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TEST OF SURVIVAL
Down To Earth
|December 01, 2024
GENERATION ALPHA INHERITS A WORLD IRREVOCABLY WARMER BY 1.5°C
FOR THE first generation of the 21st century-Generation Alpha-it is an inheritance of profound loss. For their predecessors, climate change was an unfolding planetary emergency. But Generation Alpha-which will comprise an estimated 2 billion people by 2025, making it the largest generation in history is enduring a climatologically changed, warmer planet.
The year 2024 may be the point that divides the pre- and post-climate change eras. In mid-November, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) stated with certainty that 2024 would be the hottest year since the pre-industrial period (1850-1900), and the first to cross the warming threshold of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. "This marks a new milestone in global temperature," says Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S, which has analysed temperature trends of the first 10 months of 2024.
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FLERE HISTORIER FRA Down To Earth
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Warm-water corals are the first major ecosystem to collapse in a rapidly warming planet. Scientists are racing to save them using cutting-edge technologies, from preserving spawn to breeding hardier varieties, but admit their efforts may fall short unless global temperature rises are limited to below 1.5°C.
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Emphasis on rebuilding Gaza post-truce
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Collective denial
A decade on from the Paris Agreement, countries are planning more fossil fuel production than before, putting global climate ambitions at increasing risk
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Down To Earth
BUILT TO BINGE
Over the past few decades, food companies have exploited basic human instincts to peddle ultra-processed products. Engineered to hijack the brain's reward system, these foods are silently fuelling a new addiction epidemic, and driving rising rates of obesity and chronic diseases. Urgent policy action is needed to reclaim control over our food environment.
19 mins
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Down To Earth
Another farmer quits
THIS DUSSEHRA, Pitabasha did not go for the customary sighting of the Indian Roller, or tiha, as it is called in Odia. The bird is believed to grant wishes, and every year thousands of people flock to farms, fields and forests hoping to glimpse it and make a wish. But the 30-year-old farmer from Matupali village in Odisha stayed back. From that day, he also stopped calling himself a farmer.
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Down To Earth
What the H-1B visa angst reveals about India
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Down To Earth
REDUCED TO INSIGNIFICANCE
On October 12, the Right to Information (RTI) Act completed 20 years. Activists who monitor the Act, and former information commissioners, say that amendments by successive governments have rendered the law toothless. As per Central Information Commission's latest annual report (2023-24), the number of RTI applications rejected in the year was over 67,615—the highest ever. BHAGIRATH curates a conversation on what went wrong with the law that was sought to bring transparency and accountability in governance.
14 mins
October 16, 2025
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