For someone with a congeni-tal aversion to science since schooldays, I have always preferred the escapist and doubtless, simplistic, definitions of Murphy’s law: ‘If it wriggles, it is biology, if it stinks it is chemisty and if it does not work, it is physics’. And then laughed them off. No longer; rather, science is having the last laugh with climate change and global warming forcing self to either brush up on all those pungent gases and substances or just perish. Yes, we take a break from the ramblings over the political climate that normally dogs these columns and get to discuss the real one … before I forget all the borrowed wisdom of the last few days.
And the weather outlook is truly gloomy, for the world as a whole and Asia in particular. A report by the UN’s Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change released last week is now generating a lot of heat over global warming. According to the report, food and water shortages are likely to increase in Asia … rising temperatures and extreme weather patterns are already taking their toll on crop yields…’. And India, Pakistan and Bangladesh top nature’s hit list, or is it heat-list?
Though sceptics within the scientific community have always doubted the doomsday prophets, the latter seem to be clearly winning now. Global warming wrought by greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, and the consequent adverse impact on climate is now a settled reality. ‘Warming of the climate system is unequivocal’, says the report. Again, optimists amidst the doomsayers believed that the threat was at least a few generations away. They, along with the rest of the world, are now staring into the barrel of nature’s gun this very morning. Hurricane Katrina and the Asian Tsunami, apart from a host of recent natural disasters like floods, droughts and earthquakes are only a few samples. Quoting scientists, Time says, ‘…atmospheric levels of CO2 in 2005 were higher than at any time in the past 650,000 years …of the 12 warmest years on record, 11 occurred between 1995 and 2006’. 2007, by current signs, may well turn out to be the ominous 13th!
The ensuing catostrophe has as much to do with nature as with human nature. Nature seems not to have taken kindly to mankind’s meddling with it and is reciprocating in kind! Till the 18th century, the planet was fairly green. The industrial activity since then has pumped huge quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere, depleteting the protective ozone and exposing the earth to the relentless solar heat and radiation. The resultant rise in temperature, besides affecting wind and weather patterns, is also melting the glaciers, causing alarming increase in sea levels. India’s long coastal perimeter is a blanket invitation to the oceans. Indeed, instead of us going to the beaches, the sea may visit us often. What a sea change!
The primary sinners are the big businesses and Governments of the developed nations whose spectacular growth over the last three centuries has largely been achieved at the expense of the environment. Having fouled up the world and filled their coffers, these countries now want to breathe easy. They are now pressuring the develolping nations, who too are treading the same dirty trail as they, to stop polluting. The likes of India and China, for whom fossil fuels like coal offers the best bet for double digit growth are talking of fair play –ie their own right to pollute, time and tide having turned in their favour. Some cold comfort – warm comfort, rather – there, in paying back with the same soiled note!
The irreversibility of the warming process is a chilling truth. Media reports quoting scientists say that the CO2 that is already in the air would keep the temperatures rising for centuries on, even if the entire world were to stop polluting from today. While controlling emissions is still a priority, the stress of late has shifted to ‘Adaptation’, in the spirit of enduring what one cannot cure. Several countries are gearing up in tune with their threat perceptions. The Netherlands, for instance, which is already below sea level, is hiking up its famous dykes. Iceland is a pioneer in capturing the CO2 in the air and burying it in the depths of the earth –a process called sequestration. The US has plumped for ethanol from corn, though there are dire warnings on the wisdom of converting food into fuel. Green technology and trading in carbon credits are big business today with the greenback flowing into them in billions.
While the world over, climate concerns are major political issues, politics in India remains largely immune to it. No party, mainstream or local, seems to entertain an awareness or view, let alone have a policy on it or indulge in scholarly debates as elsewhere. Environment is still confined to the bureaucratic Blocks in the Capital or the seminar halls of the academia. Instead, what we have is the offending noise pollution emanating from Parliament to political platforms. Probably, the matter would attract the attention of our resourceful politicos if there is some commission to be made out of emissions, we do not know. But as fate would have it, neighbouring Bangladesh, the country facing the biggest risk, has beat us blue in this sphere too. It is literally shoring itself up and quite admirably at that. Why not we turn green too at least out of envy?
I vaguely remember my science teacher telling the class, on one of those rare occasions I was awake, that we take in O2 and emit CO2 which means we all pollute with every breath. Now I would not advise anyone to stop breathing, but there are other ‘less risky’ ways of eliminating our carbon footprints. This space is too small to lay out a green field project, but I would direct you to the internet or your kid’s science text book for some basic tips. But as things stand, the next time a science buff asks me what is it that wriggles, stinks and is in constant disrepair, I would now say with a Eureka, ‘ Our Earth’. Poor Earth really!
But let’s try and change that!
e-mail the writer at [email protected]