India Is Seriously Affected by Climate Crisis; Conditions Will Get Worse
Recently, a friend I was talking to, someone born and brought up in Delhi, someone who can easily deal with Delhi’s extreme weather conditions with few accessories for winter told me that it was getting “really cold”, that the temperature was 4 degrees Celsius that day. And the next week, I remember reading a post that said that temperatures would drop down to 1 degree Celsius. This is clearly abnormal even for a place like Delhi.
What Is Climate Change?
It would be, without a doubt, ignorant to laugh this off and say, “there are places much colder!”. That is why this is called “climate change”. Globally, for quite some time now, several places have been seeing shifts in temperature with summers being much hotter than usual and winters being much colder than usual. These shifts in temperature are not just “abnormal” but are rather dangerous because they hit extreme levels in many cases.
Why is it called “Climate Crisis”?
One can’t say when exactly climate change began because this is the result of too many anti-environmentalist actions by people across the world. This is against nature, and yes, we humans have made a habitable planet (which is rare to find, no?) a “dangerous place to live in”. Human and non-human lives are not prepared to deal with such changes which happen so quickly.
According to UN.org, “Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. These shifts may be natural, such as through variations in the solar cycle. But since the 1800s, human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.”
You don’t have to stay updated with the news to be aware of the results of global warming and climate crisis. You would have most likely experienced it in some way or the other, the surprising changes in temperatures in your location, for no life is above climate change.
Global warming negatively affects all lives, human and non-human, across the world. Environmental conditions become more challenging and life-threatening, natural disasters tend to happen a lot more frequently, and this would directly impact the availability of food and water, health, safety, and economy.
How Has Climate Change Affected India?
India has for long been a major contributor to climate crisis. “Greenhouse gas emissions by India are the third largest in the world and the main source is coal. India emits about 3 gigatonnes (Gt) CO2eq of greenhouse gases each year; about two tons per person,[13] which is half the world average.” — Wikipedia
As mentioned earlier, climate change will lead to many different natural disasters. You must have seen or heard of some of the worst floods, severe pollution, water scarcity, earthquakes, frequent landslides, storms and cyclones, cold waves and heat waves.
How Climate Crisis Is Increasing and The Effects of Global Warming Have Increased or Become Worse:
According to this article published by worldbank.org in 2013, ten years ago, India had already been experiencing all these climatic shifts and disasters then. Compare conditions then with the conditions we have now. Any average Indian adult can tell you that the kind of summers and winters we experience now are far worse than what India had seen 10 or 20 years before. That is the result of climate crisis, and climate crisis is the collective result of mindless, destructive actions taken by both people in power and the ignorant and/or uneducated people who follow the norm.
2023 is not off to a great start, and we should all be sorry about that. As winter still continues in the hilly regions and in other such locations, Delhi has been frequently on the news for sad reasons. Reports share information that the temperature is set to hit -4 degree Celsius this week in the capital city. And that’s scary even for families who have been living in Delhi for decades or many generations now.
These are all recent news updates. Feel free to check them out yourself:
“Cold wave intensifies in J&K; -10 degrees in Gulmarg”
“Cold waves intensify across Kashmir”
“Rajasthan’s Churu freezes at Zero degrees”
“ — 4 degrees in Delhi this week”
“With 182 landslides this year, India requires a warning system” (from October, 2022)
“India heatwave: High temperatures killing more Indians now”
… and we have many more.
What Has The Government Done?
Any measure that either a state government or the central government claims to have taken is both too late and too little effort. With regard to the Assam floods, according to this article written by a research scholar, the government has done nothing to prevent even predictable damage.
“One must question if floods recur yearly, then why the government has not yet initiated effective mitigation and preparedness to avoid incalculable loss. The answer lies in an innovative argument (gleaned from Jack Black’s article, “A hole that does not speak: Covid, Catastrophe and the Impossible”)[xii] that although the government was well aware of the devastating impacts of floods, they did not take them seriously.” — Jyoti Bania
As mentioned earlier, climate change is not something that developed only recently, in the last decade or two. This is a gradual change that scientists and experts in the field have been expressing concerns about for a long time now, yet no party seems to take this seriously, right or left. According to this report, the intensity and frequency of storms across the Arabian Sea would increase significantly, yet which political party or politician seems to care?
“Not just the frequency, the intensity and duration of the cyclones over the Arabian Sea too are changing, according to the paper published in Springer’s Climate Dynamics journal on Saturday. Apart from a higher than usual number of cyclones over Arabian Sea in recent years, back-to-back “extremely severe cyclonic storms” (with wind speeds between 167–221kmph) occurred within a single month over the Arabian Sea in 2015, according to the paper. This trend means India’s west coast may have to prepare for more frequent and stronger storms, researchers said.”
While the current ruling political party must be held accountable for its negligence, so must every politician and political party that’s been in power in every state and district across the country. While the Bharatiya Janata Party has been rightfully called out for the many different social evils and mindless, wrong decisions like demonetisation and measures taken to deal with Covid-19, you can’t blame everything on BJP. The Congress, other opposition parties, the Dravidian parties, the communist parties, and the BJP, too, none of these parties seems to take climate change seriously.
According to WRI CAIT, India’s GHG emissions increased by 2,060 MtCO2e (180%) from 1990 to 2014. — USAID
If you still insist that climate crisis is some kind of conspiracy or a myth, I’d understand that you have not even the slightest capacity to understand reality. Climate crisis is a global threat, and everyone needs to take this seriously.
What Can You Do?
While it is not possible to reverse climate change, and most of us do not have the political or social power to bring about mass change, all of us can and should contribute on an individual level, as responsible citizens and concerned adults.
The first step to take is to change your lifestyle, to practice a minimalist approach. All those of us with the power to buy things, those of us who are not poor, we are all guilty of buying things which we don’t really need or we want only temporarily. All this gets accumulated as waste in the end, and what would happen to waste products in the end? Where do we dump it? Usually, waste gets dumped in areas as far away from the privileged people as possible, and it is the non-human animals and the underprivileged people who suffer the most. Waste is one major contributor to climate crisis. so reduce waste.
You are not walking the red carpet or winning the Oscars or Nobel prize everyday; you don’t have to keep on adding content to your wardrobe. Stop using plastic as much as possible, especially one-time, use-and-throw plastic. Avoid leather.
No matter how rich you are, use public transport instead of cars and bikes; walk and cycle to places nearby. Your comfort and your sense of luxury matter a lot less than climate crisis. Stop contributing to the destruction of this beautiful, habitable planet.
Be mindful of your actions and shopping. Try to purchase and use reusable material and recyclable material as much as you can. Donate or give away things that you no longer need to those who can use them to both help them and to prevent unnecessary purchase. Similarly, take or receive from your family members and friends.
Choose to walk or cycle or take public transport instead of using bikes and cars. Don’t be a douche because only such people, those loaded with the need for attention, those having little knowledge, and those who put their own inflated ego above all other things and other people would take pride in contributing to climate crisis.
Spend Your Free Time Doing Something Useful for The Planet and People. Plant trees. Work with communities and organizations that care. Raise awareness. Protest against anti-climatic decisions made by people in power.
Go vegan. “Wait! How can going vegan help?”, you’are asking. Study why so many climate-conscious youngsters and environmentalists are vegan today. Because they get paid by vegan brands? Because they want to hate all governments and get attention? For how long are you going to live in denial? There is more proof than you need to show that veganism helps reduce carbon footprint.
Read. Educate yourself. Become aware. Take responsibility. Live responsibly.
To start with, remember “minimalist lifestyle”, avoiding all unnecessary products? Meat and non-human-animal milk are unnecessary for human beings. I repeat, you don’t “need meat, eggs, or milk”; you only want them, and you like them. By going vegan, you’d help reduce the need, thereby reducing the produce of meat, eggs, and milk, and not only can animals live freely, but there would also be less animal farming.
A huge amount of plants and trees are farmed to produce animal feed and a LOT of water gets spent in the process of animal farming globally each year. Animal farming requires a vast amount of natural resources, and as mentioned earlier, we do not need animal farming!
Beef is also a key contributor to greenhouse gases. India is one of the largest producers/exporters of beef, and the irony is that the Hindu people of this country and the far right worship cows! Agh! Sad you an’t blame this on the Muslims or foreigners or the oppressed castes or other minorities!
Okay, enough facts.
How much more evidence do you need? How climate conscious are you? Do you realize that the kids of today or the people of tomorrow and the minorities and poor people and non-human animals will suffer a lot more in the future because climate change is real and it will only get worse?
In this case, “it’s never too late” is not applicable. It is late already. Do something. Start now if you are not living a consciously environmentalist life already.
