Crack the climate change code

Harvinder Khetal

Consider this week’s Chennai, wrecked by relentless rains, to be a trailer. A trailer to the disaster our world is hurtling headlong into, as warned by the ongoing UN climate COP21 (the 21st Conference of Parties) in Paris, if we do not pay heed. If we do not pay heed to climate change. To carbon footprints. To 2° Celsius. To clean coal. These phrases need to be understood and adopted by one and all. Though this time, the floods have not been caused by some climate change, if these controls are not clamped soon, by the turn of the century, nature could go catastrophic. 

It’s clear that coping with the climate change crisis calls for a commitment to cut pollution so that we do not cross the 2° Celsius Rubicon. What is this Rubicon? It is to do something that you cannot later change and will strongly influence future events. From an event in Roman history, when Julius Caesar led his soldiers back from France into northern Italy across the Rubicon river. This was an illegal act and showed that Caesar wanted to take power for himself. 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that a rise in the global temperature of more than 2°C would have serious consequences, such as an increase in the frequency of extreme climate events. If we continue without lifestyle changes, floods, storms, droughts and potable water shortage will all become more concentrated, more common and crop up in more places. Imagine many Chennais happening — more frequently, more intensely and at more places. Here a flood, there a drought and farther a storm. A complete catastrophe. 

It’s for this cause of avoiding disastrous consequences by the end of this century that Copenhagen in 2009, Cancun the next year and COP21 in Paris today, all have been crying for climate conservation. The world has already warmed about 1° Celsius. By this calculation, we will cross the 2° Celsius Rubicon much earlier than expected and the temperature rise by 2100 could be 3° to 4° C.

To prevent the blow of global warming by keeping the rise of average global temperature below 2° C, one has to deal with the clean coal quandary. Like the West used cheap coal to develop, today India, with the world’s fifth biggest coal deposits, is using coal to fuel growth, though at the cost of pollution. But, after 2017, we are committed to clean coal technology to bring down carbon dioxide emissions. Using green technology (technology whose use is intended to mitigate or reverse the effects of human activity on the environment) and clean coal, we will leave a smaller carbon footprint on the Earth for our children. 

A carbon footprint is the total greenhouse gases (GHGs) produced to support human activities, expressed in equivalent tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2). GHGs are emitted through transport, land clearance, production, food consumption, fuels, manufactured goods, materials, wood, roads, buildings, and services. Basically, everything. Use of fossil fuels such as hydrocarbons (coal, gas, oil), deforestation, and intensive grazing and farming produce GHGs, which accelerate global warming.

Otherwise, we may have a repeat of the story of Noah’s Ark as told by Moses in the biblical book Genesis (chapters 6-8). How divinity, seeing the degeneration of humanity, decides to destroy all living things, save the few pure ones, led by Noah. He is told to build an ark (a boat) in which he takes his family and two of every animal, within which they survive the worldwide flood.

Beware of global warming. For, hell hath no fury like nature scorned.

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