Elections In A Gathering Heatwave - #Issue 97
The elections unfold amidst a brewing heatwave, with forest fires reported in Karnataka and Uttarakhand and even impacting campaign trails, as seen with BJP leader Nitin Gadkari fainting.
What Elections Are Telling Us About India
The second phase of voting is over.
As we wrote in the previous instalment of this newsletter, election reportage is a “five-yearly dipstick survey on how (India’s) people are faring (and) the issues they contend with.” In the 2024 polls, as the articles listed last week and the ones listed below show, climate change and precarity seem more pronounced than before.
Tea industry trouble in Darjeeling, Kurseong and Siliguri.
Sharp contrasts in two Industrial hubs: Noida flourishes, Ghaziabad falters.
Are BJP, Congress serious about the fiscal autonomy of gram panchayats?
A ground report from Barmer, Rajasthan, where “poverty is palpable, water is scarce and migrating to states like Gujarat and Maharashtra in search of work is the route to survival for many.” This, despite the “presence of large projects like the oil fields of Vedanta Ltd, a lignite-based power plant of JSW Energy, and an upcoming ₹72,000 crore refinery and petrochemical complex jointly owned by Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd and the Rajasthan government. Plus, numerous stone quarries.”
Work is worship: Bijli, sadak, paani are once again the key poll issues in UP (Mint)
Bharat Adivasi Party: Battling BJP’s Hindutva, One Election at a Time (The Wire)
The elections themselves are contributing to climate reportage. A heatwave is gathering strength across India. Forest fires have been reported from both southern and northern India — Karnataka and Uttarakhand. BJP leader Nitin Gadkari fainted while campaigning and soaring temperatures were blamed. As many as ten people might have died in Kerala due to the heat. The Election Commission has set up a task force to review and mitigate the impact of the heatwave.
It would have been an idea, though, to finish polling in the states that will see the most heat first. We have had, instead, Bangalore voting before much of Uttar Pradesh.
Climate News of the Week
“The Indian Ocean is expected to experience surface warming of 1.4 degrees Celsius to 3 degrees Celsius between 2020 and 2100, which will push it into a near-permanent heatwave state, intensify cyclones, affect the monsoon, and lead to a rise in sea levels.” Read this report. Also see this Vox report: We could be heading into the hottest summer of our lives.
News of the Week
On other fronts, this has been a relatively low-key week with a few large developments.
The human and ecological costs of climate change have always been easy to spell out. Last year’s glacial lake outburst in Sikkim, for instance, is said to have affected over 15 million people and caused over 2,000 deaths. Data from the National Crime Records Bureau shows roughly 2% of total deaths in 2022 were due to forces of nature — like heat stroke, exposure to cold, floods, landslides, torrential rain, lightning and so on.
Last week, a report by the climate disaster database EMDAT added a financial element to these tabulations. “In the last two decades, climate-related disasters have cost India $122.2 billion, or an average of $ 5 billion each year,” wrote Business Standard, while reporting on the report.
A second big development last week came from Germany. Even as India figures out its response to the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, Germany has rolled out the Supply Chain Due Diligence Act. The Act, which seeks to enforce fair labour standards and environmental requirements on importers selling in Germany, will add another layer of compliance and reporting costs — and restrict market access further — on the Indian firms operating in Germany across sectors like information technology, automotive, pharmaceuticals, biotech and manufacturing.
Essentially, as clean energies come in and manufacturing chains see slip back into ferment, the EU is starting to use labour and environmental standards — after emissions — to make domestic players more competitive and to push the reshoring of jobs.
The JSW Group, which has been eyeing the EV space till now, wants to enter battery manufacturing as well.
The firm is amongst a handful of firms — like ACME Cleantech Solutions, Amara Raja Advanced Cell Technologies, Anvi Power Industries, JSW Neo Energy, Reliance Industries, Lucas TVS, and Waaree Energies — which have bid for the remaining slot in India’s PLI for Advanced Chemical Cell Battery manufacturing. This is the slot left open once it emerged that Hyundai Global Motors, which won the PLI, was a fake firm pretending to be a Hyundai group company.
Continuing with EV batteries, Battery tech startup Lohum is looking to raise $100 million from both existing and new investors at a valuation of $600-650 million. CarbonCopy has alluded to this firm earlier. Even as India scours the world for critical minerals, firms like Lohum focus on recycling batteries to produce battery-grade material, such as lithium salts, cobalt and nickel. This is a company to watch.
Continuing with RE, Tamil Nadu made headlines as well. The state absorbed 40.5mu of solar power into its grid — an all time high. The news makes one pause — and flinch. Forty million units is just 10% of the state’s demand. A reminder of how far we have to travel. There is, however, some hope that the country will move faster once Tesla enters the rooftop solar sector.
On other fronts, the week gone by was relatively humdrum. Familiar — if terrible — processes continued apace. Bombing continued in Gaza — which is now also seeing a heatwave. The crackdown on protestors in US universities intensified. In the energy sector, shale gas has been seeing consolidation for a while. Now comes news that mining firms are considering consolidation as well. Last week, Australian mining giant BHP announced a takeover bid for British rival Anglo-American. The energy transition is to blame. As the Economic Times reported, “Both companies have been wrestling with the transition away from traditional money makers such as gas and coal, increasingly eyeing opportunities to mine metals and critical minerals.” Also, read this Bloomberg account on how the takeover bid came about.
Heatwaves are roiling the rest of the world — here is a dispatch from Philippines, and another from south and south-east Asia. In the meantime, the US is heading into a very active hurricane season.
Back home, SEBI has finally sent questions to the offshore funds that invested in Adani. India is putting the finishing touches on a national policy for geothermal energy. Here too, the projections are rosy. India, we are told, has the potential to produce 10 GW of geothermal energy. LNG prices look set to fall further. Macquarie wants to invest $ 1.5 billion in India’s fleet electrification. NTPC and NPCIL have begun work on their first nuclear power plant together — 2,800 MW Mahi Banswara in Rajasthan. To understand its significance, see this CarbonCopy report.
On the adaptation side, things continue to be dismal. The heatwaves are one instance. Another comes from a village in the district of Ramban in Jammu. Like Joshimath, Parnote, too, is seeing land subsidence. “Landslides and land subsidence has been happening in this area since the beginning of the road widening project and carving out of the Railway Line to Kashmir,” reported Greater Kashmir.
Climate Long-reads
Climate crisis cooks up costly meals: Why your 'thaali' could be on fire (BS)
One French company’s lonely struggle to survive fierce competition from China (WSJ)
How GQG's $11 billion India empire is growing fast beyond Adani (ET Prime)
Why Dubai was deluged. Academic Jagdish Krishnaswamy weighs in (Frontline)
The Maldives is racing to create new land. Why are so many people concerned? (Nature)
They turned cattle ranches into tropical forests — then climate change hit. Read this profile of ecologist Daniel Jensen (The Verge). As the subtitle says: “They brought forests back to life in Costa Rica. Their next challenge? Restoring ecosystems in a warming world.”
How China's carbon-intensive heavy industry powers its clean tech industry (High Capacity)
A single gang of poachers may have killed 10% of Javan rhinos since 2019 (Mongabay)
Book of the Week
We just finished reading Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in the Philippines. Written by Rappler journalist Patricia Evangelista, the book details Filipinos’ fascination with Duterte who promised to, as they say, drain the swamp. His rise to power depicted the drug trade as the biggest societal threat in the Philippines — a claim that helped him draw cross-cutting support across the country — followed by grievous human rights violations as both the populist and his police forces ran amok.
A cautionary tale of our times, this one. Check out this review.