Svetlana Boym wrote that nostalgia “goes beyond individual psychology. At first glance, nostalgia is a longing for a place, but actually it is a yearning for a different time—the time of our childhood, the slower rhythms of our dreams. In a broader sense, nostalgia is a rebellion against the modern idea of time, the time of history and progress.” 

The Curt Hugo Reisinger professor of Slavic languages and literatures and comparative literature at Harvard University died of cancer at the age of 56 in 2015. In her book, The Future of Nostalgia, she writes that “the nostalgia that interests me here is not merely an individual sickness but a symptom of our age, an historical emotion”.

She identifies two faces of nostalgia—reflective and restorative, which are essentially our attitudes and responses to bygone days. She says these are not absolute types but “rather tendencies, ways of giving shape and meaning to longing.”

The word nostalgia has Greek roots: “nostos”, “return home”, and “algia”, meaning “longing”. The word comes from medicine, not poetry or politics. It was coined by Swiss student Johannes Hofer in his medical dissertation in 1688 to describe a debilitating brain disorder in Swiss soldiers and other displaced people in the 17th century.

The first, reflective nostalgia, which is salutary in its effect, “dwells in algia (aching), in longing and loss, the imperfect process of remembrance”.  It makes you accept that past is past, that it can never be recreated. In its evocation of the past, reflective nostalgia stimulates a consolation, a bittersweet feeling, even a certain peace.

Restorative nostalgia, on the other hand, seeks to recreate the past. It channels untruths, misinformation. As Boym says, it “puts emphasis on nostos (returning home) and proposes to rebuild the lost home and patch up the memory gaps.”  

The biggest impacts of climate change on society and the environment arise from changes in extremes. These are realised through the daily weather systems, which naturally produce tremendous variability on all timescales and over many different spatial scales.

This category of “nostalgics do not think of themselves as nostalgic; they believe that their project is about truth. This kind of nostalgic characterises national and nationalist revivals all over the world, which engage in the anti-modern myth-making of history by means of a return to nationalist symbols and myths and, occasionally, through swapping conspiracy theories.

“Restorative nostalgia manifests itself in total reconstructions of monuments from the past, while reflective nostalgia lingers on ruins, the patina of time and history, in the dreams of another place and another time.”

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I

n the time of climate change and warming, all of us, by design or default, tend to be reflective nostalgics, in despair or denial. We don’t just linger, but live, perforce, on the ruins, in the reality of another place and another time. The problem is we’re in a place where the past is not a prologue to the type of change in the weather we’re experiencing.  You would find such a prologue only if you were lurking around in one of the past five mass extinction events.

The climate system consists of land, atmosphere, oceans and cryosphere. The most volatile of all is the atmosphere. It combines with the oceans to produce changes in weather patterns and the water cycle. On land, we get water from rain, lakes and rivers, snow-melt; ice is important where it happens. While extremes in weather and climate happen all the time, even in otherwise unchanged climate they’re now more frequent, more intense due to human-made climate change, primarily through the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation, explains Kevin Trenberth in his article, “Climate change caused by human activities is happening and it already has major consequences”, published in 2018 in the Journal of Energy & Natural Resources Law. Trenberth is a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, U.S.

It’s not the average changes that are the cause for concern but the changes in extreme weather. “The biggest impacts of climate change on society and the environment arise from changes in extremes. These are realised through the daily weather systems, which naturally produce tremendous variability on all timescales and over many different spatial scales,” he says.

Year on year, we have intense storms and floods, prolonged heat waves, persistent drought and faraway glaciers melting. We have acute water shortages, mostly due to poor management. Rainfall is not even through the country; it’s erratic. Apart from that, India has staggering inefficiency in water use, water pollution, depletion of groundwater, among others such as water disputes between states, encroachments and development. It also has to do with letting rain water flow into the sea.

According to a Union ministry of water resources 2017 note on water shortages, which draws on data from the National Commission on Integrated Water Resources Development (NCIWRD), rain contributes 4,000 billion cubic metres (BCM) of water per year.

A ferocious mix of pressures has changed land, oceans, and atmosphere in profound ways. The normalcy we take for granted, the constancy of seasons to which we anchor our lives—all have gone for a toss.

After evaporation, 1,869 BCM is available as natural runoff. Due to geological and other factors, the utilisable water is limited to 1123 BCM per annum, comprising 690 BCM of surface water and 433 BCM of ground water that can be replenished, it states.

“The average annual per capita water availability in the years 2001 and 2011 was assessed as 1,820 cubic metres and 1,545 cubic metres, respectively, which may decline to 1,341 and 1,140 in the years 2025 and 2050 respectively,” it warns. Less than 1,700 cubic metres per capita water availability is called water stress; if it falls below 1,000 cubic metres, it’s called water scarcity.

A ferocious mix of pressures has changed land, oceans, and atmosphere in profound and irreversible ways. In scale and rapidity, they are mind-boggling. The normalcy we take for granted, the familiarity of weather we prize so much, the constancy of seasons to which we anchor our lives—all have gone for a toss.

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A

ssam is drowning in water. The misery is hard to describe even though people in general are inured to monsoon floods in Assam and the northeast. In May, Extremely Severe Cyclonic storm Fani hit Odisha, especially Puri, with winds above 115 miles an hour (184 kph). This was the strongest storm to hit India in 20 years. The storm surge—the wall of water a cyclone pushes inland—was up to 13ft (4 metres) high. At least three million people were affected. In Bangladesh, where it eventually made landfall, over one million were affected. At least 72 people were killed in India, and in Bangladesh, 12 people lost their lives.

In 2013, Very Severe Cyclonic Storm Phailin hit Odisha with winds in excess of 220 kph. Eighteen out of the 30 districts were affected by the cyclone and flooding.

The India Meteorological Department called the simultaneous occurrence of Very Severe Cyclonic Storm Titli over the Bay of Bengal and Very Severe Cyclonic Storm Luban over the Arabian Sea in October 2018 the rarest of rare occurrences. Titli did heavy damage to Odisha and parts of Andhra Pradesh.

The super cyclone of 1999, which hit Odisha, killed around 15,000 people. Some estimates put the figure at 50,000, with an estimated 1,500 children orphaned. The storm surge was seven to 10 metres. Some 13 million people were affected.

Eleven of the last 15 warmest years have occurred in the past 15 years, according to “Statement on Climate of India during 2018” from IMD .

There are 13 coastal states and one Union Territory, covering 84 districts affected by cyclones. According to the National Cyclone Risk Mitigation Project (NCRMP), 40 per cent of the population lives within 100 km of the coast. Four states—Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal and one UT, Pondicherry on the east coast and Gujarat on the west coast are vulnerable to flooding. Disaster losses amount to 2 per cent of GDP and up to 12 per cent of central government revenue, according to NCRMP.

It further states that in the period 1891-2000, 308 cyclones (of which 103 were severe) affected the east coast, and 48 crossed the west coast of which 24 were severe cyclones.

“Broad scale assessment of population at risk suggests that an estimated 32 crore people, which accounts for almost third of the country’s total population, are vulnerable to cyclone related hazards.”

A report from National Disaster Management Authority, then NDMD, as far back as 2004, estimates that floods affected 40 Mha—about 12 per cent of India's geographic area—up from 19 Mha in 1953. Apart from direct loss of life from floods, outbreaks of epidemics like cholera kill many people.

Oceans play one of the most important roles on the water cycle. With every one degree Celsius rise in temperature, the atmosphere holds about seven per cent more moisture, which raises water vapour levels. This is the fuel for super storms,

Water vapour, a powerful greenhouse gas, amplifies original warming. Sea surface temperatures have warmed by more than 1F since the 1970s, and over the oceans this has led to five to ten per cent more water vapour in the atmosphere, explains Trenberth.

“The increased moisture and related latent heat release can intensify storms and perhaps double the original charge so that precipitation increases five to 20 per cent. The effect on the storm depends on where the precipitation and released heat occur relative to the storm centre.”

It is global warming that pushes what would have been an extreme event anyway into one that goes well outside previous bounds.

Higher ocean temperatures lead to bigger, more intense storms with heavier rainfall. “Every [one] is different and has a different mix of these factors: some are more intense, some linger a long while, some just dump torrential rain and some cover huge areas.  But not all do these things, which adds to confusion.  The way to think about it is that there is more activity which is manifested in different ways,” Trenberth adds.

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T

racking heat brings up similar troubling trends. According to an IMD analysis, during 1991-2000, heat waves increased in number, lasted longer and spread out across a larger area than during the previous two decades. In May 2019, India and Pakistan faced one of the severest and longest heat waves that killed dozens of people and caused acute distress to millions.

Eleven of the last 15 warmest years have occurred in the past 15 years, according to the “Statement on Climate of India during 2018” from IMD and others, released in January 2019. The five warmest years on record in order were: 2016 (+0.72C), 2009 (+0.56C), 2017 (+0.55C), 2010 (+0.54C), 2015 (+0.42C).

The 2018 annual mean land surface air temperature for the country was +0.41C above the 1981-2010 average, thus making 2018 the sixth warmest year on record since 1901, the statement adds.

Heat waves are not confined to India alone. France and the U.S. were also scorched by extreme temperatures earlier this summer.

According to the statement from the Union ministry of statistics and programme implementation (MOSPI), there were 484 heat waves in 2018, up from 21 in 2010. A total of 5,572 people died in this period. There were 200 cold waves in 2018, up from 33 in 2010. Some 1,887 people died in this period from cold.

Heat waves almost always occur due to a strong, slow-moving anticyclone, a high pressure system that effectively acts as a lid, preventing heat from escaping. A heat dome is built and people live inside it.

While anticyclones tend to occur naturally, Trenberth says, “It is global warming that pushes what would have been an extreme event anyway into one that goes well outside previous bounds and causes major strife.”

Great heat is often the precursor to a drought, though not necessarily the cause. For instance, a welter of factors—monsoon failure in the second half of 2018, lack of pre-monsoon showers, prolonged heat waves in May and June, a below par monsoon till now—has pushed India into a severe drought. Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra are severely affected while most parts of central and peninsular India remain dry.

Heat waves are not confined to India alone. France and the U.S. were also scorched by extreme temperatures earlier this summer.

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According to the “Statement on Climate of India during 2018”, rainfall from the northeast monsoon, from October to December, was only 56 per cent of the long-term average. IMD characterises it as “substantially below normal”. It was the sixth lowest since 1901, it adds. The core region of the southern peninsula—coastal Andhra Pradesh, Rayalaseema, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, south interior Karnataka—received below average rainfall, at 66 per cent of the long-term average. Kerala, however, had normal rainfall.

IMD’s preparing to lower the so-called long period average of the amount of rainfall recorded in a normal monsoon by “around 1-2 cm” as part of a once-in-a-decade update to its baseline.

By the start of this year, the reservoirs that supply water to Chennai—Chembarambakkam, Poondi, Red Hills and Cholavaram—were dry and eventually turned up empty. Tamil Nadu is particularly hard hit: the state government declared 24 of the 32 districts drought-ridden. Ground water levels have crashed in 19 districts in 2019 compared to three in 2018, making a bad situation worse.

According to a report on the northeast monsoon 2017 from the Regional Meteorological Centre, Chennai, the southwest monsoon season from June to September is the principal rainy season, providing 75 per cent of India’s annual rainfall. But it brings Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, considered a meteorological subdivision of Tamil Nadu, only 35 per cent (317.2mm) of its annual rainfall (914.4mm). This is due to the subdivision being a part of the rain shadow area during the southwest monsoon.

The northeast monsoon from October to December is the chief rainy season for this subdivision, providing 48 per cent (438.2 mm) of its annual rainfall. Although IMD predictions say it will be normal this time, maybe above normal, it cannot alleviate the prolonged, cumulative effect of the lack of water.

To this volatile mix of variable factors in the climate cauldron we need to add the effects of phenomena like El Nino, the Indian Ocean dipole and the Maddon-Julion Oscillation if we want to get a proper idea of the complex interplay of forces that produce and affect the monsoon. 

IMD’s task is to predict rainfall amid a deteriorating climate regime, which means it has its work cut out. It’s  preparing to lower the so-called long period average of the amount of rainfall recorded in a normal monsoon by “around 1-2 cm” as part of a once-in-a-decade update to its baseline, according to the papers.

 “India is in the middle of a multi-decadal epoch of low rainfall,” a report in the UK-based Financial Times quotes Sivananda Pai, head of climate research and services at the IMD, as saying.

Based on monsoons between 1960 and 2010, IMD’s current average is at 89 cm, the report adds, while the new one will also account up to 2020, spanning 50 years.

“We will see many more heavy rainfall events...while other places will undergo prolonged dry spells, even if the total stays roughly the same,” Pai is quoted as saying.

The consequences of climate change, Trenberth explains,  are that things dry out quicker (stronger, longer droughts)—as the atmosphere demands more evaporative moisture—and the extra moisture means heavier rain and greater risk of flooding elsewhere, so that ironically, the risks of both extremes of the hydrological cycle increase substantially.

Extreme weather and warming can trigger a  likely shift of geographic range, seasonality, and intensity of transmission of selected climate-sensitive infectious diseases.

“This is confusing to many people, but of course the floods and droughts occur at different times or even in different years and different places at the same time. Studies that have sought to understand this through changes in weather patterns have generally failed, and concluded that natural variability rules. But, as explained, the weather patterns occur in a different environment, one that is warmer and moister and thus one where the atmosphere demands more moisture and causes drying where it is not raining, but one that provides much more moisture to storms resulting in much heavier rain, or even snow, where it is precipitating,” he said.

This seems to have happened right after the 2018 August floods in Kerala. When the floods receded, there was no water for fields, and farmers had to face a drought.

*** 

Two-thirds of the Himalayan glaciers may melt by 2100, if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the present rate, according to the first comprehensive assessment of the Hindu Kush Himalaya region, produced by the Hindu Kush Himalayan Monitoring and Assessment Programme (HIMAP) in coordination with the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD). The report adds that even if the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5C is met, one-third of the glaciers would melt.

Add to this the disease burden due to climate change. Infectious diseases are sensitive to climate. A host of factors in combination with climate change coalesce in the spread of disease. Factors like poor sanitation and hygiene, water contamination, air pollution, malnutrition, poverty, ecological change, lack of primary health care—all feed into climate change.

Tropical diseases like dengue, cholera, malaria are directly influenced by warming. And, their transmission too depends on temperature.

While it’s difficult to untangle all the factors and respective contribution of each, literature abounds in linking climate change with the spread of disease. Extreme weather and warming can trigger a  likely shift of geographic range, seasonality, and intensity of transmission of selected climate-sensitive infectious diseases, says V. Ramana Dhara, Adjunct Clinical Professor, Morehouse School of Medicine and Rollins Scholl of Public Health of Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, US.

“Increases and decreases projected with additional warming depend on the specific disease.”

Altered and new climate creates a space where disease carriers like mosquitoes can have a field day. Research shows parasitism increases with warming. By tweaking the physiology of both host and parasite, climate change ushers in diseases unheard of in those places or accelerates the spread of disease in already-prone places.

Disease ecology is very complex: the incidence and spread of a particular disease depends on physiology of host and parasite, ecological milieu and place where it occurs. Tropical diseases like dengue, cholera, malaria are directly influenced by warming. And, their transmission too depends on temperature.

Disease carriers of  dengue, chikungunya, yellow fever and zika are projected to increase with larger range by 2030. The range of the Anopheles vector could increase, for a longer season, putting increasing numbers of people at risk. But regions like northern China, Southeast Asia may be too hot or dry for the Anopheles vector to survive, Dhara adds.

In addition, he continues, air quality will worsen with increasing ground level ozone formation with higher temperatures. Mortality due to particulate matter could increase particularly in urban areas. Added to these are water insecurity and contamination. Floods contribute to water contamination, resulting in diarrhoea and cholera. They also contribute to the spread of dengue, chikungunya, malaria because stagnant water pools are breeding grounds for mosquitoes.With all these, India is already a hotbed of disease and death.

*** 

Whichever way you see it, India stands exposed to global warming on all sides. There is no need to quibble about whether natural variations or human-induced climate change is causing a particular event. Scientists are averse to attributing a specific event to global warming. The reality, Trenberth says is,  “All weather-related events have both natural and anthropogenic components in this era of climate change”.

“When anthropogenic climate change and natural climate patterns work synergistically, thresholds are crossed, records are broken and it can be said that such extreme events would have been very unlikely without global warming.”

Despite the positive signals, India’s emissions account for seven per cent of global emissions, and in 2018, they grew by more than six per cent.

The notable thing India has done so far in its programme to combat climate change include endorsing the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, committing itself to reducing emissions by 33-35 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. By that year, the country intends 40 per cent of installed power capacity to be from non-fossil energy sources. However, according to the recently-released ‘Draft Report on Optimal Generation Capacity Mix for 2029-30’ from the Ministry of Power, half of India’s power generation will be from coal in 2030.

India also initiated the International Solar Alliance, under the Paris Declaration. It’s an alliance of 121 countries with the aim of “cooperation among solar resource rich countries lying fully or partially between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn”. In addition, the government recently announced plans to add 500 gigawatts from renewable sources by 2030.

Despite the positive signals, India’s emissions account for seven per cent of global emissions, and in 2018, they grew by more than six per cent.

Climate Action Tracker, a website that analyses the progress of climate action, lauds India’s initiatives, while also saying that “there is still substantial uncertainty about coal power capacity and whether all renewable projects in the pipeline will be completed on time and integrated into the grid. In 2017, coal consumption increased by 4.8 per cent or 27 million tonnes.”

The government’s muddled thinking on progress and climate change and emissions is best captured in the Climate FAQs section of the website of the Union ministry of environment, forest and climate change:

“Most mitigation of GHG emissions in developing countries leads to diversion of resources earmarked for development to meeting a global environmental problem for which such countries are not responsible.

“Notably, mitigation by India will not lead to a reduction on the impact of climate change, as that is the result of accumulated emissions since 1850. India has contributed very little to these emissions, and even now emits just 4 per cent of the global total though it has 17 per cent of the population. Emissions from any point in the world have equal effect on the global climate and even if India were to reduce its emissions to zero by going back to the Stone Age, it would hardly make any difference to the impacts of climate change on India (or anywhere else.”

  For each country, state, local government, decision makers, institutions—all need preparedness based on scientific evidence to ensure against loss in monetary and non-monetary terms.

This misses the point of non-linearity of extreme events by a thousand miles. Emissions don’t have borders. While climate change is global, it can and does inflict excruciating pain on regional and individual levels. The passages from the ministry’s website are bereft even of reflective nostalgia.

To address the deteriorating climate situation, “there cannot be a one-size-fits-all policy. It can be a portfolio of policies,” says Joyashree Roy, professor of economics (on lien and founder-advisor to the Global Change Programme of Jadavpur University and currently Bangabandhu Chair Professor at the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand. Her task there is to help develop a sustainable energy policy for Bangladesh).  

“But one thing is the same for each country, state, local government , decision makers, institutions—all need to have preparedness based on scientific evidence and warnings from today to ensure against huge loss in monetary and non-monetary terms which can lead to social unrest, political instability, social conflict.”

She pitches for continuous efforts and policy changes for efficiency in energy use to reduce waste whether in industrial production, residential consumption, transport , trade through shipping, and so on.  So far, those policies that have succeeded have a few elements: “Promotion of energy efficiency by incentive design, institutionalisation, target setting and giving access to technology strategically.”

The worst policies, on the other hand, include retracting incentives for enhancing energy efficiency, premature shutdown of nuclear power plants, building new coal power plants, coal import policies, subsidy on high carbon fuel and so on. 

Besides all these and price mechanisms, she feels educating the public about climate change is one of the most effective means of addressing it.