S&P Rates Climate Risk In S. Asia @ 10X That Of Europe; A Heatwave Journey Acorss India (Atlantic)
Soon after I arrived in the eastern megacity of Kolkata in February, temperatures began climbing. They always do when India’s short winter turns into an early spring. But then they kept rising. After the hottest March in 122 years of record keeping, the scorching temperatures continued through April, with the nationwide high averaging more than 95 degrees Fahrenheit. During my recent stop in New Delhi, the mercury topped 110 degrees for two consecutive days, overwhelming the air conditioner in my rental apartment. The maximum temperature last month in the capital, home to more than 30 million people across the metro area, averaged more than 104 degrees. Even higher temperatures have been reported elsewhere: 111 in other regions of India, and to the west, in parts of Pakistan, above 120.
I was fortunate to have any air-conditioning at all. Most of India’s 1.4 billion people would consider themselves lucky to have a fan and the electricity to run one. A ride in a three-wheel tuk-tuk feels like having a blow-dryer directed straight at your face. The inside of a slum dweller’s windowless room, often housing an entire family, can become a lethal hotbox. Health authorities have reported hundreds of deaths across the country from heatstroke, but the actual number is likely to be far higher.
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The heat wave has been severe enough to make international headlines, but it is far from the only impact of climate change I’ve witnessed in the first half of my six-month journey through the country to research and report on climate change and the energy transition India is undertaking in an attempt to mitigate it. India is at the sharp end of this predicament. A recent report by Standard & Poor’s concluded that South Asia’s economies are the world’s most vulnerable—10 times more exposed to global-warming threats over the coming decades, the consultants estimated, than the least vulnerable countries, mostly in Europe.
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Here in Punjab, India’s breadbasket, wheat farmers who were looking forward to a bumper harvest in a year when prices have been boosted ahead of reduced yields from Ukraine have seen crop losses amid the searing heat. This is not just disappointing for them but, as The Atlantic’s Weekly Planet newsletter recently noted, deeply concerning for countries facing worldwide food shortages in coming months. The state’s power minister said electricity demand had jumped 40 percent, year on year, as people ran fans and AC units at home and industrial production picked up after COVID. Railways canceled dozens of passenger trains in order to rush coal shipments to power plants trying to avoid blackouts.
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https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/india-heat-wave-climate-change/629786/
