While the business-as-usual brigade, led by respective presidents of the US remained in deep denial for three decades since the 1970s, events such as melting glaciers, coral bleaching and torm surges presented a virtual discotheque of flashing, warning lights to suggest that the earth’s climate was wobbling and was on the verge of going into a tailspin. There is scarcely anyone now, save for incorrigible flat-earthers, who seriously deny the deadly reality and of climate change. Yet, even as weather extremes become the order of the day, Indian planners are doing all they can to destroy the self-regulating mechanisms of the subcontinent — glaciers, crests, rivers, wetlands and coasts — that helped all life forms overcome the cyclic atmospheric changes that have taken place over millions of years.
The accelerated rate at which we are destroying natural ecosystems by turning them into cities, dams, mines, roads and commercial plantations is nothing short of suicidal. Such irrational actions on the part of powerful leaders, including Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh can be likened to a seriously ill patient (in this case India) ripping off vital life-support systems in an ICU. Lack of common sense on the part of Indian planners defies all logic.
The destruction of every ecosystem we sacrifice for short-term gains (the port at Dhamra, Orissa, the dam in the Lower Subansiri Valley in Arunachal Pradesh, the proposed Vedanta mines in Lanjigarh, Orissa, World Bank-financed coal mining in Hazaribagh) accelerates climate change and degrades the availability of fresh water and or wild foods upon which human beings will always depend.
If the leaders of the world were to magically wake from their stupor, they might realise that future generations will hold them responsible for the environmental crimes they commit today. But for the moment, like latter day Neros, they fiddle while the planet burns.
In his path-breaking book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond, a professor of geography, writes: “The history of the Arctic, including that of Greenland, is a history of people arriving, occupying large areas for many centuries, and then declining or disappearing or having to change their lifestyle over large areas (because of) climate change.” He goes on to draw a parallel between the collapse of past civilizations and their abuse of their life-support systems, suggesting darkly that humans today are poised to follow in the footsteps of the Easter Islanders, Maya, Aztecs and the Greenland Norse. But Indians might prefer to take their lessons from events closer to home.
Divine (as opposed to scientific) evidence of global warming presented itself dramatically when the Himalingam, a naturally-formed ice stalagmite in the Amarnath cave shrine melted this summer. TV channels and newspapers splashed the news across the nation on June 19 and showed priests screaming “Sacrilege, Sacrilege!” when a man-made ice lingam was erected in place of the natural (holy) one. But, of course, much more than a shrine was desecrated.
Located at a height of 3,888 metres, the Amarnath glacier, which feeds mineral-rich water to the cave holding the stalagmite worshipped by many Hindus, has been vanishing at a rate of more than 15 metres per year. Ice caps at the North and South Poles, and the snows covering the slopes of Mount Kilamanjaro in Africa, the Andes in South America, and the Alps of Europe are suffering the same fate. Glaciers are in sharp retreat everywhere. I recently reviewed two books on global warming for the Times of India. In The Weather Makers, Tim Flannery calls climate change the ‘Last Act of God’: “Sometime this century, the day will arrive when the human influence on the climate will overwhelm all natural factors. Then the insurance industry and the courts will no longer be able to talk of Acts of God.”
The second book, The Revenge of Gaia, was written by James Lovelock. Three decades ago, Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis made me revere the earth even more than I thought possible. With sermonic fatalism he writes: “We are like the smoker who enjoys a cigarette and imagines giving up smoking when the harm becomes tangible. Most of all we hope for a good life in the immediate future and would rather put aside unpleasant thoughts of doom to come.” Resigned to the fate of the Earth he goes on to add morosely that a proper gift for our children might be: “… a guidebook for survivors to help them rebuild civilization without repeating too many of our mistakes.” I recall writing with anger but with optimism in the 70s of how the Earth would somehow manage to contain its errant wards by sending hard messages to bring them in line. But today, like Lovelock and Flannery, I must confess my optimism has vanished. Homosapiens is not a learning animal.
Flannery says it all when he points an accusing finger at policy-makers: “The Australian government’s chief economic adviser on climate change, Dr. Brian Fisher, told a London conference that it would be ‘more efficient’ to evacuate small Pacific Island states than to require Australian industries to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide.” Evidence of Gaia’s revenge stares us in the face. Not in some distant rain forest, but in urban centres of the world.
The Mithi River disaster in Mumbai and the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina were only tiny warnings. If humans refuse to be shaken from their stupor, if they allow politicians to continue to determine their fate, the human race itself will be at risk. The tragedy is that the review I wrote for the Times of India and this article will be read by more people in India than the dire advice that climate change is upon us that circulates endlessly in in the esoteric world of deep science. I wager our PM will have read neither the scientific papers, nor the articles in the popular press.
