The climate change pandemic

(Representational image) By the end of this decade, parts of India’s coastline are expected to be underwater during some part of the year. By the end of this century, large parts of India are projected to experience deadly humid heat waves.

What were you doing in February 2020?

I was in Delhi. At the airport, returning on a high after having finally tracked down Delhi’s oldest baoli, hiding behind a small landfill. The airport was crowded. Faces were bare. I recall there were three of us who wore masks. A bookshop was selling hand sanitizers. The virus (it had not yet been christened COVID-19) was wreaking havoc in Wuhan. There was perhaps a case in Italy. But it was seen as something happening far away to somebody else. Not our problem.

But then, it very quickly came home to roost. For the first time (ever?), India shut down. Schools were shut, offices were shut, places of worship were shut, factories were shut. I remember the absolute fear and bewilderment from my team. What would happen to us – to our lives, to our livelihoods? WhatsApp groups became idea-sharing platforms where operating procedures for an unprecedented present were shared, experimented upon and refined. Masking became universal. Migrants began walking home. Months passed.

Kids (those who had the tools to participate in the digital economy) began learning from home. Factories began working again. Doctors learned to treat the cases. Scientists began working on a vaccine. Trials began. Loved ones got Covid. And then it passed, and we relaxed, and took off those masks. Vaccines were introduced. Then came the wall (it was too steep, too fast to be called a wave). Loved ones died. And then the wall ebbed away. Vaccinations continued. By the time Omicron came along, most of us at risk were resilient – that is we had some immunity – either from a vaccine or from an earlier infection. Still, the infection-experience was varied. The vulnerable suffered more.

Where we are in the climate change crisis is February 2020 in the Covid pandemic. The wave and the wall are still ahead.

Why do I say this?

We’ve warmed by just a degree so far. Not much, many of you may be thinking. But that degree has translated to this:

Figure 1: Source: EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium; www.emdat.be (D. Guha-Sapir)

Even after all the COPs (UN Climate Change Conference) and all the pledges, we are on track to walk about a degree more – and that is if each country does what it says it will do and we have a wagon-load of luck along the way. The more realistic scenario is that the planet warms up by much more than a degree. This will most likely happen in your lifetime.

Like the Covid pandemic, not everyone is affected equally. Some, like the migrants walking home, or the children unable to digitally access education, fall behind. While others, like those who can now tap into a global marketplace, thanks to digitization, can thrive. In climate, think warmer, drier, more populated areas, and weaker sections suffering more. They are like the old and the diabetic or the children without a way to tap into online classes.

What worries me is water. While climate conversations revolve around carbon, the climate itself speaks through water, and as the climate heats up, its water voice has begun to shriek. Wet regions have and will become wetter still, and in the monsoon, will be deluged. Crops will be submerged more frequently. Low-lying neighbourhoods will be flooded more regularly. Possessions paid for with a lifetime of work will be lost. Somewhat paradoxically, dry regions will become drier still. Those with a borewell will drill down deeper. Those without (which is more than half of India’s farmers) will watch their crops shrivel. Parts of cities will dry up. The real estate will lose value. Parts of India will become unliveable during parts of the year – either too dry or too wet. Or cruelly, too hot and humid. The last is a killer.

You see, when our body temperatures rise above 38°C, our body weakens. When our body temperature crosses 41°C, our organs begin to collapse, and the risk of death rises sharply. When outside temperatures rise above 35°C, we cool down by sweating. But if the environment is too humid, then the sweat cannot evaporate, and the body cannot cool itself. Which means at high humidity levels, heat can be dangerous, even fatal.

By the end of this century, large parts of India are projected to experience deadly humid heat waves (when wet bulb temperatures cross 31°C). If we continue with our current pace of emissions, about three-quarters of our population is projected to experience a dangerous level of humid heat, compared to about 15 per cent today. Fatal heat (when wet bulb temperatures cross 35°C) is likely in the coming decades as the warming continues.

In other words, the wave, the wall of the climate pandemic, is coming. The dry northwest – ironically, India’s dry basket – is projected to get both hotter and drier, as per some climate models. India’s food security is then threatened. By the end of this decade (not very far away, is it?), parts of India’s coastline are expected to be underwater during some part of the year – even if we cut emissions (these are still rising). The climate change bug is amidst us, and yet we sit in the February-2020 of this pandemic and still think it is somebody else’s problem. For those who disagree, consider, I write this from another airport in March 2022, and masks and fossil-fuel-use is everywhere.

At the end of my book, Watershed, I describe a scenario that can come to pass in India in the next ten years, if we don’t build resilience. It involves a failed monsoon, dried up fields leading to waves of migration into our cities. Our sewage infrastructure is already creaky, and with this added load, this could so easily fail. For many years, pharmaceutical companies have lifted the pedal on the drive to find new antibiotics. The spectre of a drug-resistant strain of a water-borne bacteria rising in such a context is all too real. Shutdowns can’t stop sewage. And millions could perish.

We cannot prevent the climate change bug. It’s already here. We can soften its blow by cutting emissions. But now that its loose, we need to deal with it. Do we have a vaccine for the climate change bug? Are we working on a treatment? Remember, we needed both to weather the COVID-19 pandemic. A vaccine builds resilience, treatment helps the vulnerable cope. So, a climate change vaccine could be something that makes us climate resilient. Warming makes water volatile – so we need something to help us soothe the volatility – somewhere to store the water – like forests and lakes and tanks. Something to help weather the drought in dry areas – like drip irrigation or growing water-friendly crops in dry regions or treating and reusing sewage in cities. And yet, even with the climate change bug here to stay, we grow thirsty crops like paddy in dry lands and release largely-untreated sewage into rivers, and build over lakes. When the wave and the wall come, and they will, the blow will be brutal.