Arctic Fires

Arctic Fires

  Here’s a sentence for you: The Arctic is burning. Yes, that Arctic—the traditionally cold and wet one, large swaths of which are being consumed by an astonishing number of wildfires, from Russia to Greenland to Alaska. “Arctic fires—the combination of these two words is still an unusual term in my field of fire science,”…

The Terrible Truth of Climate Change

The Terrible Truth of Climate Change

In June, I delivered a keynote presentation on Australia’s vulnerability to climate change and our policy challenges at the annual meeting of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, the main conference for those working in the climate science community. I saw it as an opportunity to summarise the post-election political and scientific reality we now…

Climate Leaders Urge Massive Turnout for Global Climate Strikes

Climate Leaders Urge Massive Turnout for Global Climate Strikes

Organisers of upcoming global climate strikes hope their demands for a rapid end to business as usual and a swift start to climate justice will be too loud to ignore. The strikes, which are set for September 20th and 27th—with additional actions slated for the days in between—are planned in over 150 countries thus far,…

Study Warns of Extreme Ocean Acidification: Could Trigger Mass Extinction

Study Warns of Extreme Ocean Acidification: Could Trigger Mass Extinction

The continuous accumulation of carbon dioxide in the planet’s oceans—which shows no sign of stopping due to humanity’s relentless consumption of fossil fuels—is likely to trigger a chemical reaction in Earth’s carbon cycle similar to those which happened just before previous mass extinction events, according to a new study. MIT geophysics professor Daniel Rothman released…

Global Inequality in a Time of Climate Emergency

Global Inequality in a Time of Climate Emergency

  Something has changed, as most everyone in the climate movement agrees, and we have plenty of signposts that track the shift, from David Wallace-Well’s 2017 New York Magazine piece, The Uninhabitable Earth, to last year’s Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy, a paper downloaded by the hundreds of thousands. The Intergovernmental Panel…

Four Ways in Which India’s Water Blessings Are Turning Into Disasters

Four Ways in Which India’s Water Blessings Are Turning Into Disasters

Blessings are complicated. They come with a lot of attachments. And if you cannot manage them, you could invite disasters. India is a blessed country in so many ways as far as water endowment is concerned. We are blessed with monsoons, rivers, aquifers, the Himalaya, rich traditional techniques and management systems, to name a few….

We Parched the Country to Quench the City, and Chennai Still Cries for Help
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We Parched the Country to Quench the City, and Chennai Still Cries for Help

Thirty-four year old G. Manimaran is resentful when anyone brings up the topic of Chennai’s water crisis. In his analyses, water is not the problem, the city of Chennai is. Manimaran’s village, Padalam in Kanchipuram district, is 75 km from Chennai and located on the banks of the Palar, a river once famed for its…