Biparjoy is just the tip of the iceberg

Biparjoy is raging across Pakistan and India. For many, it is a cyclone that is threatening to lives and properties and causing displacement of people. For others, it is the warming of the waters of the Arabian Sea. They are both right. What I see is an opportunity the planet is giving us in the shape of a dry run, even when there is a lot of water. This is literally planetary warming telling us to test the waters before the real trouble starts upon entering the point of no return.

Right now, cyclones and oceanic disturbances are viewed as a sideshow while countries, primarily Pakistan and India, are focused on their own politics and other problems. That day is not too distant in the future when these climatic activities would define and shape our politics and lifestyles. People’s movements would not be restricted by the weakness of their passports but rather by whether the desired destination is livable. Whether or not that place would have clean water and breathable air, whether masks are in abundant supply or should people pack them before leaving. That is off course if they can afford them.

Remember the oceans would be the first to die in this relentless planetary warming. The excessive heat caused by the carbon emissions is being absorbed by the oceans. The enormous amount of plastic that thrives in the oceans kills all kinds of marine life, which indirectly kills us humans on the surface of the earth because whales, sharks and others travel inside the oceans creating breathable air for us humans. We humans in return kill them in order to eat them and when we are done washing them down with some kind of drink from a plastic bottle, we throw that plastic bottle in the oceans where they are eaten by various life forms who die as a result. Their death means the loss of those ocean labourers that work to sustain life on earth. In a nutshell, they keep us alive by their activities and we kill them by our activities.

Biparjoy is not the anger of the oceans. It is rather the desperate calls of a dying entity. They won’t go alone. They will take us down with them. That is just how science works and science does not care about your belief system, your opinions, and your lifestyles. It is under no obligation to be subservient to your politics or to make sense to you.

Biparjoy allows us a peek into how life could be in the future. A life not only displaced by the effects of climate change but rather defined by it, dictated by it. Movement is a central element of the planet, the cosmos, and the life forms that live on earth. The changing seasons, the migrations of the land animals, the birds, and the fish play a role in sustaining life on earth. The progress of humans depends primarily on the ability of human beings to move across national and international lines. All of these movements mentioned above would change. All would have a severe impact on climate change and interestingly all would be impacted by climate change. However, the inability of human beings to move to various regions of the world either due to those regions drowning or heating up would very badly hurt global economy, global trade, human development, human creativity, and would lead to an overall stagnated progress.

As I mentioned above, right now the climate change problem is treated as one of the problems. While we are waiting for the climate change to become more dangerous, the climate change in turn is not waiting for us to get ready for this extinction causing threat. The next phase may not be just a drill but rather real world. It is giving us hints and sneak peeks like Biparjoy today but we don’t know when the phase of hints would end. Once the signs end, so will science and civilisation as we know it.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 18^th, 2023.

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