Climate change is not real!
For me personally, climate change and carbon footprint were notions that I considered to be fashion statements for the intellectual elites. In the culture where we grew up, it was more fashionable to focus on the basic needs in ‘Maslow’s Hierarchy’ and save enough money for future. For a developing country like India, even policy decisions are aligned with basic needs of its people — jobs, security, housing etc. (at least they should be)
Who has time to worry about melting polar ice caps, rising sea levels and heat waves in Europe when there are job cuts and talks of slowdown. All this changed when the monsoon rainfall pattern in Kerala, my home state, changed for two consecutive years. This resulted in extreme flooding the intensity of which was seen only once in the last century. In addition to this, unregulated construction and mining practices in an ecologically fragile ‘western ghats’ resulted in sudden landslides that cost many lives. I am not a scientist, and I can’t prove that there is a causal relationship between the floods in Kerala and the climate change phenomenon. There are people who even question if there is a causal relationship between rampant mining and construction in western ghats and the landslides. And we are well aware of the ‘climate change is not real’ argument and ‘easy availability of guns do not increase mass shootings’ argument.
There are two interesting observations to be called out here:
- For people who go on with their day-to-day lives, a calamity that happens somewhere else to someone else is just ‘news’ that they consume in TV and Facebook and be amused. The calamity is real only when they or their families(/friends/their people) are affected.
- More importantly, there is this concept of negative externality. A negative externality is a cost that is suffered by a third party as a result of an economic transaction. As a quarry owner, I am worried about my profits. I do not really care if my actions can have negative repercussions on others few years down the line. (Even if I care and don’t take up the opportunity someone else who is hungrier will take it up)
There are other examples of misaligned incentives. A planter or a resort owner who wants to construct a building in an ecologically fragile area does not think of repercussions that can happen after a decade. The local government is also not worried as anything that is long term and hard to prove and communicate for electoral gains is not top priority. (The election cycle is 5 years in many democracies and that is not exactly long term for phenomenon like climate change) Moreover, voters have very short memory span and news cycles keep changing.
This is a complex problem. The issue cannot be solved through awareness alone. People do not change their behaviour (for eg. use travel modes that use less carbon footprint, recycle plastic etc) just because of awareness. A few might, but not the majority.
However, everyone responds to incentives. Incentives could be in many forms — increasing prices, fines, regulations etc. However the entity that has to implement this incentive structure — the govt. — needs to be incentivised too!
[The flooding and landslides in Kerala affected the lives of many in a beautiful patch of land called ‘god’s own country’(in 2018 and 2019 Aug). There were many heartwarming stories of people helping each other during these tough times.
- A street vendor selling garment on Kochi’s popular Broadway market, emptied a big chunk of his warehouse to contribute towards flood relief in Kerala
- To stabilise the situation of Kerala and to save people affected by floods, a community of fishermen came forward as good Samaritans.
If you want to contribute your bit to help the affected, you can volunteer at Kerala Rescue Portal or give monetary contributions to Govt. of Kerala, Chief Minister’s Distress Relief Fund ]
