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A 10 month apprenticeship course at the Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary, Kerala
Organised by Students for Climate Resilience in association with South Asian People’s Action on Climate Crisis (SAPACC)
From The Atlantic: In the 18th century, European colonizers virtually eliminated the American bison. When we lose animals, we also lose everything those animals do. When insects decline, plants go unpollinated. When birds disappear, pests go uncontrolled and seeds stay put. When bison are exterminated, springtime changes in ways that we still don’t fully understand.
Beggars are usually ignored on the streets and questions are asked about why they don’t work. But many have indeed worked as paid labour and have chosen begging as the primary activity, finds Sabina Yasmin Rahman. As India’s urban and rural poor reel from a state-made economic crisis, this revealing study takes on an urgent relevance.
From Logic Magazine: Despite the climate crisis, Big Oil is doubling down on fossil fuels. At over 30 billion barrels of crude oil a year, production has never been higher. Now, leading oil companies are forging a lucrative partnership with tech giants like Microsoft, building a new carbon cloud that just might kill us all.
Massive protests have been roiling through Algeria, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, France, Germany, Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Spain, Sudan, the UK, and Zimbabwe—and that’s only since September. As distinct as the protests seem, the uprisings rocking scores of countries all share a common theme, argues Ben Ehrenreich.
The Hindu
Anuj Ghanekar writes: Drought affects everyone, but the Dalits are the worst affected. They often become targets of threats and violence in different ways if they try to access water or demand rights for water, with several atrocities on record. One study noted several instances where water sources used by Dalits were deliberately contaminated with human excreta.
Big Agri, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Food, Big Banking, Big Oil and Big Government aren’t there to make our lives better. They’re there to control us and make as much money as possible; and they’ll run you over if you’re in their way. Daisy Luther on how to fight back and starve the Beast.
From The Guardian: Now, as more dangerous fire weather is forecast, they’re being asked: why did the science not lead to action? “I would blame most of that on the lobbying”,” says Pearman, now 78. “That lobbying has been extremely powerful in a country driven by the resource sector that includes uranium, coal and gas.
From The Intercept: Anthropologist and Bolivia scholar Bret Gustafson offers a nuanced analysis of how the coup in Bolivia unfolded, who benefits from the present crisis, and what is at stake for the overwhelmingly indigenous population. Also, Glenn Greenwald talks about his recent conversation with Brazil’s former president Lula, who was recently released from prison.
Jo-Shing Yang reports on how Wall Street banks like Citigroup and multibillionaires are buying up water sources all over the world at unprecedented pace. Simultaneously, governments are moving fast to limit citizens’ ability to become water self-sufficient. Also read an investigative report from The Guardian: Liquid assets: how the business of bottled water went mad
'Skeleton Arresting Masqueraders', 1891 painting by James Ensor
From Counterpunch: In a contracting, growth-less economy, the profit motive can have a powerful catabolic impact on capitalist society. In biological terms, “catabolism” refers to the condition whereby a living thing feeds on itself. Catabolic capitalism is a self-cannibalizing system whose insatiable hunger for profit can only be fed by devouring the society that sustains it.
Padma Rigzin writes: Ladakh’s folk religion teaches that humans do not form the centre of the natural world but are merely inhabitants. So much so that my ancestors would not move a rock to build a house. Unfortunately, people in Leh are shouting the tune of the mainstream. Ambani has already started knocking our doors.
Thanks to the capitalist propaganda machine, we’ve forgotten the difference between ‘conscious’ and ‘compulsive’ consumption. Frugality, which once used to be the essence of responsible living has been labelled as ‘shame’. Though rarely discussed, this was the beginning–and now the core–of the climate crisis. And it has begun to control all aspects of our lives.
We don’t seem to have decisive answers to simple questions like how polluted is Delhi, what are its main sources, and where to start controlling it. Here, Dr. Sarath Guttikunda attempts to answer one perpetual question, what are the sources of air pollution in Delhi? Interestingly, this commonly asked question is also the most confusing and unanswered.
From Down to Earth: Findings by Hiroyuki Murakami of Princeton University suggest that 64% of the cyclone risk in the Arabian Sea was due to climate change. The study further warns that the coastal areas surrounding the Arabian Sea are at specific risk since the geographical location offers cyclones nowhere to go but the land.
In 1973, Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss coined the concept of ‘deep ecology’, arguing that only a “deep” transformation of modern society could prevent ecological collapse. Næss criticized one-sided technological approaches in dealing with environmental problems, an attitude he called ‘shallow ecology’. A tribute to the visionary thinker, including a documentary-film on his life and work.
Four million people, thousands of communes, a non-hierarchical social structure based on gender equality and a cooperative economy based on ecological principles. So why is the world silent when the greatest contemporary alternative political-economic experiment—achieved against impossible odds—is thrown under the bus? Here’s a closer look at Rojava as Turkey invades the Kurdish autonomous zone.
From The Hindu: More fuel-efficient cars usually mean that car owners take many more trips, in effect nullifying the saving of fuel from the technical innovation. This simple example shows why any advocacy of a lasting technological solution to ecological challenges is only destined to set the stage for the next generation of ecological problems.
Sanjay Reddy writes: The administration of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) – which Nobel prize winners Duflot and Banerjee helped pioneer – has suffered from more than a whiff of neocolonial attitudes. Arguably, all of the difficulties of RCTs stem from a single source: a failure to recognize the full personhood of those who are affected by interventions.
Ratheesh Pisharody writes: While we pretend to have weaved in a “justice angle” into the climate emergency narrative, we conveniently veto-ed ourselves back in. Thus we ensure we represent the perpetrators and also the victims. By taking away a large part of that victim-hood-bank we seem to want an unfair share of “climate justice” too.
Mayank Aggarwal/Mongabay
From Mongabay India: First envisaged in the early 2000s, Lavasa was touted as independent India’s first privately owned hill city. But over the years, the project faced numerous legal cases of usurping the land of villagers and violating environmental conditions. It’s now a ghost town with empty, unfinished construction or buildings vacated by their occupants.
Justin McBrien writes: The planetary atrocity of ecocide has no geological analogue. To call it the “sixth extinction event” is to make an active, organized eradication sound like some kind of passive accident. We’re in the midst of the First Extermination Event, wherein capital has pushed all life on Earth to the brink of extinction — extermination by capitalism.
Hello. Allow me to introduce myself. I am a Carbon atom, writing in the hope that the intelligence operating here might be able and willing to come to our aid. In particular, I am acting on behalf of the many Carbon atoms – who are contently resting in peace, unaware that they’re in great danger.
From The Hindu: The perverse ‘achievements’ of those relentless in their advocacy of the Sardar-Sarovar dam are now evident. The riches of Gujarat—shown as a model to the rest of India—are the result of such violent extraction, exploitation and destruction that benefit a few while victimising many. Any protest is being beaten into the earth.
From The Intercept: Industrialized militaries are a bigger part of the climate emergency than we know. If the US-military were a country, its fuel usage alone would make it the world’s 47th largest greenhouse gas emitter, says a new study. Another study found that America has spent an astonishing $5.9 trillion on wars since 2001.
We’re mindful of what we provide for her. She has a relationship to the Land in a way that most Indigenous children do. She’s untangling the idea of growing food, of what it means to eat the food that we grow, and how to give thanks to the Land for growing the foods she eats.
From The Wire: The SAPACC campaign rests on two pillars: climate science and mass mobilisation. Large organisations coming together on an issue considered too abstract for a movement only a few years ago is a significant shift. It reflects the climate’s intensifying impact in South-Asia and how the issue has exploded in the public consciousness.
Ayushi Uppal writes: While the concept of Anthropocene remains contested, there is consensus on the human-led changes to the climate and the need for intervention. Humanity must create a pathway from a possible ‘Hothouse earth’ to a ‘Stabilized Earth’ state, where human activities create biogeophysical feedbacks that sustain the Earth System within the planetary threshold.
Umair Haque writes: The tables have turned. The problem isn’t climate change anymore, and the solution isn’t global cooperation — given today’s implosive politics. The problem is you — if you are not one of the chosen, predatory few. And the solution to the problem of you is climate change. To the fascists, that is.
From Vice.com: “When we go to private hospitals outside, they immediately tell us that the only way to survive is to leave the area. But the doctors here tell us there’s nothing wrong. Are they saying doctors outside this area are all mad? Are the researchers who’ve declared this place unfit mad?” asks Farah Sheikh.
Over more than 40 years, Vaclav Smil has grown in influence, and is now seen as one of the world’s foremost thinkers and a master of statistical analysis. Bill Gates says he waits for new Smil books the way others wait for the next Star Wars movie. Smil’s latest is Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities.
From The Guardian: A recent scientific study has found that 42% of fields in Britain surveyed by farmers were seriously deficient in earthworms; in some fields they were missing altogether. Particularly hard-hit were deep-burrowing worms, which are valuable in helping soil collect and store rainwater, but were absent from 16% of fields in the study. Jules
From Great Game India: At least two of the Big Four global corporate consultancies are reported to be directly involved in the big-ticket Kashmir Development Plan – Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers. A pilot project was initiated in 2017 for the creation of a ‘Model Village’ in Kathua, Kashmir, based on a blueprint by PricewaterhouseCoopers
The fact that the language of localism is being increasingly co-opted by authoritarians around the world is itself a sign of localism’s appeal. Left uprooted and adrift by the globalized economy, people are desperate for a sense of connection: to one another, to the living world, to a place and culture that’s familiar to them.
When thinking about climate solutions, people often picture technical fixes. In principle, scientists and engineers could deploy any these–but should they? To answer this, society needs the humanities and its intangible tools, argues Steven Allison & Tyrus Miller. Also included, a talk on ‘Climate Change and the Humanities’ by Subaltern Studies pioneer Dr Dipesh Chakrabarty.
From Down to Earth: India is going through one of the worst farm crisis in its history. To understand about this crisis we have to investigate the roots of the celebrated Green Revolution and what happened after that. This is the story of Jaunty, the village which was once the flagbearer of the Green Revolution.
From The New York Times: Scientist Monica Gagliano’s botanical research, which has broken boundaries in the field of plant behavior, indicate that plants are, to some extent, intelligent. Her experiments suggest that they can learn behaviors and remember them. Her work also suggests that plants can “hear” running water and even produce clicking noises, perhaps to communicate.
From The Guardian: Roasted by heatwaves, this year the world went into ecological overshoot on 29 July, the earliest yet. Unless we begin again with economics, understanding and letting go what has gone wrong, one day soon everything will have fallen apart and nobody will quite know why. But the answer will be: it was the economy, stupid.
