The city of Kolkata has the largest fleet of electric public buses anywhere in India. This is a space in which the state of West Bengal has already shown excellent leadership. When mindsets stand in the way of our children’s future, it is best to let go and embrace the inevitable reality that we need rapid, deep, and sustained emissions reduction now. A major impediment to an effective net metering policy is a mindset that struggles to reimagine electricity consumers as producers of electricity, leading to restrictive grid connection policies which are not as commercially beneficial. Research by the International Water Management Institute (which has not yet been published) has found that farmers with grid-connected solar-powered pumps have strong incentives to reduce groundwater pumping, leading to more sustainable outcomes.Įffective net metering policies are the need of the hour, along with rapid investment in upgrading the grid so it can handle large volumes of renewable energy being injected during the day. Similarly, the existing 250,000-300,000 electric irrigation pumps in West Bengal can be solarised and connected to the grid, with farmers incentivised to sell excess electricity produced.

Recommended Rooftop solar: The missing piece of India’s renewable ambitions What can governments, civil society, and we as individuals do to ensure a liveable future for our children? Our children have inherited a much warmer world than the one we were born in due to human-caused climate change, and their future depends on the actions we take today. One consequence is that all state schools and colleges in the Indian state of West Bengal, where I live, have been closed, with multiple other Indian states also shutting schools or shortening the school day.Īfter pandemic-related shutdowns, yet another closure of educational institutions is further affecting the education of millions of young children, with disproportionate impacts falling on children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Heat records have been broken in many parts of the continent, with multiple cities in India surpassing 44 degrees Celsius (111F.).

Those heatwaves are happening right now all over Asia.

The report warned of debilitating heatwaves that would test the limits of human endurance. I was a member of the team that wrote the latest climate report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC) in March 2023, which was endorsed by 195 governments including India.

I am writing this as a climate scientist and a mother of two young children. ( The Third Pole ) – When heatwaves disrupt our children’s education, it is time to demand climate action.

The Extreme Team by Matt Christopher