Global warming: increasing signs of coming troubles

No matter where you live, there are unmistakable signs that global warming is upon us. Life on this planet is going to become uncomfortable for millions – perhaps billions – of people around the globe. The world’s better-off countries may be able to deal with the problem that is already upon us but people in low-income countries will suffer. Sea surface temperatures have run as high as 5 degrees Celsius above normal, the warmest in 170 years. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, marine heat with persistent and unusually warm ocean temperatures “will have significant impact on marine life as well as coastal communities and agencies”. The agency describes Category 4 as “extreme” and category 5 as “beyond extreme”. In late June the temperature reached the extreme stage. Sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic and globally were the warmest on record for the month of June in more than a hundred years.

Jeff Goodel, an American journalist, has just written a book titled The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet. “If you are lucky enough and well-off enough, there is no sense that a life-threatening force has invaded you,” he writes in a column published by The New York Times which draws on his book. “This past week (the week ending Sunday, July 9), records were set or tied on four consecutive days as the hottest days on Earth… The extreme heat that is cooking many parts of the world this summer is not a freakish event – it is another step into our burning future. The wildfires in Canada, the orange Blade Runner skies on the East coast, the hot ocean, the rapidly melting glaciers in Greenland, Antarctica, and the Himalayas, the high price of food, the spread of vector-borne diseases in unexpected places – it is all connected, and it is all driven by rising heat.” He concluded the column with the following words: “We need to start seeing hot days as more than an invitation to go to the beach or hang out at the lake. Extreme heat is the engine of planetary chaos. We ignore it at our peril. But if there is one thing we should understand about the risks of extreme heat it is this: All living things from humans to humming words, share one simple fate. If the temperatures they are used to – what scientists call their Goldilocks Zone – rise too far, too fast, they die.”

Heat on the planet Earth is the consequence of what climatologists call “global warming”. While global warming is the direct result of the enormous burning of fossil fuels by what is today the developed world, producing excessive heat on the planet, there is little point or comfort to be drawn by low-income countries from that fact. There are occasional demands for reparation but there is little likelihood that those who are primarily responsible would be prepared to pay for the damage they have done to poor nations. Life on the globe would become more difficult as time moves on.

Different regions in the low-income world will have different experiences. South Asia has already suffered from well-beyond the normal amount of rainfall in the rainy seasons. Pakistan in the early summer of 2022 not only had to deal with hundreds of deaths that resulted from floods caused by the unusually heavy rainfall. It also had to contend with the loss of agricultural output. This may happen again this year. India has already received record rainfall in the areas that border Pakistan.

According to press reports, the level of Yumna River, which flows through Delhi, the Indian capital, and is a tributary of the Ganges breached the danger mark by 10 feet on July 13. “Many migrant workers, who live on the banks of the river, were camping on the roads alongside it as their makeshift homes were swallowed by the water, wrote Sameer Yasir and Hari Kumar in a story they did for The New York Times. “Many others were looking for shelter as water enveloped sections of residential areas and historical sites like the Red Fort.” By the middle of July, when the monsoon season was less than half-way through, 91 people had drowned and the lives of millions of others were seriously disrupted.

Delhi was not the only place affected by excessive rainfall. The hardest hit areas were the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh where dozens of people lost their lives. Tens of thousands of people remained stranded in the state of Uttarakhand, where roads leading to four important Hindu sites were blocked for several days. Those who had wanted to offer prayers at the sites were stranded and had to do without food and clean water for drinking. Their situation improved only when official help arrived in the form of a military convoy carrying supplies. These scenes were repeated in countless places. Pakistan was not spared. Lahore received several inches of rain in a few hours in late June.

Now that experts believe that these dislocations will occur time and again, governments in the developing world will have to spend their meager resources on providing relief from the expected problems created by weather change. There are several policy initiatives these countries can take. They should give up their dependence on coal and gas for producing electricity. There should be greater reliance on renewable sources for producing electric power such as solar panels and wind turbines. Pakistan has a close working relationship with China which is investing large amounts of public money on building solar parks and wind turbine stations. Investment in these ventures should become important components of the ongoing China-Pakistan Economic Corridor program.

Heat is not the only change in weather which crowded countries such as Pakistan and India need to worry about. Worsening in the quality of air people breathe is another development that governments in these places need to worry about. Some of this can be remedied by the design and implementation of effective public policies. For instance, burning of crop residues should be banned in both northern India and Pakistan. Uncontrolled exhaust from the fuels used by vehicles is also responsible for the poor quality of air in large cities such as Delhi, Amritsar, Lahore and Multan. I have seen some estimates that air pollution may have reduced life expectancy in urban South Asia.

In the article in this space next week, I will discuss how China is addressing the problem of global warming.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 24^th, 2023.

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