For the second year in a row, India’s government has ordered the nation’s coal-fired power plants to run at full power. But this year’s order is even more sweeping than last year's — all coal and oil-fired generators will be maxed out for the entire summer, from April through June. Analysts say it will dramatically increase India’s already sky-high greenhouse gas emissions.
Seventy miles from Kolkata in India’s West Bengal state, 48-year-old Kakali Halder knows the reason for the order. She and several hundred other seamstresses at Mathurapur Sanghati Swayamber Sangha, a group that make clothing items and share the proceeds between them, have struggled to get orders out when they can’t rely on the electricity.
