Act before its too late

In a resource based economy, drastic change with respect to long term sustainability is absolutely essential. With climate showing the highest rate of instability, addressing some of the major issues plaguing our society is of prime importance today.However, providing a tangible solution that requires both sincerity and commitment has often remained an intellectual concept. At the fundamental level, an intelligent approach towards survival — one that causes minimal damage to surroundings — seems to be the need of the hour.Environmentally conscious citizens have often raised concerns over the impending global crisis in terms of depleting resources, ever growing demands and flucutating weather conditions.Praful Bidwai’s latest work 'The Politics of Climate Change and the Global Crisis' too accentuates on the international negotiations highlighting climate change and the impact of politics on the underprivileged sections of the society.The book was launched prior to the UN Climate Change conference in Durban at Crossword Book Store recently.The launch was followed by a discussion with B K Chandrasekhar, Chairman of the Karnataka Legislative Council, Sanjay Biswa, Professor Emeritus at the IISC and the popular environmental journalist Nagesh Hegde.Global warming is indeed one of the most litigious subjects in science today. Needless to say, rising green house gas emissions can be attributed to catastrophic weather changes. Melting ice caps, rising sea levels, rainfall pattern changes and a complete meltdown of fragile climate balances are a sound indication of planet earth warming up. And to our dismay, we have observed several record breakers for climate changes over the past couple of years.The author along with other panelists discussed in length about the perils of cataclysmic climate changes and how it matters to India as well as our ambitious plan of raising nuclear power capacity in the next twenty years. Focusing on the politics of international climate negotiations, and emerging economies that can potentially abet or obstruct the fight against change; the book is a valuable guide to understanding further the threats associated with weather and politics.Politics surrounding climate change, no doubt, increases inequity and exacerbates the global developmental crisis.According to Bidwai, the tipping points identified today can eventually lead to fatal changes including volatility in the Indian monsoon. And once the climate system’s behaviour changes qualitatively, curative action may become futile.Apart from accentuating on the urgency for a massive change, the book also states that the global conferences held in the past including Copenhagen climate conference and the Cancun summit were both colossal failures.Needless to say, a comprehensive adaptation programme is vital in India in order to cope with unprecedented climate threats.Some of the major issues that require immediate attention include flood control, drought proofing, health improvement and prevention of diseases, climate monitoring, early warning systems, disaster management, evacuation plans and strategies for risk management and livelihood preservation.Moreover, the underprivileged sections of the society are victims of a selfish paradigm and often subjected to severe neglect. According to the author, the Indian government is not only complacent in overlooking adaptation, it is downright ingenuous.In fact, most of these far-fromeffective programmes have nothing to do with adaptation conceptually or technologically. This redefines degrees of societal vulnerability and acts as the ultimate form of betrayal to India’s deprived citizens who stand to suffer the most from climate crisis.Mitigation and adaptation in the nuclear sector is of primary importance.With stations being set up on seismically active zones, the future of this nation looks bleak and weary. Billed as the world’s biggest nuclear power station, the Jaitapur project too might suffer dire consequences.Geologists argue that Jaitapur lies inside the active West Coast fault zone where earthquakes lower than the magnitude of eight on Richter scale can cause grave damage.This project will not only destroy the livelihood of 40,000 people who are dependent on agriculture, horticulture and other natural resources-based occupation, but also devastate one of India’s most precious ecosystems — the Sahyadri mountain range which is often considered as one of the world’s greatest bio diversity hotspots by botanists.Undoubtedly, the Fukushima disaster has dampened the spirits of the nuclear industry whose preposterous claims of mastering the art of reengineering reactors to withstand high-magnitude earthquakes all over the world proved to be an epic failure in March 2011. And, as a ruthless act of insensitivity towards nuclear safety concerns, the Indian government chose the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster to announce the Jaitapur project.However, the public’s supreme concerns about Jaitapur pertain to the inherent risks of nuclear power which include radiation exposure, routine emissions, generation of waste and potential for disastrous accidents like core meltdown. Striking a balance between imminent problems and mandatory solutions, the book also states that combating climate change is all about undergoing a major transformation in the existing relations of power; overhauling the methods adopted by humanity to consume natural resources and bring about change not of degree but of kind.