We are definitely living in anomalous times – what else could explain 40º Celsius temperatures in the snowbound plains of Siberia and Canada? Or snowfall in the Sahara desert? Or floods in the Arabian desert? Increasing occurrences of such Ripleysque events have the imprimatur of climate change ~ which all Governments blandly deny. The most Government spokesmen will concede is that we may experience climate change by the end of the twentyfirst century, to counter which, they have laid down elaborate goals for 2050 or 2070. Paradoxically, frequent extreme climate events are visible to everyone – except politicians looking only at vote-banks.
An indication of impending disaster is the increasing frequency of extreme climate events: * Temperatures are rising worldwide, because increasing greenhouse gas emissions trap more heat in the atmosphere. According to the World Metrological Organisation, the last nine years have been the hottest on record. According to Scientific American, July 2023 was the hottest month in the last 1,20,000 years, with heatwaves in Europe, North America, North Africa, China and Japan.
Every month since June 2023 ~ 13 months in a row ~ has ranked as the planet’s hottest since recordkeeping began. The world’s average temperature was the highest on record, at 1.64º Celsius above the pre-industrial average. Worryingly, last month was the hottest June on record, and 2024 may turn out to be the hottest year till now. * Recognising that droughts are becoming longer and more extreme globally, the UN marked 17 June 2024 as ‘Desertification and Drought Day.’
* Tropical storms are becoming more severe due to higher ocean water temperatures. US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted above-normal hurricane activity for June-November 2024, with 17-25 storms, including 4-7 major hurricanes, with windspeeds exceeding 111 mph, of which Hurricane Beryl that hit the Indian World Cup team in Barbados was an example.
* Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean around the North Pole is melting faster with the warmer temperatures.
* As temperatures rise, there is less snowpack in mountain ranges.
* Permafrost, the permanently frozen ground, located in circumpolar areas in Canada, Alaska, Siberia and elsewhere, has acted as a carbon sink for thousands of years. Thawing permafrost could release large amounts of methane and CO2 gases, exacerbating global warming. It could also release unknown viruses, leading to a potential health catastrophe.
* Glaciers are melting at a faster rate.
According to a report from the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, Kathmandu, glaciers in the Hindu Kush and Himalayan Mountain ranges melted 65 per cent faster between 2010-2019 than in the previous decade. The Ministry of Earth Sciences found that the mean retreat rate of Hindu Kush Himalayan glaciers was 14.9-15.1 meters per year, 12.7-13.2 meters per year in Indus, 15.5-14.4 meters per year in Ganga, and 20.2-19.7 meters per year in Brahmaputra river basins. The European Alps experienced a record amount of ice mass lost (State of the Climate in Europe, 2022). * Sea levels are rising at double the pace of 1993- 2002, threatening coastal communities and estuarine ecosystems. UN Climate Change Conferences (COP) have focused on climate change.
COP28, held in December 2023, was attended by almost 200 countries, represented by more than 150 Presidents/Prime Ministers as also national delegations, civil society, business, Indigenous Peoples, youth, philanthropists, and international organisations. After noting that progress was too slow across all areas of climate action ~ from reducing greenhouse gas emissions, to strengthening resilience to a changing climate, to getting the financial and technological support to vulnerable nations ~ the only achievement of COP28 was a call to governments to speed up the transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy ~ in their next round of climate commitments.
Earlier COPs were also high on rhetoric but low on commitment ~ most countries agreed to achieve climate control targets by 2050, while India proposed to do so by 2070. Consensus emerged to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, preferably to limit the increase to 1.5°C. Significantly, no timelines were prescribed, and by last year the average temperature had increased by 1.64º Celsius. Also, everyone looked to set goals, far in the future, when none of the attendees could be held responsible for their misleading promises. Glaring anomalies were noticed; COP26 focused on reducing dependence on fossil fuels but the main sponsors of the Conference, like that of COP 25, were fossil fuel and finance companies! As pointed out in ‘Climate Change for Us’ (2 September 2022), insulation from the Asian landmass, by oceans in the south and the Himalayas in the north, protects us ~ though not totally ~ from depredations of our neighbours.
An honest effort to limit pollution and overexploitation of natural resources – the major causes of climate change ~ could yield immediate results. Thus, we have two alternatives; either, go with the mainstream and make hollow promises with no intention of fulfilling them, or try and limit climate change for our country. The gains achieved by fighting against nature are transient; more than 1,200 roads in Himachal Pradesh, including some ‘all-weather’ roads, made by cutting mountains, were blocked due to landslides, erosion and damage in 2023. Experts blame unscientific road construction for landslides ~ mainly cutting the mountains at extremely steep angles. Construction debris dumped indiscriminately in rivers, has aggravated floods, ravaging the benighted state. Mountains have been blasted for building tunnels and bridges; more than 37 bridges and 14 tunnels were made for the 197-kilometre Kiratpur-Manali Highway, which is still not fully operational, because a 16-kilometre stretch was washed away by floods in July 2023. Mutatis mutandis the same situation prevails in another hill State, Uttarakhand.
Houses at various places, particularly Joshimath, developed huge cracks in December 2022, making them uninhabitable. Left homeless, townspeople suffered immensely in the harsh winter rain and snowfall. It would appear that draining of underground water, by tunnelling activities, had created a void below the earth’s surface, leading to the land giving way; ISRO reported land subsidence of 5.4 centimetres in just 12 days, after which the Government of India prohibited publication of adverse reports. Still, NTPC and the Union Power Minister, denied any link between land subsidence and tunnel drilling for NTPC’s 520 MW Tapovan-Vishnugad hydel project. This callous approach is not exceptional; after the horrendous floods of 2013 that had caused more than 6,000 deaths, the then Uttarakhand Chief Minister refused to accept that faulty environmental policies had contributed to the tragedy.
A short-sighted vision of development, through quick economic progress, by increasing manufacturing activity and tourism, has proved to be the bane of the hill states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Last year’s spate of landslides and floods in Uttarakhand show that no lessons were learnt from the 2013 tragedy; the Railways are constructing the environmentally dangerous Char Dham Railway Project, a 125-kilometre railway line between Rishikesh and Karanprayag, with 105 kilometres of the rail line running through tunnels, including India’s longest railway tunnel of 15.1 kilometres. Additionally, large-scale road widening projects, new resorts, houses and hotels built on and near riverbeds, all have precipitated an environmental disaster in both states. Most of the residents, looking at longawaited prosperity are unconcerned – even runaway forest fires cannot quench their enthusiasm for ‘development.’
The recently tabled 135th Report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Environment Forest and Climate Change, took serious note of environmental destruction of the Himalayan ecosystem, but on a practical level, environmental concerns are always put on the backburner, by creating a sham progress vs. environment debate. The current, unstated Government policy is of not discouraging environmental transgressions, so much so that if an environmental rule or law stands in the way of Ease of Doing Business, the law is often changed. Examples are numerous: Environment (Protection) Act, 1986; Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980; Wildlife Protection Act, 1972; Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974; Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981 and Indian Forest Act, 1927, were amended, as also the Environment Impact Notification and the Coastal Regulation Zone Notification.
Mankind can exist, only by preserving the environment. As Michael Crichton wrote: “You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity… Earth is four-and-a-half-billionyears-old… In the thinking of the human being, a hundred years is a long time, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. We’ve been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we’re gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us” (Jurassic Park).
(The writer is a retired Principal Chief Commissioner of Income-Tax)