The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change for 2025 offers a grim reckoning: over 1.7 million Indians died in 2022 due to exposure to PM2.5, a deadly particulate pollutant. The death toll is 38% higher than the corresponding figure in 2010. Fossil fuels were responsible for 44% of these deaths, with petrol use for road transport accounting for 2.69 lakh fatalities and coal from power plants causing nearly 3.94 lakh deaths. Mortality is not the only consequence of such poisoned air; the economic cost of it is staggering too. The Lancet report mentions that premature mortality in 2022 due to outdoor air pollution in India translated into a financial loss of $339.4 billion, or 9.5% of India’s GDP. The wider global picture is just as disconcerting. Twelve of the 20 indicators tracking health threats linked to climate change — from extreme heat to food insecurity to air pollution — have reached record highs.
At the core of this hydra-headed calamity lie institutional failures and complicities. Global fossil fuel subsidies still remain in spite of their deleterious effects on the environment. India’s climate and health ecosystems remain fragmented — public health bodies, urban planners and climate-adaptation agencies work in silos. The lack of uniform enforcement of air-quality standards, uneven monitoring of the threat, and the lack of political will to act against sources of pollution have led to the magnification of this crisis. Worse, the government often reaches for cosmetic measures: New Delhi’s experimentation with cloud-seeding instead of addressing the structural causes of environmental degradation is a case in point. Weak enforcement of laws and institutional complicity are not the only challenges though: the public indifference to poor air is shocking. Each Diwali, there is massive collective endorsement for polluting crackers, their noxious impact notwithstanding. The rise of religious majoritarianism seems to have encouraged a dangerous prioritisation of polluting rituals over considerations to health and environment. India can no longer afford to treat climate-health losses as collateral damage. The government must integrate climate policy and the economic consequences of climate change with the principles of governance and right to health, and undertake mitigatory actions across multiple fronts.