Climate Change in India

An New York Times article, India’s Ominous Future: Too Little Water, or Far Too Much, points out that climate change has altered the monsoon season. Now, the rains are less predictable and can be more prolonged when they arrive. That leaves large areas of the country in crippling drought or in floods. On top of that, decades of inept government policies leave millions of people mostly defenseless in the face of climate changes and hopeless levels of pollution, garbage and plastic waste.

Dry creek bed choked with litter

Foam from industrial runoff pass worshipers in the Yamuna River

Watching flood water

Collecting water for drinking and cooking

Flood in Mumbai

A resident of New Delhi washing under a broken municipal water line


Flood in Mumbai

A recent report on climate change is arguing that too little is being done. The Washington Post reports:

The world has squandered so much time mustering the action necessary to combat climate change that rapid, unprecedented cuts in greenhouse gas emissions offer the only hope of averting an ever-intensifying cascade of consequences, according to new findings from the United Nations. 

Amid that growing pressure to act, Tuesday’s U.N. report offers a grim assessment of how off-track the world remains. Global temperatures are on pace to rise as much as 3.9 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, according to the United Nations’ annual “emissions gap” report, which assesses the difference between the world’s current path and the changes needed to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris climate accord.

The sobering report comes at a critical moment, when it remains unclear whether world leaders can summon the political will to take the ambitious action scientists say is essential. So far, the answer has been no.

No doubt that climate change science deniers will trot out the usual arguments in defense of doing nothing, just like gun violence deniers trot out their arguments for less gun control after each mass slaughter of innocents. India looks to be well and truly hosed.