Produce Less – Exploring Degrowth

New Delhi’s decision to auction, for the first time in the country, 13 offshore mineral blocks for deep-sea mining, vide the Offshore Areas Mineral (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2023, has met with a rare show of political unity in Kerala. Following protest demonstrations by fish workers’ unions, the ruling party and the opposition in the State have come together to unanimously oppose the project. According to the World Bank, “blue economy” is the sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods and jobs, and ocean ecosystem health. But the amended Act also makes it clear that operating rights for exploration and production of offshore atomic minerals—the ores of uranium, thorium, and monazite, for example—will be granted only to government-owned companies.

Pesticides banned years ago in the European Union are drifting through the skies and turning up in clouds above France, raising concerns about how long these toxins persist and how far they can travel, with potentially harmful global health impacts, according to a pathbreaking new study.

Every Wednesday, dozens of retirees go out to protest the economic policies of Javier Milei’s government, which has opted for repression against the elderly.

Cardiovascular disease—the world’s leading cause of death—is increasingly driven by polluted air, toxic chemicals, plastics, noise, and extreme temperatures, according to a sweeping new review in Cardiovascular Research that calls for stricter environmental regulations to protect public health.

Aspartame—the artificial sweetener found in everything from Diet Coke and sugar-free chewing gum to children’s medications—may raise the risk of the most common type of stroke by causing inflammation and disrupting blood vessel health and blood flow, according to new research.

When chemical giant Syngenta hired biologist Tyrone Hayes to study its widely used herbicide atrazine, the company didn’t like the results. Hayes found that atrazine, one of the most common weed killers in America, disrupted hormones in frogs and altered their sexual development. Instead of facing the science, Syngenta went into product-defense mode: pressuring Hayes not to publish, and when he did, launching a full-scale effort to discredit him. Internal company documents later revealed a coordinated campaign to smear Hayes’s reputation and bury his findings.

Even very low levels of nitrate in drinking water—far below the federal government’s safety threshold—may significantly increase the risk of premature birth and low birth weight, according to a new study. Nitrate, a pervasive chemical that enters drinking water mainly through chemical fertilizer runoff and animal manure from farms, is invisible, odorless, and tasteless—leaving many people unaware they’re consuming it. Researchers analyzed more than 350,000 birth records in Iowa from 1970 to 1988 and found that even 0.1 milligrams of nitrate per liter (mg/L)—a mere 1% of the level the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) currently considers “safe”—was linked to higher risks of babies being born too early or too small.  Prematurity and low birth weight is the leading cause of death in newborns and children under age 5.

A critical yet often overlooked question in the energy transition debate is how much total energy—accounting for materials, services, and other embedded uses—can a society/community/family sustainably consume. While there is no consensus, we can consider models like pre-crisis Sri Lanka or Kerala in India, which achieved high Human Development Index scores with relatively low per capita energy use. Could a renewable-powered world, based on such efficient societies, be achievable, and at what cost?

When Sowjanya Soujanaya goes to her ATM garden in Edulamaddali in the morning, she not only finds enough herbs, spices and tubers to cook a healthy lunch for her family of five, but also always finds something to sell at the market. ATM stands for “Any Time Money” and is a mixed cultivation of more than 20 different kinds of vegetables, berries, roots and herbs on the 800 m² in front of her house.