Delhi regularly clocks temperatures in the 40s in summer, but not in March!

Summer heat is not unusual for residents of North India, but rarely does the thermometer register above 400C in March anywhere in the northern plains. But the temperature did cross 400C in the Capital earlier this week and those are bad portends for the approaching summer season. The Met Department described it as an aberration and noted that higher winds over the coming days will allow the temperature to drop. But this is just another indication of an extreme weather event, Delhi’s highest temperature for March in 76 years. And the alarming frequency of such extreme events, such as the coldest, hottest, driest or wettest months in living memory, is only becoming more frequent and that is just an after-effect of climate change, which whether we like it or not is impacting our lives. The irony of this situation will be that those who can afford it will start turning on their air-conditioners sooner rather than later this year and that will just dump more heat and pollutants into the atmosphere. Increasingly affordable cooling might keep people more comfortable and one should not begrudge it, but there is an environmental cost involved for this physical comfort.

India has been on an aggressive path to adopting renewables as this country, with its massive population, is but naturally one of the largest emitters of carbon in the world. Yet India faces more scrutiny of the impact of her actions on the climate than the western nations who are failing in their attempts to decarbonise radically with the sole exception possibly of the United Kingdom, which has weaned itself off polluting thermal energy, an ironic impact of Margaret Thatcher’s war on the coal mining unions almost 40 years ago. The rest of the developed world must do more rather than constantly hector India and other developing nations. It is ironic that even global ambassadors of the green movement have been spectacularly hypocritical in their actions. One can only hope that Monday was an aberration in Delhi and that the summer will not be as brutal, but given recent history there will be more stories of melting roads and there will be hundreds of fatalities due to the heat. This newspaper would like to remind its readers to stay well hydrated and keep themselves cool this summer.