Down To Earth

4 days ago | downtoearth.org.in | Mike Allen

Picture a place at the centre of a global seaweed revolution. I’ll bet the small English seaside town of Paignton in south Devon is not what comes to mind. A decade ago, I moved from the edge of Dartmoor to the coast. It was about a simple change in work-life balance, but what followed was more surprising. The kids were four and seven. I’d always tried to inspire them with my scientific research. Moving to Paignton and walking along Broadsands beach one day, I started noticing piles of seaweed.

1 week ago | downtoearth.org.in | Rajat Ghai

Prominent activist from Sikkim, Gyatso Lepcha, has condemned a recent scaling up of the Khangchendzonga massif, sacred to the state’s indigenous peoples. Speaking to Down To Earth, he called it part of the ‘ongoing attack on the entire Himalayan range’. According to Lepcha, after emptying India’s plains and highlands, corporate interests are racing to empty the Himalaya by exploiting it commercially.

1 week ago | downtoearth.org.in | Nidhi Jamwal

Monsoon is on a record-breaking spree this year. On May 26, it arrived in Mumbai way ahead of its anticipated arrival on June 11. According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), this is the earliest recorded arrival of the southwest monsoon in the country’s financial capital. With the arrival of the monsoon, the metropolis was pounded with heavy rainfall for two consecutive days, which led to breaking yet another record.

1 week ago | downtoearth.org.in | Akshit Sangomla

The city of Latur and many other areas in the usually dry Marathawada region of Maharashtra are suffering from floods and flash floods. There are independent reports of cloud burst type of rainfall over Latur and consequent flash flooding in the city by the All-India Radio and Press Trust of India.

1 week ago | downtoearth.org.in | Sunita Narain

There are three key reasons countries need to electrify their vehicle fleet. One is climate change. The transport sector guzzles massive amounts of oil—petrol and diesel—and globally contributes roughly 15 per cent of the annual carbon dioxide emissions. Zero-emission vehicles, or electric vehicles (EVs), replace oil with electricity, generated ideally in renewable energy plants, and are hence seen as the solution.