THE American west is on fire. Literally. On Friday, Salt Lake City hit three-digit temperatures measured in Fahrenheit, leading climate scientists to say that the American west may be headed for the worst drought in 1,200 years. They are calling it a "mega" drought. The cause? Like in many things that go wrong with the Earth, there is a human cause here too. Paleoclimatologists, or climate historians as some call them, have long been warning Americans of the danger of the region going dry, dry, dry, as The National Geographic magazine put it. But no Americans who matter cared much about climate historians. Chief among them was former United States president Donald Trump, to whom climate change is a plot hatched in Paris to put an end to Big Oil. And those who cared had no power to change America's climate-unfriendly habits. Trump a modern-day Nero? A very red arrow is sure pointing that way.
If it is fire in the US, it's rain for South Asia. A moderate monsoon is good for agriculture, the farmers there will tell you. But moderate is hardly the adjective that gets attached to South Asian monsoons these days. Extreme monsoons either wash away the crops before they are ready for harvest or drown the seeds to death before they have any chance to sprout into life. The monsoon that made landfall in the Indian subcontinent this month is one such monsoon that has been made to go haywire by human mischief. As The Economist newspaper puts it, the monsoon has long "made" mankind there, now man is remaking the monsoon.
Can anything be done to keep the Earth running at best at 1.5°C and at worst on 2°C above pre-industrial levels, as stated in the Paris climate accord? Yes, but the window to make the changes in human habits is fast closing on us. But the changes must happen at the speed and scale they are not happening now. We may get the impression that the world is taking action in unison. The truth is, commitments are thicker than actions. Emissions reduction cannot be a country or continent effort. Greenhouse gas emissions can only be contained if the whole world marches to the same climate target. Granted, it's not easy to get 200 countries and territories to make deep cuts in their emissions targets. But November, the deadline for the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21), is just over four months away and some countries are not biting big enough. The Paris accord will be six years old on Dec 12.
What happens in Glasgow, Scotland, in November at COP26 will show if the world is up to the mighty task of keeping the Earth's temperature rise at 1.5°C. Or the emissions target will shift, like COP21 did from December 2020 to November 2021. Some countries are talking about carbon emissions reductions to net zero by 2050 or 2060. But carbon gas is just one greenhouse gas. To go net zero on one gas but not others doesn't do the climate much good. As Greta Thunberg, the Swedish activist, put it to the United Nations Climate Summit almost two years ago, the science is clear, but the politics aren't. We can't choose to fail. If we do, there are billions out there who wouldn't forgive us.