Nature sustains us, but so do urban centers.
News of the world environment
NEWSLETTER | JANUARY 12, 2024
City Tales
Hello, dear readers. Hope 2024 has kicked off on a good note for you. I rang in the New Year at my birthplace, Kolkata, India, surrounded by family, old friends, and a thick layer of grimy smog that increasingly smothers the sprawling metropolis every winter.
I was visiting after a gap of four years, during which Kolkata seems to have gotten ever more chaotic. Its towering new skyscrapers jostle for space with stately old homes reconfigured into posh cafes and boutiques, which in turn are inevitably hemmed in by ramshackle roadside shops and eateries. Its streets are jam-packed with vehicles of all sizes and shapes as well as pedestrians who skillfully dart through the traffic maze. Life, it feels, is bursting at the seams here.
Some of that seeming is probably in the eye of this beholder — after more than a decade living in the quiet hills of Berkeley, California, the city has become unaccustomed grounds for me. But Kolkata is indeed growing. When I left it in 2009, the population of the city’s metro area was 13.9 million. Today, it is 15.5 million.
Moving around the city with my mask on in a feeble attempt to guard against soaring AQIs, I was reminded of what I’d written in this article in our special issue on urban environments: “While humanity is trending towards an urban future, the current fossil-fueled model of the city itself is trending towards collapse.” (The issue, incidentally, won the first place for environmental reporting at the San Francisco Press Club Awards in December. Yay!)
Kolkata is certainly one of those urban centers hanging in precarious balance between growth and collapse. In many ways, it is a perfect example of the immense challenge to sustainability that cities represent, a challenge we have to tackle sooner than later given some 68 percent of humanity will be living in cities by 2050. But there is more to Kolkata than that. As with all cities around the world, it is also a place where diversity, culture, art, and ideas have long thrived. Personally, its people and places have helped shape who I am today, and it continues to offer me the comfort of family and the warmth of friends whenever I return.
What is a place that sustains you similarly? Do share.
Maureen Nandini Mitra
Editor-in-Chief, Earth Island Journal
Photo by Thosaphon Yaungyai
TOP STORIES
The Solace of the Co-op
At an organic food cooperative on the outskirts of London, a Covid long-hauler tends to his more optimistic self and ponders an anti-capitalist future.
READ MORE
Lithium Lowdown
Developers hope to extract lithium from hot brine that lies deep underground near Southern California’s Salton Sea. But the technology remains unproven, and the budding industry could compound existing environmental injustices in the region.
LISTEN HERE
People-Powered Journalism
Because of generous reader donations, Earth Island Journal can say things that corporate media won’t say.
Reader support gives us the independence to amplify voices and perspectives that strengthen communities, especially communities that don’t have access to corporate media.
Your support is essential to our long-term success. And with your help, we can reshape the media landscape. Won't you join us today?
I Support Earth Island Journal
Get Up and Garden
A local gardening program is transforming Bay Area citizens into key players in the social justice and climate change movements.
READ MORE
ICYMI
CSI: Insect Edition
Meet forensic entomologist Paola Magni, who uses bugs to solve murders and is blazing a trail for women in a male-dominated field.
READ MORE >>
Photo by Herman Pijpers
Hope and Feathers
“Our first year of chicken-keeping had been full of tiny wonders and short on heartache. But as we rounded the bend into year two ... the poultry actuarial tables were turning and the parade of covetable 'firsts' ... changed tenor." A bittersweet exploration of caring for chicks and children and all that it entails.
READ MORE >>
Photo by Bri Tucker
Did a thoughtful friend forward you our newsletter? Keep up with the latest from Earth Island Journal!
SIGN UP TODAY
Follow
Follow
Subscribe
You are receiving this email newsletter because you signed up on our website.
If this newsletter was forwarded to you, you can sign up to the email newsletter here.
Support our work by subscribing to our quarterly print magazine.
Copyright © 2023 Earth Island Journal, All rights reserved.
Our mailing address is:
Earth Island Journal
2150 Allston Way Ste 460
Berkeley, CA 94704-1375
Add us to your address book
Want to change how you receive these emails?
Update your preferences
