Climate change, carbon footprints and the Punjab floods

Climate change is one of the most urgent problems on Earth today. It means long-term changes in weather patterns, such as temperature, rainfall and wind, caused mainly by human activities.

"How do people change the climate?"

• Burning fossil fuels (coal, petrol, diesel, gas);
• cutting down forests;
• industrial pollution.

These add greenhouse gases to the air: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and water vapour. Like the glass of a greenhouse, they trap heat and warm up the planet.

The results:

• more frequent floods and droughts;
• glaciers melting;
• sea levels rising;
• loss of biodiversity (many kinds of plants and animals disappearing).

It harms people's health, farming and livelihoods, and it hits almost everyone, including women and children.

"What can one person do?" The book's answer: every small step counts. Together we can reduce our carbon footprints, use renewable energy (like solar and wind), protect forests and live more sustainably.

Your carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gases released because of what you do: using energy, travelling, and using goods and services. The book gives a quiz to measure yours:

• Step 1: tick your habits for transport, electricity, water and waste and plastics.
• Step 2: score them: low impact = 1 point, medium = 2, high = 3, very high = 4.
• Step 3: write a pledge of two changes that would lower your score.

A case study: the Punjab floods of 2025. Heavy monsoon rain and swollen rivers (the Satluj, Beas and Ravi) flooded villages, fields, houses, roads and bridges. There were heavy economic, social and environmental losses.

The book asks: was it nature or people? The answer is both.

Natural causes:

• very heavy monsoon rain, made worse by western disturbances, which brought extra moisture;
• rain fell not only in Punjab but also in the hills of Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir;
• the Satluj, Beas, Ravi and Ghaggar were already running high before the heaviest rain came.

Human-made causes:

• weak, old river embankments, called dhūsī bāndh, that could not hold the rising water;
• houses and farms built too close to the rivers, taking away the space where floodwater could safely spread;
• silt and mud piled up in rivers and dams, so they could hold and carry less water;
• flood warnings that came late or were not clear, so people were not ready.

Effects:

• many people lost their lives;
• thousands moved to relief camps;
• fields went under water and crops like paddy were ruined;
• poultry and dairy farms were damaged, and many cows, buffaloes and chickens fell sick or died;
• roads, bridges, border fences and public buildings were damaged;
• dirty standing water spread waterborne diseases.

The lesson of Punjab: we cannot stop heavy rain, but better planning and preparedness (strong embankments, keeping building away from rivers, clearing silt, and clear early warnings) can make the damage much smaller. The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) gives guidelines for managing floods.