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historical analyses

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….

Bookshelf

How ‘Silent Spring’ ignited the modern environmental movement

12th October 2017

As much as any book can, Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” changed the world, by describing it. An immediate best-seller, this classic book launched the modern environmental movement, which, in turn, led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and a host of green laws. On the 55th year of its publication, a tribute….

The New Yorker

Illustration by Golden Cosmos

ALTERNATIVES

The case against civilisation: Did our hunter-gatherer ancestors have it better?

5th October 2017

From The New Yorker: Recent research shows a gap of 4000 years separating the “two key domestications,” of animals and cereals, from the first agrarian economies based on them. Our ancestors evidently took a good, hard look at the possibility of agriculture before deciding to adopt it; because the life they lived was remarkably abundant….

Culture/Cognition

Why political correctness fails – Why what we know ‘for sure’ is wrong

29th September 2017

Gail Tverberg writes: The Politically Correct (PC) worldview has been called the “religion of success”. In this post, I explain why many popular (or politically correct) understandings are just plain wrong. I cover many controversial topics, including environmentalism, peer-reviewed literature, climate change models, and yes, religion. I expect that the analysis will surprise almost everyone….

ALTERNATIVES

Aseem Shrivastava: Who killed Swaraj?

5th September 2017

Nehru’s grand illusion was to imagine that the ‘good’ in the modern world could be somehow magically preserved while allowing the ‘evil seed’ (gluttony of power?) to flourish into a ravishing rainforest of destructive avarice, an inevitability our times are having to face, as barbarism knocks on every door. Gandhi’s fears are globally vindicated today….

ALTERNATIVES

Celebrating the Champaran Satyagraha, a hundred years on

23rd August 2017

Prof. Irfan Habib writes: This year is the centenary of one of the most remarkable episodes of modern Indian history, the Champaran satyagraha of 1917 that joined the national movement with the great struggle of the peasantry for bread and land, exposing how the twin processes of drain of wealth and de-industrialisation had ruined India….

Representative pic

ENERGY

A window into coal workers in India: The history of Raniganj Coalfield

18th August 2017

From Sanhati: A history of the 240 year-old Raniganj Coalfield– the story of its workers –the many lives that have been spent in its shadows, displaced by coal and depending on it for survival –would be a tale every bit as expansive as the Mahabharata. This two-part article gives a short glimpse of this history….

Bookshelf

Bookshelf: Indica—A Deep Natural History Of The Indian Subcontinent

27th July 2017

Amita Baviskar writes: Pranay Lal’s Indica, describes the first 4,600 million years of the subcontinent, comprising a cast of fascinating characters in a drama that begins with the Big Bang and closes with the arrival of Homo sapiens, present-day humans, in India some 70,000 years ago. But along with sparking appreciation, it also raises apprehensions….

Education/Awareness

The domestication of humankind

From Pragati: Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains, governed by precursors of today’s states? Anirudh Kanisetti reviews James Scott’s lucid Against The Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States, which provides surprising new evidence that refutes mainstream narratives of how civilization came into being….

Bookshelf

What tames inequality? Violence and mayhem, says new book

21st July 2017

From Chronicle.com: In his new book, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century, Stanford University professor Walter Scheidel puts forth the following thesis: that historically, it took four kinds of violent ruptures –mass-mobilization warfare, transformative revolution, state failure, and lethal pandemics– to reduce widespread inequality….

ALTERNATIVES

Satya Sagar: What on earth is a human being?

16th July 2017

Satya Sagar writes: It’s time to step back, reflect and ask again and again the questions: who or what exactly are human beings, how we should live in this world and where we should go? For this time the very survival of the human species may lie in getting the answers right with great honesty….

Education/Awareness

Thomas Robert Malthus, we need your voice today!

5th July 2017

John Scales Avery writes in Countercurrents.org: Malthus’ “Essay on The Principle of Population” was one of the first systematic studies of the problem of population in relation to resources. He was the first to stress the fact that, in general, powerful checks operate continuously to keep human populations from increasing beyond their available food supply….

ALTERNATIVES

Can we live without progress?

1st July 2017

Kurt Cobb writes: The idea of progress is embedded in the socio-economic system, and we cannot attack carbon emissions without attacking the idea of progress itself. If the progress we’ve made since the beginning of industrial civilization only leads to a complete reversal of all our supposed gains, can we really call what’s happening progress?…

CLIMATE CRISIS

Spotlight: Here’s how India has warmed from 1901 till 2017

12th June 2017

Here are the key findings from Centre for Science and Environment’s study of how India has warmed over the years, also plotted in animation. The analysis looks at temperature trends in the country –both annual and seasonal– from 1901 till recent years. It finds that the country has been getting warmer continuously, consistently and rapidly….

Joel Sternfeld

ALTERNATIVES

Paul Kingsnorth: The Axis and the Sycamore

8th June 2017

The Axial Age, which refers to the historical period between the eighth and third centuries BC, was a period of profound transformations, which created “the foundations upon which humanity still subsists today,” a period of collapse from which emerged new ways of seeing and being… We may be living through a second Axial Age now……

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….