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| Chennai airport under water |
That climate
change is now a reality has now been brought home to the common people. A warm
November with hardly any need for woolens, particularly in the central parts of
the country, making the people realize how true the predictions were that were
being made for some time.
A region where
the cold weather would herald its onset from the last week of October with cool
nights requiring covers and light woolens remained unusually warm this year. It
couldn’t really attribute it to below-average rainfall. The fact is the winter
this year has failed to set in so far and hence one tends to wait for December
with trepidation not knowing what it has in store for us. Already, 2015 has
been declared the hottest year so far with temperatures worldwide hovering
above normal.
Surprisingly,
however, northern parts of the country did have their usual quota of cold,
sleet and snowfall since late October which worsened in November. Rain and snow
hit Jammu & Kashmir as well as Himachal Pradesh with ferocity disrupting
road communications bringing traffic to a halt for a few days. But in deep
South, Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry, on the other hand, got a raw deal. It was at
the receiving end of extreme and violent weather with heavy rains and floods.
Both were man-made -- the first one because of global warming and the flood
havoc was because of constructions on drains and wetlands as a consequence
of thoughtless urbanization that choked
the points of egress of flood-waters.
While the South
is sogging wet, the country a few latitudes above it has been bone dry giving
rise to misery for farmers in northern Andhra Pradesh and the new State of
Telangana. Rainfall deficit has been up to 70% and the crops have withered and
hundreds of farmers have committed suicide. Large scale switch to cotton in
regions where rainfall is scanty put the famers in difficulties.
The trends of
rainfall deficit and crop failures have been witnessed for some years now. The
governments should have been able to devise by now strategies to combat the
changed weather pattern. Unfortunately, that does not seem to have happened
anywhere in the country and lives of farmers are being lost.
In the east the
Sunderbans in West Bengal has been bearing stoically the impacts of global
warming. Every year the inhabitants brace themselves for the monsoon which
unleashes severe cyclonic storms with rising seas accompanied by coastal
flooding and erosion. The Sunderbans is now a constantly shrinking landmass
with rising seas that swallow islands, gobbling up more and more land every
year progressively reducing its
‘carrying capacity’ of humans. It is here that global warming has given
rise to “environmental refugees” for the first time in India. Many have left
their sinking islands to fight their way into the Sagar Island, a large island
which is likely to suffer the same fate in course of time. The refugees will
then join their folks in Kolkata.
The demographic
push will not only be felt in West Bengal, even Bangladesh is likely to witness
“environmental refugees” pressing on to the mainland from its larger portion of
the Sunderbans and, quite likely, eventually pressure will build up on the Indian
borders too. A human problem of immense proportions is likely to unfold in not
too distant future action to combat which the governments are yet to decide on.
A recent report
says that the phenomenon of global warming will progress faster than what was
estimated earlier as the rising temperatures encourage greater natural emission
of methane, a greenhouse gas that already is in excess among other greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere. The window of opportunity is, therefore, getting
smaller and smaller.
No wonder the
United Nations organizes every year Climate Conferences to plan to find ways
and means to control not only the emission of greenhouse gases as also, as a
corollary, to contain the rise in global temperature to 20 Centigrade above
what prevailed during pre-industrial times. This year’s conference in Paris
will be the 21st Conference of Parties after the first one held in 1992, when
the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was negotiated and
legitimised.
1992 reminds one
of George Bush who made the stunning statement that the American (opulent and
wasteful) way of life was not negotiable. Two decades have elapsed since but an
agreement has eluded the world community so far for achieving the objectives of
limiting the rise in global temperature to 20 C above the pre-industrial level
during this century.
Differences in
approaches have prevented an agreement – the world having been divided between
developed and developing countries. The former have been held responsible for pumping
most of the greenhouse gases and, according to the developing world, should not
only cut down on their emissions but also finance poorer countries to adopt
technologies to promote for them a cleaner growth.
Hitherto
restricting the global temperature increase to 2°C over the pre-industrial
average has generally been reckoned as an adequate means of avoiding dangerous
climate change. However, according to climate scientist Kevin Anderson “recent
science has shown that environmental and social impacts of 2°C rise are much
greater than (what) the earlier science indicated, and that impacts for a 1°C
rise are now expected to be as great as those previously assumed for a 2°C
rise.”
Climate
scientists have explained that for this reason “avoiding dangerous climate in
the conventional sense is no longer possible, because the temperature rise is
already close to 1°C with effects formerly assumed for 2°C.” Anderson’s
researches have shown that a rise of 40 Centigrade by 2060 is very much on the
cards given the record of inaction till date on climate change by governments.
Researchers have
also indicated that there is a linkage of global warming with the concentration
of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Currently, this concentration is close
to 400 ppm and it has been reckoned that the global rise in temperature can be
restricted to 20 Centigrade if the greenhouse gases are not allowed to exceed
550 ppm. It has also been felt that stabilisation of greenhouse gases below 400
ppm would provide a higher degree of certainty of temperature not exceeding the
20 C mark. That, however, seems to be impossible now as the concentration of
green house gases in the atmosphere is likely to overshoot 400 ppm anytime now.
Naturally
therefore, so much of importance is being attached to the Paris Summit. The
world would be seen to be standing at the edge of a cliff; a false step and it
will be a disaster. It is a matter of ‘do or die’. There is no time to play the
blame game now. We are already late. Our thoughtless actions have brought us to
the brink of disaster.
Now is the time
to retrace our steps back and get back to sustainable living that does no
further damage to our planet. Rich or poor, all have to come together as it is
a matter of survival of humanity in this wonderful “commons” that our planet
is. The Summit, therefore, places a huge responsibility on the shoulders of
world leaders. Hopefully, they will not disappoint and arrive at an agreement
that had eluded them so far to rescue Humanity before it is too late.
Foto: from the net
* Published as blog courtesy INFA
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