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Technological solutions driven by enlightened policies and lifestyle and behavioural changes would help deal with the challenges of climate change, according to an expert.
Delivering the convocation address of Manipal University at Manipal on Saturday, R.K. Pachauri, Director General of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), said the solutions to deal with the challenge of climate change are not beyond the reach or the realm of human ingenuity.
“We can enjoy all the benefits of modern living and yet reduce the intensity of use of natural resources. This would require technological solutions driven by enlightened policies and lifestyle and behavioural changes, all of which carry huge co-benefits,” he said.
The resource intensity of global production and consumption has gone far beyond sustainable levels. “India’s salvation lies in innovation that gives us a way of living which is much lower in resource intensity than what we see around us,” he said.
Such a direction would allow the people of the country to live within their means, and overcome the constraints that would become increasingly severe if people continued with business as usual.
He said that many parts of the world have achieved outstanding success in cleaning up the air that they breathe and the rivers that flow through them, and in expanding their forest cover.
“Of course, India is still going in the opposite direction, infatuated with the goal of maintaining high rates of GDP growth, even as we deplete perhaps at an equally high rate our natural wealth, much of which will never be recovered,” Pachauri said.
It is virtually certain that increases in the frequency and magnitude of warm daily temperature extremes and decreases in cold extremes will occur in the 21st century on a global scale, he said.
It is very likely that the length, frequency, and/or intensity of warm spells or heat waves will increase over most land areas. Based on established emissions scenarios, a one-in-20-year hottest day is likely to become a one-in-two-year event by the end of the 21st century in most regions, except in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, where it is likely to become a one-in-five-year event, he said.
Heavy rainfalls associated with tropical cyclones are likely to increase with continued warming, he added.
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