After spending five days in New Delhi, I can’t say I’ve seen much of New Delhi. There’s lots of reasons for this, but the one that sticks out the most for the purpose of this blog post relates to the reason we went to Delhi in the first place. A large majority of the city is underwater. Currently, the Yamuna River is flooding the streets of the city due to unusually extreme rainfall, with the river’s levels reaching the highest in 45 years. This isn’t necessarily only due to climate change, but is reflective of the extreme weather events with the same consequences as what we’ve been studying. Driving over the Yamuna, I could definitely tell that this was indeed an extreme weather event. Water extended hundreds of feet further than the river bank, swallowing every tree and floodplain in its path.
Looking out the window (of our big bus with “Tourist” plastered on the front in a funky font), that wasn’t the thing that struck me the hardest. Yes, the flooded river had careened through trees and bushes and land - but it had also taken over the homes of those who tended to that land and lived along the banks of the river. Families had taken up shelter on the side of the highway over the river, using C20 banners and tarps to block them from the brutal sun and torrential rain. Government issued cots were full of mismatched belongings, seemingly all that people could salvage from their water logged homes. Residents waited in line for a meal at the community food station, while livestock searched for any green they could find on the concrete ground. This isn’t what the river and floodplains normally look like, we were told. The extreme weather had done a number here - and not just on the climate.
The effect of climate change on humans has dominated many discussions that we’ve had on this trip. This might seem obvious, but climate change isn’t just about the climate. There’s also a human aspect. How do we deal with climate change in our day to day lives? What infrastructure do we need to adapt? What do we do to help people who are displaced from their homes? How is climate change disproportionally impacting minority communities? How can we let communities grow while continuing to limit their emissions? At a visit to ITT Delhi, we were talking about the uncomfortable humanitarian questions like these that you have to consider when talking about human adaptation to our changing climate. One professor mentioned that he would recommend people get air purifiers for their bedrooms if they live in an area with high air pollution. It’s a good idea to protect yourself. But then what do we do about the people who can’t afford air purifiers? Do we stop recommending air purifiers to everyone? Do we not get air purifiers for our aging grandparents with preexisting pulmonary conditions? Does it make us unethical to get air purifiers for high risk people whom we love when other people with less money but better overall health can’t afford them? Do we then allocate more money to getting people air purifiers instead of investing in other green initiatives? These questions need to be tackled at some point, because they give us the whole, complicated picture of all the complex issues involved in our changing climate.
Not only are there human changes that need to be made for climate adaptation, but also ecological ones. When purely looking at ways to eliminate carbon emissions, the ‘right’ thing to do would be to grow eucalyptus plants, which grow quickly and take in lots of carbon during that process, and then cut them down when they are full grown and take in less carbon. That process would continue over and over to make sure that the space we have is housing the ideal carbon sucking plants. However, this could lower the number old growth forests, which are important too. They might not be as efficient at recycling carbon, but they still house complex ecosystems full of life. The ancient trees themselves are full of life, and I can’t help but think that they have more wisdom than we ever will.
I could go on and on about how climate change is impacting human life, but what it really boils down to is the fact that we are not better off. People are displaced from their homes, crops aren’t able to be grown, city streets are swallowed in feet of water, and (obviously most importantly) I didn’t get to see much of New Delhi.
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