ESSIC/AOSC Professor Raghu Murtugudde was recently featured in an episode of “Firstpost Conversations”, a video series by the Indian news network that sits down experts for in-depth conversations about critical questions. This episode, Murtugudde sat alongside a data analyst, science reporter, and a representative from The Good Food Institute to discuss the complex challenges India faces due to climate change.
“[For farmers] in India, [they] have not contributed to this problem historically, and they are already experiencing extreme weather and crop loss and changing growing seasons and so on,” says Murtugudde, “Then, media is saying, ‘You are going to get doom in a decade’.”
Murtugudde is referring to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that stated nations will need to take “unprecedented” actions to cut their carbon emissions over the next decade.
“So it leads to this reaction of either “wait and see” or just freeze, and that’s not a good thing especially because that language is not accompanied by a solution, what individuals can do. So you can say, “change lightbulbs”, “drive a hybrid car”, that’s not good for a farmer,” he says, “What are the solutions? What can he or she do on the ground level as an individual to avoid this problem? That’s not really well presented.”
In addition to his work at ESSIC, Murtugudde is an Affiliate Professor for the Department of Geology currently serving as a Visiting Professor in Bombay, India. He works primarily in climate studies, exploring the co-evolution of life and climate and what it means for sustainability. He also writes a blog hosted on the ESSIC website.
To watch the episode in full, click here: “Climate Change: Are We Nearing Tipping Point? | Firstpost Conversations Episode 6”.
