Green Options

A well-respected Indian scientist nearly died after a 38-day hunger strike in protest of construction on a hydropower dam on a tributary of the Ganges river.

AD Agarwal, a 77-year-old former professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi at Kanpur, began his strike last month when the Indian government refused to study the impacts of the dam before beginning work. The Ganges river’s free-flowing abundance is sacred in Hindu culture.

In France, the Old Left is rising again. Working people are becoming angry that bankers are being bailed out to continue to pay obscene bonuses while ordinary peoples’ jobs go to the wall. Governments are under pressure to limit mass unemployment as a result of the recession. But this cannot be done by propping up environmentally-dangerous industries. They must be required to change. It’s a story of danger – and of opportunity.