Produce Less – Exploring Degrowth

Over the first four months of 2025, 56 Norwegian citizens convened to discuss how Norway’s immense oil wealth can best serve current and future generations, both domestically and globally. Unlike traditional policymaking, where elected officials and experts call the shots, this so-called Future Panel – the second such assembly held in Norway – allowed ordinary citizens, selected through a representative process and equipped with the necessary knowledge, to craft recommendations through informed debate.

An honest and imperfect response to the climate crisis would require a political, behavioural, economic and moral transition that would systematically reduce our energy and material consumption at an unprecedented pace. But that’s not an action any modern politician seems to be able to contemplate, let alone discuss.

Gov. Kathy Hochul justified a $1 billion natural gas project by appealing to affordability. But the main reason the state needs the energy is because data centers are hogging it. The true beneficiary of the natural gas pipeline Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) approved earlier this month won’t be ratepayers, as she claims, but tech companies that are leeching enormous amounts of energy away from the state’s electrical grid, contend environmental advocates, researchers, and lawmakers. Artificial intelligence companies and other tech outfits are burdening the grid so severely that it will be 1,600 megawatts short of power within the next four years, according to the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO).

In late 2024, Brazilian federal police dismantled a sprawling illegal gold mining network in Pará, exposing a criminal enterprise that stretched far beyond the rainforest. The operation, part of a broader crackdown on illicit mining in Indigenous territories, uncovered links to money laundering via shell companies and fraudulent permits, with funds traced to accounts in Dubai, Miami, and Panama.

Dharavi, known as Asia’s largest slum, is very unique. It has migrants from states like Bihar Uttar Pradesh, Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat making it multi-ethnic. There is a diversity of occupations carried out in Dharavi, from garments and apparel, leather goods manufacturing, and waste recycling to pottery and snack making. In addition to this, there are big godowns of raw materials needed for various occupations to finished products of day-to-day use like mats, leather, pottery, snacks and unstitched cloth. It also comprises substantial residential, both ownership and rental, units in Dharavi. The latest Dharavi Redevelopment Plan (DRP) is being carried out by Adani under its real estate arm Adani Realities. Tens of thousands of workers are employed in these units. What is particularly alarming is the government’s proposal to rehabilitate ‘non-eligible’ tenements in areas like the Deonar landfill, salt pan lands in Wadala and Kanjurmarg, and the Kurla Dairy plot. Deonar is an active landfill site and completely unfit for human habitation – relocating people there is a blatant violation of human rights.

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl, Fukushima: these are names that send shivers down our spines. The first two remind us of the atrocities that can result from a war involving nuclear weapons; the latter two highlight the danger posed by one of the most dangerous technologies in existence: nuclear power.

Common chemicals in plastics, personal care products, and food packaging may drive the onset, growth, and spread of breast cancer—the second-leading cause of cancer deaths in women, new research suggests. Breast cancer is one of the most common and deadly cancers worldwide, causing more than 42,000 deaths in the U.S, with particularly high rates among Black women. Only 5 to 10 percent are inherited, meaning most arise from environmental and lifestyle factors.

Americans are once again demanding higher standards for the food they eat, insisting that companies stop using chemicals known to harm health. But instead of listening to their customers, the world’s largest food and beverage companies have launched a “transparency” campaign – fronted by a longtime tobacco industry ally – and they are betting their old, tired political playbook will allow them to keep profiting from manufacturing unhealthy foods.

pro-nuclear leftists argue that the centralized nature of nuclear is necessary for taking action on climate change and working toward a decarbonized environment; that the workforce for nuclear power in North America is heavily unionized; that nuclear power is more reliable than renewables; that new nuclear technology is safer and cleaner