This article is a keynote speech by Azhan(representing FEPAD), given on 15th Sept at the online webinar on “Climate Change and Anti-Imperialism” organized by Youth for CHEange(Sri Lanka) and joined by many climate organizations of South-East Asia.
FEPAD (Forum for Ecological Protection and Alternative Development) is trying to reach young Indians to take active participation and leadership in the climate movement. We aim to empower youth to take up the climate issues that their community faces in day-to-day life. Climate change is in seen and unseen ways, affecting the lives of the underprivileged, the working class, and the common people. When we talk about climate change, we must question who is the one getting most affected by the worsening climate crisis. It is indeed the weakest among us who have to go through the worst of it. Nearly 60% of global farmer deaths due to pesticides happen in India. Extreme heat and severe climatic conditions are making every passing summer harder for the world’s second-largest labour population. As jobs are declining in India, gig work is rising all over the nation, and gig workers are becoming the fastest-growing community of climate victims. For Indian marginalized communities, they don’t need to wait for the fall of a huge chunk of ice from the Himalayas to feel the brunt of climate change. They survive it every day in their day-to-day lives. Thirteen of the twenty most polluted cities in the world are in India as per 2024 report and 66 of 100 most polluted cities in the world are in India, with our capital as the most polluted as per the latest reports. For almost three months, nearly two crore people in Delhi breathe smog, where a single day’s air does the damage of smoking several cigarettes. During summer, temperatures peak at up to 45C in most Indian cities. Climate change is no longer a problem of the future. It is not far away anymore. It is here. It is impacting our lives every day in many known and unknown ways. Climate change affects our lives in food shortages, in heat waves of summer, in flooded roads during monsoon, in our increasing electricity bills, in adulterated food, in loss of educational hours for kids, in unclean drinking water, in loss of fertility of our agricultural land, in loss of our productivity.
For a population so drastically affected by climate change, only a few completely understand global warming. 32% of Indians have never heard of the term “Global Warming”, they don’t know the devil they are facing every single day. In this unique case of India, we believe only when young Indians take up the fight against corporate greed, fascist government, crony capitalists, and religious fundamentalists we can fight against this global threat.
Fighting against climate change is a multi-front war; we are fighting against a multi-faced enemy. It is not just the changing climate that is the impact of climate change. It is also the extra burden on our pockets; it is the breaking and deteriorating infrastructure; it is the number of extra days away from school; it is also the resource warfare; it is the power cuts in our neighborhood; it is the creation of huge landfills on the outskirts of the town; it is the packetization of our daily food items.
Humans distorting the environment is not a new or “modern” phenomena in any means. Since the beginning of the Anthrophonic age humans have impacted climate in a drastic way. Humans have jumped and now even popped out of the food chain, humans have carried out mass extinctions of several species of animals(including several other human species as well) even before domesticating wheat. Humans manipulated natural substances like fire, stones and wood to change nature in the way that no one else ever did. But, since the advent of capitalism and its global promoter, imperialism. The ecological destruction had brought the entire ecosystem to the brink of collapse. The planet has already touched 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels in single years, and on the present course the long-term average set by the Paris Agreement will be crossed within a decade . Amphibians are getting extinct at the rate 40 times the rate of background extinction. It’s not just the plants and animals on the edge of extinction. Air, water bodies and even land masses are getting polluted and even destroyed all around the globe. Large Ice masses like Antarctica are melting leading to the drowning of the homeland of coastal communities.
The capitalist consumeristic economy is the ultimate culprit of climate change. To sustain its fast fashion industry, it is using trillions of liters of water that can be used to serve communities in drought affected areas. To run its data centres, this economy consumes the electricity of an entire city — and these data centres are now being pushed into our own states, taking our land and our water while our people face power cuts . To create their electric vehicle empire, they are mining lands of native communities. To build its high-class architecture, they are clearing rainforests. To encourage its exotic food industry, it is poaching and hunting a record number of animals, including millions of fish in a year. To continue its fast food industry, we have polluted our planet with microplastic, even in our brains to some percentage.
The imperialist powers of the world have no to zero regard for crises that can potentially bring humanity to its very end. In contrast, they are accelerating at an ever faster pace. The country most responsible for the carbon already in the atmosphere, and still the largest per-capita emitter among the major economies, is the very country that walked out of the Paris Agreement — twice . The massive investment in the defense sector is increasing their carbon footprint enormously. Imperialist powers are raging wars across the globe and are massively investing in the nuclear weapons capabilities threatening planet earth in a way of “Never before”. Imperialist powers in their very nature are power hungry and are constantly involved in power warfare. Global warming is becoming an obvious side effect of this power warfare.
After all of this, Global Warming is still a solvable problem. Some experts say that we need to re-invest 2% of global GDP per year to bring tangible change in climate. We need global coordinated efforts against imperialistic and capitalistic powers to save our planet. During COVID-19 Pandemic, lack of global cooperation led to the death of millions of innocent lives. No nation can fight climate change on its own. We all need to act together to bring in that change. Climate Activist Greta Thunberg led such a movement in Europe and North America from 2018 onwards . Now, the Global South also needs such a cross-border movement to fight Imperialism.
Inquilab Zindabad
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