During the International Affairs & Security session of the Yale Young Global Scholars program at the Yale University, apart from interacting with people wearing the same watches showing different times (thanks to the varying time zones!), I also got the incredible opportunity to be involved in a rigorous seminar on the crucial issue of ‘Competing for the Arctic’, where I invested my hours researching on the ramifications of a portended competition for energy in the ice-covered Arctic. Increasing energy demand worldwide has caused speculation that countries may soon look to new sources for energy, potentially in the Arctic. With climate change rapidly melting the polar caps, it is only a matter of time before the world is free to navigate the entire North Pole without ice in the way. Ice melting doesn’t just open up the world new shipping lanes; it also opens fighting over resources located there.

It’s here where I learnt about how severely our climate will be affected, god forbid, should the nations adorning the globe decide to embark on an all-destructive, ever-ravaging indifferent attitude to the receding ice caps in the north pole.

When we navigate to the Global South, the situation is even worse. Crowned by the magnificent beauty in white, The Himalayas, the Global South is now panic-stricken over its fluxing tiara. The Himalayas have been experiencing the ramifications of severe and rapid Climate Change in the recent past. Like a sick child, the Himalayan glaciers and snow seem to display symptoms of being non-resistant to the rising temperatures of our already ailing planet. The best example of our ill-fated Himalayas is the 2013 Uttarakhand Catastrophe that startled the whole of India by the intensity of destruction it caused and the number lives it claimed. A multi-day cloudburst that hit the north Indian state of Uttarakhand in June, 2013 elicited landslides and floods becoming the country’s worst natural calamity since the 2004 Tsunami. Near about 5,700 people were “presumed” dead and 4,200 villages were affected according to government records.  With glaciers receding at a rather faster rate than the global average in one of the world's most sensitive hotspots, The Himalayas, it is only rational to conclude that global climate change is manifesting its impacts at a particularly rapid rate, a situation that is predicted to intensify in the coming years, with dire and far-reaching impacts on food, water and energy security, as well as biodiversity and species loss, not just in the Himalayas, but throughout Asia. Here’s a video by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in partnership with UNEP and the Asia Pacific Network on the HImalayan Glacial melt.

A World Bank report suggests that at 2.5°C warming, melting glaciers and the loss of snow cover over the Himalayas are expected to threaten the stability and reliability of northern India’s primarily glacier-fed rivers, particularly the Indus and the Brahmaputra. The Indus and Brahmaputra are expected to see increased flows in spring when the snows melt, with flows reducing subsequently in late spring and summer. Alterations in the flows of the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra rivers could significantly impact irrigation, affecting the amount of food that can be produced in their basins as well as the livelihoods of millions of people (209 million in the Indus basin, 478 million in the Ganges basin, and 62 million in the Brahmaputra basin in the year 2005).

Moreover the rising sea levels cause goosebumps for climate scientists since the coastal areas of India are also at stake. If the world’s temperature rises by 2º celsius, homes of 20 million people in India would be submerged in sea while the figure is expected to be 64 million in China.

With India close to the equator, the sub-continent would see much higher rises in sea levels than higher latitudes. Sea-level rise and storm surges would lead to saltwater intrusion in the coastal areas, impacting agriculture, degrading groundwater quality, contaminating drinking water, and possibly causing a rise in diarrhea cases and cholera outbreaks, as the cholera bacterium survives longer in saline water. Kolkata and Mumbai, both densely populated cities, are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of sea-level rise, tropical cyclones, and riverine flooding.

Let’s consider the case of the 1st place to be orphaned by climate change. The villages most affected by the climate change are the coastal villages in the district of Kendrapara in Odisha, India. The cluster of seven villages called Satabhaya is the live example. 1930 land records show an area of 320 sq km for the Satabhaya cluster near the port town of Paradip in Odisha. The 2000 land records indicate that this area has been reduced to 155 sq km with five of the seven villages being swallowed by the sea.  This shows the plight of human race in the hands of climate change is elevated at an unprecedented rate.

A report by Yale Environment 360 concludes that if we could somehow find ways to extract 500 billion tons from the atmosphere, we would likely be able to have our wish of CO2 concentrations of 430 ppm and warming capped at 1.5 degrees. The trick that puts a glint in the eye of some technologists and climate scientists is known by the acronym BECCS, which stands for “biomass energy, carbon capture, and storage.” The idea is to convert the world’s power stations to burning biomass, such as trees or marine algae. The industrialized production of this biomass on such a scale would accelerate the natural drawdown of CO2 by plants during photosynthesis. If the CO2 created by burning the biomass could then be captured from the stacks and buried in geological strata — the prototype technology known as carbon capture and storage — then the net effect would be a permanent extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere. It would be the reverse of the current fossil-fuel energy system. And the more energy generated, the more CO2 would be drawn out of the air. There are huge questions about such a strategy. Wouldn’t such a vast new industry have its own absurdly high-energy requirements, putting us back at square one? But says IIASA’s Florian Kraxner, “Of all the ways of achieving negative emissions, BECCS seems to be the most promising.”

Now, back to the question - why must we keep global temperatures below 1.5 degrees?

I was invited to be a part of the Youth Climate Summit in my state where in answer to the above question, I put forward the following answer:

“Climate is a more geopolitical issue now since different regions have differing roles in contribution to climate degradation and as a consequence, different nations will be affected differently when policies are made and imposed. That’s how the term Global South and advocates for the needs of the Global South got introduced in the UNFCCC. The Global South is a group of countries who are still transitioning into an industrialised economy which compels them to pollute the climate. When welfare is weighed against climate responsibility, any government, particularly that of a developing country, would choose the former since the citizens need to be fed, dressed, employed, and educated, all of which command industrial involvement from marginal to maximum degrees. But in case of an extremely advanced nation like Germany or USA, where consumers are offered much more than they actually need, the governments can work towards curtailing excessive fossil fuel dependency and thus eliminate industrial pollution. Thus political will on the part of industrialised nations is a MUST when it comes to restricting global rise in temperatures to 1.5 degree celsius. It must become the principal responsibility of the the greatest contributors to pollution to take the first and most severe actions to face the climate crisis.

By some estimates, curbing warming at 1.5 degrees could be sufficient to prevent the formation of an ice-free Arctic in summer, to save the Amazon rainforest, and to prevent the Siberian tundra from melting and releasing planet-warming methane from its frozen depths. It could also save many coastal regions and islands from permanent inundation by rising sea levels, particularly in the longer run.

Hence, being climate sensitive in our economic and political actions becomes a prime responsibility in this crucial hour on earth. Every effort, no matter how small or big, will bring keep a check on the global rise in temperatures.

Remember, the world is watching and our mother Earth is waiting. So, buckle up and make an effort!!!”