Sunil Kandar, Ghoramara Island, India: I live in the Hatkhola locality of Ghoramara. I remember how on this island, during my childhood, I had a very happy and enjoyable life. We had a big mud-walled house. We also had large farmland of our own where rice and other vegetables grew. We sold a big part of… Read More Ghoramara island has been shrinking: living on the frontline of global heating
According to a new exhibition at the Design Museum, the most ubiquitous hallmark of the Anthropocene is not a game-changing material, nor the mastery of technology. It’s trash. “We are arguably living in the waste age,” says Justin McGuirk, the London museum’s chief curator, who has spent the last three years rifling through rubbish with… Read More This is the age of waste
Many economic assessments of the climate crisis “grossly undervalue the lives of young people and future generations”, Prof Nicholas Stern warned on Tuesday, before the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow. Economists have failed to take account of the “immense risks and potential loss of life” that could occur as a result of the climate crisis, he said,… Read More Climate crisis: economists ‘grossly undervalue young lives’
World leaders must do more to prevent the destruction of nature, business leaders have warned before a summit in China that aims to draw up a draft UN agreement for biodiversity. In an open letter, the chief executives of Unilever, H&M and nine other companies have called on governments to take meaningful action on mass extinctions of wildlife… Read More Halt destruction of nature or risk ‘dead planet’, leading businesses warn
Greta Thunberg has excoriated global leaders over their promises to address the climate emergency, dismissing them as “blah, blah, blah”. She quoted statements by Boris Johnson: “This is not some expensive, politically correct, green act of bunny hugging”, and Narendra Modi: “Fighting climate change calls for innovation, cooperation and willpower” but said the science did not… Read More ‘Blah, blah, blah’: Greta Thunberg lambasts leaders over climate crisis
Last month we wrote about the end of the American occupation of Afghanistan and the Taliban victory. This piece is about climate change in Afghanistan. The topic is urgent. Afghanistan is one of countries in the world most vulnerable to climate change. This year a long-running drought caused by climate change has reduced the harvest by almost… Read More Nancy Lindisfarne & Jonathan Neale – Afghanistan: The Climate Crisis
Millions of people forced to leave their homes because of severe drought and powerful cyclones are at risk of modern slavery and human trafficking over the coming decades, a new report warns. The climate crisis and the increasing frequency of extreme weather disasters including floods, droughts and megafires are having a devastating effect on the livelihoods of… Read More Sarah Johnson: Climate crisis leaving ‘millions at risk of trafficking and slavery’
The truth is that Indians have switched to palm oil not because of some great choice but merely because it has come cheap. For most people cooking their food in palm oil or some mixture thereof, the content makes little difference. It is just another vegetable oil to them. The very versatility of the oil… Read More Omair Ahmad: What would the proposed large-scale cultivation of oil palm mean to India’s ecology and economy?
Trillions of metallic nodules on the sea floor could help stop global heating, but mining them may damage ocean ecology In a display cabinet in the recently opened Our Broken Planet exhibition in London’s Natural History Museum, curators have placed a small nugget of dark material covered with faint indentations. The blackened lump could easily be mistaken… Read More Robin McKie: Is deep-sea mining a cure for the climate crisis or a curse?
Brazil is voting to legalize the destruction of the Amazon forest and the extermination of Indigenous peoples, the forest’s last line of defense. It is not just the people of Brazil who will suffer in the face of their government’s smartly coordinated attack on humanity’s future. All of us, across the world, are set to… Read More Vanessa Andreotti: If we lose the Amazon, our world will lose its future
After the truth-shower 