When political leaders themselves ignore a key institution, posit environmental action as anti-religious and undermine established scientific research on the deadly effects of a ‘temporary’ surge in pollution levels, it is not surprising that profit-seeking cracker sellers and people—who are healthy and prioritize enjoyment, turning a blind eye to the suffering it causes others—respond this way.
As cracker control has many similarities with anti-smoking efforts, which have seen legislative action going back much longer, it is useful to see the experience from this perspective. Smoking-related morbidity and mortality are attributable to direct or near-direct action, unlike air pollution or climate change.
Globally, of the 8.7 million people who died prematurely from smoking in 2019, over 7.5 million were direct smokers and the rest passive smokers (IHME Global Burden of Disease report 2023).
Concerted action by the scientific community, civil society organizations, different arms of government and the media has managed to significantly mitigate the threat of tobacco use.
While the proportion of India’s smoking population has fallen from 50% in 2000, it was still at 27 % in 2020. The country’s death rate from smoking fell from 121 per 100,000 people in 1990 to 76 in 2021 (Smoking: Our World in Data).
However, this would still put the death rate from smoking at second place, with Ischaemic heart disease taking the top place with a death rate of 113 (2019 data from the World Health Organization), indicating that we have a long journey ahead of us.
The example of India’s anti-smoking campaign gives us both hope—because we have managed to bend the curve on the smoking population as well as its death rate—and despair.
If, with the cause-and-effect being so directly visible, it took such a long struggle to bring about smoking behaviour change, then how long will it take to implement the air pollution and climate change actions needed? Will it take us decades?
New scientific evidence is strengthening our understanding of the strong and complex relationship between air pollution and climate change.
The 10 New Insights in Climate Science report of 2024-25 has highlighted that while air-particulate-matter reduction has significant public health benefits, it also reduces the net cooling effect that it exerts on the climate.
As a result, the reduction of pollution in the atmosphere has “partially ‘demasked’ the full warming impact of accumulated greenhouse gas emissions.”
In other words, while reducing air pollution is essential, doing so exposes us to the full impact of climate change-related heat, necessitating an integrated approach to both challenges.
All this is alarming enough when smoking is largely an individual issue, and air pollution largely local or regional. But climate change is a global issue. The whole world must act in concert. The world committed itself to climate action as recently as in 2015.
But it is clear that the nationally determined commitments (NDCs) made and implemented by governments so far will not meet our stated goals. There is near-certainty that the world will exceed the 1.5° Celsius average temperature-rise cap that science demands.
Even accounting for net-zero commitments by non-state actors does not improve the situation meaningfully. The Emissions Gap Report of the UN Environment Programme for 2024 also reveals that we have a high likelihood (above 90%) of temperatures exceeding 2° Celsius.
A significant step-up of finance and technology flows to developing countries can reduce this likelihood to about 79%, which would still not be comforting. So, as of today, we seem to be on track towards a 3° Celsius average-rise-in-global-temperature world, which is a disaster for the planet.
Unsurprisingly, most countries are not on track to meet their own commitments, leave alone fulfilling the 2015 agreement to increase reduction targets periodically (greenhouse gas emission commitments by a further 40-60% over the current aggregate NDCs).
India is extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Yes, while we are feeling the heat of climate impact today, we are also committing ourselves (not just our kids and grand-kids) to much worse in the years to come (not just decades).
The entire northern part of India, and the Himalayan region in particular, will experience heat waves with increased frequency, duration and magnitude, in addition to higher average temperatures.
Consequently, this will have a serious impact on our snow storage of fresh water, while putting us at risk of floods, food insecurity and biodiversity losses.
In its self-interest, India should enhance its ambitions now. A genuine multi-stakeholder, all-party-based strategy needs to be drawn up urgently that raises our targets for both mitigation and adaptation, taking into account the costs of climate impact and other related challenges such as biodiversity protection and social equity. This strategy should integrate the learnings from our own failed and successful social experiments.
India must take care not be held hostage to the unforthcoming largesse of the developed world.
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