BIJOY KUMAR Y

Bijoy firmly believes that climate change isn’t as serious as we make it out to be

ALRIGHT I WRITE ON CARS AND motorcycles but that does not mean that I have no other interests. I love aircraft of any kind and a speeding train always makes me stop in my tracks and watch in amazement. Alright, edit that track bit. Occasionally I do think beyond the realm of mobility. And we are not talking Ursula Andress in Dr No.

I don’t believe in climate change. It’s an elaborate scam to keep rich countries rich and poor countries poor. I begin my day with a dose of BBC News and these days the overall theme is disasters ― wild fires in the USA, floods in Europe and drought in China with the occasional hurricane damage and monsoon fury thrown in, with resulting floods in Assam. And everything is attributed to climate change. Correction, man-made climate change. Of course, I disagree completely. The more I watch the news, the more it becomes apparent that there is no consistency or periodicity to these happenings. I do agree that climate varies from place to place and season to season. Last year there were severe forest fires in Australia. If climate change was really happening, there should have been even more fierce fires in Australia this year. Last time a big hurricane hit the USA, it was Katrina in 2005. Nothing as serious has followed for almost two decades. Few years ago, the Atlantic coast got a fierce freeze ― it has not returned yet. Earthquakes and tsunamis are forever present in Japan. That is why they wanted to occupy more land to be in safer environs ― but they got the wrong friends and the plan failed. If you ask me, Mother Earth has been behaving consistently ― four seasons, cold polar regions, hot deserts and floods in Assam every year. There are states in our country that asks the Centre for flood relief as well as drought relief every year. I mean, this is normal.

Most of the disaster news starts by saying that ‘it is the coldest recorded winter/summer/rainfall’ since someone started recording things. Trust me, that is never more than 200 years back. Since no machine to measure these phenomena was invented before that, the numbers we are force-fed are the result of some people’s colourful imagination (whose purpose in life is to paint a bleak picture). And 200 years is nothing in the evolution of the Earth. And if we humans think that we can cause so much trauma to the Earth by driving some two-stroke bikes and V8 powered cars, we have got to be missing a few screws in the head. Few years ago, a small volcano erupted and caused so much pollution that flights were cancelled. God alone knows how far between these eruptions are ― and they are certainly not man-made.

Until very recently we were worried about the ‘hole in the ozone layer’. That got fixed somehow. Then came ‘global warming’. That got boring after a while. Now it is climate change. Next thing could be ‘unpredictable rain’. Hello, isn’t it clear that this is a big ploy to create budget allocations, roll out new taxes and dole out funds that can create a parallel economy that will make it difficult for developing countries to burn coal and emerge from the pits?

Humans never stopped travelling. They moved looking for warmer, safer pastures for time immemorial. And they continue to do so and get help from satellites that can warn them about most impending catastrophes. And they are smart enough to carry an umbrella if it rains, not go fishing during monsoons and drink a lot of water during summer. Just because we started measuring heat and rainfall 200 years back, we can’t conclude that all of this is caused by humans. For heaven’s sake, we can all go up in fumes if a solar flare that is slightly longer than normal happens. And we can’t do zilch about it. Ditto with rocks that can come from space at speeds mankind cannot fathom ― let alone record. Blink and we’ll be searching for candles in a black hole.

Now if you ask me what a man-made disaster is, it is the Ukraine-Russia war. Young people are dying in reasonably large numbers for this atrocity fuelled by powerful countries. And Russia is not even wasting its state-of-the-art armoury ― instead sending T-series tanks that is fodder for angry Ukrainian farmers. This can end.

Don’t listen to POTUS speaking, avoid teenage Swedish girls who gives you sermons from the UN… take out your trusty old twostroke motorcycle and go for a morning ride. The blue smoke may pollute a bit but it is nothing compared to one of those volcanoes we thought was dormant, yet can kill us all. Whatever we have on Earth today, including the plastic Coca Cola bottle, came from the Earth – except for those fast stones from space. And Mother Earth has ways to sort that out. Go ahead, celebrate life and stop complaining.

I promise to stick to cars and bikes for the next column. ⌧

Until very recently we were worried about the ‘hole in the ozone layer’. That got fixed

somehow