We are doomed.

 

December 2018, Katowice. That marked the beginning of my realisation that we were on our way to apocalypse. Six years on, after attempts that I would call frenetic, people who feel the urge to do something about it remain unheard, subsumed by the masculine assertion by fossil fuel giants, Big Corporate, and compliant government. CoPs have become a sham, a circus for demagogues and ungrounded talk. Elected representatives remain mired in non-problems, in the face of The Problem of Climate Apocalypse. Amidst this, law could barely have done something. We could not have possibly expected the law to correct our future, it can never do that with the entire world being complacent and in a deep slumber.

Domination of Delhi in air pollution politics has meant that while the Supreme Court will intervene there, albeit miserably failing again, villages and towns in Punjab remain cloaked in equivalently fatal smog, but no-one paying attention. 400 and above is not a measure only recorded in Delhi but in the entire North India. But have the courts thought about that? And it’s not even the work of the courts. Are the governments not seeing their dereliction of duty? Do they not exist in the same cities, towns as the people? Can the Delhi problem really be solved without paying heed to the problem of the northern region? Do you really think Delhi is a secluded island? Then why focus on Delhi alone? Are rural lives disposable? Are rural and semi-urban settings of Punjab non deserving of an equal attention by the Supreme Court, or rather their governments? Do they not need clean air? And remember it’s not the farmers, but overwhelming number of cars and factories powered by Big Oil. Do not deflect the blame on farmers for capitalist, classist infrastructure is to blame.

Those who choose to speak up against domination of Big Corporate are repressed by the state. example- Hasdeo Aranya and FFF. Urban Naxals are what the dissidents are called. A conspiracy of the Left to derail national development and security. The Shadow Lands remain unheard, exploited, pulverised, suppressed, unliveable because of this vilification.

CoP 29 begins with the routine alarm raised by Antonio Guterres, but he represents those who are vilified. He is not heard by anyone. The Big Oil and compliant governments will continue to fuel wars, annihilation of Shadow Lands, accelerating our pace to reach the climate apocalypse, and law will remain there. Law will not help because its elaborate statutes on Big Corporate can never be defeated by namesake, mouldable and minuscule statutes on environment with convoluted logics at the heart.