Images:
Top:Met department’s latest temperature chart shows much of northern India experienced 40-plus degrees Celsius this week. Right IMD’s Yellow alert of heat wave for the next few days.
Bottom:The 2020 novel that kicks of with an Indian heat wave – and its author
Met department records 40-42 degree C across north India states this week; warns of heat wave and another 2-to-4 degree temperature rise in next 3 days. Scientists point at a bestselling 2020 “cli-fi” novel opened with an Indian heat wave that sets off a global climate change crisis.Is this a case of fiction anticipating fact?
April 29, 2022: The India Meteorological Department (IMD) put out a Yellow Alert, just short of a Red Alert on Monday (April 25) April followed by an orange alert on April 28, after it recorded temperatures of 40 to 42 degrees Celsius across a wide swathe of upper India from Gujarat, across the subcontinent, to Orissa. The maximum temperature could rise by another 2-3 C degrees between by 29 in states like Madhya Pradesh, it warned .
Already the temperature in the plains of north India rate as a full blown heat wave when air temperature is fatal to humans, if they are exposed. Some global weather services show Delhi hitting 43-44 degrees C any day now. All schools in Odisha have been closed and other states in the hot belt are expected to follow suit with local warnings.
As multiple states gear up to face the heatwave, some observers are recalling a 2020 piece of “cli-fi” (a genre of fiction dealing with climate change and global warming) which eerily suggests how a massive Indian heat wave, killing millions, sets off a world-wide climate crisis.
The book is “The Ministry for the Future” by American science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson, first published in 2020 and now available in paperback (Rs 568 at Amazon).
It follows the work of a fictional UN-style organisation called Ministry for the Future which was established as a result of the Paris Climate Agreement and advocates for the rights of future unborn generations as if they were alive today. The book opens in July 2025, in a village in Uttar Pradesh where one of the protagonists, Frank May and his team see the mercury creep up remorselessly, as the monsoon is indefinitely delayed. As power fails across the state, and generator sets run out of fuel, even fans and air conditioners stop working; people in their thousands jump into lakes and ponds to keep cool… those who can’t find shelter or water, die in thousands. The book sets this unerringly, in the context of the dilemma of developing economies like India pressured to reduce its carbon footprint by the worst offenders in the world: "India was told not to burn coal when everyone else had finished burning enough of it to build up the capital to shift to cleaner sources of power... The (Paris)agreement had been ignored and abrogated -- and now India had paid the price...the deck had been stacked, the game was over and 20 million had died."
The climate correspondent of the UK daily newspaper, The Independent on April 26, first drew attention to the similarities between the premise of this novel and the predicted temperature build-up to dangerous levels in India today. The writer, Saphora Smith quotes a scientist in a climate change think tank, E3G, who suggests that the building heat wave in India is “eerily familiar because it’s basically the opening scenario of ‘The Ministry of the Future’.”
The editor of a UK green news site, Business Green agrees: “Not that far short of the horrifying first chapter.” Heat waves are the deadliest extremes of climate change, suggests a scientist at Imperial College quoted in the newspaper.
India's National Disaster Management Authority has flashed the latest IMD weather warnings issued today ( April 27 at 8 am) and may be tasked to step in if the IMD upgrades its alert from yellow to red. Many affected states are not waiting for this to alert citizens to follow standard procedures to keep safe in heat wave conditions like drinking water and oral re-hydrants; using damp cloth on head if forced to be outdoors; keeping in the shade whenever possible. Such episodes always hit those who cannot afford to stay in doors; who are forced to work outdoors, but while the toll may not be quite as catastrophic as the novel suggests, it is nevertheless a warning, an amber sign that drastic and potentially tragic climate change consequences are already upon us.
Hollywood disaster epics
In 2009, a Hollywood ‘disaster epic’ called ‘2012’ suggested a massive flooding of the world which left 9/10ths of the earth covered. It began with a scene set in this country, where an Indian astrophysicist played by UK-Indian Jimmy Mistry, warns that unusual solar flare activity could see huge melting of polar ice and a consequent flooding worldwide. No one listens.His prediction comes true, he and his family are among the millions dead (though the film’s big name stars survive).
In 2004, another Hollywood 'disasterpic' , “The Day After Tomorrow”, again begins with a UN climate conference in Delhi which predicts a new Ice Age – it happens over the rest of the movie.
Setting aside for the moment, the coincidence of such climate disaster movies, seemingly all opening their stories in India, let us note that such apocalyptic visions are always set a few years hence. The last, placed it ‘the day after tomorrow’. But if this week's heat wave plays out as predicted, the danger is not tomorrow or the day after. It is today. - Anand Parthasarathy