Earth, Humans, and 5th of June.

I know many of you would be wondering what 5th of June means. I mean “Humans” and “Earth” sound okay but why he would put today’s date in there. It’s because 5th of June has been designated as World Environment Day. Seems very cliche, doesn’t it? The same old crap that we have been reading since high school. We loved environmental studies in our school, didn’t we? It was much easier than Science, much more entertaining than History, and much more scoring than Maths. We hardly put any effort in environmental studies and we got very good grades that lifted our overall percentage generously.
But we have come a long way since then, and so has the environment. We may be advancing towards IOT, Machine Learning, and 5G technologies but the environment in which we are advancing is dying. I would continue the same old crap of Air Pollution, and Water pollution so if you want to skip it casually like you did in high school, you are free to do it now.

In the second half of 20th century, when the world, after the horrors of nuclear bombing and was engaged in the cold war, we first took the pollution seriously with initiatives such as Earth Day. The Industrial Revolution of 19th century had come a long way and countries were fully equipped in their industrial development especially the countries who were engaged in the World War.
The coal was in the large scale use at those times, and in 1952 LONDON suffered from a devastating smog which was resultant of the unregulated coal use. More than 4,000 people died and it was named The Great Smog of 1952. A few years earlier in Pennsylvania, industrial air pollution created a deadly smog and killed more than 7,000 people. It was on the account of many of these incidents that we decided to take pollution control to the global level. We have come a long way, true, for example, the Montreal Protocol which was signed in 1987 is one of the most successful protocols of all. It set binding limits on the developed countries to control their emission of pollutants which was harming the Ozone layer in the stratosphere. As of today, we have recovered 23% of the Ozone layer and it is expected to recover by 50% till 2040.
But if on the one hand we were recovering ozone, we were damaging the other things.
From the term pollution, we shifted to Global Warming, and from Global Warming we have now shifted to Climate Change, and let me tell you, this is as real as they get.
The world is getting warmer, it’s already 1 degree C warmer than the pre-industrial level, and do you want to know what effect it has on us?
According to the Global Assessment report on biodiversity published by IBPES in April 2019, “The rate of global change in nature during the last 50 years is unprecedented in human history. 75% of Earth’s land surface and 66% of Marine environments have been significantly altered, and that over 85% of Wetland areas had been lost.”
It further says that these changes have been driven directly by changes in land sea use; direct exploitation of organisms; climate change etc..
According to the report by Intergovernmental Panel on climate change earlier this year, while the world was warmer by 1 degreeC than pre-industrial levels, some part of the world are already 1.5 degree C warmer than the pre industrial levels. And don’t be surprised when I tell you that a handful of those areas lie in India.
So how does 1.5 affect more than 1 ?
The impact of 1.5 degreeC is much more than what was anticipated earlier. The world is seeing a greater rise in sea levels which is causing floods and tsunamis; increased precipitation and higher frequency of droughts and pushing millions into poverty; hotter days and heatwaves are bringing in new health impacts; more intense tropical cyclones and increased ocean acidification and salinity.
The developing and low developed countries are the worst affected from the climate change, particularly India.
India still has 49% of its people engaged in Agriculture, which means that any impact of climate change will directly impact the lives of 49% of our population and indirectly the rest of the country. Indian agriculture is still mostly rainfed as 60% of the areas don’t have irrigation facilities. You can imagine the impact on the lives of people when there’s less or more rain. The regions in Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu are already facing severe droughts frequently for the last 5 years. The rate of suicide among the farmers has gone much higher than before. Food inflation has squeezed the savings of common man, and altered their diets altogether.
Of the 10 most air polluted cities of the world, 4 are in India with Gurugram topping the list. I live in Delhi, and I frequently travel to Gurugram, and when I see the report and when I see the place, I’m not at all surprised. You must have noticed that the in period around October and November, the news is mostly concentrated in Delhi NCR regions. And it’s because of their air pollution. And the main drivers of this are the farmers (Punjab and Haryana) themselves. Kharif crops are sown in March and April and are harvested in October November. Now when they harvest the crops, tonnes of stubble (cut stalks of cereal plants sticking out of the ground) are left in the field. Now the farmers get very little time between cutting the kharif crops and sowing the rabi crops. So, for them the best way to get rid of the stubble is to burn them. Now, when tonnes of stubbles are burnt, you can imagine the impact it can have on the surrounding regions. All kinds of dangerous gases come out, they react with the ozone in the atmosphere and you get to see what you call the smog. The premature deaths due to air pollution in India is much higher than other countries. But it’s not like the farmers don’t have the alternatives, they have. Machines are available which can help in getting rid of the stubble, the farmers can sell the stubbles to government and they can use the stubble to produce ethanol which can further be helpful in blending with petrol which can directly lessen the pollution out of vehicles and also take the prices of petrol down relieving the common man. But it doesn’t happen, why? Because the machineries are in private players’ hands and govt is not yet ready to subsidise it as the farmers can’t afford themselves. SO, you see how a little initiative can solve the problem of pollution, better income for farmers, and the core inflation ? But let them ban the firecrackers instead because that’s easier, innit ?

The seas around Maharashtra and Gujarat are one of the most polluted seas of the world. Do you know how much plastic we dump in the oceans and the seas? A garbage truck of plastic every minute. That’s right, let that sink in. The persistent organic pollutants from industries and agricultural land float around the ocean at low concentrations, but their hydrophobic nature concentrates them on the surface of plastic particles, the marine organisms feed on these plastics and die. They also release chemicals such as Bisphenol A which further endangers the biodiversity. India has a population of 1.28 billion people living around coastlines, and the unprecedented rise in sea level and the plastics pollution will force them to migrate. More than a billion people are likely to migrate due to climate change till 2050, imagine the impact, imagine the chaos. One example was the Kerala flood we all saw last year. All of you would know that it was dam mismanagement, but how many of you know that the flood was also caused due to climate change. The Madhav Gadgil report had earlier warned the govt to stop the exploitation of eco sensitive zones of Western Ghats, the central govt tried to ban the construction and work there but the govt of Kerala and TN protested against it. The result was a devastating flood killing hundreds, displacing thousands and spreading deadly diseases.


We boast about the better managements, better cure, we develop vaccines, build new hospitals but we seldom talk about the prevention. We always live by the attitude that “let’s do it, whatever comes we’ll handle.” And this very attitude has taken us here. We can’t stop the world from warming upto 1.5 degreeC of pre industrial levels, even if we stop the emissions completely at this time. We can certainly stop it from going any above than that. For that we cannot possibly rely on our Govt’s determination on climate change or the synergy in geopolitics. We constitute the world, and it is we who has to take the initiatives. Start small, like segregating your organic and plastic wastes at your home and dumping them separately, or by better management of water at your premises, don’t think like it’s your water and you can do anything from it, even if it was, it isn’t anymore.
This is the last figure I’m gonna show. According to the WaterAid report, India’s rate of groundwater depletion has gone upto 23%, and the metro cities are gonna run out of groundwater by 2022.
75% of Indian population don’t have drinking water at their premises, and 70% of drinking water is contaminated.
yes, we’re living in such a scenario.
I could focus on what the govt should do, but I would really like to focus on the people and what they should do. I could write many reports and many factors but these few mentioned above are one of the most important ones and people need to be aware of this.
Do your bit, Save the Environment, or we’d not have one to live in.