Heating Up – Issue #104
Unrelenting heat in North India; Price-monitoring as a solution; CAFE norms; and more
Climate News Of The Week
Will the north Indian heatwave let up this week? For over a month now, maximum temperatures in Delhi have stayed above 40 Celsius. On 4 May, the day-time temperature in the city crossed 40 Celsius, falling to 38 Celsius only after four days. Four days of relative respite followed — with temperatures ranging between 38 and 39 degrees — and then, the mercury climbed again. Since then, between 12 May and 18 June, temperatures in the city have remained above 40 degrees. In these 36 days, the city saw 16 days when the mercury touched (or exceeded) 45 degrees.
On the whole, as data from Accuweather shows, the city has seen 38 straight days where day-time temperatures were much higher than the historical average. Night-time temperatures, too, have been (mostly) higher than usual — and are climbing fast.
May
June
On Sunday, the minimum temperature at Safdarjung, in relatively green central Delhi, stood at 33.2 degrees, an incredible six degrees above normal.
And that is just Delhi. Things are no different further up north. Himachal, Punjab and Haryana are being roiled by heat as well. So is Uttar Pradesh. As many as 119 heatwave-related deaths have been reported by the state. Deaths have been reported from other states like Odisha and Bihar as well.
A couple of things are worth noting here. One, estimates on heatwave-related deaths vary from publication to publication. Where Jagran says 119 died in Uttar Pradesh, ABP Live says 33. This shows India lacks a heat-wave/public health tracking system. There are other questions. Is India counting all heat-induced deaths as heat-wave deaths? In the case of Covid, remember, a clutch of deaths were blamed on co-morbidities.
These questions need to be asked. A quick survey, late in May, by the Centre for Rapid Insight (CRI) shows the pervasiveness of heat-related health crises in India. A rapid poll of 12,496 people covering 421 of India’s 543 parliamentary constituencies — where respondents were asked: “In the past month, have you or anyone in your household experienced illness, such as fever, vomiting, headache, or dizziness, due to the heat outside?” — netted an alarming answer. “A staggering 45% of households reporting at least one member falling ill due to the heat in the past month,” the think-tank wrote in an op-ed. “Of those who reported a household member falling ill due to the heat, more than 67% reported household members falling ill for more than 5 days in the past month.”
As expected, income was a key determinant here. “A total of 32.5% of households with a two-wheeler, and a total of 28.2% of households with no motorised vehicle reported having a household member who experienced illness for more than five days; this number dropped to 21.8% among households with cars.”
The poor have to work each day to survive. So does biodiversity. And so, mortality amongst plants and animals is high as well.
It gets worse. Usually, by 17 June, monsoonal effects start to reduce temperatures, but this year, the heat is slowing the monsoon’s arrival itself. In the meantime, the north is being roiled by water shortages — and is one power cut away from even higher morbidity.
The obvious question writes itself. When does this country start to take any of this seriously?
News of the Week
Going by news headlines from last week, government policy is still placing short-term interests above long-term imperatives. We got one reminder from the country’s coal ministry about policymakers inhabiting a world that no longer exists. Despite worsening climate change effects — and despite the competitiveness of 24x7 renewable power against coal — it announced plans to open more coal mines. Mechanised coal loading, it added, will reduce air pollution.
Forests are also continuously being axed. You have the Great Nicobar Transhipment Port. Assam is trying to denotify entire protected areas; building defence camps inside forests; and thereafter, deciding to chop another 3,200 trees to make its ring road. Here, similarly, is Karnataka, planning to cut 99,000 trees to open a new mine. And that is just two states. This obliviousness to climate concerns takes two forms. As the instances listed above show, the country continues to take decisions that will exacerbate climate impacts. It also works on the assumption that its existing policy toolkit is enough to handle climate change impacts.
One instance of such thinking surfaced last week. Heatwaves also hammer agricultural output. And so, to guard against spikes in vegetables, the government is planning to bring 16 new agri-commodities — mostly vegetables — into its list of price-monitored items. The current list — of 22 staples of our diet — includes rice, wheat, atta, sugar, gur, salt, milk, tea, potato, onion, tomato, and a clutch of pulses and edible oils.
What will this achieve? Price monitoring helps the government, as Economic Times told us, maintain “a strategic buffer of commodities for calibrated release to moderate price volatility and discourage hoarding and unscrupulous speculation. For building such stock, it promotes direct purchase from farmers at the farm gate or mandi.”
The obvious question rears its head. Most of the commodities in the original list of 22 — like rice, wheat and salt — are not quick to spoil. They can be stored longer. If the government wants to similarly maintain stocks of vegetables, it will have to create a dedicated cold chain for procurement, storage and transport to rapidly meet regional shortfalls. This would indeed be one form of climate mitigation.
At this time, however, it’s unclear if the government is mulling such an investment. The private sector cannot do this. It will push farm produce to the markets where prices are the highest — which is a function of not just scarcity but also paying power.
At the same time, the government is silent on boosting research/marketing of more climate-resilient crops.
Sikkim was hammered by a GLOF (Glacial Lake Flood Outburst) last monsoons. The Teesta III dam at Chungthang was washed away, as were countless bridges, homes and roads. By October, 44 people were reported dead.
That was less than a year ago. And now, even before little Sikkim could recover from that catastrophe, it is back in the chokehold of another flood. This time around, heavy rains have resulted in the Teesta overflowing its banks, again inundating houses and washing away roads. The rain also resulted in a massive landslide which left six dead, five missing — and around 1,500 tourists stranded.
This is the new normal. A series of body blows by an increasingly unpredictable climate. Even before it could rebuild (and climate-proof) infrastructure lost in the catastrophic floods of 2022, Pakistan is seeing intense heatwaves.
There is an opportunity here. The country could reboot its growth through ambitious, climate-proof reconstruction. Schemes like MGNREGA (and urban equivalents) could be used to boost local climate resilience by building groundwater recharging structures, planting trees where needed, desisting ponds, climate-proofing existing houses for heat, linear green stretches (see long reads, below), what have you. As books like The Deficit Myth show, finance is not the problem we think it is.
And yet, we are not seeing such thinking yet.
What we have, instead, is business-as-usual (BAU) thinking. Assam illustrates this well. Even as the state cuts its forests, it announced — proudly — that its state government HQ is now “eco-friendly”. It now has rooftop solar. In the same week, however, the state also held talks with the new coal minister to boost coal mining in the state. Appearances continue to trump reality.
BAU showed up in the coal ministry as well. Under the new government, it’s again tilting at a familiar windmill — India wants to reduce coal imports. Given the political economy around coal imports, we will wait and watch.
Elsewhere, the government has decided to not sell BPCL after all. About four years ago, there were strong rumours that Reliance and Saudi Aramco were eyeing BPCL. On the whole, it is a strange event. The government went to the extent of inviting bids before deciding to back out of the sale. One wonders what changed.
Other news. Adani is getting into hydel power — albeit in Bhutan. Electric scooter maker Ather Energy will site its third plant — the first two are in Hosur, Tamil Nadu — in Aurangabad, Maharashtra. This location will help the firm reach markets in north India faster. For a while now, this newsletter has been harping about the decarbonisation-led changes in India’s economic geography. Here is one more factoid for that dataset of winners and losers.
Positive news came from the auto sector where the government’s new fuel-efficiency norms are forcing carmakers into a clean up. “The new targets are so tough that carmakers will have to embrace clean technologies wholeheartedly to dodge steep penalties that kick in if they miss emission targets even by a whisker,” reported ET Prime. “The government is considering shifting to Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedures (WLTP) for determining emissions and fuel consumption, replacing the Modified Indian Drive Cycle (MIDC), which has been criticised for being far off from real-world mileage.”
Shorn of jargon, what does this mean? “The CAFE norms were first notified in 2018 in two phases – CO2 emission target of 130 g/km by 2022-23 and 113 g/km 2022-23 onwards… The WLTP cycle emissions are around 16% higher than MIDC's. So, under CAFE 3, an average new car will be allowed to emit only 91.7 g/km by 2027, and further dropping to 70 g/km by 2032. As emissions and fuel consumption are directly proportional, these shifts will mean fuel consumption must drop by 30% by April 2027, and by 47% by April 2032.”
This is an interesting report — from a low-profile but very consistent newsroom. Do read.
That was India. A couple of global developments also drew our attention.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has directly caused or paved the way to the emission of 175 million tons of CO2, reported Economic Times. “The report, published by Ukraine's environment ministry and climate NGOs, said their estimate included both emissions that had been released and those that would be produced during repair work.”
In France, renewables are now so cheap that the country has had to shut down nuclear plants. Read this report and think about NTPC’s recent decision to embark solo on SMRs. Finally, Greece, too, has seen heatwave deaths.
Climate Long-reads
Carbon Markets in India: Need for a Cautious Approach (India Forum)
Dead In The Water: How heatwaves are killing fish (Livemint)
War, money, oil and the shaping of Aramco's giant share sale (ET)
This superb ground report from Uttar Pradesh on how the state voted. This is not climate. But the report packs hard insights into the lives of India’s commoners. (Aidem)
The frayed symbiosis between Mumbai and its shrinking forests (Question of Cities)
Linear parks hold power to transform cities and be climate warriors (Question of Cities)
Adapt or perish: NGOs struggle to survive (Deccan Herald)
It Will Be Difficult to Feed India if Our Climate Goals Are Not Met (The Wire)
How a shadow fleet of ancient tankers keeps Russian oil flowing (WSJ)