India must prioritise the transition to energy sources that do not upset the natural balance

• The PM’s inaugural address at TERI World Sustainable Development Summit has again brought to the fore the discussion on equitable energy access and climate change

Shaping Planet’s destiny

• James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis - posited the inter-connectedness of nature
• Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen - warned that chemical effluents were altering the planet’s atmosphere and causing harmful climate change feedback effects
• Humanity is in the Anthropocene era and is like a geological force that is shaping the planet’s destiny.

Changes to global climate & its effect

• Man’s embrace of agriculture, the dominance of wheat and rice as food crops and the clearing of forest tracts caused the first major large-scale changes to global climate though their effects were apparent only over centuries.
• Atmospheric changes due to the dawn of the Industrial Age and the use of fossil fuels happened in a blink of an eye.
• What is common to both these eras is that those who suffered the most are the poor or those with the least agency to shield themselves from a perturbed nature.
• Uttarakhand saw an avalanche of rock and ice destroy two hydropower projects and cause deaths.
• The geology of the Himalayas makes the region inhospitable to large mega-engineering projects and the several floods, landslides and earthquakes over the years have underlined this time and again.

Protecting planet or people

• While the earth rearranges itself, it does so in a manner that can be destructive and lethal to those least responsible for causing the disequilibrium.
• Thus, if “fragile” were to mean a brittleness needing care, then it is people and animals that need protection than a vaguely defined ‘planet’.

What lies ahead

• India will continue to fire coal plants, raze forests for industry and build roads in fraught geology — in other words, put the lives of millions of the vulnerable at climate risk in the pursuit of economic development.
• India’s commitment to net-zero is set decades into the future at 2070.
• India, given its size and population, will be disproportionately vulnerable.
• It must accelerate and prioritise the transition to energy sources that are minimally perturbing to the natural balance
• Because planet, which may be in a form incomprehensible at present, will long outlast its current residents.