If you don’t get climate change, then climate change will get you.
For years, nearly every country in the tropical and equatorial belts has been subjected to floods, fires and famines, as weather patterns grew more erratic. But this year, world records are tumbling elsewhere, too.
Britain recorded temperatures of over 40 degrees Celsius for the first time since temperature records began to be kept. The heatwaves infamously burnt down forests and melted roads and railway tracks in a country that is built only for fog and rain.
Denmark — known previously for belonging to the frigid Nordic — touched 36 degrees Celsius. In one week in July, over 100 million Americans were living under heat alerts. And in Bengaluru — India’s ‘good weather’ capital — folks have struggled to sleep without air conditioning in the middle of the monsoon.
Yet, international politics is rarely ever a solution to any problem. In the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a global war has also been waged on the planet. Sanctions on Moscow and the unreliability of Russia’s natural gas supply have led to a scramble for dirtier fossil fuels. This month, US President Joe Biden went to Saudi Arabia — a country he had once vowed to turn into a pariah. The objective was to get the Saudis to pump more oil and bring down oil prices, and thus inflation, in the US.
Elsewhere, far poorer (and more desperate) countries took note. Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro continued to sell the Amazon — the world’s largest rainforest — to miners, developers, and criminals. In the Congo, an exasperated government, which has long been locked in an eternal war with rebels, decided to do the same with its own rainforests — the world’s second largest.
Demand is also at an all-time high for the dirtiest fuel source of them all: coal. Only months ago, countries had vowed to do away with coal at a lavish conference in Glasgow. Now, driven by post-pandemic recovery and Russia’s ill-fated war, they are embracing it once more. In India alone, demand for coal is expected to rise by 7% this year. In Europe, it will rise by 7% — on top of the 14% growth recorded last year.
This is a series of vicious cycles with no escape. War is inducing sanctions and acrimony, which is inducing faster climate change, which will in turn soon induce more wars. Climate change is also destroying food crops, causing famines, creating poverty, and in turn, compromising the world’s ability to fight climate change.
The problem is that international politics and governance is not built to tackle such a sophisticated and multi-dimensional enemy. The solution to climate change — if there is one — will not come from the world’s governments or at an international level. It will have to come from conscientious citizens who try to save resources in daily life — by switching off lights in an empty room, moving into more fuel-efficient homes, or walking when they don’t need to drive. Science will have to play a major role by creating cooling machines that are less polluting, or vehicles that consume less fuel — or other types of energy.
In past years, the war on climate change was framed as an investment for the future. “Do you want to leave behind an inhabitable planet for your children?” posters would often ask. That is now an outdated question. The question today is whether you want to live on an inhabitable planet yourself.
Seeing how every part of the world is either burning or frozen at any given time in the year, there is nowhere to escape from the weather.
(The author is a student of all things global and, self-confessedly, master of none, notwithstanding his Columbia Master’s, a stint with the UN and with monarchs in the Middle East.)