Global warming: Battle between man and nature

by LALIT SETHI 

Global warming is already at work and it is time to take the doomsayers seriously. The scenario is frightening. Gangetic plain that has for thousands of years nursed human civilization is likely to vanish as the lands are reduced to sands. Conversely, the Gateway of India, the modern symbol of India is likely to be the victim of a deluge and submerge in the rising ocean waters. The battle to reverse these trends is already on. 

Doomsayers have told the United Nations that the world is in peril. The rapid change in climate has no doubt melted glaciers and started raising temperatures and sea levels. Global warming can no longer be called a grim or distant possibility. It is indeed at work.   A number of the world's most reputed scientists have predicted a near deluge as well as drying up of the rivers, deserts advancing and overtaking fertile green belts like the Gangetic plains. They also visualize that the Gateway of India and Nariman Point in Mumbai could be flooded in less than 15 years from now. They see Delhi's short winter disappearing, replaced by the year long summer as in equatorial zones. They already said that Delhi had almost no winter in 2007-8. This is not correct. Yes, indeed, the end of January and February was warm, but cooler or colder days returned in the end of the month and March.  

Even the Bruntland Commission of the 1980s had said that Kolkatta and Bangladesh would go under the sea by the end of the century. That has not happened. The climate wizards then say that by the year 2100, the consequences would be dire. Saline sea water would overtake most cities. There would be water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink. May be their aim is to wake up the slumbering people of the world and persuade them to do something before nemesis overtakes planet earth. If that is their purpose, one would like to applaud them. But the fact is that their measurements and calculations as well as predictions are not always on the dot because the weather despite the best equipment available and global information sharing by monitoring stations around the world are often hard to predict correctly.  

Already, one good prediction is that La Nina factor as opposed to the El Nina will ensure good crops this summer in India. El Nina lies east and La Nina in South America and the latter is believed to be benevolent this year and El Nina not adverse. Already the Indian weather man has forecast a normal monsoon this year, give and take four per cent less than normal or more than normal over a four month period from June to September. Aberrations in the behaviour of weather are now a well known experience year after year. The rains do come, but not at the time required, that is when the summer crop has to be sowed. Thus sowing has to be delayed or done with pumped up ground water or canal water wherever possible. But a majority of farmlands are rain fed. The large majority of farmers are at the mercy of the weather gods and they look up to the sky and pray to Lord Indra to be merciful. The capricious lord may or may not heed the prayers. That is his will. The gods have their own take on human wishes.  

But global warming and melting of the glaciers, snows and ice caps in the Himalayas as well as the Arctic and the Antarctica is a fact of life. Man is doing precious little yet about it as economic progress in the name of taming hunger of the billions of people. Thus what will man do? What will we Indians do about our motherland? How will try to save it? Shall we take genuine steps or makeshift measures? It is obvious that the human race can only take makeshift measurers. The forests are being cut down mercilessly to make room for towns and croplands to feed the ever-rising population, which has already gone up from six billion a few years ago to seven billion on a global scale. Foresters, be they contractors or guards and officials chop off a thousand trees if they are allowed to cut one hundred. They have electronic saws, which bring down a big tree in less than an hour from the ground level. But it is true that more saplings are being planted by the million, but they take a decade to 50 years to grow to the required level. Carbon dioxide or CO ² and fuel emissions are massive and polluting the atmosphere and creating a hole in the protective ozone layer. That is what is speedily warming up the globe.  

What are the makeshift measures that man will take to save himself from the fury of nature evident in earthquakes, storms, tornadoes, hurricanes and tsunamis as well as torrents of rain taking the shape of cloudburst and causing a great deluge. The consequences are inescapable although those in the range of these natural calamities are being forewarned and shifted to safer zones, if and whenever possible.

Since the Gateway of India was the entry point for the royals in the early part of the 20 ^th Century, it does not have a sea wall like Marine Drive, the golden necklace by night, has a low one, which could be gradually raised to ten feet or more.  If in three years, there are clear signs of rise in the sea level around Mumbai, a wall could be raised around the Gateway and even protect the threatened Nariman Point, the business and residential hub of the rich and famous. If in eight or ten years, it appears that sea walls will not suffice, then Indians could consider protecting threatened cities on the sea shore as property worth tens of thousands of crores of rupees is at stake. Netherlands technology might or might not work. But the rich and famous will already be thinking of relocating some of their operations away from Mumbai, including Pune and elsewhere in the country. Thus the dreams of Mumbai becoming a world class financial hub and city grande might be shattered in the not very distant future.  

Plans to protect the Gangetic plains, the breadbasket of India as well as the most densely populated region in the world, are already in the blueprint stage. The excessive waters from the Himalayan ranges could be placed in massive new reservoirs to keep farms irrigated and generate electricity for the rising population with higher expectations of the quality of life. Even the dream of a garland canal worth billions upon billions of rupees could be regarded by planners and policy makers as something inevitable and feasible to use surplus waters from the Himalayas rather than let them run waste to the seas and bays. Whether the World Bank or India itself will finance grandiose plans remains to be seen. But the countdown has begun. Whether nature or man will work faster in their battles, only time will tell.