Robinson novel’s 20 million India death scenario cited by scientists
Climate scientists are increasingly warning of the “Other Big One,” a catastrophic climate scenario once confined to fiction that researchers now discuss as a possibility, even an inevitability. The phrase plays off California’s reference to a “big one” earthquake and reflects growing alarm among researchers tracking the planetary conditions needed for a massive climate disturbance.
In the opening scene of American writer Kim Stanley Robinson’s “The Ministry for the Future,” a heat wave combined with a breakdown of the electrical grid in India kills 20 million people. The resulting catastrophe causes the world’s nations to unite to combat climate change.
Scientists have long warned that the world will experience more intense extreme weather events — heat waves, storms, floods and droughts — as the climate changes. What once seemed like the realm of fiction is now discussed as a possibility, even an inevitability.
Warning about an “extreme of extremes” can be fraught because nobody can say with certainty when a weather catastrophe may happen. Yet over the last few years, the planetary conditions needed for a massive disturbance have been building, and alarm is growing.
“The risk is that people just think you are exaggerating,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the California Institute for Water Resources, said. “It’s the ‘Boy Who Cried Wolf’ problem. Sometimes wolves are real. If it’s outside the door, wouldn’t you want to know?”