World on Path to 2.7°C Temperature Rise – Issue #55
Study warns of mass migration due to extreme heat, emphasising the need to limit temperature increase
News of the week
A new study says the world is heading towards an increase of 2.7 degrees.
With that, says the study by the University of Exeter, the world will see unprecedented levels of distress migration.
Most humans live in places with mean annual temperatures around 13C or 25C. “Conditions outside those are too hot, too cold or too dry and associated with higher death rates, lower food production and lower economic growth,” reported the Guardian.
However, given current action plans, as many as 2 billion people will experience average annual temperatures above 29C by 2030 – well beyond the climate niche where humans can survive. “Up to 1 billion people could choose to migrate to cooler places... although those areas remaining within the climate niche would still experience more frequent heatwaves and droughts,” the study says.
This number can be brought down to 400 million – staggering all the same -- if the world limits temperature increase to 1.5 degrees.
With that as a reminder of the stakes involved, how did the world fare on the climate front last week?
First came a reminder from economist Jean Dreze that, even without climate change, abysmal policy-making is already pushing Indians into precarity.
The week saw other instances of India’s poor readiness for climate shocks. Punjab might run out of groundwater in just 16 years. Jyoti Yadav again showed why Bihar’s health system is a cesspit. Her dispatch, a horrifying report about organ thieves preying on poor Dalit women, is a must-read. How can such a broken state protect its people from climate chaos? Or, for that matter, from idiotic scams? It’s not the only one, of course. India wants to stop measuring the incidence of anaemia.
From North Lakhimpur, however, came a reminder that the past needn’t determine the future. This district in Assam has successfully recycled 40 years of legacy waste in just nine months – converting it into either organic manure or refuse-derived fuel. The impetus, writes Mongabay, came from a local MLA and a local bureaucrat. Also came news that Kerala has adopted a water budget. The state has begun “recording the availability of water, its consumption, surplus and deficit in 94 gram panchayats of the state,” reported Mongabay.
There was a time when India’s states borrowed best practices from each other. That is how mid-day meals, started by Tamil Nadu, became national policy – and Chhattisgarh’s Mitanins provided the blueprint for the centre’s ASHA workers. In more recent years, this learning has lost its developmental edge. For instance, we now have Punjab police learning surveillance from Telangana; and Odisha mimicking non-productive populism from Tamil Nadu. But, one hopes, lessons like the water budget and waste recycling will also spread.
From adaptation/mitigation to fossil fuels themselves. King Coal, first. Please read this superlative long-read in CarbonCopy on how India’s push for coal mining, mostly through deregulation and outsourcing, is affecting relations between the state, forests and tribals. “In 2017, to address the ‘coal shortage’ within the country, the MoEFCC granted a special concession to coal mining projects, allowing existing coal mines to increase their output by 40% of their original capacity without a public hearing,” says the article. “Since no new land acquisition was involved, the impact from the project on the population residing nearby was considered minimal and ‘manageable’. North Urimari mine, too, rode on this wave of concessions and corresponding coal expansions. It received multiple expansions without a public hearing. However, the mine and its expansion have left a trail of impacts and risks for the tribals of the Barka Sayal region.”
Also, see this report in Business Standard about the increasing role of MDO operators – private sector coal miners who mine on behalf of Coal India, etc.
Other fossil fuel news. Back in 2017, the Modi government had announced dynamic pricing for oil. This approach, as many suspect, is getting junked before each assembly election. “Government data shows that fuel prices are being kept unchanged for weeks and sometimes months before assembly elections, only to be changed soon after,” reported TCA Sharad Raghavan for The Print.
Who takes these calls? No one is willing to say. “While ministers in the government say the pricing decisions lie with the oil marketing companies, India’s largest public sector OMC — the Indian Oil Corporation — has told ThePrint that any questions related to pricing should be referred to the petroleum ministry,” writes Raghavan. What is more incontrovertible is the resulting calculus of winners and losers. The government avoids unpopularity for high fuel prices. The oilcos, however, have to “buy expensive oil and sell fuel at lower prices”. This, as Raghavan says, “either pose a cost to the taxpayer in terms of bailouts that the government has to transfer to these companies, or it entails losses for the OMCs themselves.”
Other news. The weather continues to be topsy-turvy. Just last week, north India was in the throes of a heatwave – and high power demand. This was India on 22 May – and this is Delhi five days later. It wasn’t the only part of the country to get aseasonal rains either. The previous day, Himachal was pelted by rain. Other parts of India, like Rajasthan, have also seen aseasonal rains. Unsurprisingly, the Met now says parts of India might get a below-normal monsoon.
This odd rainfall in May is not the only change India is seeing, of course. Nights are warming up. Also, see these charts on heatwaves in Kutch. And, if you have a subscription to Granta, read this essay on heat (and hate) by Amitava Kumar.
What else made headlines in India? There is some opportunistic yammering that the best way to manage human-animal conflict is to resume hunting.
Turning to the rest of the world, the news is the usual mix of terrifying and cheery. In Antarctica, deep ocean currents are slowing faster than expected. China’s solar boom continues. The country’s tying up Lithium supplies even in risky parts of the world – this development comes at the same time Australia -- which exports Lithium to China – is looking to refine the critical mineral on its own.
In other news, Qatar is struggling to find takers for its long-term supply contracts for Gas. The world is sailing towards a future with many gas sellers, so it’s waiting for prices to tumble.
Re-Plug of the week
From 2022, lawyer-activist Sudha Bharadwaj on the Climate, Trade Unions and a Just Transition.
The interview is worth re-reading. And so, here it is again.
Egregious moron of the week
Rajesh Vishwas, a junior bureaucrat in Chhattisgarh, drained 21 lakh litres of water from a dam’s reservoir to retrieve his phone – he had dropped it while taking a selfie. This is enough water to irrigate 1,500 acres of land.
Audio interview of the week
Anthropologist Annu Jalais on the Sunderbans.
Climate long-reads of the week
How Toronto’s Don River, once declared dead, is roaring back to life (Guardian)
A Poor Province in China Splurged on Bridges and Roads. Now It’s Facing a Debt Reckoning (WSJ)
How Liberals Created, Then Destroyed, Publicly Owned Nuclear Power(Jacobin)
Farmers face a soaring risk of flash droughts in every major food-growing region in coming decades, new research shows (The Conversation)
Despairing about climate change? These 4 charts on the unstoppable growth of solar may change your mind (The Conversation) (Needless to say, things are not so simple. The world might change its energy architecture but subsequently grapple with reordered supply chains and new trade dynamics. Also, a certain amount of global warming is now baked into our future. That too will rearrange the world between haves and have-nots).
'Are We Sinking African Cheetahs in India,' Ask South African Scientists(The Wire)
Raghuram Rajan asks if the mobile phone PLI is working.
The State of the Indian Economy Today: What do the Numbers Actually Say? (The India Forum)
Workers at India’s Largest Mandi Still Paid Decades-Old Rates, Can’t Afford Vegetables (The Wire)
How the World Bank and IMF fuel water privatization in Africa (ScoonTV)
Book(s) of the week
We are now reading Caste Pride, by veteran reporter Manoj Mitta.
The book is nothing less than a history of India's anti-caste movement – all the people who came before Ambedkar, so to say – and is spell-binding. One reads the book and marvels at how slowly India embraces social reform. Here is a review.
You also need to check out this review of Distress In The Fields and this new book by a COP negotiator – he doesn’t think COP can save the world.