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Daily Vocab Capsule 8th December 2019

The Children Are Cursing Us

Can we rescue humanity from the Suicide Pact of the 7 Billion?

When someone is diagnosed with cancer, we often see the extended family pull together and get organised with

incredible speed. The mami who spends the night in the hospital, the neighbour who looks after the children at

home, the nephew who musters up the blood donors, nobody shirks their part – especially after multiple doctors

have agreed on the diagnosis and the essential course of treatment.

The doctors are agreed that saving the planet needs cutting emissions. IPCC assesses that human-induced warming

reached approximately 1°C above pre-industrial levels in 2017, and it is against this backdrop that we must

understand the goal of keeping global temperature increase limited to below 1.5°C by 2100. That we are currently

on track for a 3.2°C to 3.9°C rise instead, indicates the scale of present failure and future threat.

Overall greenhouse gas emissions are still rising, nitrous oxide has reached 123% and atmospheric methane 259%

of the pre-industrial level. Helped along by how it remains in the atmosphere for centuries, carbon dioxide levels

are higher than they have been in 4,00,000 years. The Anthropocene era is already experiencing a very different

climate from what our ancestors knew and heading for much worse.

To any alien observer our inability to pull together, to do what the doctors have prescribed, must look like the

Suicide Pact of the 7 Billion. It is widely reported that the impact of the warming will fall on the poor and

vulnerable, but by no means will they be the only ones with a severely stressed quality of life.

If that were the case, we would have been talking about a murder pact. Sure, Dhaka is barely 4 metres above sea

level with surrounding areas being even more low-lying, so the prospect of a 3.9°C rise gives it a sinking feeling.

But this will also make a tinderbox out of California and rain the fury of many Hurricane Katrinas on New

Orleans and spread the wrath of heatwaves through Australia and Europe. Btw in the 2003 European heatwave

Paris recorded an excess death rate of 141%.

There is really nowhere to run no matter how rich you are. It’s like when Delhi is in November hell and loose talk

about migrating to other cities happens. As Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan writes, “Get out of Mumbai, see that

you do, the sea is coming for me and you. Get out of Bangalore I’d recommend, before the water comes to an

end. Move to Goa? It’s pretty dire, you might end up dead in a garbage fire … So get out? Why bother? Just

choose your tomb.”

In disparate movements like Fridays For Future and Extinction Rebellion, it is really no surprise that young

people are at the forefront of protesting the current state of affairs. Consider that the children born today will

actually live to see the 3.9°C nightmare, no matter how rich their country. In this sense Greta Thunberg is

absolutely right, young people are bearing the brunt of leaders’ failures. The adults have signed them onto the

suicide pact by proxy.

Of course there are also several misgivings when the Extinction Rebellion talks up drones shutting down

Heathrow airport or when Thunberg’s prohibitively expensive sailing trends so much flight shaming in her

country that the Swedes even coin a word for it: flygskam. It smacks of very elite Luddism. Without having met

many Scandinavians I have still managed to meet a few who have travelled to 50 countries, while countless

Indians have yet to come within 50 km of an aircraft.

Beneath the binary surface there is actually lot of meeting ground here. This is not in turning off the twin engines

of capitalism and technological progress but in a historical and scientific view of things, where the EU is

responsible for 40% of cumulative emissions, the US 22% and India 2%. As the adults have lived expansively at

the expense of the future generation, so the developed world has partied like no developing country now can.

Those who have created the largest share of the mess must shoulder a larger burden of cleaning it.

In his eye-opening book More From Less, Andrew McAfee showcases how rich economies are dematerialising.

In the US there is now a decreasing consumption of many things from metals to water for irrigation, and even

total energy use is peaking. It is in everyone’s interest for similar decoupling between growth and consumption

of Earth’s resources to take place in less rich countries too. Saving the planet needs the developed bloc to follow

through on promises of meaningful assistance to the developing bloc, especially in new technologies.

Think in terms of opportunities not sacrifice, including the chance to live in a peaceful and ecologically fecund

world rather than a barren one riven by infernal conflicts between the haves and have-nots. Flying itself could

become greener with say synthetic jet fuels and electric planes. The Matrix was fiction. In real life AI and deep

learning will help improve agriculture, weather forecasts, renewable energy management, heat mitigation et al

exponentially. Profaning the gods of science and technology is the worst disservice humanity will do itself. Next

only to ignoring the cry of the children.

This will hurt you, no matter how high up in the clouds is your castle. In the hit teen drama 13 Reasons Why, one

suicide unsettles the lives of all the persons her life touched. In the event of a mass extinction, those who survive

humanity’s suicide pact will also be twisted as beyond recognition as a 3.9°C warmer Earth.

Courtesy: The Times of India (General Studies)

1. Muster (verb): Meaning: To gather together as a group or force, or to cause a force to gather. (एकत्र होना)

Synonyms: Assemble, Congregate, Marshal, Rally

Antonyms: Disperse, Disband, Dissolve, Spread

Example: 17,000 people had been mustered on Haldon Hill.

2. Shirk (verb): Meaning: Avoid or neglect (a duty or responsibility). (बचना)

Synonyms: Avoid, Evade, Run Away From, Dodge, Shun

Antonyms: Accept, Face, Take On, Do

Example: I shall not shirk from my obligations.

3. Disparate (adjective): Meaning: Different in every way. (भिन्न)

Synonyms: Dissimilar, Contrasting, Heterogeneous, Poles Apart

Antonyms: Similar, Homogenous, Corresponding, Kindred

Example: Chalk and cheese are disparate substances.

4. Extinction (noun): Meaning: A situation in which something no longer exists. (समाप्ति, भिलुिी)

Synonyms: Vanishing, Extermination, Elimination, Disappearance

Antonyms: Survival, Existence, Endurance, Subsistence

Example: They have driven the rhino to the edge of extinction.

5. Cumulative (Adjective): Meaning: Increasing or increased in quantity, degree, or force by successive

additions. (संचयी)

Synonyms: Increasing, Accumulative, Snowballing, Swelling

Antonyms: Decremental, Degressive, Decreasing

Example: The evolution of human life was a gradual, cumulative process.

6. Shoulder (verb): Meaning: Take on (a burden or responsibility). (दाभयत्व लेना)

Synonyms: Bear, Assume, Carry, Undertake

Antonyms: Refuse, Repudiate, Disown

Example: The insurer who fails to perform the obligation must shoulder corresponding liability.

7. Fecund (adjective): Meaning: Producing or creating a lot of new things, ideas, etc. (फलप्रद; उत्पादक)

Synonyms: Productive, Inventive, Gainful, Prolific

Antonyms: Barren, Futile, Vain, Unrewarding

Example: They have let loose their fecund imaginations on the facts of Barrie's life like a pack of hungry dogs.

8. Mitigation (noun): Meaning: The act of reducing how harmful, unpleasant, or bad something is. (शमन, कमी

करना)

Synonyms: Easing, Alleviation, Palliation, Soothing

Antonyms: Intensification, Escalation, Exacerbation, Sharpening

Example: There has been no significant increase in funding for flood mitigation works.

9. Profane (verb): Meaning: Treat (something sacred) with disrespect. (अपभित्र करना; अपमाभनत करना)

Synonyms: defile, debase, violate, desecrate, pollute

Antonyms: venerate, revere, deify, esteem

Example: Their behaviours profaned the holy place.

10. Disservice (noun): Meaning: A harmful action. (क्षभत)

Synonyms: Damage, Disfavour, Mischief, Hurt, Offence

Antonyms: Favour, Assistance, Benefit, Boon, Service

Example: The fans have done the game a great disservice.