The Brave Pedestrian

Do you & I have anything to do with FARMER SUICIDES? Are we responsible in any way? I would say a firm NO. Still, think about the question a little. The commoners and even Lords and ladies of Britain one century ago would have believed that they were not responsible the enslavement of cotton farmers in India. They would have said that they had nothing to do with the pricing policy for cotton imported from India and the textiles manufactured in the mills of Manchester. The British soldiers would have said exactly the same thing... because they were not the policymakers. Even individual MPs and who knows, the British Prime Minister and even King George or Queen Victoria might have said that they were not responsible for the chronic poverty and exploitation of Indian farmers. http://tinyurl.com/farmer-suicide Today, with the benefit of hindsight, I feel that all the people in Britain benefited from the Indian farmers' helplessness... and therefore, they were responsibl...

1) Individual consumers need to consciously consume less of whatever it is that they consume. The government or NGOs should incentivate families to benchmark their current levels of consumption on various fronts, then reduce them. Consuming fewer air-miles each successive year should be high on our list of priorities, considering their huge addition to our individual carbon footprint. (As a cheap and effective alternative to flying, we may consider video-conferencing.) 2) Advertising aimed at making people buy more should be tapered off. Only adverts giving information should be allowed. 3) Roadside advertising hoardings should be reduced by 50%, and they should not be illuminated, as they use up precious energy for a relatively non-productive purpose. 4) Stop adding power generation capacities, whether thermal or otherwise. Freeze them at existing capacities and merely replace thermal capacities with wind-energy and solar generation capacities. 5) Stop registering new privat...

By Ken Whitehead, Growth is Madness Civilisation as we know it will no longer exist within 30 years. This bleak conclusion is not one I have arrived at lightly. However, wherever I look the evidence suggests that we are heading towards a major ecological breakdown which the majority of us are unlikely to survive. A number of critical environmental problems are coming to a head and the fall out from these will dwarf any attempts we can make to tackle them. If the pitiful attempts that have been made so far to tackle the environmental crisis are any guide, then major ecological breakdown is inevitable within a few years. Once civilisation starts to unravel, it will happen quickly. Crop yields will fall considerably as the effects of climate change and peak oil really start to bite. It is likely that one of the first casualties will be the current banking and financial system, which is unlikely to be able to withstand the strain. Thus wealth will offer no protection. Compounding t...

Bicycle: the Charkha of Climate Conservation A fairly large proportion of us agree that taking concrete measures to combat global warming is  an idea whose time has come.  I feel public opinion on this issue is currently like a super-saturated solution where crystallization is eminently possible, but is not happening for want of exciting thought-leadership. There is no dearth of good ideas floating around as to how we can reduce energy consumption and fuel combustion.  This is a point that many of my fellow-bloggers have made. There are a multiplicity of views as to what overall direction to take, which is causing some confusion. I would like to simplify things by submitting that Climate Change is caused primarily by technologies based on combustion-based energy — primarily thermal-generated electricity and combustion-engines of vehicles. And so I believe that the way forward is to choose technologies that minimise dependence on combustio...

November 30, 2007: [I dedicate this blog to two guys with whom I connect — one on the iLand one offline. The iLander is  Sunshine ,  with whom I disagree on a number of issues including his dislike of stray dogs. But I connect with the genuineness and essential gentleness that shines through his writings as well as his comments to othe people. I dedicate this particular post to him because he has inspired it this morning through his reasoning, which is representative of the thought-process that all of us have. The offline person is  Tejus Coulagi , the guy who named our tiny fledgeling group  Children of the Earth,  and gave it the catch-phrase,  Protecting Our Mother.   Tejus is characterised by his innocence and earnest good intentions, which shines through the name and catch-phrase, and indeed, much of what he says.  He asked me to design this logo for our group-of-three; I hope he likes it.] Something that Tejus said in the course...