Mortgaging Our Ecological

A climate change narrative lost in rhetoric and catchy metaphors.

- Dinesh C Sharma

THE GLOBAL climate discourse reaches its crescendo every time a new report is released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or a landmark treaty like the Paris Agreement is signed or delayed. At times, tweets by climate deniers like the US President Donald Trump also make news and create a temporary flutter. The occurrence of mega-disasters such as those caused by tropical cyclones, dust storms and heavy flooding of cities due to extreme rainfall also make people rant about climate change and its disastrous impacts. Climate change is also in the backdrop of major diplomatic gatherings and international events such as meetings of G-20 countries and the World Economic Forum, though such meetings rarely end up in any worthwhile commitment by political or business leaders. Decoupling the climate discourse from such event-based response is critical if the world is serious about taking action to prevent the catastrophic outcomes of unbridled warming. David Wallace-Wells’ book is yet another wake-up call to do so. It mostly provides an evidence-based narrative on what the world would look like if projections about temperature rise become a reality by 2100.

The reference point of this narrative is the Paris Agreement which lays down a global action plan with the objective of avoiding the impacts of climate change by limiting the warming to below 2°C while directing all efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. This looks like a tall order, given that carbon emissions continue to grow and the pledges made by countries to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will only get us down to 3.2°C, the book points out.