Mood:
d'ohNow Playing: INDIA, CHINA RESPONSIBLE FOR UNUSUAL SUMMER HEAT
Topic: GLOBAL WARMING
So everyone in India today is talking about global warming. Every year the weather has been becoming more and more extreme, be it summer heat or flooding during monsoon or even winter cold and snow. My cousin recently wrote to me from the US about how the snow in the just passed winter was a record high.
My friends in Kerala call up to say that tropical regions are becoming uninhabitable because of intense heat. People have even died this summer due to sun-burn in Kerala though Indians are amongst the most sturdy people in the world.
For the first time, Mumbai saw torrential rains two years ago that sunk the city. Now has it ever occurred to you that the climatic changes are taking place because of the progress of man. It is because of science and technology, the lifestyle changes which include driving cars, owning fridges, TVs, homes, shopping at malls, etc. First let me give you a backgrounder before pointing out who is responsible.
Mark Tully's first book on India is now becoming prophetic. In his book 'No full stops in India' Tully had explained that the western concepts can never be extended to countries like India when gauging the national progress and
development. If every Indian family owns a car, a television, a
refrigerator, etc. will the planet have enough resources left? Think about it. We are a billion people.
In a seminar on real estate in Mumbai last year an official from Wipro had raised the same point about sustainable growth, what with so many malls, expressways, new cars, all coming up across the country. If 250-million people or 25-crore families own cars will there be any fuel left on this
planet, and will we have enough roads to ply them on? What will be the consequences of emissions from such large number of vehicles on climate change. We already know.
The latest report from the UN on climate change brings forth this long-held conventional thinking that Gandhi's philosophy of there-is-enough-for-everyone's-need-but-not-for-everyone -greed and Hinduism holds true. Global warming has been brought about by the second global phase of high economic growth in India and China. Not that the developed countries
are paragons of virtue. Their development had started the first phase of global warming, which according to foreign media made the situation ''beyond the tipping point''.
Even in remote villages of India global warming has led to devastating consequences.
Wells which had perennially borne water for centuries ran dry. And the same wells have filled up to the brim during the recent years' heavy rains which shook the foundation of the surrounding houses. Both have been considered as bad omen by villagers. Indian farmers have instinctive knowledge of the weather and prospects of harvesting, but their instincts don't prove right anymore as the climate has changed beyond repair.
The latest UN report is as alarming as it gets. Global food grain production is estimated to slump by over 30 per cent. There were reports of how the developed countries will spend billions of dollars to combat the adverse
effects of global warming. But the developing nations will bear the cross as they don't have the resources or the technology to check and deal with global warming.
The UN has estimated that over 132-million people will starve to death as prices of food grain and pulses would skyrocket. And if the response of the governments to deal with disasters in India is anything to go by, one can
rest assured that millions who die will have no recourse to any state
assistance to deal with massive and unprecedented famine. The moral of the story is that development and progress of countries as huge as India and
China have to be sustainable.
Even today few people outside the ambit of environmental activism understand the gravity of global warming and polar ice melting. It is not just about sea levels increasing and submerging huge tracts of land but also about
agriculture failing, slump in marine production, drought and famine,
diseases, misery and death for most of mankind.
There are even reports that only 500-million people will survive the
devastation wrought by global warming. It does not take much to guess which countries will finally survive.
But industrialisation of various countries has been taking place for over a century, but why this sudden markedly change in the climate? There is an underlying reason for which China and India are wholly responsible.
When the western world or even Japan and Singapore went in for massive industrialisation and development projects like buildings, ports, roads and malls; and had also bought cars and refrigerators for every family it did not make as much an impact on the environment. Why? Even when a country as large as the US developed to become a role-model for the rest of the world, it did not make as huge an impact on the environment as India and China are doing now.
The answer lies in the population of these two countries. A lot of people say that every country goes through the same process, almost to the detail, like the painful inflation and interest rate hikes.
Why we Indians should consider ourselves responsible for this lethal situation is that we had an opportunity to build India into a developed country just as the US, without causing so much damage to the environment. Our development process has not even started today, with almost all the parameters of a developed nation status yet to be fulfilled. But already our progress is creating an environmental havoc. If we had after gaining Indepedence in 1947 immediately got into liberalising our economy as we are doing today our country would have developed like Singapore. Singapore got Independence from British rule as late as 1965 yet look at where it has reached and where are we today? Singapore is a role-model for even other developed countries when it comes infrastructure and law and order.
Our population was about 25-crore at the time of Independence. We, out of our immaturity and lack of sophistication, got sold to Nehruvian socialism. Don't blame Pandit Nehru for the mess. If we had voted against socialism, knowing as all intelligent people do that socialism is not the way to develop a nation into modernity,
We could become a developed nation like any G7 country today without costing this planet its life. Just as Mark Tully said in his book. With a 25-crore population it is possible to progress into a developed country without any pain that we are going through everyday. Look at the minorityism and the reservation policy of this government and people tell me they are dreaded.
But more than even that, is the fact that the intelligent people who are in terrible minority in this country feel our policies are laughably naïve, crude and immature. Reservation policy and minorityism are not our only failings. Democracy is such a beautiful system of governance but we simply don't have the maturity and sophistication for it. And now the whole world is paying for it. Last year when crude prices went up to $80 per barrel president Bush blamed India and China for it. Very soon the rest of the world will blame us for global warming and all its disastrous effects. And they won't be far wrong.
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What does all this mean
# All over the world agriculture harvest will slump by nearly 10 per cent by
2020, and in all probability up to 30 per cent by 2050
# Crop yields to drop, and consequently prices of foodgrain, pulses and
seafood are expected to surge beyond common man's reach
# Himalayan glaciers to melt threatening 700-million people. If one goes by
the current rate of melting the glaciers will disappear by 2035
# The present trend of decline in grain harvests, chronic flooding, heat
waves and droughts to become worse
# A 2-degree Celcius rise in temperature will plunge rice harvest in China
by 30 per cent
# Sea water temperature rise to affect marine production which is yet to be
estimated.
# Global wheat, corn and barley production to be down by 40-million tones
# More than 200-million people to be displaced because of rising sea-level
and submersion
# Mediterranean region to become arid and to lose capacity to yield any
farming produce
# Destruction to be worst seen in sub-Saharan and Asian regions
Posted by Anil Nair
at 9:34 PM
Updated: Saturday, 7 April 2007 9:36 PM
