Activists and villagers affected by the Jaitapur nuclear power project will boycott the Maharashtra government's meeting, to be held here on Tuesday to clear misconceptions over nuclear energy. Experts from the nuclear energy establishment, agricultural universities and environment are expected to have an open house with the affected people, the media and elected representatives on the controversial project. Official sources said Srikumar Banerjee, chairperson, Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), Anil Kakodkar, and...

At the Cancun climate change conference in December 2010, Jairam Ramesh, Union minister for environment and forests, raised the white flag of surrender when, departing from the prepared text, he declared, “all countries, we believe, must take on binding commitments under appropriate legal forms”. The minister thus signalled that India will give in to pressures from developed countries to convert its voluntary, nationally-determined mitigation actions into internationally-binding commitments in an...

Winter in the Indian capital is a season of mists, minus the mellow fruitfulness. The air becomes charged with toxic emissions and particles that cannot disperse due to a meteorological phenomenon called "ATMospheric inversion". According to B.P. Yadav, scientist with the meteorological department, ATMospheric inversion is caused by a warming of the upper layers of the ATMosphere, trapping colder air on the surface and, with it, vehicular and industrial emissions. "The immediate...

While there will be general agreement that the judgement in Binayak Sen's case represents a gross miscarriage of justice, most people will attribute it to the overzealousness of a lower judicial functionary, or, at the most, to the prevailing ATMosphere in the state of Chhattisgarh. If the trial had been held elsewhere, they would argue, Binayak would not have got the verdict he did. They are probably right, just as...

The debate on the climate negotiations, instead of discussing the nature of any policy shift, should define the national position and determine red lines for future negotiations. A new paradigm has emerged at Cancun. Instead of the multilaterally agreed emissions reduction targets of the Kyoto Protocol, there is now a shared target for all countries, where deep cuts in greenhouse gases are required according to science. Developed countries are to take...