Climate Change: A Crisis of Honesty

Questioner: Namaste Acharya Ji. I'm Vishnu and I have started listening to your sessions from a session in IIT Bombay that I attended as a student. So my question is mostly on climate change. When we do talk to people on climate change, we most often come across a lot of climate deniers who treat climate change as a hoax. So here, my question is mostly revolving around: what is the proof that we should give to them to challenge their stance and educate them about the seriousness of the issue that we are facing?

Acharya Prashant: Welcome. You come from just the right place. You see, the proof that you need to give is not subtle, not immaterial, nothing hidden from the eyes. It is all available in the research reports. It's all over the internet. It's there in the news. So all that is there. It's just that, because the media does not highlight it that much, so you have to dig a little for the news and the proof that climate change is actually happening. And not just happening, the change is actually at a pace that even scientists had not anticipated.

Usually, we put it in this way: that by 2025, 1.3° ± 0.4° temperature change is expected or apprehended. So scientists tend to put it conservatively. That's their job. They are not meant to create sensations. But even the scientific estimates are being exceeded, and we have more proof than we can tolerate from all over the world. You have so much from India, you have so much from the US, Europe, Australia, Mexico, China. All parts of the world are experiencing once-in-a-century kind of extreme weather situations.

So we have proof galore. And the US, you had this January wildfires in California, right? And why exactly did that happen? That happened because, first of all, there was too much heat that resulted in the forest bed turning extremely dry. That also meant that the leaf fall was more than usual. And more heat in the atmosphere also means that the wind velocity is more than usual. Heat is energy. Energy results in greater wind speed. So more heat, more dryness, less rainfall, and higher wind speed, and you had unprecedented wildfires in California. And that was on the west side.

Now these months, on the east side, you have heat waves that have never been seen before. The New York area and other places, right this month, June, are sweltering. Closer home, India: the first four months of this year were some of the hottest months in the last 100 to 125 years. The first four months. And then, in the fifth month, suddenly you had just so much rainfall. So it was the wettest month over a long period.

And all of that wreaked havoc on the economy, on public health, on everything that is exposed to the elements of nature, even on employment, because people can't work. The informal economy can't work in extreme weather conditions. Those are the people who work on the streets, on the roads, in open spaces, in factories. And we are yet not talking of agriculture. We are talking of the economy being exposed to the elements. And we are not talking of agriculture, which is still more than 50% of India's economy in terms of participation of the workforce.

So there has been massive damage across the world. It's been raining in Madras, in Tamil Nadu, when that part is not supposed to receive much rain as of now. And these kinds of unseasonal rains and also dry spells are being experienced throughout the country. Why? We don't want to look at it. But the temperature variation that India in particular is experiencing is twice the temperature variation that the rest of the world is experiencing due to climate change.

We know the global average temperatures have gone to more than 1.5° centigrade above normal now. We know that. But even this rise is not a uniform rise. This rise is much more skewed towards the Indian subcontinent: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh. So temperatures have risen everywhere, but they have risen much, much more in India, both the temperatures and the extreme weather events, the highs as well as the lows.

The number of people who suffered from heat strokes this year — all this is in the public domain. How do people claim that they are unaware of climate happenings? It would remain a puzzle to me.

We understand the media does not quite emphasize on that. But still, it's all around us. In many cases, the evidence would be present within the household, in the family. How does one gloss over? This is just self-deception. Self-deception equable to criminal negligence.

In fact, there was this list of very, very prominent weather events across the world, right? I've already talked of this one: New York, Boston, Philadelphia. In the eastern part of the US, they are experiencing massive heat. There is a heat dome, and the nights are failing to cool.

How is this something so private, so hidden, so confidential that people claim they don't know of it? How do we feign such ignorance? This is there.

So the East Coast is experiencing a massive heat wave. That is there. UK — Southeast England. And England is colder than the US, right? Even among the European countries, England is one of the colder ones. 32° centigrade in England. This kind of an event should ideally be so improbable that it should occur only once in 2,500 years. 32° in England. That's hot even by standards of some of the Indian states. For example, 32° in Uttarakhand or Himachal would be considered hot. And you have that temperature in the UK. That has become 100 times more probable now.

How do we say that climate change is something of the future, that it's a distant happening? It is right here upon us. It is the Anthropocene. We are in the middle of it. It's happening. Just that we are pretending that it's a little thing or it's something that we will be able to avoid personally and for our families. Wishful thinking.

This is something of the elements. It is something of the air. We are talking of CO₂ ppm massively increasing in the air, increasing by 80% (Yale Environment 360, report). It is something of the air. And how will you avoid the air from entering your house?

Climate change will assault us right within our homes. It is doing that already. Just that right now, the most underprivileged ones are bearing the brunt. So the luckier ones are able to afford negligence. Not that they don't really know, but they are able to somehow afford keeping the knowledge aside for a while. Let's see how long they can pretend such ignorance.

This is May 2025, and over the last 12 months, starting from May last year, that is, the average number of heatwave days across the world has risen by 30 (euro news). So, on an average, if a place used to have 15 days of heat waves, that place now has 45 days of heat waves. If a place used to have 60 days of heat waves, that place now has 90 days of heat waves. And we are saying there is no proof.

The proof is staring us in the face. Soon it will stab us in the heart.

This year, April was so hot that in India, the average temperatures in the north spiked 5 to 8° above the seasonal average. We are not talking of 1.5° increase here because that 1.5° figure is a little comforting. You say 1.5° isn't much, is it not? But 1.5° is the average hike. The felt hike is different across different places. In India, it was 5 to 8° above normal this very year.

Human beings are not meant to survive when their normal ambient temperature is disrupted to this extent. And let's not talk only of human beings. Birds, animals, all other creatures are designed by evolution to survive only within narrow temperature ranges. You exceed that temperature range on either side, and the organism either won't survive or won't reproduce or its population would drastically shrink.

Coral bleaching. 80 to 90% of the coral reefs now stand bleached (Source: Reuters). Now stand bleached because of carbon dioxide, because of temperature. And that is a massive blow to the aquatic ecosystems because the coral reefs are hubs of biodiversity. When we talk of their bleaching, we say now they have been turned white. Why have they turned white? Because their color came from the life forms that stuck to them, that were present there. All those life forms are now gone. So what you see is just dead whiteness. That's coral bleaching.

California wildfires, all too well known. Greece wildfires. We also had the Australian wildfires, right? That was last year — China, Mexico unprecedented storms. And NASA, finally, the report saying that the frequency of both droughts and floods have doubled over the last 10 to 20 years. And if this looks very distant because it is very global, then India.

Yes, I said the number of heat stroke cases has been increasing. The report here has the exact number. India has had the longest heat wave since 2010 and the second longest heat wave in the last 50 years (Source: Council on energy, environment and water). The number of heat stroke cases this year was 44,000. This number exceeds the number we have ever experienced. This is a World Meteorological Organization report.

Now next, we have a CEEW (Council on Energy, Environment and Water) study which says 57% of Indian districts, and these are the most densely packed districts, most of them in North India. These 57% Indian districts are home to 76% of the Indian population. They're at a very high risk of extreme heat, exacerbated by rising night-time humidity, which blocks relief from daytime peaks. And this is what is contributing to more and more heat stroke cases.

So are there proofs not available in the public domain? There obviously are. The proofs are there, if you search on the net. The proofs are there, if you utilize an AI model. The proofs are there, if you just open your eyes and look around yourself. But, you know, as they say, it's very difficult to wake up a person who is pretending to be asleep. That's what we have across the world today, especially in India.

Questioner: And Acharya Ji, when we provide these proofs, two obvious logics come up. They are presenting a pessimistic view and believe in the human capability to adapt to every challenge that comes, as we have faced many challenges.

Acharya Prashant: It is not a question of belief. It is a question of whether that capability can even exist. It's like “we believe in the capability of ice to survive 50° centigrade.” We are not talking psychology here. We are talking physics here. We are not talking about belief systems and assumptions here. We are talking about hard facts here.

You can have great confidence and holy belief in the capacity of ice to survive 50°. But would it? Why not test things out in a laboratory rather than relying on belief?

And we are not presenting a pessimistic picture. We are presenting the whole picture. Now show me which parts of it are optimistic to you. Here is the complete report, and show me which parts of it are not pessimistic. What do we do if realistic itself has become pessimistic? This is reality, not pessimism.

In fact, you want to act like an ostrich by not wanting to see that which you don't want to see. And instead of accepting that, you don't want to acknowledge the massive scare of climate change. And it is not a scare. A scare is something distant. It is the sixth mass extinction currently happening (PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

70% of all wildlife, and it's not 70% anymore, it's more than 75% now. More than 75% of all wildlife has been obliterated by our species in the last 50 years (Source: World Wide Fund For Nature). And a lot of that is related to climate change. Let it sink in. 75% of all wildlife is gone. And all that has happened almost within our lifespans.

There is no pessimism in it. It's like using a thermometer and seeing that you stand at 103°F, and you say, "You know, this is a very pessimistic thing." This is the reality. And show me what you're doing about it.

Is there anything that we are doing about it?

The Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement was about reducing carbon emissions, right? 2015 was the agreement, and it was trying to bring emissions back, cut emissions back to a level that could match the levels that we were at in 2010. Ideally, we should have been able to match the 1990 levels. Though that's not what the agreement said. That is the ideal thing, however, if you don't want any temperature rise. Still, it was agreed that we will rather take the 2019 levels as the baseline, and then reduce from there.

In 2019, mankind emitted 59 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalents in the atmosphere (UNEP emissions gap report 2020). 2025, it's actually a little more than what we were emitting in 2019. The Paris Agreement said it has to be 44% less in 2030 compared to 2019. Instead of it being reduced by 44%, we are well on course to having something increased over and above 2019. Forget about reduction. We are actually increasing our emissions.

Where is the optimism? Please tell me. What is there to be optimistic about?

Yes, we could have understood that the situation is bad, but we are very sincerely addressing the situation and doing something about it. Here, the situation is bad, and we are only making it worse day after day. Right now, as things stand, the global average hike in temperature would be well beyond 3° centigrade. And that would mean that the extreme hikes would run to 10 to 15° also, especially in places like India.

And it's very, very astounding, shocking, that this country of ours, that stands to be hit the hardest by the climate catastrophe, is among the ones most happily ignorant to and dismissive of the climate threat.

If we conduct a survey about climate awareness across the world, several countries, India would rank among the lowest in terms of awareness. People don't want to talk about it. People don't want to acknowledge it. And then that is reflected in the governmental policies. Because if you don't vote for a government that acknowledges climate change, how will there be policy decisions towards the same?

The whole world is saying, "Vote green, vote green." No echo of that is heard in India.

Here, the voter makes his decision on all kinds of petty issues, but not the ultimate catastrophe that we are staring at. 'Not staring at' the ultimate catastrophe that is buffeting us, that is killing us, right now.

Questioner: Then again, there's one more that comes up. Economic growth. When we project that we should minimize our desires as a result of self-awareness, then the question comes up that we would be reducing the economic growth, which would probably hinder the lesser privileged or the less rich people in the society.

But I mean, of course, the obvious answer is also that it is affecting them the highest, the climate injustice. But still, it’s not willing to be accepted in that sense, that this economic growth.

Acharya Prashant: See, it's like this. If I address the fact that I have a flat tire, then I'll be delayed, my speed would be reduced. The question is, how far can you go on a flat tire anyway? And it's all four punctured tires.

We don't read these things. But you look at IPCC reports (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. They are very meticulous in their data collection and in their projection.

India is one of the countries that is going to be the hardest hit, even in economic terms.

What economic growth are we talking of, being negligent of climate change? Medical costs, costs to agriculture, costs to the informal economy, costs to infrastructure, costs even in terms of your defense preparedness. We must read these things in detail. We are not only the world's most populous country. We are also the country where there is the biggest informal sector and the biggest proportion of population dependent on agriculture and allied industries.

What is going to happen to those crops standing under the sun? Think of the farmer, think of the crop, think of the entire ecosystem, think of the insect responsible for pollination. Would they survive? Think of the rivers. Not only is our big chunk of population dependent on agriculture, they're also dependent on the monsoons. Our crops do not get the support of irrigation. We depend on natural water, rivers and rains and tanks in South India, and climate change is going to disrupt the rainfall patterns. It already has.

How will there be crops at all? What economic growth are we talking of? There would be mass unrest. Can there be any economic activity when the entire population has gone turbulent and there is mass civil unrest?

If it does not rain, the glaciers melt. When the glaciers melt, first of all, it would flood. And after the floods, there would be an unending dryness because now the rivers can't flow. The glaciers that are the sources of rivers do not exist anymore. How will the rivers flow? The rivers are not there. The rains are not there, or there is just too much rain at the wrong place at the wrong time. From where will the crops come? And if the crops are not there, what economy are we talking of? 60% of the population will have nothing to feed itself. And if they have nothing to feed themselves, what will they do? They'll rush towards other places.

Now think of mass migration. Now think of unemployment. Now think of — not just mass migration, that's a very meek word. This is called total displacement of large chunks of populations.

Does the northern part of the country have a lot of industry? No. It depends mainly on agriculture. No river, no rain. What will those people do? The 70, 80 crores of them, where will they go? And they'll be killing each other over water. Something as simple as water and food and grains.

What economic growth are we talking of?

Even manufacturing depends to a great extent upon natural produce — textiles, for example. First of all, the manufacturing sector in India is quite small. But even there, show me how many industries are totally insulated from climate change. Please show me. So it's not just that agriculture would be demolished, even manufacturing. And services depend on the general population having some money to spend. Services cannot feed the service sector itself continuously. Right?

If the two other prominent sectors are going kaput, who will go and eat in a restaurant? Who will take a taxi? Who will hire a cook or a gardener? Are you getting it? Who will travel to tourist places? So what will happen to the service industry? What economy are we talking of?

People think that the economy can keep not just afloat, but growing, irrespective of climate change. And we have not yet addressed the medical costs, sir. All kinds of diseases multiply, proliferate, intensify, become more probable under climate impact — you name it. From lifestyle ailments like cancer, heart disease, kidney disease, to bacterial diseases like TB, to viral diseases. Everything would be exacerbated by climate change.

Think of a virus that is lying hidden beneath a thick ice sheet, or is lying hidden deeply below the soil in permafrost. And as the ice melts, the virus would be exposed. And that virus has been sleeping there for millions of years. And now it would be exposed. What's worse is that you do not have immunity against that virus because this virus never came in contact with human beings. So human beings don't have immunity against that one. And that virus was happily sleeping beneath ice. Now that the ice has melted, the virus is out.

Save yourself!

We are talking of economic growth.

What happened to economic growth during COVID?

And thousands of such viruses are lying dormant, in jungles, in caves, beneath ice sheets, below the soil. They are everywhere. And we are safe only because we don't come in contact with them. But now they'll be released.

You know, in 1966, Homi Jehangir Bhabha's flight crashed on the mountains, the Alps, and not much could be found because everything was snow and ice there. Now slowly, something intriguing is being seen. A lot of cafes are coming there based on Air India themes because now the ice is melting. And not one but two Air India planes crashed there at the same spot, one in 1950 and one in 1966, and the debris of both these planes is now getting exposed because of climate change. The ice is melting.

So the local population is carrying those parts away, and the plane is a huge thing. They are using them in the designs of their fancy cafes. And a lot of things are now being found that were buried under the ice for a long time. Now the ice is no more. The ice is releasing everything that was being concealed by it. And those viruses will be out.

And we are talking of economic growth? We have forgotten COVID.

What economic growth?

India's economic heart is Mumbai, and we know by how many centimeters the sea level has already risen. What will happen to Mumbai? That is the city that provides you with the maximum tax revenue. That is the city that is your financial center, and the sea levels are rising. What economic growth?

And your political capital is Delhi. That is vulnerable to the worst kinds of heat attacks. And we are talking of economic growth.

Three of your biggest metropolitan cities, namely Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata, are vulnerable to rising sea levels. And vulnerability again is such a soft word. When sea levels rise, they simply swallow up the city. That is it. Finished. Game up. You have an underwater city now, or at least huge parts of the city will now be underwater. Run the city.

North India at least has some backup, that the glaciers are massive, the Himalayan ice sheets. So the glaciers will take some time to melt and till then the rivers will continue to flow. South India, the rivers depend not so much on ice but on rainfall. What happens when the rainfall patterns are disrupted? What will happen to all our South Indian rivers? Already, you have had the two states fighting over Cauvery waters. The fight will be settled, because there will be no water. In the north also, you have Delhi and Haryana squabbling over the Yamuna waters.

If the future will have any history, then history will look at this period, the 21st century, with great astonishment. We who inhabit this century will be seen as utter idiots, caricatures in the name of human beings. And the future, if there is any, will ask us how stupid you could be to not confront the facts, to keep denying the truth.

We are a very special people at a very special time, doing our utmost to kill the whole planet. It is a very, very rare happening in the history of Earth. We are very special people. We are very privileged in fact. If there is a future, the future will remember us. These were the idiots.

Questioner: We often hear that personal finance should be a compulsory subject in schools. But now it seems like environmental education, or self-education must be the compulsory subject that must be taught in schools.

Acharya Prashant: You see, that is what. The science of climate change is not complicated. It is so easy. Even a 10th grader can understand it.

The problem is not so much intellect or science. The problem is in the intent to acknowledge the obvious. The problem is that we lack inner honesty.

The problem is not that we lack education or science. We lack inner honesty.

And unless our entire system of upbringing and our culture place emphasis and educate its kids in not accepting the false, whatever be the cost, there is no way inner honesty can develop. We might be very educated people. We might also know the facts, really. But what to do when one knows the facts, yet wants to deny them? Here, the problem is not education but honesty. Which means your education system is not teaching honesty. Your education system is only teaching them external things, nothing internal.

You could be a scientist and yet a climate denialist. It is possible. You may have all the facts on your table and yet choose to push them aside.

Questioner: Thank you Acharya Ji.

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