India’s population will still continue to grow from its current tally of 1.45bn: it takes time for fewer births to translate into fewer people overall. But the number of births is already down by a fifth from its peak in 2001. In Tamil Nadu 1,200 schools were closed last year for a lack of pupils to fill their classrooms. Those who do attend increasingly show up without any siblings. The government frets that India will get old before it gets rich—that the country is on a similar path to China, where the population has already peaked and is starting to fall. Some politicians are offering cash to encourage Indians to procreate. India’s demographic transition is the most striking example of a global trend. For it is no longer just wealthy places where families have few, or no, kids. Over two-thirds of all countries are now below the replacement rate. Middle-income ones like Brazil, Iran, Thailand and Turkey have been well below it for years. Poorer countries are steadily joining their ranks. Sri Lanka has a TFR of just 1.3; Tunisia’s is 1.6. Morocco has fallen below replacement rate. Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, may be close to that point. In many places birth rates are plunging despite marriage remaining near-universal and even though few women have formal jobs.

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/06/04/indias-surprise-baby-bust-is-a-warning-to-the-world

pardon, nemám bez paywallu

UN backs historic climate crisis ruling, despite US attempts to stop resolution | Climate crisis | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/may/21/un-vote-support-icj-world-court-climate-change-opinion

Abstaining were a bloc of 28 countries spanning emerging emitters and traditional petrostates, including India, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Nigeria, the Czech Republic and Turkey,

V Indii a Pakistanu se zacinaj varit

India Bakes At 47.6 Degrees: Heatwave Explained, From Urban Heat To El Nino
https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/india-heatwave-news-el-nino-heat-wave-11521133

kind of related, strip mining beyond earth

Can helium-3 create a ‘gold rush’ on the moon? | Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-helium-3-create-a-gold-rush-on-the-moon/

A kilogram of helium-3 costs roughly $20 million on Earth, where the entire planet produces only a few kilograms of it per year — almost all through the radioactive decay of tritium, a hydrogen isotope used to boost thermonuclear weapons. Scientists estimate that around a billion kilograms of the rare isotope lie embedded in the lunar surface, deposited over billions of years by the solar wind. That gap between terrestrial scarcity and lunar abundance is now driving serious commercial interest in moon mining, with Seattle-based Interlune among the companies positioning themselves to extract it.

The appeal is not speculative. Helium-3 is a superlative coolant that enables quantum computers to reach their operating temperatures — fractions of a degree above absolute zero — and is also essential for advanced medical imaging, for detecting smuggled nuclear material, and holds promise as a fuel for future fusion reactors. Writing in Scientific American, Robin George Andrews quotes Clive Neal, a lunar geoscientist at the University of Notre Dame, who draws a sharp distinction between helium-3 and other touted lunar resources such as water ice: "Helium-3 is where the money is".

The reason so much accumulates on the moon comes down to exposure and mineralogy. Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field deflect the solar wind; the airless moon has no such protection. Sara Russell, a planetary scientist at London's Natural History Museum, describes the result as helium-3 being "spray-painted across the whole of the lunar surface". Much of it is retained by ilmenite, a mineral composed of iron, titanium, and oxygen, which Neal describes as "a sponge" for solar-wind gases. The richest deposits are expected in mare regions — the dark, ancient lava plains — particularly in near-equatorial areas and, more often than not, on the lunar far side, where solar-wind exposure tends to be strongest.

Extracting the gas is considerably harder than locating it. "It's like trying to mine spray paint from a wall", Russell says. Interlune, founded in 2020, has developed a prototype extractor with industrial partner Vermeer Corporation capable of processing 100 metric tonnes of lunar regolith per hour. NASA awarded the company a $6.9-million contract earlier this month to advance its hydrogen- and helium-capturing technology. The company's robotic Prospect Moon mission, planned for as early as 2028, will carry a robotic arm, a mass spectrometer, and three different extraction devices. "That's what we need to demonstrate our business case for full-scale operations on the moon", says co-founder and CEO Rob Meyerson.

Not everyone is persuaded the enterprise is either viable or desirable. Russell raises environmental concerns about unregulated strip-mining leaving mechanical scars potentially visible from Earth. "The moon belongs to everybody, surely", she says. Meyerson counters that Interlune plans to dig to around three metres, leaving behind no waste or pollutants, describing the aim as "leaving the site looking like a tilled agricultural field" — though the article notes this is an optimistic projection that no one can yet verify in practice. Even NASA administrator Jared Isaacman has expressed scepticism, recently suggesting that asteroid mining may offer a greater return than lunar helium-3.

There are also open scientific questions with industry-defining stakes. If the solar wind replenishes the moon's helium-3 supply quickly, it could function as something approaching a renewable resource. If regeneration takes centuries or more, reserves may not keep pace with surging demand from quantum computing and other applications. "If helium-3 is a renewable resource, then you've got long-term prosperity", Neal says. Robotic prospecting missions — including NASA's VIPER rover, expected by next year, and the joint Japan-India LUPEX mission planned for 2028 — should begin to answer that question. "We're going to hit the mother lode", Neal ventures. "If it's proven, it could change everything."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/05/09/iran-farms-thailand-food/

A Thai rice farmer has decided that the rational response to the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran is to leave 19 hectares of land empty. The Washington Post reports that Saithong Jamjai, 53, spent weeks calculating whether to plant again in central Thailand and reached the same answer each time: fuel, fertiliser, plastics and other inputs would cost at least $33,000, while the rice she expects to sell in August would bring in only $22,000. Her conclusion was blunt: “A confirmed loss”. So she is letting the land bake under the husks from last season.

The mechanism carrying the war into Asian rice fields is urea, the nitrogen fertiliser that modern high-yield farming depends on. Iran’s destruction of gas infrastructure in the Gulf, combined with U.S. and Iranian efforts to choke the Strait of Hormuz, has blocked supplies of fuel and gas-linked fertiliser products from leaving the Middle East. According to Pranshi Goyal, senior analyst at CRU Group, 30 per cent of global urea supply has effectively been “wiped out”. Urea spot prices are up 40 per cent since February; weekly production in Iran has fallen from 182,000 to 63,000 metric tons, while Qatar and Bahrain have dropped to zero in the figures cited. China has restricted fertiliser exports to protect its own farmers, and Russia is seeing demand rise in a way that could strengthen its economy and aid its war in Ukraine.

The Food and Agriculture Organization is warning that the shock is spreading through the global food system by calendar, not by geography alone. Speaking in Rome, FAO director general Dongyu Qu called the war “a disruption at the core of the global agrifood system”. FAO chief economist Maximo Torero said the worst effects are currently in Asia, where Thailand, the Philippines, Bangladesh and Australia are entering key sowing periods, but the crisis is “moving east to west and south to north”. Farmers are already skipping planting, reducing acreage, or cutting fertiliser use, which means lower yields later this year.

The next pressure point is June, when India and Brazil, two of the world’s biggest agricultural producers, are expected to ramp up urea orders. If ships carrying urea are still not moving by then, Torero warns of “significant yield loss” across many countries, higher commodity prices, renewed inflation, and a hit to economic growth “very close to what happened in covid-19”. A likely super El Niño this year could add extreme heat and drought to the fertiliser shock, making the same planting decisions even riskier.

Thailand’s official assurances are already colliding with shortages on the ground. The Commerce Ministry said in April that the country had 343,000 tons of urea, enough for the upcoming planting season. But the Post found fertiliser shops across Ayutthaya and Suphan Buri provinces out of urea for weeks. One wholesaler sent a truck to a marketplace used by large dealers and got nothing after four days. Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow says Thailand still has sufficient farming supplies, while also acknowledging that the country is competing against richer nations and has “not faced such a crisis before”. A Russian supply attempt is likely to fail because shipping disruptions mean the urea would take at least two months to arrive, too late for the current planting window.

Thai farmers are being squeezed from both sides. Their costs are rising because fertiliser and fuel are scarce, while their expected income is falling because the Middle East, one of their major export markets, has effectively shut. The region accounted for 17 per cent of Thailand’s rice exports in 2025, with Iraq the largest single destination. Since the war began, rice shipments to the Gulf have stopped. Malaysia and the Philippines have absorbed some of the excess supply, but not enough, leaving a glut that keeps rice prices low just as input costs spike.

The human consequences are already visible: farmers taking credit from local loan sharks, planting only part of their land, growing vegetables and fish for subsistence, considering day labour, and reporting anxiety, debt and depression. Pramote Charoensilp, president of the Thai Farmers and Agriculturists Association, says calls from villages now carry the same themes: debt, depression, desperation. His advice is painfully thin because the options are thin: “I ask them to try to keep going. Just to keep going”.

Even a quick reopening of the Strait of Hormuz would not immediately solve the problem. Goyal says cargo would still take one to two months to reach destinations and markets would need time to stabilise; the longer Middle Eastern production plants stay shut, the longer they will take to restart. “This problem builds in a nonlinear fashion”, she said. For farmers whose planting window is measured in days and weeks, a supply chain that recovers in months has already failed them.

related

https://www.science.org/content/article/pesticides-may-wreak-havoc-gut-microbiome

Velmurugan Ganesan of the KMCH Research Foundation wondered whether pesticide exposure could explain a curious finding. In a study of almost 3000 people in southern India, his team found that 23% of participants in urban areas had diabetes, which clustered with classic risk factors such as obesity and high cholesterol. Yet in rural areas, the prevalence was still 16%, and there was no association with those risk factors. “We started wondering whether environmental chemicals could be playing a role,” Ganesan says.

The team then explored the effects of exposure to one widely used agricultural insecticide, chlorpyrifos, in mice. Previous animal studies had often tested high doses for short periods, but Ganesan’s team used what he calls a “realistic dose,” based on pesticide residues in the average Indian diet, for 120 days. The study, published in August 2025, found that chlorpyrifos reshaped the gut microbiome, with beneficial bacteria such as Lactobacillus declining and potentially harmful species such as Helicobacter rising. Mice exposed to chlorpyrifos also developed high blood sugar and diabetes, despite not gaining weight, says Karthika Durairaj, the study’s first author.

Another study co-authored by Ganesan suggests a possible mechanism: When gut microbes break down chlorpyrifos, they produce acetate and other metabolites the liver uses to make glucose through a process called gluconeogenesis, leading to elevated blood sugar levels.

Ganesan’s team is now analyzing blood, urine, and stool samples from people with diabetes, both with and without obesity, and healthy controls to examine whether the patterns hold up in humans. “We are working to show that diabetes induced by environmental chemicals is quite different [from lifestyle-associated diabetes] in its underlying disease mechanisms and could require different clinical care,” Ganesan says.

Pesticides appear to drive not just population shifts in the microbes, but also changes in their activity. In a large study published in 2025, for example, researchers exposed 17 representative bacterial species from the human gut to 18 different pesticides and detected changes in the microbial production of hundreds of small molecules. They included short-chain fatty acids, bile acids, and tryptophan-related molecules—compounds that help keep the gut lining healthy, regulate inflammation, and guide immune responses.

“Most studies focus on the effect of pesticides on … gut microbial composition, but this study shows that effects are far greater than that,” says study co-author Caroline Johnson, an environmental health epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health. The team also found that some bacteria accumulate pesticides within their cells, which could prolong their presence in the human body and increase the risk of long-term health effects.

P Worms
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1AmdTujaWZ/

There's been much discussion of the impact on energy systems of the closure of the Persian Gulf, but rather less than I would have expected of the - to my mind - more alarming impact on several kinds of fertiliser and other feedstocks of the global food system. Without going into details, modelling suggests that will throw several hundred million more people into food insecurity.

Crops need fertility to grow, and in the usual industrial farming systems that dominate the planet, those fertilisers must come from fossil fuels (my tribe of agroecologists has long shown that different production systems can generate more food while damaging soil and biodiversity less with only a fraction of those inputs, yet here we are - the reasons why is a discussion for another day). But plants also need water, and here this year, the problems linked to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz risk being compounded by a phenomenon called El Niño. This redistributes heat from the Western to the eastern Pacific that is then released to the atmosphere, creating a warming pulse that leads to drought conditions across much of the world and weaker monsoons in places like India.

On top of that, there is rising evidence that the climate forcing - i.e. the amount of global heating we get from a doubling of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere - has been seriously underestimated over the past decades: instead of being about 2-3°C, it's more in the region of 4-5°C (the paper i'm sharing here details the reasons).

That higher forcing is a problem for the medium term.. But in the short term, the climate system through El Niño willi amplify the horrors about to be unleashed on the food system by Trump’s war of choice.


Super El Nino? Super Warming is the Main Issue.
https://jimehansen.substack.com/p/super-el-nino-super-warming-is-the

https://reneweconomy.com.au/coal-power-drops-in-china-and-india-for-first-time-in-52-years-after-wind-and-solar-records/
The new analysis shows that power generation from coal fell by 1.6% in China and by 3.0% in India in 2025, as non-fossil energy sources grew quickly enough in both countries to cover electricity consumption growth.

A nejaky info ze sveta
Z Indie slusny zpravy. Po Cine, kde emise klesaji uz rok a pul (ackoliv stale malo)

India power sector review 2025: Record clean energy deployment drives historic decline in coal generation – Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air
https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/india-power-sector-review-2025/

V Litvě se meziročně zvedl podíl výroby z FVE šestnáctkrát (z 0,8 na 13 procent), hlavně na úkor importu z okolních zemí

Lithuania Electricity Generation Mix 2025 | Low-Carbon Power Data
https://lowcarbonpower.org/region/Lithuania

The green transition has a surprising new home
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/08/21/the-green-transition-has-a-surprising-new-home

The green transition has a surprising new home

Forget about northern Europeans, with their coalition governments and love of cycling

Picture a country where renewables are being rapidly rolled out and electric-vehicle sales are surging, and you will probably have in mind somewhere smug and northern European; a place with tall people, coalition governments and a yen for cycling holidays. Or perhaps the first thing that pops into your head is the sheer scale of China, which manufactures the bulk of such equipment and last year contributed more than half of the global increase in solar and wind installation.Think again. For a wave of Chinese-made electric vehicles is flooding new markets. In the past year sales of evs have more than tripled in Turkey, where Togg, a local brand, is also popular—they now account for 27% of all cars sold, making the country the fourth-largest European market. Last year more than 70% of cars imported into Nepal were electric. Some 60% of new cars sold in Ethiopia were battery-powered, after the state banned sales of internal-combustion-engine vehicles altogether. ev sales have doubled in Vietnam over the past year owing, in part, to VinFast, a local carmaker. Two- and three-wheelers are surging in popularity, too. The International Energy Agency (iea), a forecaster, reckons that across developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America ev sales rose by 60% in 2024.

It is a similar story with renewables. In the first six months of the year, Pakistan generated 25% of its electricity from solar power—not far below the 32% managed by California, a clean-energy pioneer. The country’s battery imports are booming as well. Indeed, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a think-tank, estimates that on current trends battery storage will cover 26% of Pakistan’s peak-electricity demand by 2030. Meanwhile, over the past year Morocco has increased its wind generation by 50%, becoming the country with the ninth most. India has seen four months of decline in coal-power generation, aided by an increase of 14% in renewable generation.Lust for powerAlthough the principles of international climate diplomacy suggest that poorer countries, being less responsible for climate change, have less duty to go green, many face strong economic incentives to do so anyway. Most countries in the global south are energy importers, and therefore must use scarce foreign currency to buy oil and gas. China and India have coal reserves that play an important role in their economies and power generation, but neither has significant oil or gas reserves. For its part, Ethiopia’s ban on internal-combustion engines was not a green measure—it was designed to cut spending on fossil fuels and save foreign currency.

Moreover, across emerging markets, Chinese-made evs are now about as cheap as traditional vehicles. In some places, they are even cheaper. The iea reckons that last year the average Chinese ev sold for around $30,000 in Thailand, compared with $34,000 for the typical petrol-engine car. At the bottom end of the market, old-fashioned vehicles still have an advantage, but only a relatively modest one. Government policies have also made a difference. In Turkey purchasers of evs typically paid a tax of only 10%, compared with one of between 45% and 220% for petrol-powered vehicles. The recent surge in part reflected car-buyers getting ahead of a reduction in the generosity of the policy.

Clean technology generally requires more upfront investment than fossil-fuel tech, even if it has lower lifetime costs. This has historically held it back in places where the cost of capital is high. The iea has calculated that the typical cost of capital for a solar project in India, for instance, is 11%, compared with around half that in rich countries. But the Rocky Mountain Institute, an American pressure group, now estimates that, owing to falling prices, many clean technologies have reached “capex parity”, where initial costs are the same as fossil fuels on a per-unit basis. As a consequence, they have become more attractive in large parts of the world.Tariffs have been helpful, too. As America and the eu attempt to shut out Chinese evs, they are finding their way to other markets—at even cheaper prices. For the most part, emerging markets lack legacy manufacturers that will lobby their governments to keep out Chinese imports. Yet this relatively free trade is at risk as protectionism begins to spread. Until recently Brazil allowed evs into its economy tariff-free; now it is gradually raising import taxes to 35% by 2026. India’s imports of finished solar panels have stagnated as the country seeks to build its own supply chain. Nigeria is considering banning solar-panel imports altogether in an effort to support domestic manufacturers.

Governments are at least also creating loopholes that allow Chinese imports to continue so long as the companies in question commit to local production. Brazil has carved out an exemption for byd, a carmaker, while it establishes a factory in the country. Indonesia has reduced value-added tax on evs from 11% to 1% for vehicles that meet a 40% local-content requirement; foreign manufacturers, meanwhile, can bring in equipment duty-free so long as they promise to increase domestic production by 2026 and provide a guarantee for the forgone tariffs if they do not follow through. Such policies are far from perfect—but they are better than the alternative. Well-heeled northern Europeans have something to learn. ■

"Welcome to the Desert of the Real"

Can India stop Pakistan’s river water — and will it spark a new war? | India-Pakistan Tensions | Al Jazeera
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2025/7/9/can-india-stop-pakistans-river-water-and-will-it-spark-a-new

Indie blokuje Pákistánu 90 % vody. Jaderná mocnost hrozí válkou - Médium.cz
https://medium.seznam.cz/clanek/thomas-paukner-valka-jadernych-mocnosti-kvuli-vode-je-na-spadnuti-166646

With Indus Waters Treaty in the balance, Pakistan braces for more water woes : NPR
https://www.npr.org/2025/07/08/g-s1-73122/pakistan-india-indus-waters-treaty

Daleko od našich hranic probíhá zřejmě nejnebezpečnější eskalace napětí mezi dvěma jadernými mocnostmi od Karibské krize roku 1962. Indie od dubna neúnavně blokuje Pákistánu přítoky řek, které muslimskému státu zajišťují až 90 % zdrojů pitné vody a slouží také k výrobě elektřiny, zavlažování půdy a naplnění přehrad pro případy extrémního sucha.

Pákistánské přehrady vykazují naplněnost na rekordních minimech a Indie nezablokovala pouze přítoky z řeky Indus, ale také z dalších dvou toků, Chenab a Ravi. Jde o bezprecedentní krizi bez historické paralely. V období následujících měsíců se mohou bez vody ocitnout miliony, ne-li desítky milionů Pákistánců a eskalaci konfliktu dokládají i následující prohlášení lídrů obou států.

On r/collapse, people are ‘kept abreast of the latest doom’. Its moderators say it’s not for everyone | Reddit | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/26/rcollapse-reddit-apocalypse-news


“Almost half of the members, when asked when they think collapse is going to happen, said that it’s already happening”
Anonymous r/collapse moderator

“The threat of nuclear war, genocide in Gaza, ChatGPT reducing human cognitive ability, another summer of record heat. Every day brings a torrent of unimaginable horror. It used to be weeks between disasters, now we’re lucky to get hours.

For many, the only sane solution is to stop reading the news altogether – advice often shared by therapists, self-help books and even newspaper articles.”

“But to bury your head in the sand until the day the apocalypse arrives at your doorstep is not necessarily the most tranquil, nor moral, of postures. In the sprawling Reddit community r/collapse, people instead try to stare unblinkingly at the unravelling of civilization. For the roughly half a million members here, many of whom joined in the wake of Covid-19 pandemic and two Donald Trump inaugurations, the arc of history feels more like a freefall.

This June, r/collapse was busy discussing the developing conflict between Iran and Israel, as well as “wet bulbs” (a far more humid and deadly type of heatwave), the millions of air conditioners being bought in India as temperatures rise and Trump’s plan to end Fema.

Indové překročili milník miliardy tun uhlí, to se ještě nikomu nestalo

https://www.business-standard.com/industry/news/india-s-coal-production-hits-record-1-bn-tonne-milestone-for-first-time-125032101024_1.html

Trocha horkych zajmavosti

BREAKING: Hottest Day On Record 3rd Day In A Row — Global Heating Is Here - CleanTechnica
https://cleantechnica.com/2024/07/25/breaking-hottest-day-on-record-3rd-day-in-a-row-global-heating-is-here/

Already back in May, Reuters reported, “Meteorologists say a weather phenomenon known as a ‘heat dome’ ‌has trapped hot air over the southern Gulf of Mexico and northern Central America, causing temperatures to soar to 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas. Between May 12 and May 21, authorities said 22 people died from heat-related causes, adding to a total of 48 deaths since March 17. In comparison, during the same period in 2022 and 2023, heat waves claimed the lives of two and three people, respectively.”

...

Meanwhile, over in Delhi, India, the capital city of famously hot India set a new heat record in May, before summer officially arrived, reaching 52.3 degrees Celsius (Fahrentheit)! “The highest temperature ever recorded in India has been recorded.

...

And down in Venezuela, the country lost its last glacier — in early May.

...

Then, this past Sunday, the world — the Earth as a whole — reached its hottest day on record. But that was short lived, as the record was broken again the next day, on Monday.

...

Temperatures in Fairbanks, Alaska, were forecast to hit 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius) yesterday. Earlier in July, Las Vegas “saw five straight days with a high temperature of 115 degrees Fahrenheit or more, breaking the old record of four consecutive days set in July 2005, per The Guardian. It also hit a record high of 120 degrees on July 7.”

...

June was the 13th month in a row to set a new heat record for the month. We can be sure July will be the 14th month in a row.

New Delhi recorded its highest temperature ever on Wednesday — 126 degrees Fahrenheit, or 52.3 degrees Celsius. For weeks now, temperatures in several Indian states have been well over 110, and hospitals have been reporting a rise in heatstroke.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/29/world/asia/india-delhi-hottest-day-ever.html?smtyp=cur&smid=bsky-nytime

April Heat Waves from Gaza to the Philippines Were Made Worse by Climate Change | Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/april-heat-waves-from-gaza-to-the-philippines-were-made-worse-by-climate/

Extreme heat has left hundreds of millions of people sweltering in record-breaking temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past few weeks across a broad swath of Asia. From the Palestinian territories in the west to India, Thailand and the Philippines to the east, scorching conditions have caused at least dozens of deaths, ruined crops and forced thousands of school closures. Relentless heat waves have worsened the already precarious conditions for those living in refugee camps and in makeshift housing in dense urban areas. And the 1.2 degrees C of warming the world has already experienced has significantly cranked up such events’ severity, a new analysis shows.

SHEFIK: i jaro není co bývalo

India saw a 55% rise in deaths due to extreme heat between 2000-2004 and 2017-2021, a recent study published in the medical journal, The Lancet, has found.

Exposure to heat also caused a loss of 167.2 billion potential labour hours among Indians in 2021, the study noted.

This, it adds, resulted in loss of incomes equivalent to about 5.4% of the country's GDP.

India has faced increasingly intense heatwaves in recent years.

India heatwave: High temperatures killing more Indians now, Lancet study finds
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-63384167

Reportedly zacalo horiet na Den Zeme

Toxic smoke from burning garbage mountain blankets India’s capital | The Independent
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/ghazipur-landfill-delhi-fire-toxic-smoke-b2532597.html