About 2 billion people depend on the Indian Ocean monsoon for their caloric intake (climate change) [View all]

[Recursion]

The Indian Subcontinent is, roughly, a diamond. The Western Ghat mountain range defines its southwest face, and the Eastern Ghat defines its southeast face. I live in Mumbai, outside of the Western Ghat, about halfway down the southwest face. There's maybe 20 miles between the mountains and the sea here; it gets closer as you go north or south (that's why the Portuguese picked this spot to harbor).

The northeast side of the diamond is marked by the Himalayas (where India shares a border with Nepal) and the northwest side by the Kush (where India shares a very tense border with Pakistan). India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka all share a single large ecosystem defined by the oceans and mountains. That's 2 billion people. 2 billion people who depend for their food on a monsoon cycle that is, bluntly, terrifyingly vulnerable to climate change.

As far right as you can go in India, there's no doubt of climate change; they don't have that luxury. India and Sri Lanka have been arguing for decades over a little fucking rock in the ocean between them. Border disputes happen; the US and Canada have them. India and Sri Lanka were not going to go to war over a rock. But, India is coming into its own as a superpower and wanted to flex its muscles, so they sent a squadron of ships out to the "island" to do "training exercises". Sri Lanka, bless their hearts, sent the two boats they had to also do "training exercises". Dick-measuring at its finest. But when the two flotillas got to where their GPS told them the rock was... nope. Higher ocean temperatures increase the volume of ocean water, leading to higher sea levels, meaning the rock was submerged.

World peace through climate change?

I live in Mumbai along with 20 million other people, at 0 feet above sea level. Another 200 million or so live along the coast between the western ghats and the sea (between Kerala and Pakistan). That's who we normally worry about when we think about climate change, and that's warranted. But it goes much further than that.

By my count, 2 billion people depend on the Indian Ocean Monsoon cycle for their livelihoods and caloric intake. This is not a cycle we can keep taking for granted. As the ocean heats up, the predictability of the monsoon becomes less and less of a thing. Already in the past five years we've had both the earliest and latest monsoons on record. And this year we have a record heat wave that has killed nearly a thousand people, as well as record early "daily rains" (what we in the US just think of as "rains"; they used to be unknown here) that nearly ruined the mango and lentil crops.

2 billion people eat the crops that grow because of the monsoon. If we heat the ocean too much, there's no telling if the monsoon will continue. When the Pentagon or the White House say "Climate change is the largest national security threat we face" that is what they mean. Nobody wants to imagine a world where a nuclear-capable India and Pakistan face mass starvation.