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100 years of Russian gas for India

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100 years of Russian gas for India Yamal LNG Project in Siberia, Russia (File photo) India is taking baby steps toward green energy. Two of India’s biggest business houses are spearheading it — Adani and Ambani groups. India has made several ambitious commitments at the Glasgow climate summit and two key pledges were that India’s non-fossil energy capacity will reach 500 GW by 2030 and the country will transition to net zero emissions by 2070. Sceptics doubt whether such timelines are realistic. Meanwhile, the climate agenda itself has gone for a six with the    conflict in Ukraine weaponising energy security in a way that was unthinkable. In all probability, both green energy and zero emission targets will need an extended timeline, as the major industrial countries grapple with economic recession and high inflation. The momentum has been lost and the geopolitics of energy security will inevitably impact the calculus in ways not quite foreseeable. When an energy superpower such as Rus

Flattening the curve or flattening the global poor? How Covid lockdowns obliterate human rights and crush the most vulnerable

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Stavroula Pabst and Max Blumenthal · December 3, 2021 In October 2021, it seemed as though the lockdowns that still paralyzed societies from Australia to New Zealand and Singapore were coming to an end, as these countries threw in the “Zero-COVID” towel following a year and a half of rolling restrictions and closures. But with COVID-19 cases rising in Europe, several countries are implementing lockdowns all over again, often with clearly punitive motivations.  This November, Austria’s government announced that police would enforce a lockdown exclusively against unvaccinated citizens . Following days of massive protests, the policy was extended to everyone, with steep fines and even prison sentences to be imposed on those who refuse to comply, and a compulsory vaccination requirement tacked on for good measure. Next door in Germany, where a new lockdown was announced this December for unvaccinated people , barring them from almost all public places except for pharmacies and su