THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL

Western science is lauded as the ultimate arbiter of knowledge. When it comes to climate change, they are often quoted as the experts, with people from all fields urging the irrational: “Listen to the science!” The only problem: scientists are limited in their imagination and cannot see beyond the 1.5 degree threshold. Much like Tom Friedman’s “The World is Flat,” they imagine the planet to be flat, warming at an even rate all over like a nice tortilla, from mountains to Himalayan glaciers, from Antartica to the Gulf. But the world is not shaped like a tortilla. It has immense geographical, environmental, social, political and policy variations, even a few kilometers apart. In some parts of India, peak summer temperatures already reach 50 degree centigrades. This is unsustainable for human habitation. Some of this heating is caused by global climate change, but other reasons for warming and drought is local deforestation, extraction of water without rain recharge, and indus