The mental costs of climate change and more - Issue #33
The Big Picture
Climate change is sowing a mental epidemic across India, warns Sanket Jain.
In his report for PARI, the journalist uses Khochi, a village in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, to show how India’s farming communities, beset by climate events and unable to cope with the resulting financial and emotional stress, are developing psychological disorders.
The loss of certainty – in the rainfall pattern, the harvest, the income – is taking a toll on Geeta’s health. “After the July 2021 floods, I started experiencing muscle weakness, stiffness in joints, and even breathlessness
,” she says. She ignored the symptoms for four months, hoping they would ease over time. “One day, it became so unbearable that I had to consult a doctor,” she says. Geeta was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism; the doctor told her that stress was rapidly worsening her condition. For a year now, Geeta has been spending Rs. 1,500 a month on medicines. The treatment is expected to continue for another 15 months.
His report – part of a larger deepening of climate reportage in the country – must be read. Its implications have to be understood. At the first level, there is the public health dimension – as with other medical specialisations, psychologists are scarce in rural India. The danger that this trauma will go undiagnosed – if not misdiagnosed – with all the accompanying costs is real. That is not all. As Susan Neiman shows in Learning From The Germans, societies can progress only by recognising and learning from their traumas. India, however, does a poor job of addressing traumas. Old wounds – so many riots, so many deaths due to state failure, ever-rising precarity, one could go on – lie unhealed, with those affected dealing with varying degrees of PTSD. Climate change has now manifested itself as a new stressor.
There is a question here. Even as the country demands restitution for Loss and Damage, it needs to parallelly ensure these funds flow down to places like Khochi. India’s modern history is rife with instances of developmental aid being siphoned off to a few – CAMPA funds used to buy vehicles for forest departments, to take one instance.
That shouldn’t happen here.
News of the Week
Let us start with the stuff that made headlines across the world.
Here is why the UAE is courting the world’s kleptocrats. Extreme weather events have caused an estimated $115 billion in insured financial losses around the world this year, according to Swiss Re. That’s 42 per cent higher than the 10-year average of $81 billion, said Grist. It’s not just humans that are affected. This year's heatwave in Jersey killed off a whole generation of baby grey long-eared bats, an endangered species.
France has announced two impressive plans to reduce emissions. It has banned all short-haul domestic flights, aka between cities linked by a train journey of fewer than 2.5 hours. It will also pay car owners €4,000 (nearly Rs 3.45 lakh) to swap their car for an electric bicycle – or a regular bicycle. The country, however, continues to export prohibited pesticides to the third world. A selective (and self-defeating) shade of green!
Turning to India, there is more clarity on the country’s sovereign green bonds. For transparency regarding expenditure, the government will publish an allocation report. The allocation and utilisation of green bonds will also be under the purview of the Comptroller and Auditor General. ET Prime reports the race between India’s electric scooter makers. Nikkei has a similar report on India’s electric car makers. Indore is floating a retail bond to fund its solar plant. Chhattisgarh wants to set up 5 pumped storage plants, adding up to 7,700 MW.
In other news, the Kirit Parikh committee, set up by the government to review the pricing formula for gas produced in the country as global energy prices soared, has recommended complete liberalisation of natural gas prices by January 1, 2027. This, as Moneycontrol reported, will spur the production of domestic gas. Some of this is puzzling. India wants Gas to account for 15% of its energy mix. For the longest time, we have been told that the country’s domestic reserves are not large enough to produce such volumes. Imported Gas, however, is uncompetitive against most of the fuels it seeks to replace. How does deregulation of Gas change these equations?
Beyond these developments, the news from the ground remains dire. The Ganga Basin has reported a large drop in water volumes between 2002 and 2021. The Adani juggernaut continues to roll. In the week gone by, not only did it make headway in its takeover bid for NDTV, it also bagged a Dharavi slum redevelopment project – the company runs the adjacent Mumbai airport. A Hindu group, noted to be close to BJP, has now come out in support of the project while protests against it have been portrayed as being spearheaded predominantly by Christian groups.
Finally, China and India continue to buy Russian Oil – but now, at a 40% discount.
COP27 Analyses
1. On emissions: “At the U.N. Climate Change Conference late last month, world leaders reaffirmed the 1.5C goal. But these scenarios show that without dramatic action — action the leaders did not commit to taking — it most likely will not be possible. Or at least, not with” The Washington Post examined over 1,200 different scenarios for climate change over the coming century, and came up with this conclusion.
2. On forests: In the runup to COP27, three forest-rich countries -- Brazil, Congo and Indonesia – said they would come together as a bloc. Reporters at Sumauma, a journalism startup located in the middle of Brazil’s Para district (This is Amazon country), took a closer look at their pact.
“It is through payment for ecosystem services that (the pact) expects to “add value to the conservation, recovery and sustainable management of forests and engage the private sector, indigenous peoples and local communities”. The text also mentions payment for avoided deforestation (such as the Amazon Fund) or Redd+, which is the incentive mechanism for countries that reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation or forest degradation.” As such, writes Sumauma, “The forest alliance leaves many important questions: will it benefit indigenous peoples and traditional communities? Is it just a geostrategic tactic or an engine for constructive change? Should forest defenders be hopeful or worried?”
Climate Podcast
1. How reporters uncovered a massive illegal shark finning operation (Mongabay)
2. In the annals of India’s environment reportage, Rajkumar Keswani occupies a halo-ed perch. He repeatedly warned about lax systems, despite the lethal nature of inputs like Methyl Iso-Cyanate, at Union Carbide’s factory in Bhopal. As we know, his warnings went unheard. This BBC podcast on him and Union Carbide has to be heard. While on Union Carbide, see this new investigation by Reporters’ Collective. For as long as 14 years, successive Indian governments used shell companies to keep buying the company’s products.
3. Who pays the bill for Climate Change? New Yorker looks at Barbados’ proposal to restructure international finance.
Climate Long-reads
1. ‘The Godfather, Saudi-style’: inside the palace coup that brought MBS to power (Guardian)
2. “England is one of the few countries in the world where water is fully owned by private companies. These companies answer to investors based thousands of miles away from their customers.” (Again, from the Guardian).
3. Xi Broke the Social Contract That Helped China Prosper (NYT). Also read this FT report on the humbling of Xi.
5. From the Intercept, another reminder that green energy is not enough to save the world. “There is also habitat fragmentation and loss, overhunting and overexploitation, agricultural expansion, pollution, and industrial development.” There is also light pollution. More on which, in this new book.
6. The Electricity (Amendment) Bill Will Radically Alter the Character of Power Supply Industry (The Wire)
7. India's gas target of 15% was only aspirational. Time to give it up? (Business Standard). This is a superb report. It describes how this random 15% target came about.
8. How Russian reactors are fueling the nuclear energy industry in India (TOI)
Book of the Week
A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies
, by Matt Simon.
Nature just had an article out on microplastic risk. And now, we also have Simon’s book. As he writes: “You are at this moment exposed to some of the highest concentrations of microplastic anywhere. Stare into the light pouring in through a window and you’ll catch glimmers of airborne microplastics flittering around like insects. Leave out a glass of water and you’ll find microfibers from your clothes creating tiny dents of surface tension. Leave a glass next to your bed when you change your sheets and you’ll see just how many particles the fabric flings into the air. The dust that accumulates in corners and the lint that sticks to your clothes—it’s all plastic.
"
This is something our bodies aren’t ready for. The book’s review here.