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2. India's solar boom

Solar power is creating some fundamental changes in India. Those changes are sweeping, both in terms of how huge they are and how much they may transform that country's agriculture sector.

An amazing piece from Yale Environment 360 lays out precisely what is happening and what's at stake.

"There is a solar-powered revolution going on in the fields of India. By 2026, more than three million farmers will be raising irrigation water from beneath their fields using solar-powered pumps," wrote Fred Pearce.

Sounds good, right?

Hold on. Pearce has more.

"With effectively free water available in almost unlimited quantities to grow their crops, their lives could be transformed. Until the water runs out," he wrote.

The solar pumps can transform the life and business of a farmer. They have extended farmland deep into the desert.

In just 10 years, the Indian government has given solar pumps to nearly 100,000 farmers. Pearce says they now irrigate more than a million acres of farmland.

It's not just India. Pearce's piece highlights how this is happening around the world. But the threat posed is particularly acute in India.

"The country is already the world’s largest consumer of groundwater, with farmers each year pumping onto their fields an estimated 50 cubic miles more water than the monsoon rains replace," he wrote.

The piece is wild and very well-written. It was originally published at Yale Environment 360 and is part of a collaboration with another publication called Climate Desk.

Read the article here