State of the Climate: Is it already too late, wonder policymakers

State of the Climate: Is it already too late, wonder policymakers

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) noted that four key Climate Change indicators – greenhouse gas concentrations, rise in global mean sea level, ocean heat, and ocean acidification – had hit a record high last year. In the last 20 years, nearly 100 crore Indians were touched by natural disasters, about 83,000 lives snuffed out, and losses stood at Rs 13 lakh crore.

FPJ EditorialUpdated: Saturday, May 21, 2022, 03:59 AM IST
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Representational Imge/Pixabay

“We are the first generation to feel the effect of Climate Change and the last generation who can do something about it.” To these words of Barack Obama, former US President, another phrase can be added: We are the generation that’s finally counting the costs of Climate Change but doing little about it. This is true of all nations and their policymakers but especially in the developed world. In its recent ‘State of the Climate’ report, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) noted that four key Climate Change indicators – greenhouse gas concentrations, rise in global mean sea level, ocean heat, and ocean acidification – had hit a record high last year. And that the damage due to extreme weather events across the world could be in excess of $100 billion. Other reports had put the loss at $170 billion for last year alone.

The articulation of loss in money terms rocked a number of people, especially in the industrialised world and corporatised corridors. This WMO report is not the first time that damage and loss due to Climate Change events have been explained in monetary terms – reports in the last few years have focused on this aspect – but as the figures cross notionally acceptable thresholds, people in power have begun to take note. India ranks third behind the US and China in the number of natural disasters it has recorded in the last century or so, many in recent decades traced to Climate Change impact. In the last 20 years, nearly 100 crore Indians were touched by natural disasters, about 83,000 lives snuffed out, and losses stood at Rs 13 lakh crore, according to a State Bank of India note last year.

If these are wake-up calls, then it is fair to argue that it’s too late already. Will this realisation lead to a transformational shift in the way they do business, is the fundamental question. There’s little to be optimistic about. For at least four decades now, the world’s movers and shakers have been consistently warned of the Climate Change phenomenon leading to enormous damages and disruptions in life in countries across the world. The scientists, environmentalists, activists, and locals around the world who cautioned on this issue back in the 1980-90s were summarily dismissed, mocked, or shown the full force of the law in their countries. Climate Change, the mainstream or unscientific opinion argued, was a rich person’s leisure pursuit or a figment of imagination, or a grand conspiracy to destabilise the world’s economy. Environmental damage – emissions and global warming – was an inevitable by-product of economic growth measured in profits and GDP of nations, we were told.

Only when the damage was given a price tag did the world want to do something about Climate Change. In itself, this is a self-serving and myopic approach. The fact that damage had to be quantified in monetary terms which the ‘developed’ world understands is itself questioned by ecological warriors and scientists around the world. There’s another troubling point too. The commercial articulation of climate events does not show us the nuance or lopsidedness of their impact. The global North or the developed economies contributed a larger share of emissions and pollutants than the global South or developing economies which led the world to the climate crisis. Yet, the harshest impact of climate events has been on the poorer global South or the poorer communities in developed countries. Assigning one figure to the worldwide damage, therefore, flattens it out unfairly for vast millions of people in the developing world or poorer nations.

Indeed, there was the Montreal Protocol and Kyoto Protocol to cap greenhouse gas emissions and rein in the fossil fuel industry, but the world’s richest refused to ratify it or stick to their commitments. As global greenhouse gas emissions rose, as heat wave and flash flood episodes increased, as the extreme weather events became part of the new normal in the last few years, the reality of shifting weather patterns due to Climate Change sank in. The US suffered hurricanes and floods that its cities have not been able to recover from, floodwaters inundated cities in Europe last year, and forest fires and heatwaves walloped places and people across the world, destroying crops and damaging food security. Climate events not only destroyed public and private property around the world and displaced millions, but also put a question mark on the feasibility of the current economic model that puts untold stresses on the natural environment.

The wake-up call, though late, should have ideally led to a pause in the uncontrolled tearing down of natural ecological systems that sustain life and a tightening of legal protection for natural areas in every country along with structured plans to bring down emissions and carbon use. Instead, from Brazil to India and Australia, natural areas are under greater threat than ever before by the corporate elite that pretends to be shocked by figures such as $100 or $170 billion worth of damage and loss. This should have been the pivot for the world’s rich nations, large industry, and influential policymakers to review their unsustainable economic model – where environmental costs are undercounted and return as damages – and demonstrate the courage to radically transform it into a more sustainable one. But it’s too much to ask of those who have been wedded to profits. Who’ll remind them of the old adage that we cannot eat money?

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