Subject to [Climate] Change

There was something very different about this year in northern India that prematurely ended the Menlo Abroad trip. 40 kilometers out of Ramnagar, leaving Jim Corbett National Park and ascending almost 1800 meters, fires appeared along the Himalayan hills. In my previous four years in India, I had never seen such things. Not once. And when we reached Ranikhet and got the students sorted with their host moms for their home-stays, I looked out with horror over the valley from my hotel balcony to see the northeastern section ablaze [see photos]. Flashbacks to the northern California fires that burned Paradise to a crisp last year ricocheted in my mind’s eye. Ranikhet’s fires, mostly burning underbrush and not the trees themselves, threatened more with toxic smoke than the actual fireballs of the menacing inferno of Butte County. Nevertheless, the consequence at least for Menlo School was the same: evacuation.

What is different? India has always been hot and dry before the monsoon rains of June, but the subcontinent is hotter, dryer, and more unlivable than ever before. Climate change -- what can sometimes feel like an abstract, future doomsday prophecy -- is coming to nightmarish fruition particularly for the 200 million, mostly poor, inhabitants of northern India. Just when we arrived, meteorologists were predicting a heat wave could last a fortnight or more in New Delhi, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Uttarakhand (where we spend the majority of our time). In fact, a severe heat warning had been issued for the capital as temperatures exceeded 46 Celsius. Water scarcity, frequent and prolonged fire events, and heatstroke are increasingly the new normal for Indians. The reality of climate change and its devastation on humankind is a real and present danger now.

In our home-stay village, the denizens of Ranikhet have been coping with effects of climate change for decades – it’s now getting worse. In the 90s, the rivers that passed through the Himalayan hills almost all dried up. Desperate for reliable water sources, wells were dug and dams built to mitigate water scarcity. Still, the problem persists. Experts from Gandhinagar city’s Institute of Technology warned last month that more than 40 percent of India faces drought this year. Indian weatherpersons report that not only is there less rain than average this year, but that rainfall patterns are more erratic in the last decade overall – frequent droughts, floods, and sudden storms. This is exactly what Thomas Friedman of the New York Times calls “global weirding,” and it hit particularly hard just as Menlo Abroad was pulling into town. The arid conditions exacerbate forest fires. According to the information presented in news18.com, the fires in Ranikhet were the worst experienced in two decades. The source quoted Mark Parrington, senior scientist at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts who wrote about the fires in the state of Uttarakhand, “Looking at May monthly total fire radiative power, 2019 is second worst in 16 years after 2012.” In other words, the emissions of pollutants from these fires were now at their most severe in the twenty-first century. Unfortunately, this is a trend that will continue: Forest fires increased by nearly 2.5 times between 2011 and 2017 throughout Uttarakhand. Under such conditions, Menlo School vacated the region, back to Delhi, only to find that the capital was approaching 47-48 Celsius.

From this experience, three questions present as most salient. First, given undeniable, first-hand proof of anthropogenic climate change, will the nations of the world act radically and rapidly to curb carbon emissions to forestall the most tragic impending consequences wrought by our carelessness? As harrowing as it was for Menlo Abroad to be chased by fires and smoke in Ranikhet – moving from hotel to hotel for refuge – this authentic learning experience galvanizes our own personal advocacy for climate action now. Second, with billions lacking education in the dangerous affects of extreme heat and air pollution (e.g., there wasn’t a single accessible air quality index reading for the Uttarakhand region according to our partner NGO), how do privilege, power, and wealth demarcate zones of relative climate vulnerability and invulnerability? Menlo students received personal experience in global inequality; we had the information and means to escape respiratory damage when the locals almost seemed blithely unaware of these threats or lacked the capacity to do anything about them. Finally, how will climate change, as experienced in New Delhi and Ranikhet, affect the kind of powerful education sought in the Menlo Abroad program? This is “open air” learning, where students meet host culture in the market, the field, the temple, and the home patios to engage in conversation and develop relationships. Extreme temperatures and capricious extreme weather events make it increasingly difficult to plan and execute such transformative educational visions. How will we adapt? What needs to change?