A mountain of waste is burning in India. People are dying from the methane gas that is released from the piles of garbage in the dump grounds. You might be wondering to yourself, why is this happening? The reason is a massive heatwave near India and Pakistan. It is so hot that the heat is causing landfills to catch fire. This is India’s hottest summer in the past 122 years. And now when the country needs temperature control the most, the country is facing record power cuts!
Let's first understand the definition of a heatwave. A heatwave is when the recorded temperature is more than the usual temperature by 4.5 degrees. The recorded temperatures in India was 6 degrees higher. But you might be asking yourself, what difference does it make if the temperature rises by a few degrees? In the last 20 years, 1,66,000 people have died to heatwaves. A deadly heatwave in Chicago in the year 1995 killed 692 people with more than 3000 people hospitalized and from the who were hospitalized, 1/3rd of them passed away in the coming year. A similar heatwave in India in 2015 killed 2,500 people. This is especially dangerous as many people in India work under the harsh sun; and many of them don't have protective gear. Usually, temperatures fall during the night but because of the heatwave the temperatures don't drop which doesn't allow the body to cool down.
There are many reasons of that heatwaves occur. Geographic factors such as wind or lack of rainfall but the biggest contributor is climate change. :The chances of a heatwave have increased by 30 percent due to gas house emissions" said the Met Office. And now with the rising heat in the summers, we use air conditioners and purchase coolers but to use all of that we need electricity. 75% of electricity comes from coal in India with 6/10 powers plants being critically low in coal. And because of the Russia Ukraine war there is a global energy crisis. And because of this crisis, the price of producing energy have shot up to 5 times the price.
People like you and me can simply just turn on the AC but what about the people who can't afford this? What about the trees that have to bear this heat without water? What about the birds and animals who have to deal with the heat? Climate Change is not knocking on our door anymore, it is tearing them down and entering in. So, what can we do? Climate change is a frightening term; it feels like whatever we do will not be sufficient. According to Thomas Crowther- a British Scientist, We produce 120 gigatons of Carbon and trees have the capacity of absorbing 120 gigatons of Carbon world-wide. Our world is in perfect balance but in the last 200 years we have started producing 10-20 gigatons of extra carbon. And to absorb this extra carbon we haven't accounted for any provisions. It is estimated that we need to plant a trillion trees to account for the carbon. Maybe you and I can't plant 1 trillion trees but can we plant 1 tree for our future generations together?
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