False solutions for climate change

As the ghastly impacts of climate change become more visible in our everyday lives, it is hard to shake off the feeling that one must step up and do something constructive.

- CHINTAN GIRISH MODI

Conscientious people all over the world are evaluating their choices with respect to food, clothing, transport, leisure, and housing, then switching to alternatives that support the health of our planet. Their actions show that humans are capable of thinking beyond their own convenience, and cultivating new habits that are better aligned with collective well-being.

While individual acts of resistance and care are worth celebrating, there is an urgent need to understand the systems in which we participate and are influenced by. Good intentions are simply not enough to fill knowledge gaps that exist in our society at the moment. In a powerful new book titled The Nature of Nature: The Metabolic Disorder of Climate Change, ecologist and scholar Vandana Shiva—who founded the NGO Navdanya and Bija Vidyapeeth—alerts readers to the emergence of "a new green colonialism" that promotes "false solutions for more profit and greater control over the earth, its resources and our lives".