Civilizational Wake-up Call

Guy 1:
Climate scientists agree: climate change is happening here and now. Based on well-established
evidence, about 97 % of climate scientists have concluded that human-caused climate change is
happening.
- Report by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2014
How sad to think that nature speaks and mankind doesnt listen.
- Victor Hugo, 1840
Intro

Earths age: 4.54 0.05 billion years

Human species: 1.8- 1.3 million years old. Look what they have done to the old mother earth
300 million people in India live without electricity. They live a life we cant even imagine.
Thousands of year, Earths temperature remained same with 1 C variation. Since 1990,
temperature of the world has increased by 0.8 C, only causing sea level rise and change in weather
pattern
Today we will a have discussion on Climate change, or Global warming. How come nobody is
talking about it in India and Indian media?
Introduce the panel or members: 2 and 3
Guy 1: Guy 2, Climate Change Denial. Personal Account. How did you deny climate change?
I have seen that Donald Trump has been very vocal about the absence of Climate change whatsoever. I
mean a presidential nominee of world leading country, how can he have such view!
Please enlighten about the starkness of climate change.
Guy1: Guy3, First UN climate summit to reach an understanding among nations, was held in December of
1994, and after 21 years of talks, they finally reached the understanding in 2015. What were even they
discussing for so long about an impending disaster? Whats your views on it?
After his answer.
While researching for this talk, I also interesting thing about India.
The biggest exporter of Beef in the world. Hold on there is no religion involved here!! India exported 2.4
million tons of beef in FY 2015, compared to 2 and 1.5 million by Brazil and Australia respectively. From
India, beef export have been growing at an average of nearly 14% each year since 2011. In 2014, beef
export alone fetched $4.8 billion!! Note the role of extractive capitalism, here.
Let me fit this in to the context. Artificial fertilizers are used to grow grasses to feed thousands of animals
on a farm. Although, grass grows quickly and in huge quantities but it lacks the essential nutritious elements.
When ruminant animals, including Cows and buffalos, eat such grass they find it difficult-to-digest
and the grass ferments in the cows' stomachs, where it interacts with microbes and produces gas
which come out as flatulence.
A cow does on overage release between 70 and 120 kg of Methane per year. Methane is a greenhouse gas
like carbon dioxide (CO2). But the negative effect on the climate of Methane is 23 times higher than the
effect of CO2. Therefore the release of about 100 kg Methane per year for each cow is equivalent to about
2300 kg CO2 per year.
You are burning oil, tropical rain forests, coal etc., and clearing all the mechanisms of cleaning Greenhouse
gases form environment. Burning candles form both ends!!! Good!

Recently, I was reading a journal, Reconstructing the History of Harappan Civilization by Vahia et
al from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. There, I found an intriguing graph showing how various
civilizations in the human annals got dumped straight from the peak of civilizational progress as they could
not prepare for the rapid societal change, and therefore couldnt recover after falling from the next big
leap of sustainability.

In this context, the future looks really gloomy and the global civilization is at stake. Can we act? Is there a
window still open to take the next big leap? Is there a way out?
They say challenges are the opportunity. If you believe what scientist are shouting all around, then the
challenges are already about to break the door (they were knocking for tool long!!).
Does that mean the opportunity for redemption is also here?
In the next episode, we will talk about the efficient innovations in low-carbon energy generation field
and how the governments policies, around the world, are changing/ forced to change to combat
Climate change.
So, subscribe this channel for that episode.
If you liked this video, then like it, and share it with your friends and families.
Till next time, Jai Hindi!! Vande Matram!! Namaskar!!
Guy 2:
Like everybody else, I first came to know about it in school, through the curriculum textbook. Finished
school, got grades and moved on. Climate change was never a concern for me as, for now, it never affected
me directly or to an extent so that it can be acknowledged. If the temperature, during summer, went up
every year by 2 or 3 notch, it wouldnt bother me, coz I would be sitting in ac or under a fan in my concrete
home. Still the climate change talk would creep in to me through headlines of newspapers or TV news, but
I would ignore it because water was still running through my taps.
Its human nature, guy 1. First stage is the denial, you know! You always start with a denial if
something bad is happening around you. You always say it not going to affect you, any time soon. But
it does at the end, anyway. In this case, we do not have time to go through all the stages to reach a mere
acceptance of the fact that global warming is happening, that polar bears are dying and are at the verge of
extinction because polar ice is melting at an alarming rate of 12% per decade suggesting the Artic will be
ice free by 2030.

Mumbai, Shanghai, New York, London and whole of Bangladesh to be worst affected by sea level
rising due to climate change
1 billion people on Earth depend on sea food for their proteins and nutrition and as see level rises
these people are going to be affected too
Due to weather pattern change, all of the humanity will be directly affected
For example, temperature rise in the Gangetic plane, will create harsh condition for wheat growth.
According to an estimate, in next 2-3 decade Indian wheat production and American corn
production will plummet by 75-80%.
If you see right now, according to World Food Programme, Some 795 million people in the world
do not have enough food to lead a healthy active life. That's about one in nine people on earth.
Basically, ever increasing population (now standing at 7.5 Billion) will have a looming threat of
food shortage.
Now coming to your question of denial by politicians. Particularly Mr Trump!! These people are
extractivists. Or, in general term capitalists. They see climate change crusaders and advocators as
attackers on extractivism. To combat climate change, the whole thinking of private transport will have to
be discarded. Now, whose loss is this? Car industry, oil industry, metal industry coal industry etc.
Considering oil industry debacle means Middle Eastern countries are gone. They will fall flat on their nose.
From here, germinate the denial. Shekhs fill the pocket of American politicians- Republicans and
Democrats alike, resulting no passage of bill concerning climate change in the congress of USA. If USA
can get affected to such a scale then what about developing and underdeveloped countries who have just
started walking.
Guy 3:
It just that climate change doesnt serve anybodys economic interests, as discussed by Guy-2. Tell me,
which countrys GDP or whatever gonna grow by leaps and bounds by accepting in truest sense the
declarations of Paris Climate Summit 2015?
You know, WTO and UN Climate Summit started functioning around the same time. On one hand, WTO
(read USA) enforced every country on Earth to abide by their rules. Many country were coaxed and cajoled
to follow their rules. India, Brazil and other agricultural dependent countries were bribed to open their
market and agriculture sector for global trading. This and many more things happened under the name of
free trade.
On the other hand, UN Climate Summit has to wait for 21 years to reach a soft line of understanding. You
know the declaration of the summit is not even abiding on the member countries.
Because of free trade and globalization, domestic needs of a developed country is satiated by developing
or under developing countries. If you know what I mean.
Take the example of Indonesia- an under-developed country. Indonesia has/had one of the largest reserve
of tropical rain forest. Now, enters the Palm oil into the picture. Palm oil is the most widely consumed
vegetable oil on the planet, and it is in about half of all packaged products such as Burger, Lipstick,
Pizza Dough, Instant Noodles, Shampoo, Ice Cream, Detergent, Chocolate, Soap, Packaged Breads
etc., sold in the supermarket. While palm oil is the most efficient source of vegetable oil, its rapid
expansion threatens some of the planets most important and sensitive habitats. Palm oil grows in tropical
rainforests, and the uncontrolled clearing of these forests for conventional palm oil plantations has led to
widespread loss of these irreplaceable and biodiverse rich forests. These are the forest which suck up
most of the CO2 from the environment.
Palm tree plantations have also been connected to the destruction of habitat of endangered species,
including orangutans, tigers, elephants and rhinos.
So, basically the capitalism is standing naked on the face of climate change discussion and its crusaders.