By: Ruchika Rashya Bhuyan
You are walking on the street. Desolate, dark, and deserted. The firmament weeps in stygian hues. The ground is moist from the remnants of the waves that encroached upon them and devoured most of your comrades in a rage. The clouds vigorously clash against each other, launching sparks of lightning but a few inches from your feet. They tremble fretfully— your limbs. The doom flashes across your vision. The air smells of poison as a gust of carbon-riddled wind hisses past your ear. A handful of muffled screams it brings along from the barely surviving isolated corners. You fling your hands in a fit of defeat. Your feet can no longer carry the weight of your body. They can no longer carry the weight of the blunders of a generation now buried beneath them. Losing your balance over life, you fall to the ground, crying in remorse, “When in history did we lose our voices?”
As dramatic as the scene above may seem to be, the plausibility of its occurrence is only increasing by the day. While mainstream news is deluged with tales of vaccines, recoveries, a third wave, and other headlines about the pandemic, stories about our infected planet have sunk to oblivion, or rather, deliberate neglect. Heavy monsoons across our country like never before, over a thousand lakes born to the Swiss Alps, unprecedented heat waves causing unanticipated surges in temperatures across the United States and Canada, floods in Germany and New Wales that took many lives— are these signs we must be turning blind eyes to?
It is difficult to point fingers at a particular act or a particular generation of people that invited climate change. It has been perniciously growing ever since one can recall. But now more than ever, its ramifications are inevitable and unstoppable. The aforementioned phenomena in different parts of the globe aren’t usual. They have disrupted weather patterns that held true for decades. Places like Portland, known for their pleasant climatic conditions, are facing abrupt and uncanny rises in temperatures. Let’s take a look at our own country: the monsoons usually last over four months, June to September. But recent years have witnessed increasingly erratic and uneven patterns of rainfall, with some places receiving these seasonal showers as early as in April-May, and others receiving a long-overdue share of the rains. As detrimental as irregular rain patterns can be to our farmers, they are also warning signals about the deteriorating climate of our planet. Two separate studies published in the journal named ‘Earth Systems Dynamics’ revealed a crucial connection between the Indian monsoons and climate change. The first study found that dust particles from the Middle Eastern Deserts sweeping into the atmosphere can grow so hot that they can change the pressure of the Arabian Sea. This has irreversible implications for the monsoons, for these showers build from the pressure that develops over the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. The second study, on the other hand, states that climate change is causing the monsoons to be more erratic and wetter. Moreover, every additional degree of warming is likely to increase the intensity of the monsoons by 5%, researchers from Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research have found.
Zooming out the lens to view the world, the portents become all the more conspicuous. A study conducted by NASA has found that the ability of tropical forests to absorb carbon dioxide is on the decline. While we have been relying on trees as our saviours from a likely climate-induced apocalypse, trees may not be as acquiescent to help us as we may imagine. Research conducted from 2000 to 2019 in forests and savannas around the world discovered that the vegetation absorbs a smaller fraction of carbon dioxide than scientists originally thought. In addition, the ability of tropical forests to absorb CO2 is diminishing due to massive deforestation, large-scale habitat degradation, and climate change consequences like droughts and floods.
Looking at an even bigger picture, in all probability, temperatures will continue to rise, changes in precipitation patterns will increase, more droughts and heatwaves will creep in, and in brief, climate change will continue throughout this century and beyond. Living in a time when the weather is becoming increasingly unbearable and the world is grappling with a lethal virus, to even entertain the thought of what ‘beyond’ might look like is ghastly.
The tone so far has been sombre and if you’re expecting optimism to slide in from somewhere, I must apologise to you for bursting your bubble. Despite how hesitant we might be to admit it, we are getting the taste of our own medicine. There is no more time to complain or accuse each other. There is no more time to ignore what is happening and what we’re all experiencing together. The call for action is urgent. When it was about our own lives, we came together to battle against the pandemic. Presently, we might be on the verge of encountering the third wave but we can all agree that our resilience and resolution to declare an end to the pandemic has increased tremendously since last year. Should we also not come together to save the life of our planet? Till now, we’ve always found excuses. We have to go to school, work, run errands, complete chores, and attend to a million other things that we deem much more significant than climate change. But without a planet, where will our cars run, where will our buildings stand, and which air will we breathe?
If you don’t know where to or how to start, remember that charity begins at home. We can all start by reducing, or better, ending the use of air conditioners. We can all start by minimising the use of private vehicles and switching to carpooling or public transport. We can all start by planting little saplings on barren lands in our vicinity. We can tell our friends and family why this is important and what we can do about it. From there, step by step, pace by pace, we can fight this battle for our planet, our home, together. For if we don’t, we will be left wondering one day: when in history did we lose our voices? (The author us a student of Dhirubhai Ambani International School)