Blogs
Guest contributor Bill McKibben has a message for Earth Day: It's time to kick it into high gear, people.
For the last 20 years or so, there's been a reasonable excuse for not building a movement big and tough enough to tackle climate change: It had no chance. Washington was filled with such obstructionists that everybody knew meaningful change on a scale large enough to dent the carbon concentration in the atmosphere was pretty much doomed.
Well, we screwed up that excuse last November. With the advent of the Obama administration , there was suddenly at least the possibility of real change. It's populated by people who believe in science, who think about the future instead of obsessing over the past, and who even believe in working with other countries.
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Wednesday,21 April, 2010 | Hits: 193
Indian physicist and environmentalist Vandana Shiva has won the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize for her efforts towards women empowerment in developing nations and her scientific contribution to climate conservation.
The 57-year-old activist has been recognised for her work on the empowerment of women in developing countries, her advocacy of the human rights of small farming communities, and her scientific analysis of environmental sustainability. Shiva will give the City of Sydney Peace Prize lecture at Sydney Opera House November 3, and will be presented with the prize November 4, Australian news agency AAP reported. Speaking from her hometown Delhi, Shiva said she was honoured to receive the award.
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Thursday,06 May, 2010 | Hits: 155
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species governs living animals and plants, and also the tusks and skins of dead animals. India has two such items. Darryl D'Monte reports. Stephen Nash is a tall, burly Canadian, with a flowing white beard and a wry sense of humour. He introduces himself as someone who is often mistaken for Santa Claus. But he is a veteran wildlife specialist who has caught deadly snakes in his native country and has handled many other vicious creatures. As he notes, "I have been bitten, scratched and impaled over the past 32 years!" He once hosted our very own Romulus Whitaker, who started the Snake Park in Chennai and now runs a Crocodile Park outside it.
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Monday,10 May, 2010 | Hits: 193
Executive SummaryThe target agreed by the world’s Governments in 2002, to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on Earth, has not been met.There are multiple indications of continuing decline in biodiversity in all three of its main components genes, species and ecosystems — including:
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Monday,03 May, 2010 | Hits: 645
Proposals for mining in the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve are pending at New Delhi for environmental clearance. Conservationists have warned against proceeding, while the state's politicians are for the mining. Jaideep Hardikar digs deeper. Chandrapur : For the wild life lovers and conservationists, the news could not have been more heartening. Junona, a tiny hamlet 15km east of Chandrapur tucked in the old and pristine forests of the district, has got a new tiger family: a tigress with three cubs; and if the villagers are to be believed, the robust male (perhaps the father of the cubs) is keeping the company.
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Tuesday,04 May, 2010 | Hits: 364
Kirit Parikh, former member of India's Planning Commission, chairs a 26-member expert group tasked with developing a low-carbon growth strategy for India.
There was a time, not long ago, when the idea of a national low-carbon growth strategy for India would have been hard to imagine. "Low carbon" was seen to be at loggerheads with India's ambitious economic development agenda and was too controversial a concept to find voice in domestic politics. Yet in January 2010, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh constituted a 26-member expert group to help develop a low-carbon growth strategy for India. The group, which hosts a formidable array of government, industry, academia, and civil society members, is being chaired by Dr. Kirit Parikh, former member of India's Planning Commission.
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Tuesday,09 March, 2010 | Hits: 332
Recent conservation efforts, linked to the development of alternate livelihood options for local communities along the Brahmaputra, have led to new hope for Assam's state aquatic animal. Ratna Bharali Talukdar reports. Sambhu Prasad Bin and other fishermen of his community were once expert hunters of Shihu, the Gangetic dolphins (Platanista Gangetic) found in the Brahmaputra. They hunted this unique fresh-water mammal for its blubber, at the confluence of the rivers Gadadhar and Brahmaputra, which is one of the dolphin breeding hotspots in Dhubri district of lower Assam. The Bins also traditionally used dolphin oil extracted from the blubber as bait to catch neriya, a local variety of fish.
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Sunday,28 February, 2010 | Hits: 380
Shifting rivers in India's largest tea producing state and abnormally high rainfall this year is destroying hundreds of acres of tea gardens and could cut output in the world's second-largest tea grower.
More than a tenth of the 18,000 hectares of plantations, or tea gardens, in India's northeast state of Assam could be washed away as the mighty Himalaya-born Brahmaputra and other smaller rivers flood the region where century-old operations grow over half of India's tea.
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Wednesday,19 May, 2010 | Hits: 247
Enacted in 2004, the current biodiesel tax incentive program helps make the fuel competitive with petroleum based diesel. Unfortunately, the current incentive program will expire on December 31, 2009 at a time when “U.S. biodiesel production has reached commercial scale, and the nation has realized the job creation, environmental and energy security benefits that come with the expanded production and use of biodiesel,” according to theNational Biodiesel Board (NBB) Vice President of Federal Affairs Manning Feraci. Without such a stimulus, biodiesel advocates fear “these benefits will simply be lost.”
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Thursday,20 May, 2010 | Hits: 523
Despite prototype solar vehicles at car shows, solar auto racing competitions, and the upcoming (and pricey) Tesla Motors electric vehicle that can be powered by sun rays, the marketing of solar-powered vehicles to the general public seems a long way off.
If you are hobbyist with a penchant for solar technology however, time is on your side—with a low-cost kit, you can start building your very own solar vehicle today. If you already own a hybrid electric vehicle, you can upgrade it with some sleek solar cells to solar power your travels.
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Sunday,09 May, 2010 | Hits: 336
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