Need of the Hour: Climate Emergency

Need of the Hour: Climate Emergency

“About forty years ago, we would walk back home from school in summers and then we would also go out and play after school. We would sweat, get tanned in the sun, but as soon as we would sit under the shade of a tree, the breeze would cool us down immediately,” reminisced my mother. “Today, even the air stings! The sun now burns the skin, and air conditioners are the only rescue in this scorching heat,” she added, while conversing with her sister over a cup of tea one summer morning sitting in an air conditioned hall recently.

“Are we even in the Northeast? Guwahati has stopped feeling like a city of the Northeast. Temperatures keep rising, the air is more polluted and it seems to me like the entire city is perspiring all at once!” added her sister.

On hearing their conversation, I refreshed the weather application on my mobile phone to know the actual temperature and what it ‘felt like’ several times a day this month and realized that growing up in a house without an air conditioner, I did just fine, but today, five minutes out in the sun gives me a severe headache. Standing beside the outdoor unit of the same Air conditioner that cools my house from the inside actually makes the air around it much hotter. Now let’s multiply that over a million times and that is just one little portion of our contribution to global warming.

There is not one Guwahatian that would not agree with this. The fact that the city has never seen extreme temperatures like this and that it only keeps getting worse year after year is a major issue of concern.

As per reports, the state of Assam is likely to be hotter by another 2.2 degrees Celsius with extreme rainfall, droughts and floods to follow by the year 2050. About 3 million people are affected by floods every year only in Assam. Extreme rainfalls have been projected to rise by 38%. The state well known for its scenic tea estates are going to face a drop in tea yield by an estimated 40% and draughts will rise by 75%!

Climate change is occurring and there is no denying that, its irrefutable evidence can be seen through warning signs like drastic changes in rainfall distribution, the arctic meltdown of over billions of tonnes of ice sheets, to name a few, let aside the overall change in ecosystems across the globe.

A delay in declaration of Emergency is only making recovery more and more expensive for our future generations. Researchers have found that it is already too late to stabilize the amount of carbon-di-oxide that has already been released into our atmosphere. This has irreversible impacts which can be seen in the form of rising sea levels and various natural disasters too.

If we take a look at historical climate data, the situation has never been this worse in human history. All these natural disasters are just the beginning of nature’s wrath and fury. If we do not act immediately, Heaven alone knows what else nature has in store for us.

Farmers, who feed the nation, are among those worst affected due to floods and droughts. Low yield and loss of agricultural produce every year only make the food on our plates less affordable by some. We are currently facing severe food and water supply shortage not only in India but across all seven continents of the planet and this problem is only going to deteriorate further if no action is taken immediately.

We must define these problems, select right methods to solve them and by accuracy through testing, solutions must be applied wherever possible. Assessments have been made of both social and economic impacts of climate change, why then do we still shy away from declaring a climate emergency? Are we waiting for our rivers too to run dry or our lush green forests to turn into barren lands?

The Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region at the national level is making efforts to enhance climate resilience among rural communities in the region which will further contribute to Climate change adaptation by conserving public resources such as water, forests and agricultural patches of land. My question here is that is this enough to combat a danger this grave?

As per a NITI Aayog report published earlier this year, 21 cities are projected to completely run out of water by the year 2020. Nearly half the Indian population is at risk of facing acute water shortage in the near future. Over half a million people of the nation have already signed petitions demanding that the Indian government declare a Climate Emergency. Chennai this year has been in the global spotlight especially after the Hollywood actor Leonardo Di Caprio posted a picture on his Instagram account, highlighting the daily struggles of thousands for water where reservoirs dried up due to poor monsoons.

We Indians seem to be more worried about Britain’s BREXIT and how it will affect the Indian economy but we do not talk about the fact that Britain was one of the first nations to have declared a Climate Emergency and how India can learn from that. Countries like France, Canada and Ireland too have declared an Environmental Emergency and we must learn from them to place climate change at the centre of planning and policy decision making and set up an action plan.

The United Nations has come up with the Act Now Climate Campaign (The lazy person’s guide to saving the world) which calls for citizens from across the globe to reduce their daily carbon footprints by following simple steps such as taking showers of shorter duration, driving less, eating meat-free meals, recycling products, saving electricity, adapting to zero-waste fashion and carrying one’s own bag to the grocery store.

Nearly 935 jurisdictions across 18 different countries have declared a Climate Emergency so far by planning out ways to curb their share of carbon emission. If our government still continues to turn a deaf ear towards this issue, we as responsible citizens must start an extinction Rebellion, like the one established in UK in 2018. We must start a Civil Disobedience and non-violent resistance to protest against the biodiversity loss and do something to reduce the risk of a tormenting ecological collapse which is approaching us in our immediate future.

If we refuse and turn away now, we ourselves will be responsible for the destined climate catastrophe leading to the extinction of our own species.

Rifa Deka,

Guwahati.

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