I was reading, partly with sympathy and partly with a feeling of 'serves them right', the news about the recent heat wave sweeping across the UK - a few days ago London was considerably hotter than Delhi, the celsius having for the first time in recorded history broken the 40 degree barrier. A couple of years ago I had read about the same thing in France (people diving into public fountains, and looking around desperately for fans and air conditioners and mechanics who could install and repair them, these things being in very short supply there because they have never imagined needing them!), and about wild bushfires in Australia and western parts of the USA.
If climate change is both real and serious, it is good that it is beginning to affect the advanced western countries already. Let them learn first hand a little about the conditions in which we live, here in south Asia. That is the only way they will ever become really interested in doing their bit to reverse the damage, their societies learning at last to pay more attention to an issue like this than the release of the latest iPhone or the shenanigans of the latest pop music band. Who cares, after all, if the polar ice caps melt and kill off all the bears and penguins, or even if an insignificant country like the Maldives sinks within the next twenty years, or millions of poor and unimportant people suffer in countries like India and Bangladesh? Things will begin to change only if the white sahibs start taking big steps, and of course, that is only when we in India and China will follow hurriedly in their footsteps...
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I landed in London on the same day that you posted this, amidst a mild 23 degrees. After that, temperatures have been fluctuating from high twenties to the thirties. Meanwhile news has been coming in from France and other European countries. Electricity bills have been traditionally low in Europe in summers as they have not used air conditioners so far. What seems extraordinary is that people seem to be discussing climate change everywhere and seem very serious about taking steps. Although they may well be very small steps and not enough. However, I was left wondering that by the time European summers become as hot as Indian ones, people in countries like India might have to deal with temperatures where they could be easily roasted, The other thing that disappointed me is that the media is still following its old policy of sensationalizing news, and anything constructive being done is still far from becoming a reality. Climate change is like death. We all know that it is coming, but we cannot avoid the temptation of piling on junk food on our plate whenever we get a chance. As the native American proverb goes: "We Do Not Inherit the Earth from Our Ancestors; We Borrow It from Our Children."
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