Environment

When Hurricane Sandy lashed the east coast of the United States in October-November 2012, innumerable small businesses had to close shop. Some 20,000-30,000 of such establishments went out of business practically in the blink of an eye. Disasters, especially those linked to climate change, don’t spare anyone. And small businesses are no exception. The Small Business Majority and the American Sustainable Business Council (ASBC) released a report (PDF) a year later pointing towards the dangers...

If a Union Budget is supposed to be not just a document of numbers, but a precursor to the shape of policy initiatives to come, then the 2015-16 Budget presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley needs to be seen as a recipe for unmitigated disaster. There is nothing wrong with a government that calls for economic growth; after all, everyone wants to have a better life. But when policy initiatives pave the way for a flagrant and unrepentant exploitation of natural resources and turns a Nelson’s...

For almost two decades since the landmark Rio Summit of 1992, businesses saw red whenever ‘environment’ and ‘sustainable development’ were mentioned to them. And the catchphrase ‘it isn’t development unless it is sustainable’ was perceived to be a shibboleth of hostility on part of environmentalists towards businesses. By and large, the situation hasn’t changed much, but things are changing. Slowly, quite slowly perhaps, but the trends are quite perceptible. From ‘green businesses’ some years...

Earlier this month, the world's largest PR firm Edelman ended its decade-long relationship with the world's largest oil lobby, the American Petroleum Institute (API). A welcome step, and high time too, as climate change activists would likely assert. API's contracts with Edelman had been big; so massive that it amounted to 10 per cent of the PR firm's revenues. Its Blue Advertising subsidiary helped API run commercials that promoted the idea that oil and gas were plentiful, and were viable too...

The forests scene the world over is depressing, quite depressing indeed. The ones plundering forests are not complying with international benchmarks, and the impunity with which the ravaging of forests is under way will leave one frustrated and in utter despair. There are as few as 250 companies across countries that are engaged in this unfettered loot, and the ones from India come a cropper when it comes to performance. The Global Canopy Programme (GCP), which evaluates and ranks 500...

News about solar and wind energy have been making headlines over the past few months. And not because renewable energy is a focus area of the present government in India, but because it’s a need-based practice that is fast catching on at the global level. There are reports of cities meeting most of their energy demands through solar/wind energy, and there are examples of governments making a push for renewable energy at the policy level. It is not that climate change has suddenly become the top...

In 2006, the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) published a damning report on the presence of banned pesticides in colas. The Indian media, by and large, went easy on the two cola brands – Pepsi and Coca-Cola. The allegation was serious and the implications far and wide. Yet, the cola companies, the opulent advertisers that they are, tided over the crisis with consummate ease. One of the many reasons for this was that news media establishments steadfastly refused to push...

In a milieu where bedlam and mutual suspicion hold discourse to ransom, it is difficult not only to find voices of sanity, it is as challenging to remain circumspect oneself. One invariably ends up believing not the truth, but what suits one’s own predilections and narratives. It is this unsettling milieu that reigns supreme in the country today, and in such a frenzied backdrop comes a shoddily-drafted document that unabashedly spins a conspiracy yarn so fantastic that one would gleefully accept...

It’s almost always a given that when development for the greater good of the greater number is unleashed on a nation, the first casualty is environment. Against the backdrop of this inconvenient truth, when a political party storms to power having canvassed on the plank of development, it is a cause for anxiety. This, in turn, needs to be seen in the light of the hapless condition that the Congress-led government left the country in. The economy is in a shambles, and the ecology has been...

Purportedly entertaining films that feature global warming and climate change can indeed affect public understanding. But films are often bound up in problematic and limiting identity politics, which commonly reiterate racial, gender and sexual stereotypes positioning as they do white men as being the decisionmakers and the voice of authority. These are findings of Bridie McGreavy and Laura Lindenfeld of the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of Maine, who analysed...