Environmental Ignorance is Bliss

…where ignorance is bliss,

The above is one of the oft quoted lines (alas, too often for my taste) from Thomas Gray’s Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College. I remembered this line when I was thinking about my discussions with my friends on global warming, including the more contentious Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). They readily and blissfully plead innocence, deriving comfort from the poet’s endorsement.

I do not want them to enjoy this faux bliss, but I am helpless. For one thing, I cannot pull rank on them as they all are more successful in their chosen careers than I am in mine, with some being the literary types, some in government, some teachers, and some successful professionals too, like doctors, engineers, chartered accountants.

But their bliss will last only till such time that Dalal Street, Mumbai does not go Dunkin’ Donuts into the Arabian Sea!

It is only when New Yorkers were inconvenienced by hurricane Sandy last year – with apocalyptic scenarios of being marooned on Wall Street – did the mayor of New York endorse Barack Obama (supposedly an AGW sympathizer) for president of the US, that too only because Mitt Romney sported supreme indifference.

What is Wall Street is to global capitalism, Dalal Street is to Indian capitalism, which the middle class swears by. Hurt the middle class where it hurts, endanger the perceived growth of its pocketbook, then this bliss will vanish. Dunk Dalal Street in the sea.

Saying that Haiti lost 90% of its agricultural output to extreme events like hurricanes Isaac and Sandy last year, or Maldives is likely to be devoured by sea, will not even raise the eyebrows of the aspirational class, the Indian middle class. But, let it merely be hinted that Dalal Street will be flooded (it does not matter that BSE is housed in a 30 + storeyed  building), see our middle class gather for candle light vigils, in Shivaji Park in Mumbai and also much inland, in the India Gate lawns in Delhi. Suddenly everyone and her cousin will be an expert on AGW.

Now, I am really not into “raising false alarms in a crowded theatre lobby” to bring about the desired change in how society perceives AGW. But, I am interested in letting people know how I came to believe in AGW, just thinking through without much science but assuming some far off and unverifiable situations, believe that it is real and poses threat to all of us,.

Science tells us that the earth, in its early years was enveloped in a carbon dioxide and nitrogen rich atmosphere, and free oxygen was rare. Life came about and it is this life, phytoplankton and later plants, that reduced (meaning, in simple terms, released oxygen) the atmosphere, and consequently cooled it, to bring about conditions that are livable to biological entities such as human beings. Now, all these carbon based life forms keep dying off, get cooked under pressure and heat for millions of years and we get fossil fuels.

By burning fossil fuel, a process of oxidation and opposite of reduction, we are reversing the above process; the faster we burn the faster the reversal. We are the supreme anti-phytoplankton. Yet, ironically it is only man who knows what would happen if we let this process go unchecked – heat death of the most nasty kind. The species Homo sapiens sapiens will be dead much before earth is devoid of life.

The two paragraphs above, coming in at mere 161 words, convinced me that we are on a slippery slope of AGW. There may or may not be exit ramps. OK, I will admit, the above stoked my interest and I got educated further on AGW, including the 380 ppm, 450 ppm, 60 cm sea level rise and all that. Yet, I am anchored to this simple, scientific line.

It involved no science beyond the 8^th or 9^th standard. It is impossible for me to believe that my friends, and along with them those who take pride in their scientific illiteracy, could not have comprehended the above explanation. Only because Gray said, “ignorance is bliss”, all of them are emboldened enough to claim a stubborn form of idiocy.

To conclude, just as AGW deniers take recourse to Thomas Gray, I too will, the line following the one given at the start:

 “'Tis folly to be wise.”

This is my fate.

Raghuram Ekambaram