Burning Earth

How global warming changes the lives of Indians, and the unequal ways it affects the population

- Snigdhendu Bhattacharya

TEMPERATURE is at the heart of creation, survival and destruction. After the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago, cooling allowed the formation of the first protons and neutrons and later atoms, leading to the creation of the first elements, hydrogen and helium. On Earth, cooling created the conditions for life to emerge. Excessive cooling during the ice ages left many species extinct. Temperature is one of the essential drivers of change, the only constant in life and beyond.

When the temperature changes abruptly, it triggers chain reactions among interacting elements. Higher temperature accelerates chemical reactions. Flowers, food and dead bodies decompose faster. Water reacts faster with minerals. Naturally, a warmer world will see many changes in the natural environment, just like a person whose blood is boiling may act unpredictably.

Over the past few years, the yellow spring flower known in the Kashmir valley as Gul-e-toor has been blooming about a month in advance and so has the spring flower of red rhododendron locally called Buransh in Uttarakhand. These did not mean early celebrations; people heard the footsteps of a calamity approaching.

In this journey into a new, uncertain world, a polar bear sleeping on a melting glacier is on the same ship as the unnamed 40-year-old factory worker from Bihar who lived in New Delhi in a room without a fan and succumbed to heatstroke on May 29, the day the mercury crossed 52°C.