Creative Producer: Kunal Mehra
‘Climate hasn't changed.'’
‘We have changed.'
'Our habits have changed.'
This is what Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said on climate change, in a Teachers’ Day interaction with students in 2014.
Back then, Modi had all but dismissed climate change as "people's inability to tolerate the cold as they grow older."
But now, in 2020, even PM Modi agrees and made his point in the United Nations Climate Summit in New York.
There’s more than enough data to make it official:
Let's take a closer look at the year that just went by:
Consider this, we saw the longest summer and the coldest winter, all in one year.
About 2.17 million people were displaced in the first six months of the year – again, due to extreme weather events.
India experienced the most delayed monsoon since 1961. But, by the end of that "delayed monsoon", the country recorded the highest rainfall since 1994.
Karnataka, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur saw unprecedented floods.
India was also hit by seven cyclones, for the second year in a row. Australia and Brazil are not the only countries affected by forest fires. India, too, recorded an exponential increase in forest fires – a 113 percent increase.
That brings us to the end of 2019.
While IMD had warned of a warm winter, the conditions were far from that. Not only did cold wave sweep North India in early December, Delhi saw the coldest December in recorded history.
To sum up, as ‘Science Guy’ Bill Nye said: ‘The World Is On Fire!’
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