India experienced an unrelenting heatwave this summer with temperatures crossing 50 degree Celsius. Average temperature has been on a steady rise. New findings by the EU’s climate change monitoring services, C3S, now say that since June 2023, every month for 13 months in a row, is ranked as the planet's hottest since records began. World over, heat and cold waves, ocean warming, heavy precipitation, erratic/heavy rains and floods, cyclones, droughts, tornadoes, melting polar ice, declining soil biodiversity and air pollution are increasing and recurring due to climate change endangering the entire climate system. And all living beings are part of the same climate conditions.  

Climate has been affected by the use of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas in homes, factories and transportation. Their burnings emit greenhouse gases (GHG), mostly carbon dioxide and methane, into the atmosphere, raising the earth’s surface and ocean temperatures. India is highly coal-reliant, and the worlds’ third highest emitter of GHGs after the US and China.

In this episode of #Checks & Balances, Geetanjali Minhas of Governance Now spoke with climate experts to understand the causes of climate change, its impact, mitigation and adaptation.

You can watch the episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_QVIu2oNrI

Here are edited excerpts of what the experts said:

Ashok Lavasa
Former Union Secretary, Environment, Forests and Climate Change:  

Despite all the efforts of the government and all our commitments, the reality is that we depend a lot on fossil fuels. 70% of our electricity is still coming out of fossil fuels. The good thing is that India is actually taking the lead in harnessing renewable energy. We all have heard of the International Solar Alliance.

Since liberalisation, 1992 onwards when we invited the private sector into electricity generation, our installed capacity of renewable energy has gone up from about 32 MW to more than 150,000 MW. That is very creditable. Barring China, no other country has taken such a huge step towards installing renewable energy capacity.

The irony is that even during this period especially after the Kyoto protocol where countries that made commitments for reducing carbon emissions, coal consumption in most of the countries including the US as well has gone up.

So far renewable energy is not capable of providing base load for which we need technologies and storage capacities to make it reliable and predictable. The other challenge of course is that we need to have smart transmission systems to absorb renewable energy. Thirdly, we need to try and develop more and more decentralized distributed generation so that the cost on heavy duty grids is reduced.

The costs for financing of renewables should be spread over the investment which is made. In our country this debate has gone on for a decade now. In 2015 the ministry of environment notified stringent norms but the industries stoutly resisted their imposition with the argument that it will lead to huge capital investment. So what? It is not as if that capital is not available. The system has to gear itself up to provide that capital and to spread the impact of that over the length of the project so that the impact on the consumers is not heavy. But if you want to recover everything in five years or 10 years, obviously, the impact will be more. Financial models can be created which make this balance viable; so whatever additional investment is required that will have to be made. Same applies for buildings and for any other kind of investment.

In fact, the Supreme Court recently said that exaggerated investments in the name of protecting the environment cannot be made when we don't even know whether that investment will work.  

Many entrepreneurs have come into the market and they are bringing out financial as well as investment models which can make things viable. For example, the aggregators who have come in the market are aggregating demand from different people and making this investment.
I have great faith in new technological solutions being tried and cracked to deal with this problem. I believe that private capital will eventually find its worth to make commercial investments and have the ability and the skill to create projects which are commercially viable.
You have to create institutions, platforms which have this credibility of channeling that capital and deploying it in proper projects and for that I think the scientific community can develop evaluation standards to credibly assess the impact of all the investment.

The other part is that a lot of philanthropic capital is available in the world waiting to be deployed.

We need to protect our finite resources. Take the case of protection of rivers which I think all of us are struggling with. Everybody talks of either water or sand that the river provides. Nobody talks of the river system as a whole which is flowing and part of a system. It is a topographical feature which nature has created. If we don't protect that system very soon what we want to extract from that river will also disappear. Is it too late to arrest the situation.

A study by Isher Judge Ahluwalia has indicated that almost 70% of the infrastructure in urban areas is yet to be built. The rate of urbanisation in India is going to go up and rapid urbanisation will call for more infrastructure, largely building infrastructure. We have an opportunity to construct our buildings which are energy-efficient, green, have the capacity to utilise solar energy and thereby not only harness more renewable energy but also lower the demand.
 
Importantly, one should never undermine the importance of policymakers or governments in this exercise. Ultimately, it is the policy which governments bring out that can provide a momentum to this exercise. If the governments are fully behind this you might be able to achieve what we want to achieve faster. That is where I think the role of government becomes important.

Mahesh Palawat
Vice President, Meteorology and Climate Change, Skymet Weather:

Our Earth is surrounded by a blanket of air and we are adding layers of more and more greenhouse gases (GHG) into this blanket which is leading to warming of air. Warm air leads to heating of space and the capacity of air to hold moisture is also increasing. With increase in moisture in the atmosphere, there is development of intense vertically developed cloud which causes heavy downpour. GHGs also cause pollution. Pollutants trap the energy of sun and further exaggerate the rise in temperature.

Weather extremities are coupled by naturally occurring and interchanging weather patterns El Nino and La Nina. When the sea surface temperature of Eastern and Central Pacific starts increasing, trade winds get weaker and the sea surface temperature over Eastern Equatorial Pacific starts increasing leading to intense rainfall over Peru and Southern parts of USA and drier conditions over Australia and Southeast Asia. This is El Nino. Increasing sea surface temperatures leads to more intense and frequent development of typhoons, hurricanes and cyclones over the Pacific as well as over the Atlantic.

In La Nina it is reverse. Temperature starts cooling over the Eastern Pacific and increasing over Western Pacific leading to orbital conditions or intense rainfall over Australia and southwest monsoon is more imminent – it will be normal or over normal. The intensity and frequency of rain increase over western Pacific and Southeast Asia.

We see normal or above normal monsoon over Southeast Asia and in our country with drought like conditions at other times. This May-June has been the hottest summer with severe heatwave conditions over Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and even J&K. The pattern of rainfall we have witnessed in the 1980’s and 90’s that took place over 3-4 days is now taking place in the span of 6-8 hours or occasionally in 24 hours leading to flash floods and waterlogging.

Intensity as well as frequency of cyclones is increasing, ice cover is melting over mountains and glacial lakes are leading to rise in the sea levels, displacing thousands of people in low-lying areas. Particularly in tropics and subtropics we have seen that rainfall patterns are very erratic. One part of the district will have rainfall and other part of the same district will be dry.
Rising temperature leads to drier weather and ignition of forest fires like we have seen in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh which are sustaining. Due to GHGs in the atmosphere, pollution is also increasing.

We need better forecasting models to give input of more and more data shapes like satellite imagery, radars and have more automatic weather stations. We need more resolution coverage panning up to 500 kms for precise predictions and have experienced meteorologists. Students of meteorology should undergo an internship in IMD or Indian Air Force.

Suruchi Bhadwal
Director, Earth Science and Climate Change Division, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI):

Climate change is a global issue. No country can escape from the impacts of climate change. We are now a fast developing country and may be the third largest emitter of GHGs, but we are not responsible historically for the emissions and the concentrations of GHGs by the developed world in the atmosphere. Developed countries are now in a position to take steps and actions to turn the curve with regards to reducing the overall GHG emissions or concentration levels in the atmosphere.

Now that we are being hit hard with whether extremities there is realisation that something different is happening and they need to be acted upon.

The three pillars of the term ‘Sustainable Development’, coined in the 1972 UN Conference on Human Environment, are environment, economic and social. However, it has remained only a concept and a jargon and applied by countries without syncing its real meaning.

The European Union and the US have made Net Zero commitments for 2050, China has committed to go net zero by 2060 and India has pledged to go net zero by 2070. Such commitments raise hopes.

The measures being put in place however are still slow-paced and it will take another 30-40 years before you start seeing things being pushed very aggressively. With extremes that we are experiencing right now, another 30-40 years is a long time and these extreme changes will keep increasing in different forms.

Our consumptive lifestyle and desire to own different brands are putting pressure on resources. To produce these goods, a huge amount of energy is consumed in industrial processes and transportation at the back-end that add to emissions in the atmosphere. There's only one earth and it has finite resources and raw materials. We are continuously extracting from the earth to produce all those materials for us. Systems need to be put in place for recycling, onsite recycling and circular economy. We have to reduce the carbon footprint on earth and entities have to start emerging for a circular economy. We don’t have that.

Kartiki Negi
Lead, Climate Impacts & Science, Climate Trends:  

Average global temperatures have been increasing and on steady rise. This year we saw temperatures reaching 50 degrees Celsius across northwestern planes which are prone to heatwaves. East India, parts of South India and coastal regions have been facing the brunt of these increased temperatures too. Till last year, 2023 was the hottest year on record and before that it was 2016 and 2014.   

Majority of the population in India does not have access to air conditioners. At the most they have a cooler and when the cooler does not work they just left with fans. Due to increasing heat, power demand is increasing. Maximum power demand comes from cities like Delhi and Mumbai. Even in a city like Bengaluru, this year people told us they were thinking of installing an air conditioner. This is the new world.

Mumbai in 2023 recorded 92 nights with temperatures above 25 degrees Celsius. If there was no climate change, Mumbai would have only 30 nights with temperatures above 25 degrees Celsius. Those at the fringe without a cooling mechanism suffer the most.   

Last year rainfall was below normal though most of the places recorded normal rainfall. Our district-level study found that 60% of the districts had drought like conditions.

Even in the case of intense rains, it is about the spatial distribution of the rainfall which will benefit agriculture and crops.

We are a developing nation and people have aspirations for development. With the highest population in the world we cannot afford to adopt all measures that could stop emissions and for such reasons the Loss and Damage fund comes into play. Curbing emissions and steps like avoiding work during peak hours also have an economic cost. Can you stop a daily wager from working during the peak hours? Who is going to compensate for his core hours? Government policy will have to be implemented at ground level. You need localised heat action plans as per requirements of a particular area.