Wednesday, October 10, 2018

Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Global warming needs to be controlled' that was published in Newsband


Global warming needs to be controlled
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change calls for a reversal of man-made greenhouse gas emissions, to prevent severe harm to humanity in the decades ahead. The IPCC’s special report on global warming of 1.5°C, was prepared as a follow-up to the UN Paris Agreement on Climate Change. The impacts of climate change will be felt on agriculture, health, water security and extreme weather.
Major progress must be achieved by 2030. Governments should achieve net zero CO2 addition to the atmosphere. The need for action is urgent. Human activity has warmed the world by 1°C over the pre-industrial level and another half-degree rise can raise the frequency, intensity and amount of rain or severity of drought. There might also be risks to food security and water.  
India, Pakistan and China are already suffering moderate effects of warming. The sensible course for national policy would be to fast-track the emissions reduction pledges made for the Paris Agreement. Save the water this is the first step to reduce the global warming which is used to individual level. Many of the uninformed political leaders are oblivious of the serious threat global warming raises. There is imperative need to expand and intensify the harnessing of renewables to meet the energy requirements. Unfortunately neither the governments nor industries are expressing concerns on global warming. Ironically, they are responsible to a large extent.
We need to take a stock of the production and consumption patterns, huge amount of garbage generated due to short life of commodities produced these days and carbon footprint resulting from an economy that completely ignores the impact on environment. Is the drought and agrarian crisis seen year after year in many states a result of global warming or man-made choices of reckless and wrong kinds of crop production? Also our carbon and garbage footprints need to be reduced at multiple levels- individual, institutional, regional and national- to make any difference.
The government and political parties are only concentrating on problems of life of the current generation. They are not having time to look for the problems in next decade. Since only the politicians are having free time they should leave the present to people themselves and plan for facing global warming in 2100.
The climate change from 1cto 2c will create more geographical effect of either abnormal rain or drought and we have to sustain such effects caused by our own lapses of emitting carbon both in industrial and social life. The Paris accord emphasised the green gas emission by countries and accord reached to control them. But US pulled out from the game and poured cool water on the proposal. We cannot set aside the El Nino effect generated from Pacific ocean. Global warming caused by human causes should be addressed failing which the repercussions will be the worst.
The recent floods in Kerala should spur India to do much more to counter climate change. The entire programme for building new coal based power plants needs to be drastically curtailed. The switch to electric vehicles should also be speeded up. A big push towards public transport is needed. At an individual level, we could review lifestyle choices, cut back on discretionary travel.

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