Edge of Tomorrow
Climate Change is a word that gets thrown around easily today to the point that I’ve even come across it in my Family Whatsapp Group chats, which I consider to be a cesspool of casteism, useless quotes, and long-ass messages who only oldies have the time to read and comment about. These groups don’t really serve any purpose other than promoting forwards and questionable content; but when these groups start talking about climate change, you know that shit has hit the fan, and you are actually doomed. No seriously, we all are doomed.
Well, what piqued the interest of these individuals was a piece written in Indian Express, which now resorted to what all news organizations do to get clicks and views, Sensationalism, and Fear-Mongering, because how else will people understand the gravity of the situation unless they fear for their life? That’s where we are at as a species.
Now, this Chahal dude has done some commendable work and he is fairly right in making this statement. Mumbai, my hometown, is surrounded by water on 3 sides, making the city extremely vulnerable to nominal rises in sea levels, which over the years have compounded and become a massive monster that is getting ready to attack. But that monster was initially not at our doorstep so it didn’t matter.
Arey glacier melt ho raha hai!
Kya Gangotri ka glacier??
Nai bhai Arctic mai jo barf hai wo pighal rahi hai.
Accha, fir kya tension, apneko kya farak padega
But now, the risk is near and seems more threatening than it was estimated to be. Peculiarly, this didn’t stir any emotions regarding, can we stop this? why is this happening? Rather the critique of this piece was, “Take your kids to South Bombay and show what it is like before it floods, ROFL, LMAO, LOL hahaha.” This issue seems to be a hand me down from generation to generation where no concern was displayed as to how it would be combated by people who had nothing to do with it in the first place.
I truly am a believer of the fact that mine, or probably the next generation will be the last one to know Earth as it is today, inhabitable. When you see Greta Thunberg shout and yell why it's important but only to get ridiculed by so-called adults, who have it all figured out I guess, that she should return to school; shows how out of touch everyone seems to be. I have grown up seeing how the situation has gone from bad to worse, in spite of steady and progressive “steps” to control the rising temperatures.
When war reaches your homeland is when you know that something is wrong, similarly, most of the countries rather than being proactive about this have been reactive about it, which puts almost everyone at a disadvantage. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, that’s when the US woke up. Similarly when cyclones starting hitting Mumbai more frequently, irregular patterns in rainfall were more evident is when, most of the people realized that, yes, it’s a problem.
Well, it’s not a problem of now, the great Paris agreement of 2016 aims to hold and control climate change by slapping countries an upper cap on the number of carbon emissions permissible. Now it’s not completely crappy. It takes into different factors and also population and capability of a particular nation of being able to commit to this Agreement, but it is the UN, a shadow of League of Nations was post First World War, and this agreement is hardly enforced by them and most of the nations, including the developed or the First World Countries, have been caught not matching the demands and expectations which they have promised. The fact that Donald Trump, ex-President of the USA had temporarily pulled out of this agreement, speaks volumes about how seriously Climate Change is taken. (Admittedly, they didn’t want to help the poor nations with money)
If you aren’t aware of the 2016 Paris Agreement, I’ll summarize it in brief. It is a pact made by countries around the globe and aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change, in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty. To put it in simple terms, every nation has a cap on the number of carbon emissions they would restrict themselves to by focusing more on alternative energy resources.
Let’s say Shantanuland is a party in the agreement, so, as the President of the best country in the world, I would have to:
- First, let's classify my land, as a developing or developed party. Because the rules are different for both of these categories, which makes sense.
- After the classification, let’s say it's a developing nation, then I would be eligible to help from the UN and other developing countries. Sweet!
- In addition to monetary grants, I am also exposed to cutting edge technology being used in said developed countries so that I can control carbon emissions
- Further, I just have to report my statistics biennially and have to be ‘transparent’.
After going through the Paris Agreement, it looks like the only quantitive measure laid out is:
Holding the increase global average temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius and limiting temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The rest of the agreement seems to be overcomplicated articles that basically says that
Please co-operate with everyone and do what you can
Applying some common sense and logic, the inference is evident, Developed nations are better placed, because why? They are the reason why we are in this situation in the first place. The amount of damage done through the Two World Wars and the preceding Industrial Revolution is not directly faced by these countries, rather, poor countries like Bangladesh which is placed in the delta region of the Great Ganga, are at immediate risk of being submerged.
Having made this inference, shouldn’t developed countries be the ones who hold to their promises and be at the forefront of this?
Most of the rich, or the politically correct term, first world countries seem to be doing extremely worse than what is expected from them and virtually no country seems to be following the promises, which they themselves submitted!
Due to the lack of any powerful enforcing organization, though this agreement is a step in the right direction, is impotent. If countries that are capable of reducing their carbon emissions and helping other small or third world countries are the ones lagging behind, it doesn’t show any promise or hope that this agreement would help that much, and the damage done is irreversible now.
If you are reading this paragraph, I commend you because most of the article was complex and unintelligible words that made no real sense in our day-to-day life, but the question still comes up. Can we affect any change or is it too late? Sure, probably we could follow the ‘Charity begins at Home’ model and hope that everyone picks up on that, but in a more general sense, it is going to be a prolonged and painful process when we finally realize we have made a planet which gave birth to life, completely uninhabitable.
