-TheWire.in (Science) Never underestimate the power of human stupidity, says Yuval Noah Harari in his book, 21 Lessons For The 21st Century. If anyone doubts this truism she has only to see what we have been doing to the Himalaya for the last three decades, particularly in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, in the name of development. This stupidity also involves ignoring the pleas of local residents/villagers, the advice of experts, and...

-The Hindu This year can go down as the year when we set the planet on a path towards healing As COVID-19 upends our lives, a more persistent crisis demands urgent action on a global scale. Three environmental crises — climate change; nature loss; and the pollution of air, soil and water — add up to a planetary emergency that will cause far more pain than COVID-19 in the long-term. For years, scientists...

-TheWire.in There should be no doubt that the Chamoli disaster is a sign of our misguided developmental priorities and proves our inability to sustainably develop ecologically sensitive zones. In 2019, a petitioner from a village named Reni, in Chamoli, Uttarakhand, had filed a public interest petition at the Uttarakhand high court. Kundan Singh’s charge was that the Rishi Ganga Power Project, set up near the village in 2005, was resorting to environmentally...

-The Tribune A rare incident, they say; temperatures rising in the Hindu-Kush Himalayan region Experts are citing climate change as the reason behind the flood caused by a glacier breaking off in Uttarakhand, a “rare incident” by any measure according to them. Prima facie this looks very much like a climate change event as the glaciers are melting due to global warming, says Anjal Prakash, the lead author of the ongoing 6th Assessment...

A recent report by Christian Aid -- an international NGO based out of London -- says that the world was not just hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it actually faced massive loss of lives and livelihoods owing to the intensification of the ongoing climate crisis. Climate-related disasters varied from fires in Australia and the United States, floods in China, India and Japan to storms in Europe and the...