World’s response to warming is reckless

Fireworks at America’s 250th birthday bash, claimed to be the ‘best firework show ever!’ by President Donald Trump, is the new low in sending poisonous gases into the atmosphere. Over 40 minutes, 851,000 individual shells were fired. It is a Guinness World Record. The fumes erupted in the atmosphere and turned the humid sky into an extravagant explosion of red, white and blue. Critics reminded everyone that several thousand explosions are p erhaps no t Mo ther Nature’s preferred birthday present.

The extravaganza took place when large parts of America and Europe were reeling under severe heat waves. Several thousand extra human deaths are attributable to soaring temperatures in both continents. Greece, Spain, and Portugal have been engulfed in massive wildfires lasting for weeks. Fire was also reported from Greece’s recycling plant, and the government advised residents to remain indoors and close windows to block the entry of toxic smoke from the burning plant. Hundreds of water-dropping planes, thousands of firefighters, vehicles and aircrafts have been pressed into service in each country. 12,000 ha of forests in Portugal, 2,200 ha in Spain and 10,000 ha in Greece burned in four days’ time.

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The peak summer season in both the continents are July and August. More heatwaves and wildfires are in the pipeline. Wildfires are a double whammy. While carbon sequestration potential of the forests is lowered, additional poisonous greenhouse gases are emitted in the atmosphere due to the blaze and smoke. The world’s lungs – Amazon, Congo and Boreal forests – are degrading due to anthropogenic pressure and fire and researchers have concluded that some patches of these forests are becoming net carbon emitters. As temperatures soar, wildfires are more difficult to control and are more destructive. The Asian continent is also not spared.

A fatal typhoon Maysak has flooded the reservoir and busted the wall of a dam in Nanning in China sending the torrent of water downstream. It swelled the river, killing dozens of people and forcing officials to evacuate nearly a lakh of people from the command area of the river. After a lull in June, widespread rains beginning July in the Indian sub-continent have caused flooding and landslides in Himalayan states, Western Ghats, northeast, and many places in the central Indian landscape. Barely five km from Wayanad’s 2024 Mundakkai- Chooralmala landslide that had buried more than 300 people, it rained incessantly and caused a repeat of the tragedy by bringing down massive torrents of mud and debris thundering downhill towards the Meenakshi river sweeping away people, vehicles and machines in its path.

When the tragedy occurred this time, a twin tunnel project cutting through the Vellarimala mountain range to connect Kozhikode and Wayanad districts, was under execution by the Konkan Railway Corporation. This project was in the pipeline when the 2024 tragedy had struck, and experts had advised against implementing it as the region is vulnerable to landslides. Yet, the State went with it and even the Supreme Court granted a go-ahead recently. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in its update on El Nino, warned that the climate phenomenon is going to be active from July to September in many parts of the globe.

It is likely to suppress rains and aggravate heat wave conditions, droughts and other extreme weather events. The Indian sub-continent has already experienced more than 40 per cent rainfall deficit in June. The rainfall picked up in July and IMD’s forecast indicates that it is going to be more in August and September. Southwest monsoon’s deficit is projected to be only 10 per cent, and will cover up 40 per cent of the June deficit. We are likely to have intense rains in August and September that would further cause landslides and flooding in some regions.

July rains have already shown the trailer; we saw tragedies in Kerala, J&K, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh. Among all the El Nino years in the past, a monsoon deficit has been observed in only 60 per cent of the cases. The effect of El Nino is neutralized by a positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD). Positive IOD is a climate phenomenon where sea surface temperatures are warmer than normal in the western Indian Ocean (near the African continent) and cooler than normal in the eastern region like Indonesia. The global wind pattern is changing bringing heavy rainfalls to East Africa and India and suppressing it in

Indonesia and Australia. The unpredictable monsoon has caused anxiety among Indian farmers. Sowing is delayed, which delays the maturity of the crop. Despite repeated advisories from the Union Agriculture Ministry to go for dry crops like bajra, ragi etc., farmers still opt for paddy using canal water and bore-wells. The canal water level depletes, and as more bore-wells pump ground water, the underground aquifers get further discharge d. Do we have no responsibility to our future generations? Between paddy harvest and preparing fields for wheat sowing, Punjab and Haryana farmers burn stubble for paucity of time, emitting poisonous gases in the atmosphere.

The delayed planting of paddy will have additional pressure on pollution. The annual conferences of parties under the auspices of the United Nations have failed to cut the use of fossil fuels for growth and development. There is no binding on the use of coal, oil and gas, and this way enormous greenhouse gases get pumped into the atmosphere. It is 42 Gigatons of CO2equivalent annually. In a sign of intense competition among oil producers, Saudi Arabia has recently slashed crude prices by $11 a barrel for August.

Crude prices have already fallen to pre-28th February level, as Iranian pressure on ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz is reduced. In case Iran weaponizes this choke point again, Israel has proposed to the US to lay a 700-km long oil pipeline along the land route from Saudi Arabia to the Israeli Red Sea city of Eilat, connect it to the existing pipeline from there to the southern Mediterranean port city of Ashkelou, from where oil tankers will transport oil to European countries.

Trump calls climate change a hoax and eases the restrictions imposed by his predecessors, to drill and pump out more oil. The fireworks on America’s birthday bash are another example. Clearly, oil-producing countries want to produce more and make it available for users at cheap prices. This leads to more consumption. The transition to renewable energy gets slowed down and lives and livelihoods will continue to be under peril. When will world leaders take action to cut emissions and prevent environmentally unsustainable projects? If they are only concerned about holding on to power, the world will see Doomsday sooner rather than later.

(The writer is the retired Head of Forest Force, Karnataka.)