Climate Action – Are we planning for an Economic and Environmental Collapse?

India’s Election Oversights: The Looming Threat of Climate Change India has just concluded a massive and intense election exercise to decide the future of the nation. However, there was almost no focus on plans and actions for combating the emerging threats of global warming and climate change, which pose prime existential risks to life and property, with looming economic losses for the nation. Climate change impacts such as extreme heat, rapid glacial melting, and unexpected devastating floods are becoming more frequent and severe, leading to increasing economic losses worldwide. Yet, the main cause of excessive greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions—over 50 gigatons per year—remains unmitigated and is, in fact, still increasing unabated. The random exploitation of Earth’s resources also continues to rise, destroying the rich biodiversity that has allowed human civilizations to evolve and prosper. The UN-based IPCC has warned humanity that whatever damage control can be achieved with urgent global climate actions before 2030 will determine the future of our next generations—our children and grandchildren. The problem is indeed global in dimension, but the solutions largely lie in regional or local actions that must combine coherently to create global-level solutions. However, even at regional levels, very little is happening, aside from the shift to renewable energy sources like solar, wind, or bioenergy, which are now cheaper than fossil-fuel-based polluting energy. Although humanity has very little time to recover and restore the Earth’s carbon balance, there has been no concrete action taken yet for serious and rapid decarbonization. It is well known that while visible atmospheric particulate pollution kills over 7 million people every year, the invisible GHG emissions will soon cause much wider death and destruction once we cross certain global atmospheric tipping points. The absence of action by leadership and society amounts to planning for disaster. One emerging solution is to make polluters pay at the individual level to reduce per-capita GHG emissions. This could involve heavily taxing communities where per-capita GHG emissions are above the global average. Funds collected under UN oversight could then be directed to low per-capita emission-poor countries to enhance their capacity-building efforts for climate resilience and adaptation activities. All these are measurable parameters and can be implemented transparently as a first step towards establishing climate justice. By Prof. Amitav Mallik,Founder Member and Trustee, PIC Source: PIC

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