radical pathways to local self-rule

15th February 2016

Ashish Kothari & Pallav Das write in State of Power report: People are recognizing that the current power dispensation is frozen in an intellectual paradigm defined by free-market orthodoxy and will change only if confronted by worldviews such as swaraj or Radical Ecological Democracy. India (and the world) needs that change in order to continue to thrive….

Grist / Amelia Bates

ALTERNATIVES

Charles Eisenstein: Climate Change, grief and carbon reductionism

13th February 2016

People are not going to be frightened into caring. Scientific evidence-based predictions about what will happen 10, 20, or 50 years in the future are not going to make them care, not enough. That requires making it personal. And that requires facing the reality of loss. And that requires experiencing grief. There’s no other way….

ALTERNATIVES

Blessed Unrest – How the largest social movement in history is restoring grace, justice, and beauty to the world

2nd February 2016

Environmentalist Paul Hawken has spent over a decade researching organizations dedicated to restoring the environment and fostering social justice. From billion-dollar nonprofits to single-person dot.causes, these groups collectively comprise the largest movement on earth, a movement that has no name, leader, or location, and that has gone largely ignored by politicians and the mainstream media. www.blessedunrest.com…

CLIMATE CRISIS

Time to stop talking about climate change?

29th January 2016

Transition Towns movement founder Rob Hopkins writes: The story we tell flows like this: A movement is building. Here are the things different people are doing in their communities, rooted in caring for ourselves, each other and the living world. This shows a different future is possible. Here’s how you can be part of it….

ALTERNATIVES

Video & Report: Yogendra Yadav on the unfolding famine in Bundelkhand and the need for a farmers’ politics

15th January 2016

Having endured three successive droughts, the region of Bundelkhand in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh continues to be on edge. Governments in both the states have failed to do their bit. Here’s a press conference video and interview of Yogendra Yadav, who leads the Swaraj Abhiyan movement, which recently held an extended survey of the region….

The Hindu

GREEN POLITICS

Yogendra Yadav and Vandana Shiva call for a green party in India

29th December 2015

Vasanth Srinivasan of The Hindu quotes former AAP leader Yogendra Yadav as saying, “there is a crying need for environmental politics” in India, but with the following caveat. “If green politics does not restrict itself as urban environmental activism but emerges as a binding agent of various marginalised groups and concerns, it definitely has a future in India.”…

Rahul Alvares

GREEN POLITICS

Earth Heroes: The Sanctuary Wildlife Awards 2015

21st December 2015

Meet this year’s Earth Heroes, winners of the Sanctuary Wildlife Awards 2015, who form a part of the small tribe of people who keep our planet wonderful. Men and women who work with steadfast passion to protect what remains of wild nature. (Pictured above: Two of the award-winners – Goa-based environmentalists Claude and Norma Alvares)….

Frida Kahlo

CLIMATE CRISIS

Charles Eisenstein: What We Do to Nature, We Do to Ourselves

17th December 2015

Author Charles Eisenstein writes: We will not escape this crisis so long as we see the planet and everything on it as instruments of our utility. The present climate change narrative veers too close to instrumental utilitarian logic — that we should value the earth because of what will happen to us if we don’t….

Consumerism/Lifestyle

The false promise of economic growth

29th November 2015

We can have it all; that is the promise of our age. We can own every gadget we are capable of imagining, without compromising Earth’s capacity to sustain us. The promise that makes all this possible is that as economies develop, they become more efficient in their use of resources. In other words, they decouple….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Special: Institutions are pulling out investments worth billions from fossil fuels

24th November 2015

What is fossil fuel divestment? Divestment is the opposite of investment – it is the removal of your investment capital from stocks, bonds or funds. The global movement for fossil fuel divestment (sometimes also called disinvestment) is asking institutions to move their money out of oil, coal and gas companies for both moral and financial…

Development/Growth

Towards A Unitive Life: An Interview with Shyam Balakrishnan

5th November 2015

One World University Shyam Balakrishnan is the coordinator of One-World University, a collective dedicated to the study of dialectics and geopolitics. He lives at an organic farm in Wayanad, Kerala, which is also envisioned as one of the campuses of One-World University. On May 20, 2014, Balakrishnan was arrested by the state police on charges of being…

Bookshelf

E-book: Water warriors – Stories on people and their relationship with water

23rd October 2015

The stories in this yearbook highlight efforts by rural and urban communities across India to take back ownership of their water resources. India Water Portal Water sustains lives and livelihoods. It is a precious and finite resource that, in future years, is likely to become the main bone of contention between peoples, states and nations….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Political Violence – The Last Refuge of the Incompetent?

17th September 2015

John Michael Greer, The Archdruid Report (Click here to view original essay and comments) There are certain advantages to writing out the ideas central to this blog in weekly bursts. Back in the days before the internet, when a galaxy of weekly magazines provided the same free mix of ideas and opinions that fills the…

CLIMATE CRISIS

News update

13th September 2015

Burning all fossil fuels will melt entire Antarctic ice-sheet, study shows The Guardian, UK Burning all the world’s coal, oil and gas would melt the entire Antarctic ice-sheet and cause the oceans to rise by over 50m, a transformation unprecedented in human history. The conclusion of a new scientific study shows that, over the course…

CLIMATE CRISIS

News update

27th August 2015

Doomsday in 10 years: India may run out of water by 2025 Nihar Gokhale, Catch News We know quite well that water is scarce. Many even imagine that a Third World War will be fought over water. Nonetheless, the thought of taps running dry doesn’t come naturally. But maybe it is time to wake up…

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…

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…