Heatwaves: India must stand up to certain countries’ climate lethargy

Pandemic shows how large emission cuts need to be, India must stand up to countries’ climate lethargy

The heatwave in India is yet another sign that we are on the brink of a point of no return on anthropogenic climate change. Temperatures are expected to reach 48oC in parts of northern India, carrying serious risks of hyperthermia deaths—last year’s heatwave killed 200-300 people. The increasing frequency and intensity of heatwaves is becoming de rigeur. There were 484 recorded heatwaves across India in 2018, up from 21 in 2010, and last year’s May-June heatwave was India’s second-longest on record. Indeed, the Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, warns that even if global heating is contained at 1.5oC above pre-industrial levels by 2100, India will see a fourfold rise in heatwaves. Almost every multilateral and national body with an Earth-sciences focus has warned that drastic cuts to emissions will be needed to keep the planet on a 2oC-hotter pathway. The Covid-19 pandemic stunting economic activity across the planet is as drastic an emission-cut as it gets—as per an analysis of emissions data published in Nature Climate Change, global emissions fell by nearly a fifth of the historical figure for the period so far, and are likely to fall by 7% for the year, if various lockdowns remain in place. However, once economic activity resumes at a beat close to pre-Covid if not the same, emissions will rise; if activity returns to pre-Covid levels by mid-June, emissions will fall by a modest 4% in 2020, but this will still be the largest absolute cut in emissions since World War II. For perspective, global emissions have to be cut by 7.6% every year till 2030 for the planet to stay on the 1.5oC pathway, a goal set at the CoP21. And, even if each country implements all the cuts it committed to, the world will still be hotter by 3.2oC by 2100. Further, as a 2018 report from the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) points out, even with a 2oC rise in temperature, India could see deadly heatwaves like that of 2015, which killed more than 2,500, become an annual affair.

Climatologists believe that 2020, even if it doesn’t surpass 2016 as the hottest year, will be one of the top five in the 142 years for which global temperature has been recorded. A 2017 study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimates that heatwaves in the Chota Nagpur plateau (covering large swathes of Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal, and Chhattisgarh) could reach an intensity that would be beyond human survival by the end of this century, if there is no action to mitigate the effect of climate change. The problem is compounded by the fact that the heatwaves will severely diminish the food-producing capacity of some of India’s most fertile agricultural land, the Indo-Gangetic plains. The disastrous consequences of anthropogenic climate change have become quite obvious over the last few years, from heat and cold waves of unprecedented scale at unusual geographies—Antarctica, which is sporting massive algal blooms, recorded its highest ever temperature in February this year—to massive cyclones becoming an annual event. Against such a backdrop, the developed world throwing up its hands, quite like the US, became unacceptable long ago. India and other emerging South Asian economies, which are going to bear the brunt of the West’s climate lethargy, will have to participate in a world order that can stand up to climate rogues, and force them to act.