Good News Bad News: Farmers, Freedom, and the Dhaba's first Used-Book Give-away!

First, if you listen to the politicians in power (or to much of the media), you've been hearing a lot about the "pro-farmer budget" just released by Pranab Mukherjee.  Writing in The Hindu, the venerable P. Sainath (or should we just call him a super-hero?) explains that all this talk is almost true:

Maybe the pro-farmer claim was merely a typo or proofing error. They just dropped the word “corporate” before “farmer.” Reinstate that and all is true. This is a budget crafted for, and perhaps by, the corporate farmer and agribusiness.

Sainath goes on to explain what's missing in the "higher-prices-benefit-farmers" mantra.  Among other things, he writes:

Further, over 70 per cent of Indian farmers are net purchasers of foodgrain. (Between 55 per cent and 60 per cent of the average Indian farm household's monthly per capita expenditure goes on food.) Huge rises in food prices crush them.

Sainath also suggests that efforts to replace the subzi walla with corporate middle men are likely to do more harm than good. 

Agricultural and food policy is incredibly complex--but it also happens to be incredibly important.  Simply dreaming up  new slogans and printing photos of farmers with mobile phones will not, I regret to say, lead to food security, nor is it likely to address the desperation that leads so many farmers end their own lives every year.  I doubt that offering huge giveaways to the "big fish" will help much either. I hear a lot of complaints about The Hindu. Some of them are true.  But columns like this one by Sainath are why I still read it. You can see it on-line, for free, here. 

Speaking of good journalism, Tehelka's done a nice job this week with their cover story on Bt Brinjal--what happened, why it matters, and what we can expect next.  The article takes an extensive look at the issue from all kinds of angles.  After reading it, I feel even more strongly that environmentalists all over India should feel proud that we were able to slow down the biotech steamroller, at least for the time being.

But don't rest easy.  The forces backing genetically modified foods are not giving up.  Having suffered this setback in the fight to get Bt Brinjal into India, they have a new strategy; they are pushing legislation that will fast track the process by which the government approves genetically modified foods. According to Tehelka:

Apart from many other disturbing provisions (see box: Wrong Bill for Wrong Reasons), most shockingly, Section 63 of the NBRAI Bill proposes imprisonment and fine for anyone who “without evidence or scientific record misleads the public about safety of GM crops”. That could put all activists and journalists in jail for merely asking questions.

Hmm, I guess Monsanto and it's friends in government have decided to take a new approach: if you can't beat 'em...beat 'em--or at least lock them up so they can't cause you any further problems! Repressive, un-democratic corporate-government alliances have happened in many parts of the world, many times before, of course.  (If you want to read a whole book about it, try reading The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein.) But that doesn't mean we should sit by and let it happen here.

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Enough of the bad news!  A couple of weeks ago, at the bottom of this review of Kaveri Gill's Of Poverty and Plastic, we offered a well-worn copy of the book to the person who wrote the most compelling email explaining why she or he just has to read it.  The deadline for the contest has passed, and today the Green Light Dhaba is pleased to announce the winner: Space Bar!

Space Bar won because she wrote not just one, but three reasons why she should have the book!  And in case you think she was just following the old "more is better" strategy, please think again.  All three of her three reasons qualify as compelling, as required by the contest rules.

Briefly summarized, they are, as follows:

1. Space Bar wrote a book for very small children called Kabadiwala (the publisher changed it to Cheenu's Gift but the story remains the same).  You can buy it here. I confess I haven't read it yet, but I am surely going to do so soon.

2: Space Bar is deeply concerned about bathrooms and sewage. To prove it, she sent some links on the subject, which I put up at the Dhaba on Saturday.

3.  Space Bar is interested in traditional methods of recycling, which she wrote about in her contest entry.

With reasons like that, I hope you can see why our panel of judges was unanimous!  Congratulations, Space Bar! We'll be sending the book your way soon.

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Finally, March 22nd is World Water Day, and the Indian Youth Climate Network is organizing events in several places on that day.  Find out more here.

Saturday Special: Holi, Hull Hydro, Plastic, Trees, Toilets, and More!

First, I have to say my favorite part of this post is the colour-spattered sign over there on the right. What would I do without my resident 9 year old artist-extraordinaire?  I think he was so eager to take on this project this morning, because the alternative was to study how to write applications for leave and letters to the editor.  (I'll suggest he try to imagine he's a low ranking journalist; then maybe he could use the same form for both purposes--Dear Editor, I regret to inform you that due to a severe case of stomach pain....)

Holi is close at hand, so let me just say this: beware of toxic colours, and please no eggs on my head, people! Navdanya has more on how you can celebrate Holi without the poison.  And before you curse too loudly at the cheap plastic pichkaari that breaks in your child's (or your own) hands after one or two uses, remember it was probably inexpensive because India recycles 60-80% of it's post-consumer plastic. And recycled plastic is cheap, more environmentally friendly than new plastic--and more likely to break!  See, life requires sacrifice.  I say, just throw a bucket of water on them when they least expect it!

On a more serious note, if you didn't  get a chance to read our update last week on recent attacks on Himachal environmentalists, then please do now! And then go sign this petition against that violence and the Hull Hydroelectric Project.  There are not nearly enough signatures on that petition yet, so I'm going to keep hammering away for awhile.  We have to support rural environmentalists, especially when they are literally being attacked!

Sorry but the contest deadline is past for those wanting to get a used copy of Kaveri Gill's Of Poverty and Plastic.  We'll be announcing the winner of our first ever used-book give-away contest soon.  Now for our usual Saturday links:

pRiYA is back with The Plum Tree II.  Here's a great post on how we love trees!

Three via Space Bar:

At Siva's writes about sewage treatment in Bangalore.

Fun, yeah on sustainable toilets.

The Archdruid Report explains why neither perpetual motion machines nor our addiction to an energy-intensive economy work.

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The Asian Age's NYT supplement has a full page of articles designed to make us feel like green issues are being taken seriously in the world.  I'm not convinced, but here are three of the more interesting articles they ran today:

Many relationships are feeling a green strain. (Need green advice about your relationship?  Write to the Green Light Dhaba's Agony Uncle!)

China seems to be beating the world in the race to build clean energy. Where's our plan to dominate solar?

Slower ships are more efficient ships.  But shouldn't we just ship less stuff?

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Back from the Brink: Frontline story on biotech.

Have a happy and safe Holi.  The weather is warming--good time to think about a water cooler if you don't already have one! Read more in the second half of this post.

Reviewed: The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming

The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming 

by Laurie David and Cambria Gordon (Scholastic India, 2007)

Rs. 350

Two and a half Green Stars* 
(worth reading, but not uncritically)

Let's face it, books about global warming are going to have a tough time competing with The Famous Five,  Harry Potter, and Percy Jackson.  The Down to Earth Guide about Global Warming book makes a sincere effort to do so.  Its colourful layout and straightforward prose are appropriate for the book's target audience--children eight and up.   Although it was originally published in the US -- and was clearly written for American children -- it's been brought out by Scholastic India and is readily available here.

As a green father, I was excited to share this book with my kids.  After months of nagging my 9 year old to try it, my wife and I read it out loud to him, which is what we should have done in the first place. After reading it, my own son had this to say about the book:

"It's OK, I guess.  It has good examples and pictures that sort of explain it. It has interesting facts like this one: 'One tree can absorb the amount of CO2 released by an average car that's been driven for 4,000 miles.' The bad side? It's about global warming, and that's kind of boring.  I'd rather read fiction."

There is a lot to like about The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming.  One of the authors, Laurie David, produced Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, and she clearly knows her stuff. The explanations of subjects like the greenhouse effect, mass animal extinctions and extreme weather do a nice job of putting real science into language kids (and adults) can understand.

But two things troubled me about this book: it's annoyingly cheerful tone and it's unwillingness to be honest with children about some important issues. First, in order to make global warming exciting for young readers, the authors have put a chipper, cheerful...cutesy spin on just about everything, including things that are not cute.  In the chapter Extinction Stinks, there are sections like, "Kiss this Toad Good-bye" and "Don't Put Bleach in the Colors, Um, Corals."  

Call me an old fashioned, but the largest mass extinction event since the dinosaurs just isn't something I want to joke about over and over again.

Similarly, the section on extreme weather is called "Heat Waves: The X-Games of Summer" and opens with a picture of an extreme cyclist; the chapter on rising sea levels is called, "Beach Bummer" and includes this "fun fact", which you can also read on the Scholastic Website, "If the Greenland ice sheet melts completely, it will add enough water to raise sea levels all across the world by 21 feet (6.4 m)"  

Let's imagine for a moment what this might mean: much of Bangladesh, Mumbai, New York City and maybe even Los Angeles underwater, millions of desperate climate refugees heading for Delhi and Chicago...Wow.  What a bummer! 

I'm not saying that David and Gordon should have taken the opposite approach and spelled out the worst case scenario explicitly.  (If  they had, their "fun facts" might have sounded something like this: Crazy Cannibals!  Did you know that Jared Diamond writes that many societies that didn't avert environmental crises ended up in total collapse, which included widespread famine, violence and even cannibalism!  Now that's extreme hunger!)

My second concern is that this book includes a lot of what I call "light bulb environmentalism." In other words, children are told that we can go on doing things pretty much the way we are doing them as long as we car pool, recycle, and change a few light bulbs.   As for the problems with a global economy based on over-consumption, well the authors of this book really don't have a problem with that.  As they say:

"We've spent a lot of time talking about why burning fossil fuels is so bad.  Now it's time to hear about why the future of fuel is good. There are other ways we can drive our cars, and manufacture our products."

David and Gordon then go on to exclaim that nearly all "alternative" fuels "rock", even  industrially produced bio-fuel which results in more hunger AND more greenhouse gases than petroleum because we are cutting down rain forests (which absorb CO2) in order to make room for bio fuel crops.

And the book says nothing about the failure of the United States government to take any meaningful action on climate change, but it makes much of the fact that mayors all over the US have signed symbolic commitments to reduce their cities' emissions.  Sorry, but putting a positive spin on the United State's efforts to reduce emissions requires too much...spin to qualify as honest.   Copenhagen certainly didn't do anything to change that fact.  Even children should be told when governments are failing them.

Again, we don't want to overwhelm young people with bad news, but it is fair to them to be a little more realistic. The Story of Stuff, also for children, manages to do a much better job of this, I think.  Our children deserve more honesty because they are the ones that will have to live with the mess we're creating. This book does a lot of good, but it is fundamentally misleading in parts; both children and adults should read it, but they should read it critically!   

Note:  I wrote Scholastic to ask them for permission to use a thumbnail image of the book, and do you know what?  A nice woman named Samantha wrote me back a letter explaining how to properly ask for permission to do that.  It involved downloading forms and sending them back via fax machines, so I said, no thanks. That's why my son is holding his copy of the book in the picture that goes with this post. Hope THAT'S not going to get us in trouble!   In fact, Scholastic explained that I needed permission to actually link to their site! I docked them a half a green star for being so unhelpful!

Buy the Down-to-Earth-Guide to Global Warming in India through Friends of Books
Buy the Down-to-Earth-Guide to Global Warming in the US through Amazon

Action Alert: Himachal Environmentalists Under Attack in Chamba

On February 14, five environmental activists, including a  Zila Parishad member, were brutally attacked in Himachal, allegedly by contractors of the Hul Hydroelectric project.  The villagers were attacked at the village Chungah, where residents were holding a meeting to oppose construction of a hydroelectric dam on the Hul Nala, a tributary of the Ravi River.  Though the attacks are getting little if any coverage in most national news outlets,  you can read more and see photos in My Himachal.

Villagers have opposed this project since 2005, due to it's affects on local forests and water resources. Local residents were outraged by the attacks, as these photos of the large protest and bandh they staged last week clearly demonstrate--the streets were full, the shops were shuttered.

Local people typically have a clear understanding of what is at stake in struggles like this--farmers know how much water they need and what will happen if water needed for irrigation is diverted for power generation. And that's to say nothing of flooded forests and homes that often result from projects like this. It's no surprise Chamba residents oppose this project.  

But sometimes, in their rush to cut carbon emissions and consumption of fossil fuels, well-intentioned urban environmentalists jump too quickly onto the hydroelectric bandwagon.  Hydroelectric power is often billed as clean and renewable.  The problem is that more and more research suggests that in many cases, hydro plants actually emit more greenhouse gases than burning oil!  This is because when trees and plants go underwater, they decompose and release methane, which is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon.  Even small dams can drown a lot of trees.  More work on this is needed, but recent research into methane production at the Three Gorge Dam in China suggests dams may be even worse than many previously believed.

The fact that dams may contribute much more than we once thought to climate change suggests that while hydroelectric power may be renewable, it's not necessarily sustainable!  We cannot allow these projects to be pushed through by force over local opposition.  

Wherever your live in India or the wider world, you can help by signing this on-line petition calling on the Chief Minister of Himachal to scrap the Hul Hydroelectric project and to take action against those who perpetrated the recent violence against local environmentalists.  Let him know the whole world is watching!  Then you can post the link to Facebook and mail a few good friends.


Thanks to the Indian Youth Climate Action Network for the tip on this story.

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Thanks also to the IYCN for passing on word about this event, which takes place later this week in Delhi:

PERSPECTIVES invites you to a convention COMMUNITIES, COMMONS AND CORPORATIONS the struggle for rights and resources
24TH February, Wednesday: 1:30 pm to 5:30 pm
Ms. Arundhati Roy (Activist and Writer), Mr. Prashant Bhushan (Advocate, Supreme Court), Mr. Felix Padel (Anthropologist working in Niyamgiri, Orissa), Ms. Joya Mitra (Activist and Writer, West Bengal)
25TH February, Thursday: 1:30 pm to 5:30 pm
Ms. Shamim Modi (Activist, Shramik Adivasi Sangathan, Madhya Pradesh), Film and Talk by Mr.Amar Kanwar
(Independent Documentary Film-maker), Ms. Dayamani Barla (Journalist and Activist, Jharkhand), Prof. Nirmal Chandra (Formerly Professor of Economics, IIM-Kolkata)
Venue: Room no. 22, Faculty of Arts, North Campus, University of Delhi.

For more information, go here.

Saturday Special: Lost Cities, Sarai, The Onion and more

Sarai celebrated it's tenth year in Delhi last week with a wide range of activities and performances.  I've got it from reliable sources that Ashis Nandy made some interesting remarks about the many kinds of cities out there in the world: cities that define themselves in relationship to the village; cities that define themselves in relationship to other cities; ancient cities, lost cities, etc.  Delhi, of course, is many cities at once.  Regardless of what the organizers of the Commonwealth Games want us to think, the village remains important in the way this city understands itself, because most of the lakhs of people who come to Delhi do not come from Paris or London. 

Today, I'm taking the metro to Old Delhi and that's got to say something about what kind of city we live in. But it's Saturday, and I don't have the energy to write a serious essay about how we imagine the cities we live in.  Instead, I'm going to make an entirely different kind of contribution to this discussion. Here are the people at The Onion discussing another kind of lost civilization.

Will Facebook, Blogger, Twitter be next?

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P. Sainath on the ABC's of Indian Media: Advertising, Bollywood, Corporate power

A story worth watching: Shyam Saran resigns his post.

Will solar powered gadgets save the world?  (I doubt it.)