Provincialising the

Anthropocene UNIT 36 CLIMATE CHANGE*1

Structure
36.1 Introduction
36.2 Understanding the Science
36.3 Impacts of Climate Change
36.3.1 Impacts on Humans
36.3.2 Impacts on other Species

36.4 The Urgency of The Problem

36.5 How are Governments Responding?
36.6 How Should We Respond?
36.6.1 Individual Measures
36.6.2 Collective Responses

36.7 Summary
36.8 Exercises
36.9 Recommended Readings and References

36.1 INTRODUCTION
In 2022, it was extraordinarily hot in many parts of India right from March.
Northwest India and other regions faced repeated and long heat waves,
unusually high temperatures combined with unbearable humidity. Such
extreme heat was also experienced by people and other species in China,
Pakistan, southern Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United
States.

But these were not just random weather events. Intense, longer heatwaves are
becoming increasingly common. This is just one of many changes happening
worldwide in recent years. Sea levels are rising, along India’s shores and
elsewhere. Rainfall patterns are changing. Glaciers are receding and ice
sheets melting. These are momentous changes, altering landscapes, borders,
and the planet as we know it. We need to understand why all this is
happening, and what we can do about it.

The primary purpose of this Unit to explain the basic science of climate
change, narrates its key impacts, both on people and on other species,
explains the urgency of the situation, and delves into climate politics and
discusses the responses by the Indian government and others. Finally, it
offers a few suggestions about what we can do, as individuals and
collectively, to address the problem. Our responding with the utmost urgency
is important, for two reasons — students reading this text will face far graver

444 *
Mr. Nagraj Adve, Independent Researcher and Climate Activist, Delhi.
impacts in their lifetimes than earlier generations did. Two, the windows to Climate Change
intervene, before far more serious impacts hit us, are closing fast.

36.2 UNDERSTANDING THE SCIENCE

The term ‘weather’, says the World Meteorological Organization (WMO),
describes short-term natural events such as rain, wind, or snow in a specific
place and time. ‘Climate’, on the other hand, refers to the average weather
conditions for a specific location and over a long period of time, usually at
least 30 years.

At the base of climate change is human interference with the carbon cycle.
For millions of years, carbon dioxide (CO2) has circulated between different
parts of the Earth’s system – the atmosphere, land, mountains, and the oceans
– in very slow cycles. Carbon dioxide, one must point out, is essential to life
on Earth. Without carbon dioxide (and other greenhouses gases, including
water vapour), being naturally present in the atmosphere, the Earth’s average
temperature would have been about 30 degrees Celsius (oC), colder, making
it too cold for agriculture, and not liveable for human beings.

However, by burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas, humans have
disrupted the natural carbon cycles. When human societies use different
varieties of coal, crude oil in any refined form, or natural gas –to generate
electricity, drive cars, heat or cool homes, make things in factories, or run
tractors – the carbon in those fuels combines with oxygen in the atmosphere
to form more CO2. This excess CO2 in the atmosphere absorbs and traps some
of the Earth’s invisible, infrared (heat) radiation. There are other gases that
also do this, such as methane (CH4, present in natural gas) and nitrous oxide
(N2O, from fertilizers). However, carbon dioxide is the most important
greenhouse gas because, unlike the other gases that have much shorter life
spans, CO2 lasts for tens of thousands of years in the atmosphere. It is also a
by-product of, and hence connected to almost all human activity anywhere in
the world.

According to the recent, Sixth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental

Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world emitted 38 billion tonnes (Gt) of
CO2 from burning fossil fuels and cement production in 2019. Another 6
billion tonnes of carbon dioxide were added by deforestation and land use
changes. As for the other greenhouse gases – methane, nitrousoxide, and
others – they are measured by their capacity to cause warming, in terms of
CO2 equivalent (CO2eq). These other gases totalled roughly 15 billion tonnes
of CO2eq that year.

So in all, in 2019, greenhouse gas emissions worldwide totalled 59 billion

tonnes of CO2eq, of this, 44 billion tonnes CO2 alone. By sector, if one
includes the energy used by them, the biggest sources of emissions are
industry (34 per cent), land use changes and agriculture (22 per cent),
buildings (16 per cent), and transport (15 per cent). For those interested,
Figure 1 also provides the emissions from different activities within each
sector. 445
Provincialising the
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Fig. 1: Greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, by sector, 2019

Source: IPCC, 2022. Sixth Assessment Report, WG3, Technical Summary, p. 24.

Such a sectoral distribution hides two underlying, systemic factors that are at
the roots of global warming – one, inequalities of income, wealth, and
consumption. And two, the tendency to maximize profits and economic
growth inherent to all modern economies, and driven by most economic and
political elites. Added to this tendency are recent trends such as growing
urbanisation, hyper-consumption, and the deepening or spread of capitalist
practices in many countries, such as in China, Russia, Brazil, South Africa,
and India. These factors cannot be elaborated here due to limitations of space
(see Adve, 2014). However, these systemic factors need to be addressed if we
are to tackle global warming comprehensively, urgently, and fairly. Merely
technological responses, such as more solar power, will be insufficient.

To return to the science, not all the carbon dioxide we emit stays in the
atmosphere. Roughly a little more than a quarter of the total emitted gets
absorbed by forests, grasses, and other land-based ecosystems. A little under
a quarter gets taken up by the oceans, thereby making their waters more
acidic. About 44 per cent of all the CO2 from human activity since 1750 has
remained in the atmosphere. As we emit larger volumes of CO2 year after
year, the Earth has been helping us by taking in more. Despite that, because
we are emitting so much, more of it stays in the atmosphere. Over the last 64
years that they have been measured daily, CO2 levels in the atmosphere have
been rising and at an accelerating rate. They are currently (in 2022) about 418
parts per million (ppm). According to the IPCC, this is the highest they have
been in the past two million years (Figure 2). And as for the other two key
greenhouse gases, methane levels are roughly 1,866 parts per billion (ppb)
and nitrous oxide 332 ppb, also both significantly higher than they used to be
in pre-industrial times.

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 Climate Change

Fig. 2: Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, March 1958October 2022

Source: NOAA observatory, Mauna Loa,
[Link]

In the atmosphere, these greenhouse gases act like a blanket, trapping some
of the Earth’s infrared heat radiation. This results in an imbalance between
the amount of energy coming in from the Sun and leaving the Earth, with
more coming in than leaving. These need to balance in the long term, hence
the Earth warms up, resulting in global warming.

The heat that greenhouse gases trap is massive, 153,000,000,000,000,000,

000,000 joules over 2006–2018, says the IPCC. On average each year, this is
20 times the world’s annual energy consumption. To put it differently,
greenhouse gases have been trapping the heat energy equal to five Hiroshima
bombs every second! So in a one-hour class that you may attend as a student,
greenhouse gases would have trapped the energy equal to 18,000 Hiroshima
bombs. By the end of today, they would have trapped the energy of 432,000
bombs!

This massive amount of heat is being added to the Earth, day after day, year
after year, and even that is growing. It is difficult to overstate the importance
of this, for it drives not just the rise in surface temperature but also a range of
climatic changes and the extreme events with which we are, unfortunately,
becoming increasingly familiar.

Most of this massive heat goes into the oceans, over 90 per cent of it, making
the oceans waters warmer, causing them to expand – as all heated water does
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Provincialising the – and contributing to sea level rise. What remains warms the soil, melts ice
Anthropocene
and glaciers, and warms the atmosphere.

How much has the Earth’s surface warmed? Surface warming is measured by
taking the air temperature just above the land and at the ocean’s surface and
seeing how it has changed over time. This is done at thousands of locations
all over the globe and has been done since 1880. Scientists compare current
average temperatures with the baseline average of 1850–1900, a reliable
proxy period for temperatures at the start of the Industrial Revolution, dated
at about 1750. The Earth is currently, after accounting for short-term
variability, 1.15oC warmer than the 1850–1900 average (Figure 3). Over
land, the rise is higher, at 1.6oC, according to the IPCC. Average
temperatures tend to fluctuate year on year but the upward trend, reflected in
the figure, is what is really important. The last eight years, 2015 to 2022, will
have been the eight warmest ever recorded.

Fig. 3: Rise in global average temperature, 1850‒2022

Source: World Meteorological Organization

In India, the average temperatures has increased by about 0.7 degrees Celsius
(⁰C) since 1901. And even this is only an average; temperatures are rising
during some seasons, or in some places, more than others. For instance, the
Himalaya is warming twice as fast. Sea surface temperatures of the tropical
Indian Ocean have risen by 1⁰C since 1951, more than the global average,
according to a landmark report by the Indian Institute of Tropical
Meteorology (IITM), Pune. This extraordinary warming of the Indian Ocean
has an influence on most of the climatic changes taking place in India.

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36.3 IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE Climate Change

The excess energy being absorbed by the oceans and the other Earth’s
systems and the rise in temperatures have resulted in a number of climatic
changes worldwide. They are mostly all accelerating, most of them faster
than computer models predicted and many scientists expected.

But before we discuss the impacts of climate change, there are a few things to
be kept in mind connecting the physical science of climate change and
impacts. One, the source of carbon dioxide and where its effects are felt can
be half a planet apart. The effects of carbon dioxide generated in the United
States affects people and other species in Delhi, Nagpur, and Chennai.

Two, a portion of carbon dioxide emitted today will remain in the atmosphere
for thousands of years, influencing future climates. That climate impacts will
carry on for a very long time into the future is not sufficiently appreciated.
For example, sea level rise is expected to continue because the warmer waters
of the deep oceans will expand for centuries.

And three, there is further warming in the pipeline, which will happen due to
past emissions and cannot be avoided. Hence, impacts will worsen, some of it
unavoidably.

How the varied impacts of climatic change are felt are rooted in social
contexts, both in terms of social inequalities and also how we build our cities,
alter coastlines, interfere with fragile ecosystems, etc. Climate change
impacts are both affected by, and worsen the many challenges facing
vulnerable communities in India — that millions of labourers have to work
outdoors in searing summer heat; that rain-fed, marginal farmers who can’t
make ends meet are now regularly being hit by erratic rainfall; landlessness
among Dalits; falling groundwater levels in many regions; 49 million women
having had to leave the labour market in recent years but responsible for
nurturing and household responsibilities in adverse conditions; rising costs of
health care in urban areas, etc. Each of this cannot be spelt out while
discussing impacts, but none of this can be forgotten.

36.3.1 Impacts on Humans

First, a brief look at climate changes happening worldwide. Here, we touch
upon just three key changes. Intense, extreme heat, which used to cover
barely 0.1‒0.2 per cent of the Earth’s landmass in the 1950s, has now spread
50⎯100 times wider, to 10 per cent of its land surface. This explains the
frequent fires in different countries in recent years. In 2022, China faced the
most severe heat wave ever recorded, if one were to consider its intensity,
duration, and area affected.

Two, the Earth is not just heating up, it is also melting. Greenland is losing
243 billion tonnes of ice each year, six times as much as barely 20 years ago.
Arctic sea ice is shrinking at 13 per cent per decade, according to NASA. At
the other end of the planet, Antarctica has been losing ice at the rate of 149
billion tonnes a year, three times as much as two decades ago (IPCC data).
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Provincialising the Less ice means a darker surface remains, resulting in more heat gets
Anthropocene absorbed, which in turn melts more ice, in a feedback loop.

Three, sea levels the world over are rising, Melting glaciers have been the
highest contributor to this sea level rise, followed by ocean water’s expansion
due to the heat it has taken in, and then ice melting on Greenland. Though sea
level rise happens at different rates in different oceans, the global average
rate of sea level rise during 2013‒2021 has been 4.5 mm annually. This too is
happening at an accelerating rate.

One of the most definitive impacts of climate change in India has been that
heat waves have become more intense, frequent, and last longer. They are
caused partly by a warmer tropical Indian Ocean, less rain, and drier soils.
Nights too have become less cool than they used to be, hence offering little
respite.

Being a tropical country, the definition of a ‘heat wave’ has a high

temperature threshold in India, particularly when compared to other
countries. But it is not just the heat, it is also becoming more humid, because
a warmer air can hold more moisture. The elderly, infants, those with already
existing ailments, and people working outdoors are particularly vulnerable to
this deadly combination of heat and humidity. Across India, workers labour
in stifling conditions for up to 12–14 hours a day in industrial areas. Those in
other occupations are also vulnerable: construction workers (often women),
agricultural labourers, road-building workers, miners, and those who sell
goods in pushcarts, or work outdoors in cities.

A study published in October 2022 in medical journal Lancet states that

“exposure to extreme heat is associated with kidney injuries, heatstroke,
adverse pregnancy outcomes, impacts on mental health, and worsening of
underlying cardiovascular and respiratory disease”.

A second widespread climatic change across India has been the rainfall
patterns, in particular of the southwest monsoon (June to September), from
which India gets 75 per cent of its annual rainfall. There are multiple human
factors underlying changes in rainfall. These include increased aerosol
pollutant particles in the atmosphere from fossil fuel burning, deforestation,
and greater urbanisation. A big factor is the excessive warming of the Indian
Ocean, the western Indian Ocean in particular.

Consequently, the southwest monsoon has reduced slightly overall since the
1950s. On top of this, it often rains irregularly. In context of the agricultural
season and cropping cycles, it often rains when it should not and does not
rain when it should. Extreme rainfall events, over 150 mm/day, have been
getting more frequent, in a very wide belt extending right from Gujarat to the
Orissa coast. Which is why many farmers say that nowadays it does not rain
for many days and then a lot of rain falls in a few hours or a couple of days!

Droughts too have increased, in duration, area, and intensity since the early
1950s, particularly in central India and southern peninsular India. Two key
reasons are warmer temperatures due to global warming and a warmer Indian
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Ocean. In general, with global warming, wetter regions tend to get wetter and Climate Change
drier regions tend to get drier.

As can only be expected in a society so heavily dependent on rainfall, these

heat waves, erratic rainfall, and widespread droughts tend to hit rain-fed and
marginal farmers, agricultural labourers, and women from poor households
(on whom the burden of procuring water and caring falls, in addition to
varied work). Distress migration has increased. With the spread of
commercialisation in agriculture in recent years, some have benefited, but it
has become more risky for all, and climate change is intensifying that risk.

The biggest threat to India’s borders is occurring, and will occur from sea
level rise, which, as mentioned above, will continue unavoidably for
centuries. Sea level rise along India’s coasts has accelerated to 3.3 mm/year
over the past 30 years. Relative sea level rise in the West Bengal Sundarbans,
which includes other factors, is much higher. It has meant a slow erosion of
people’s lands, villages, homes, and salination of wells and fields. “We used
to have 12 bighas”, a farmer told. “Six have been swallowed by the water.”
People repeatedly have had to shift inland, and tens of thousands of people
have had to migrate in their search for a livelihood. Multiple factors are
responsible, but what is unfolding in the Sundarbans today will occur at that
rate along thousands of kilometres of coasts tomorrow.

For those in urban areas, the growing heat waves have often proved, literally,
lethal. Hundreds have died in heatwaves in recent years in India. Their effects
are worsened by the unequal nature of urban development – studies have
shown that extreme heat affects the urban poor excessively, because of their
cramped homes, congested localities, and materials used in house
construction.

Another big urban impact is flooding. People in Mumbai still remember the
extreme floods of June 2005 in which city received 974 mm of rain in a
single day! Other, more recent flooding events include the floods in Chennai
in 2015, Kerala in 2018, and in Bengaluru in 2022. In each case, the flooding
has been made worse by the poorly planned ‘development’ often fuelled by
commercial interests – the blocking of the Mithi River in Mumbai, the
shrinkage of wetlands in Chennai, and the takeover of urban lakes in
Bengaluru by residential complexes and technology parks.

To shift to an entirely different ecosystem, the Hindu Kush Himalayan region

has warmed by 1.24⁰C during 1951‒2014, about twice as much as India’s
average over the same period. The warming at 5,000 metres has been a
staggering 2⁰C–2.5⁰C during 1961–2006. Warmer temperatures across the
Himalaya are causing a change in snowfall patterns in Kashmir, Ladakh, and
Himachal Pradesh. It snows less at mid to high altitudes. Precipitation is less
as snow and more as rain. Or it snows at the wrong time in the season.

To sum up, there is hardly any ecosystem or region in India immune from
climatic changes any more. They are happening more frequently.
Consequently, people barely recover from one impact before another hits
them. One can only hope that the rapid impacts we have experienced in 2022,
one after the other, are not the start of a ‘great acceleration’ in impacts. 451
Provincialising the Finally, its impacts are deeply unequal. And unjust, because it is hitting the
Anthropocene most those who are least responsible.

36.3.2 Impacts On Other Species

Other species are already far worse hit by climate change than humans,
because they have relatively limited physiological thresholds to cope with
rising temperatures of the air or water, or changing rainfall patterns.

In Uttarakhand, trees have climbed higher by a thousand feet, looking for

temperatures to which they are accustomed. In this climb upward, they are
hardly alone. Across the Himalayan range, oak trees, apple trees, vegetables,
reptiles, butterflies, birds, and other flora and fauna are all trying to adapt by
climbing higher up mountain slopes. It raises a question as the Himalaya
continue to warm: how far up can they go?

This shift in species’ range (the geographical location to which species are
historically accustomed) is also happening in the oceans. Key marine species
such as mackerel and sardines, on which lakhs of people depend for their
incomes and nutrition, have spread north by hundreds of kilometres over the
last thirty years, from Kerala to Gujarat along the western coast and from
Andhra Pradesh to Bengal along India’s eastern coast.

Species are also undergoing phenological changes, in the annual timing of

events such as bud emergence, leaf emergence, fruiting, etc. There has been
early or erratic flowering of many plants and trees, such as rhododendron
across the Himalaya, saffron in Kashmir, and mango in Orissa. This can also
cause havoc in their interdependence, between pollinators and their food or
between caterpillars and the timing of leaf emergence. Finally, cattle and
other livestock also get affected by heat waves, droughts, and the wider
spread of vector diseases due to it being warmer or following floods.

36.4 THE URGENCY OF THE PROBLEM

Crucial ecosystems will soon cross tipping points into new states from which
they will not recover. A September 2022 paper in the journal Science
analysed many of the world’s ecosystems and argued that the Earth may have
already left a safe climate state beyond 1oC warming, and that a “significant
likelihood of passing multiple tipping points exists above 1.5oC”. These most
immediate threats include the collapse of the gigantic ice sheets on Greenland
and West Antarctica, the death of coral reefs, including off India’s western
coast, and the melting of boreal permafrost– all at 1.5oC –and the irreversible
loss of Himalayan glaciers at 2oC. These processes will take long to unfold,
but once initiated, they cannot be stopped. At the current rate of warming, we
will cross 1.5oC in barely two decades.

Two, with greater warming, extreme events –such as the floods that hit
Pakistan in August 2022 or the heat wave in North India in 2024 – will
happen far more frequently. Something that should happen every 50 years in
a normal climate may occur every ten years or even every other year.

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Three, the Earth’s is a complex system, which means that its various Climate Change
ecosystems are interconnected and the whole is more than the sum of the
parts. Changes in one ecosystem due to global warming – say, less ice in the
Arctic – may affect another, such as the Greenland ice sheet (Figure 4).
Changes in both would affect a third, such as the Amazon rainforest. And so
on. At some point, multiple feedbacks will happen simultaneously
accelerating the planet toward extreme warming, beyond the experience of
human civilisation. Our urgent intervention is needed to make sure that key
ecosystems do not get irreversibly damaged, and that the situation does not
spiral out of control.

Fig. 4: The world’s ecosystems are interconnected in feedback loops

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36.5 HOW ARE GOVERNMENTS RESPONDING?
The world’s governments have been meeting each year to address different
areas of climate change – in particular, reductions in greenhouse gas
emissions, climate impacts, financial assistance, and technology transfers – in
what is called Conference of the Parties (COPs) under the United Nations
auspices.

In the most important area of intervention – emissions reduction –

interventions by the world’s governments have so far been less than effective.
In the 30 years since the Rio Summit, the world’s emissions, instead of
falling, have risen by over 60 per cent (38 billion tonnes of CO2eq in 1990, to
over 60 billion tonnes in 2022).

A very brief history of this process: under the Kyoto Protocol (named after
the city in which COP 3 was held, in Kyoto, Japan in 1997), governments
agreed to cut their GHG emissions by an average of merely 5.2 per cent
measured against 1990 baselines. This was much less than the science
demanded in terms of emissions cuts needed. What is more, the US Congress
refused to ratify the protocol. And under the common but differentiated
responsibilities (CBDR) principle, developing countries such as China and
India were not required to join. Hence the world’s three largest emitters were
not covered.

Under the Paris Agreement following COP 21 in 2015, countries are required
to make voluntary emissions reduction pledges in their nationally determined
contributions (NDCs), to be periodically submitted to the United Nations. As
of September 2022, 166 nations had submitted their NDCs. For instance,
China, in its updated NDC, has pledged to cut its CO2 emissions intensity
(that is, not an absolute emissions cut, but relative to its GDP) by over 65 per
cent by 2030, compared to 2005. The United States has pledged to reduce its
greenhouse gas emissions — in absolute, not relative terms — by 50–52 per
cent by 2030, also over 2005 levels.

As of September 2022, 88 countries have also declared ‘net zero’ emissions

pledges, including India. ‘Net zero’ is when the amount of carbon dioxide
emitted into the atmosphere by human activities equals the amount of carbon
dioxide removed from the atmosphere by human interventions. The aim is to
reduce emissions by electrifying sectors, such as transport, and to generate
that electricity via expanded solar and wind power. On the other side of the
ledger, draw down the emissions via more afforestation, changed cropping
practices, or capturing and storing the carbon dioxide emitted. ‘Net zero’ is
important because it would result in there being no additional warming,
though it would remain at the level reached.

Though there has been slight progress in recent years, it is not enough. The
Paris Agreement set as its targets limiting “the increase in global warming
well below 2oC above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the
temperature increase to 1.5oC”. However, United Nations’ Emissions Gap
Report 2022 states that the implementation of current NDCs “is estimated to
limit warming over the 21st century to about 2.6oC”. It also warned that
454 “warming is expected to increase further after 2100”.
Indian government’s policy responses Climate Change

India first submitted its nationally determined contribution (NDC) to the

United Nations in October 2015. This document was updated in August 2022.
In this update, the Indian government declared the following key goals:
1) To reduce the emissions intensity of India’s GDP by 45 per cent by 2030
from the 2005 level;
2) To have 50 per cent of electricity capacity from non-fossil fuel-based
energy sources by 2030, but dependent upon transfer of technologies and
low-cost international finance from the Green Climate Fund;
3) To create an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of CO2-
equivalent through additional forest and tree cover; and
4) To propagate a healthy and sustainable way of living based on traditions
and values of conservation and moderation, including through a mass
movement for Lifestyle for Environment as a key to combating climate
change.
This update, it says, is a step towards our long-term goal of reaching net zero
emissions by 2070. In that context, on 15 November 2022, the government
released India’s Long-term Low Carbon Development Strategy at COP 27 in
Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. It provides roadmaps for transitions is six sectors –
electricity and energy, transport, buildings and urban areas, industry, carbon
dioxide removal, forests, and financing low carbon development.
The enhancement of pledges by different countries, mentioned above, has
been enabled by the start of an energy transition, an expansion of solar, wind
and other renewables, and a slowing growth (though still an expansion) in
fossil fuel use. The expansion of solar and wind power has been helped by
falling unit prices, largely due to a massive production of solar panels by
China, and the expansion of solar and wind power there. According to BP’s
Statistical Review of World Energy 2022, solar, wind, and hydropower
contributed 28 per cent of total electricity generation worldwide in 2021.
In India too, we are at the beginning of an energy transition, with a
considerable expansion of renewables in electricity generation, solar power in
particular. As of September 2022, renewables’ capacity in India has grown to
118,080 megawatts (MW). Per unit prices of solar power have fallen
considerably, from Rs 17 per unit (or a KWh) about a decade ago to roughly
Rs 2.30 per unit currently.
However, some caveats are necessary. In renewables, the actual electricity
generated tends to be much lower than capacity. Hence the share of
renewables in electricity generation is still modest.
Two, the most significant shifts are happening in the electricity sector
worldwide, but electricity is only one form of energy use. The shift away
from coal, oil, and gas in sectors other than electricity, such as in transport,
buildings, and the industrial sector, is still at an initial stage. For example, in
transport, fossil fuels still dominate vehicular sales – according to the
International Energy Agency’s report, Global EV Outlook 2022, electric cars
were 10 per cent of cars purchased worldwide in 2021 (in India, the share
was less than 0.5 per cent), but just 0.3 per cent of trucks sold last year 455
Provincialising the worldwide were electric ones. The energy transition needs to be speeded up
Anthropocene and be more equitable. Civil society has an important role to play in meeting
these objectives, and it is to this important question that we now turn.

36.6 HOW SHOULD WE RESPOND?

There are multiple ways to engage with the issues of climate change and
apart from initiatives by the governments, it is necessary to begin with the
individuals.
36.6.1 Individual Measures
Any suggestions about individual measures only applies to the well-off. Some
of our actions have a large carbon dioxide footprint and it is important to
minimise those. Flying tends to have the highest carbon footprint and hence it
is important to restrict it to essential journeys and emergencies. Reduce your
electricity consumption by limiting the use of energy-intensive gadgets such as
air conditioners. Use the Metro and other public transport as much as possible.
In general, living simply also helps reduce commodity consumption and waste
generation, which has become such a huge urban problem.
At the household level, it helps greatly to install rooftop solar panels and
rainwater harvesting. Growing vegetables in your veranda if you have one, or
on the terrace of your house or housing complex is not just healthier, it also
reduces your food’s carbon footprint. And eat less meat if you are well-off
and can meet your nutritional needs from other food.
36.6.2 Collective Responses
Individual measures are certainly relevant. However, they are not sufficient.
Collective responses – through student groups, resident welfare associations
(RWAs), political parties, farmers’ unions, women’s groups, and other
organisations – are more important because a complex problem like global
warming cannot be addressed by individual measures alone and needs
collective solutions, in sync with enabling and enlightened state policies.
Given limitations of space, briefly discussed below are a couple of key
measures pertaining to the reduction of emissions (mitigation) and coping
with climate change impacts (adaptation).
Emissions are the most important aspect of climate change, and hence their
sharp reduction is what we should prioritise. Cities and towns are responsible
for roughly 70–75 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions in India (and
globally), and a large part of it comes from just three sources: electricity use,
air conditioning in particular; transport; and construction.
Hence, we need to push for a more rapid transition to renewable energy
sources such as solar and wind. Though considerable progress regarding
renewables has been made in recent years in India, much more is possible.
The share of renewables in actual electricity generation is still modest, and
the only way this share can be raised significantly is by a huge expansion of
renewable energy. Such an expansion is particularly pertinent as we electrify
sectors that currently depend on fossil fuels, such as transport (cars, e-
rickshaws, buses, etc.) and cooking, because if their source of electricity is
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still coal, it will continue to generate a lot of carbon emissions and thereby Climate Change
defeat the purpose.
Regarding public transport, we are at the start of a shift towards electric
vehicles, particularly in two-wheelers. What is needed even more is a robust
public transport system in every town and in rural areas. We should push for a
transport system that stops focusing on car users, and is meant for all, including
cyclists and bus users. To reduce the use of private cars (and hence emissions),
local governments can introduce congestion charges, car-free zones, and better
last mile connectivity to homes. Expanding renewables, reducing the dirtiest
coal use, and increasing public transport also helps deal with air pollution,
which has become such a massive health issue in so many places in India.
Regarding adaptation, water is a key area of intervention in a climate-
changed context. One needs to expand water harvesting along roads and in
public places and create dug holes for recharging groundwater.
The transformation needed of urban and other systems and the rethinking of
societal priorities implies that the climate crisis is not merely a technical
question, and addressing the crisis adequately cannot be done merely by
technological interventions. It is related to larger questions of development,
to a development trajectory that needs to be more sustainable and equitable.
This implies prioritising people’s basic needs, reducing wasteful, elite
consumption, and seeking greater connection and harmony with Nature. In its
absence, not just climate change, but also a range of other crises – air
pollution, soil degradation, massive waste generation, plastic contamination,
deforestation, etc. – will continue to haunt us, and many of them will affect
the quality of our lives adversely.

36.7 SUMMARY
This unit has sought to provide an overview of climate change, both in the
Indian context and globally. It includes the basic science of global warming,
key climate impacts on humans and other species, its politics, the energy
transition, and some suggestions on ways forward.
The intensifying climate change manifestations in 2024 — heat waves,
droughts, raging fires, cyclones/hurricanes, and severe floods — in South
Asia and elsewhere in the world provide a warning to humanity that its
impacts may be far sooner and graver than earlier imagined. In a gross
inversion of justice, climate change is harming the most those who are least
responsible for the problem, both within and between countries. And its
impacts on other species is already far worse than on our own, and in fact
lend a qualitatively different and greater urgency to the problem of global
warming than is usually perceived.
Addressing the crisis cannot be limited to technological solutions, while
carrying on everything else in the same, business-as-usual manner. In fact,
addressing different facets of the problem provides opportunities for a better
re-imagining and restructuring of urban spaces, transport systems, and much
else. Equity and sustainability need to be central to our interventions, and
they need to have different aspects – between people, between generations,
and between species.
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Provincialising the
Anthropocene
36.8 EXERCISES
1) What are the key climate change impacts in India? Why are they
intensifying?
2) What the key points of India’s NDC?
3) How do you think is the best way to respond to the climate crisis?

36.9 RECOMMENDED READINGS AND

REFERENCES
Adve, Nagraj, (2014) ‘Moving Home: Global Warming and Shifts in
Species’ Range in India’, Economic & Political Weekly, vol 49, no 39, 27
September, pp. 34–38.
Adve, Nagraj, (2019) ‘Impacts of Global Warming in India: Narratives from
Below’, in India in a Warming World: Integrating Climate Change and
Development, Navroz Dubash, ed. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, pp.
64–78.
Adve, Nagraj, (2022) Global Warming in India: Science, Impacts, and
Politics, Eklavya Bhopal.
Agarwal, Ravi and Omita Goyal, (eds.) (2020) Weather Report: The Crisis of
Climate Change, IIC Quarterly India International Centre, Delhi
Down to Earth. Centre for Science and Environment.
[Link] (website, for regular updates on climate
change)
Dubash, Navroz, (ed.) (2019) India in a Warming World: Integrating Climate
Change and Development, New Delhi, Oxford University Press,
[Link]
[Link] (free download).
IPCC/Masson-Delmotte, V, et al, (eds) (2021) Climate Change 2021: The
Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group 1 to the Sixth
Assessment Report of the IPCC. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
[Link]
Klein, Naomi, (2014) This Changes Everything, Penguin Books London.
Krishnan, R. et al, (eds.) (2020) Assessment of Climate Change Over the
Indian Region: A Report of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of
India. Springer, Singapore. [Link]
15-4327-2.
Raghunandan, D., (2020) ‘India, Paris Agreement and Domestic Action’,
Science and Culture, vol 86, nos 1–2, Jan–Feb, pp. 10–20.
TACC. (2022) Recordings of varied talks on different aspects of climate change.
Organised by Teachers Against the Climate Crisis. Available at
[Link]

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