India’s Energy Leadership for Global Net Zero | ft. Jayant Sinha

So, Shreya, you raised some of the most important issues that we are confronting as a country.

We know that global warming is accelerating, that we've already, compared to the pre-industrial era, that is before 1850, have already warmed the planet by about 1.2, 1.3 degrees centigrade.

These are all UN numbers that I'm giving you, which represent the best scientific consensus right now.

Now, this warming has happened over the last 170 years, from 1850 prior to 1850 onwards.

And in that time, we warmed 1.2 degrees centigrade.

Now, the problem is from here on, from 2026 onwards, till about 2100.

The expectation is that we are going to go from about 1.2, 1.3 degrees of warming to about 2.6 to 2.8 degrees of warming.

That means 1.6 degrees centigrade in the next 70 years or so.

So in the last 170 years, we went 1.2 degrees.

In the next 70 years, we're going to do another 1.6 degrees.

So again, as an engineer, it's the derivative that is of great interest to me, right? Which means that the rate of warming has doubled.

So all the changes that we are seeing right now, those changes will come twice as fast now going forward because global warming is accelerating.

And frankly, the problem is there's very little we can do about it because we've already put that carbon into the atmosphere and we'll keep on producing it.

putting carbon into the atmosphere.

So we are in a situation where we are going to see very significant, very fast global warming, which means it's going to get warmer consistently.

And mind you, this 1.6 degrees centigrade further that's coming, 2.8 degrees centigrade in total by 2100.

I mean, I probably won't be around, but you all are much younger.

You'll be around.

When this happens, this represents global average mean temperature.

So when we say 2.8 degrees centigrade global warming, we're saying global average mean temperatures.

Now, two thirds of the planet is water.

One third is land.

So what does this mean for land temperatures? Means significantly more than 2.8 degrees centigrade.

What does this mean for maximum temperatures? It means even more.

So a very practical way to think about it is right now, Delhi consistently hits max temperatures of 46, 47, 48 in the summer.