Baffling reluctance to talk about pollution, climate

November is halfway through, and you, just like me, might also be wondering: When will winter start in Delhi? The national capital is already grappling with severe fog.

- Shashi Shekhar

Its air quality is regularly dipping to dangerous levels; the city was declared the most polluted capital city in the world on Wednesday.

But where did this mess begin? We need to go back in history, to October 2, 1974, to track the origin. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) recorded a maximum temperature of 34°C and a minimum of 22°C that day. On the same day 50 years later, the highest and the lowest temperatures stood at 37°C and 28°C, respectively, in Delhi.

If you think a temperature variation of 2°C won't make much of a difference, you may be mistaken. The Industrial Revolution in Europe led to a 1.1°C-1.3°C rise in temperature over the two-and-a-half centuries that followed. It has wreaked havoc.

Many places on the planet today are suffering from extreme heat. Rivers' flows have ebbed. Antarctica, the Arctic, and Siberia have been losing their ice cover at an alarming pace.

Meteorologists warn that if the average global temperature rises by even 1°C, it will have catastrophic consequences. We are already facing its preliminary impacts. In 2024, May and June were declared the hottest months in the history of independent India by the IMD.