Year 2, Month 3, Day 16: John Company Raj Redux

The Times of India runs an article on the McGill study, which had also provided fodder for yesterday’s letter. One good turn deserves another. In this letter I tried to connect the climate crisis loosely to India’s history of British colonialism.

Sent March 7:

In an ironic coda to the destructive legacy of colonialism, the McGill University study makes painfully clear the fact that those whose lives are already subject to the vagaries of climate and extreme weather will be the first and most painfully affected victims of climate change. Asia, Africa, South America and Oceania are going to bear the brunt of the destruction caused by the industrialized nations’ greenhouse emissions; countries whose “carbon footprint” is little more than a rounding error will be the ones submerged by rising seas, devastated by drought, or inundated by catastrophic flooding. A world-wide initiative to transform the energy economies of both the developed and the developing world is morally, scientifically, economically and socially essential. Alas, in a world dominated by the short-term fiscal interests of multinational corporations, a just and equitable approach to the climate crisis seems likely to remain a planetary fever dream.

Warren Senders