Talking Shop: A funny, cuddly summer

“Climate change is real. It is

the most urgent threat facing

our entire species. We need

to work collectively, together

and stop procrastinating.”

—Leonardo Di Caprio

Actor Leonardo Di Caprio grew up in Los Angeles and is a strident celebrity voice on Climate Change, using award ceremonies to share his vision on the burning issue. Di Caprio’s Oscar-winning speech for ‘The Revenant’ was broadcast to almost 35 million viewers and resulted in the largest increase in public engagement with Climate Change, ever.

I grew up in Delhi. Summers were spent waiting for the monsoons and then all naalis (ditches) would be bloated with water and then came boat-time. Homework would be damned and notebook sheets serenely floated away where they truly belonged, in the ditch, till they capsized. And the next homework page became my newest yacht, for homework anyway looked good there, floating away into obscurity. Then would come September and biting cold. As did moongfali (groundnuts). Life was fun. All of a sudden and unfortunately, I was all grown up. I even had a stupid moustache—the only saving grace being that the women of yore liked it, and I had a ball, or two, and more.

In their own way, summers were beautiful, but they are now gone, as are winters and spring and autumn and the fall. We are caught in a topsy-turvy change in clima(c)tic conditions that defy basic natural environmental logic. The upheaval is being felt hard—this May was the coolest in North India in 36 years. That’s nice for our electricity bill payments, but not so much for the Next Generation. We are staring at some very tough times, but no one is frowning, and that’s why Di Caprio and other ‘activists’ are smarting and screaming foul.

Havoc, havoc everywhere

Over the last few years, the world has faced the wrath and fury of Mother Nature, battling unforeseen floods, unseasonal bouts of rain and snow, hot spells followed by bone-chilling cold. What’s gone askance? These aberrations are only slated to increase with time as we continue to tear apart the very fabric on which our world’s weather systems have been dependent on for centuries. A picture speaks a 1,000 words, it is said, and we have all been watching numbing images and videos of nature’s ferocity ravaging Mother Earth. But words can do a lot of talking as well. Let’s look at headlines over the last two years from global publications to give us all a whiff, a grim reminder of all that is going wrong. And now we have excerpts from Google...

✼ 44 dead as flash floods hit New York area in ‘historic’ weather event

✼ Searches, sorrow in wake of hurricane Ida’s destructive, deadly floods in the US

✼ We left it in God’s hands, say people as floods wreck Spanish seaside town Alcanar

✼ Joe Biden calls emergency in New York over heavy rain and floods

✼ Village in Bihar’s Vaishali district inundated amid massive floods

✼ Animals flee from floods in Kaziranga National Park, get hit by vehicles

✼ Hyderabad cloudburst leaves parts of the city flooded

✼ Relief material affected due to floods in Uttar Pradesh

✼ Germany's floods were up to 9 times more likely because of Climate Change

✼ Freak rainstorm in Iceland where it has only snowed in recorded history

✼ Forest fires ravage Canada amid extreme and unprecedented heat wave

✼ Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh see deadly landslides after cloudbursts

✼ Joshimath sees fissures in roads, entire villages collapse

✼ Nainital and other Uttarakhand towns are sinking, warn experts

Whew...

What about our farmers?

Our farmers are not in a good place. While we city-dwellers enjoy this welcome respite from a scorching summer, those that toil the soil to keep us fed are in trouble, very big trouble. Unseasonal rains have already caused losses of over Rs 15,000 crore in ruined crops and destroyed farmlands. Hailstorms damaged everything, said a farmer from Haryana, crying that his grain has become black and all dried up. “My harvest would have been over 20 quintals (each quintal is 100 kg), but now it is barely 5-6 quintals. How do I feed my family for the next year,” he beseeched. His wife added that they could not even recover tractor and labour expenses with this quality and quantity of produce. At last count, our gentle farmer and his wife are now procuring wheat from the market to feed the family and prepare for the next crop. What a shame.

Northwest India, Central India and the Southern Peninsula received higher-than-normal rainfall from April 27 to May 3 this year. In the first three days of May, these regions received 18 per cent, 268 per cent and 88 per cent higher-than-normal rainfall, respectively. As a whole, the country received 28 per cent higher-than-normal rainfall during this period, according to the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD). The unseasonal rains resulted in the second coldest May Day for Delhi in 13 years—but the crops that are yet to be harvested, and the plants which are currently being grown are already severely depleted.

As a city-guy (or gal), we should not be too happy about the nice weather, for our grocery bills shall soar, not at the behest of the hapless farmer. The middleman, or the new ‘seths’ will reap the benefits and savour the succour accorded by a changing Mother Nature. We thought mothers were benevolent—they are, but do not rub them the wrong way or you face a whiplash.

A pretty scary saga

It is worrisome indeed, this Climate Change story that is well in the making but not much is being done to mitigate it, perhaps because no one foresaw or recognized the speed and ferocity of changing weather patterns. Experts warn us that this is just the beginning and we can expect climatic belligerences to become more regular. Highway systems, rail networks, dams and high-rise buildings, metro and rapid transports systems have increased urbanization and triggered deforestation and a systematic removal of supporting natural phenomena. This removal is driving disruptive Climate Change—forest fires, freak heat and cold waves, flooding in towns and rail systems. Jai ho.

I am Indian, a proud one at that, but I yet unabashedly say that in a country of my size, scale of infrastructure development and sheer natural diversity, natural calamities and seasonal disasters will happen. Quite simply, there are no clear answers, only one—Climate Change brutally underscores the need for steelier resolve and introduction of globally-accepted norms to bring about change while we still can. Global powers and superpowers have been dilly-dallying around this very real and burning issue, putting national and regional interests first, often forcing smaller nations to follow their diktat while their own industrial and mining machineries keep spewing dangerous and lethal gases into the Earth’s atmosphere.

To end this tirade, let’s get to what Terry Swearingen said: “We are living on this planet as if we have another one to go to.” Sure, we are having our cake and eating it too. It is almost as if we have a couple in the refrigerator for later. Let’s grow up, moustache or no moustache.

The writer is a veteran journalist and communications specialist. He can be reached on narayanrajeev2006@gmail.com. Views expressed are personal