Democracy and the Small Car

This is the draft of the edit I wrote for the EPW issue dated 04-11 April, 2009.

[The political role of the small car is as important as its environmental impact]

Lenin’s Epitaph: Lessons from the Russia – Georgia War

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Now that the war between Russia and Georgia is over, it is a good time to learn a few lessons. This war holds out important lessons for all concerned – for the Georgians, for the Russians, for the Americans and NATO, for the world at large. Moreover the lessons are political, military and economic. Let us see what some of these lessons are.

Under the Nuclear Shadow: Reviewing one decade of nuclear weapons in South Asia

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Ten years ago, on the occasion of the birth celebrations of India’s own prophet of peace – Gautama Buddha – the Indian State exploded nuclear warheads under the sands of Rajasthan. Pakistan responded to it in a predictably unfortunate manner by exploding a set of nuclear warheads of its own. We complete a decade of living under the nuclear shadow in the sub-continent of South Asia and it’s a good time as any to remind ourselves of what this means.

The Anti-Growth Manifesto V (The relevance of Socialism)

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For the past few weeks, this column has been arguing that constant economic growth is not only un-achievable but also deeply undesirable.

Unachievable because it is impossible to have unlimited growth in a planet of limited resources. With human population creeping close to seven billion, we collectively consume about a quarter of the world’s biomass but this only satisfies about a fifth of our energy and natural resource hunger. So we are happily mining away the non-renewable resources of petroleum, coal, gas, iron and other metals. This is a situation when an overwhelming majority of the world’s human population lives on less than US $ 2 a day or in utter poverty. Imagine the extraction of natural and non-renewable resources if every one of this blessed planet’s seven billion people lived the life of a West European or North American?

The Anti-Growth Manifesto IV (The Energy Trap)

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As this column has pointed out a few times in the past, hydrocarbons have been the material foundation on which continuous and limitless economic growth – so characteristic of our industrial societies – is based. It may be useful to recap the main points before we move further.

Hydrocarbons provide concentrated energy in small packets. One litre of petroleum concentrates the energy from 23 tonnes of prehistoric plant matter. Coal, though less energy efficient, is still far superior to charcoal or fresh wood as an energy source. Not only do these hydrocarbons provide high levels of energy, being carbon-based, they are useful for a range of other products for our use like fertilisers, plastics, textiles, medicines and cosmetics, among others. Further, hydrocarbons are easily transportable and storable over time, while at the same time being available in sufficient quantities for globally pervasive, if unequal, use for a few centuries before they run out.

The Anti-Growth Manifesto – II (The Need for Speed)

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The two week absence of the Left~write column was caused by the sudden death of my brother-in-law in a road accident in the city of Baroda (India). A young man of 42, he leaves behind an uncomprehending daughter who is not yet seven, a distressed wife and distraught parents. It is difficult to come to terms with the hurt and loss this has caused, especially since it seems so avoidable and inexplicable. ‘Why?’ is the question in everyone’s mind. But even in our moment of sadness it is sobering to realise that close to a 100,000 people die in similar road accidents in India each year. Each death a catastrophe for the family. Globally close to 800,000 people die annually in road accidents, a figure that is expected to touch a million by 2010.

The Anti-Growth Manifesto – I

Sherlock Holmes, that immortal detective of Victorian England is perhaps among the best teachers of the methodology of research. As he proceeded to unravel one crime after the other, Mr Holmes left behind a treasure-trove of tools of investigation that stand any social scientist in good stead when he investigates human society. In the famous novel, Hound of the Baskervilles, Holmes says, “The world is full of obvious things, which nobody by any chance ever observes,” and in Boscombe Valley Mystery, he observes, “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”

Nation: Another Solidarity is Possible

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Over the past two weeks this column has tried to demonstrate the futility, rather danger, of continuing with the Nation and its “ism” as a political community in today’s world. While some readers may even be willing to accept the logic of this secular heresy, the common response would be, what is the alternative? What political community is possible other than the Nation in today’s world? Would it not be a costly political mistake to attempt a destruction of the Nation when there is no alternative?

Coming to Terms with Nature (Socialist Register 2007)

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Review of Socialist Register 2007, titled Coming to Terms with Nature; edited by Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, The Merlin Press, London, 2006; published in India by Leftword Books, New Delhi, 2007, pp. xv+363, Rs. 250. This review was published in Down To Earth, 15 June 2007.

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The Socialist Register has come to acquire a special place, globally, as an annual document bringing together state-of-the-art thinking within the left. Therefore it is both a welcome step, and one somewhat surprising, that finally in its 43^rd edition the Social Register focuses exclusively on issues relating to the environment and the human – nature relation.

Humpty Dumpty Revisited

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Humpty Dumpty reportedly gave “Living on the Edge” as his last known address to the King’s men who came to rescue him as he lay dying.

It may well be a metaphor for the times — Living on the Edge!

As this column has argued over the past two weeks, our astounding progress of the past two and an half centuries has been accomplished at a terrible cost. Not only have we irreversibly changed our climate and the Earth’s ecosystem, we have become addicted to a non-renewable resource, oil and coal, for our very existence.

The Search for Energy’s Holy Grail

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Climate change, as was pointed out in this column last week, has been primarily driven by carbon emissions from human activity in the past two and a half centuries. The industrial age has thrown more carbon di-oxide into the atmosphere than was done in the past 650,000 years. The effects of this massive infusion will last us for millennia to come and change the entire ecology of planet Earth.

Can we weather this storm?

This article started off my column with The Post (http://thepost.com.pk) which is an English language daily newspaper published from Lahore and Islamabad, Pakistan.

It was published on 7 February, 2007.

You can find all my writings for The Post at http://thepost.com.pk/PrevColumns.aspx?src=Aniket%20Alam

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Coal & End of Oil

These two books look at the history of human interaction with these two hydrocarbon energy sources which are central to our lives. The combined review was published in Down to Earth in 2006.

Barbara Freese, Coal: A Human History, Arrow Books, London, 2003;

Paul Roberts, The End of Oil: The decline of the petroleum economy and the rise of a new energy order, Bloomsbury, London, 2005.

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People2People Carbon Trading

This report was part of a media fellowship given by ICRISAT, Hyderabad to write on environment and water. It recounts an attempt to transcend the Government to Government deadlock in the Kyoto agreement by initiating people to people carbon trading and getting individuals and institutions to take responsibility for their carbon emissions.

River Interlinking

These two articles were published in February 2003 as a special report on the then proposed river interlinking scheme for India.