Bengaluru: Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy created a riveting alternate universe. The celebrated author's new book, The Great Derangement illustrates how much the universe we inhabit is in danger of being annihilated in our lifetime by pointing to what happened in Chennai where a 'rain bomb' devastated the city in December 2015.
“Its what happened in Houston, it's what happened in Chennai. Soon, there will be no Kolkata, no Chennai, no Mumbai,” he says, explaining that the title of his second non-fiction book - the first was In An Antique Land - sums up how lax the international community has been in being alive to the dangers right here on this planet.
“I called it The Great Derangement because that is what it is. Look at what is happening in Chennai, in Adyar despite the flood. A multi storey building is coming up in Chennai, about a 100 meters from the coast which has a seven storey basement, not one or two, but seven! In a city that just had an epic flood, if this isn't derangement, then I don't know what is.”
Issues such as rain bombs, which are intense rains that fall on a particular place to the sudden volcanic eruptions of methane across Siberia that leave craters wherever they rear their ugly heads and the bubbling methane plumes rising off the ocean floor off Washington state, the book is an eye opener to the willful ignorance of this massive change in climate that the world today has turned a blind eye to.
“The only time the carbon dioxide concentration was this intense in as it is now was 65 million years ago, when the sea level was roughly 80 feet higher than what it is now,” says Ghosh.
“With the rising temperature, we are living in what we can call a lag time period, the moment it lapses....” he said, leaving the sentence incomplete.
“The methane that is under the earth is getting released", he warned in an interview to Deccan Chronicle. “ Earlier this year, we saw an enormous spike in Methane.” Methane is a greenhouse gas that adds to the rise in temperature 21 times faster than carbon dioxide.
“The thawing of the Permafrost, below which lie reserves of methane buried into the Earth, in parts of Russia, Siberia and Alaska, places which are frightfully close to the North Pole, which governs most of the climatic conditions of the earth, is releasing huge amounts of Methane, thanks to our blatant disregard for the environment and couldn't careless attitude about this steady rise in the Earth's temperature,” he explained.
Asked how badly this would affect India, Ghosh says : “Don't be fooled by names that sound seven seas away. India isn't too far off from this situation either. The two things that the Indian climate depends on, the monsoons and the glaciers are both a part of this derangement.
“The Indian monsoons are changing. There were recent rain bombs in Kerala.
If this situation continues, the places with high rainfall will have higher rainfall and the dryer places will be even more parched. The source of perennial rivers, the glaciers are receding. That's why we venerate the Gangotri and Gaumukh. They feed the rivers that run through the north.”
“That’s what we're looking at - climactic chaos,” warned Ghosh, who spoke on Wednesday at the IISc.
Make kids aware of climate change: Amitav Ghosh
During a discussion on his new book at IISc, Amitav Ghosh called for raising awareness among children about climate change, both globally and locally, and stressed on the role literature can play in this regard.
The author was in conversation with Rohini Nilekani, Chairperson, Arghyam Foundation, R. Sukumar, Professor, Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc, J Srinivasan, Professor, Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, IISc, Kartik Shanker, Director, ATREE and Dakshin Foundation. He said literature could provide a method to the madness and cultivate among the young the seeds of the cause and effect relationship of environmental degradation and human life.
“Literature, even at the level of children’s books does have a place for climate change. We need something that would spread the news rapidly. What is that virus that you can plant that could get the job done?” The panelists also touched upon various other causes of climate change and possible solutions.
