The deadly heatwave

With over 1,000 climate-related deaths reported from Spain and Portugal over the past week, as extreme temperatures break all previous records, and with Britain declaring a ‘national emergency’ over exceptionally high temperatures, expected to touch an all-time high of 40°C in a day or so, UN chief Antonio Guterres terms the ‘record-shattering’ heatwave conditions that have engulfed large parts of the globe as nothing short of ‘collective suicide’.

The planet is currently heating at the rate of over 13.3 Hiroshima nuclear bombs per second, or over 1,150,000 Hiroshima nuclear bombs per day.

Addressing ministers from 40 countries at the two-day conference on climate change, held at the beginning of this week in Berlin, the UN Secretary General reportedly warned: ‘Half of humanity is in the danger zone, from floods, droughts, extreme storms and wildfires. No nation is immune. Yet we continue to feed our fossil fuel addiction. We have a choice, collective action or collective suicide. It is in our hands.’

The stern warning comes at a time when, smashing all previous records, extreme weather conditions appear to be fast hurtling the world towards an apocalypse. As someone said, it is not climate change but ‘climate suicide’. From huge wildfires that have ravaged parts of Europe and North America, extreme heatwave conditions, and also incessant rains in certain regions of India, a terrible heatwave in Central Asia, the rapidly shrinking ice-shield in the Arctic and Antarctica, to drought in several parts of Africa, the global climate suddenly seems to be spinning out of control. It wasn’t as if the havoc that climate change can result in was not known but the massive damage it has begun to inflict has come much sooner than expected.

Here is what Prof Eliot Jacobson, formerly a professor of mathematics at Ohio University, using his prodigious mathematical mind, has worked out. Writing in his blog ‘Watching the World Go Bye’, he says: ‘The planet is currently heating at the rate of over 13.3 Hiroshima nuclear bombs per second, or over 1,150,000 Hiroshima nuclear bombs per day.’ He further calculates that the oceans are heating at the rate of over 12 Hiroshima nuclear bombs per second.

This is simply frightening. And yet, we aren’t ready for any collective action. The visibly worried and upset UN chief had earlier remarked: ‘Governments and business leaders are saying one thing, but doing another. Simply put, they are lying.’ He was reacting to the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which wants the greenhouse gas emissions to peak in 2022 if the world is to be confined within a safe limit of 1.5°C rise in temperature in this century. But that doesn’t seem to be happening. The clock is ticking fast.

Despite the repeated warnings, it is business as usual for political leaders, business leaders, neo-liberal economists, scientists and the media. These influential voices continue to convey a message that urges people not to unnecessarily panic, newer technologies will be able to fix the climate debacle. Numerous articles continue to appear worldwide, some even denying abnormal rise in temperatures to be associated with climate change, and justifying the destruction of natural resources for the sake of economic growth.

The world is certainly witnessing a strong opposition to the kind of economics that has led to the crisis. The demand for doing away with fossil fuels is gaining. There are a lot many influential voices that don’t think like the mainline economists. British minister Zac Goldsmith is one of them. In one of his tweets, he writes: ‘As fires rip through Europe and the world, as heat records are smashed in almost every region, as forests and ecosystems are being grubbed out at a record pace… it is worth reflecting that there are still politicians being elected who think protecting our planet isn’t cost-effective.’

Ban Ki-moon, former UN Secretary General, had poignantly quipped at a recent World Economic Forum meeting that the world needed leadership that could overhaul the economic design that was leading to a climate catastrophe. To me, that is the crux of the climate problem that political leadership is afraid to take on. Unless the obsession with GDP as the growth matrix ends, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Whether we like it or not, in reality it is the economic design that has not only widened inequality but also has led to an ecological crisis that has also brought the world at the edge of a precipice. The need, therefore, is for a radical economic transformation to fix the broken economic system. It can’t go on for long.

Perhaps the deadly heatwave has come as a shock therapy, a kind of awakening for humankind, and thereby providing an opportunity to go for a structural change. After all, there is no Planet B that we can shift to.

That there is a direct link between gas emissions, climate change and wealth creation has been widely acknowledged. The higher the rate of economic growth, higher is the carbon emissions. The quest for a higher GDP is leading to heating of the planet. It is in this context that a leading economist, Dr Herman Daly, emeritus professor at the Maryland School of Public Policy, has, in an interview with New York Times, argued in favour of a steady-state economy. He says that ‘every politician is in favour of growth’, and understandably so, but very conveniently they duck the real question: ‘Does growth ever become uneconomic?’ He asks whether growth is making us really richer in any aggregate sense or is it increasing costs faster than benefits? That is a question to which mainline economists have no answer.

Besides the dominant economic thinking, people’s behaviour too has to change. Reducing the economic footprint comes with a commitment to reduce consumption. We may not have created the climate crisis but have certainly helped sustain it.