Hi,
Today’s newsletter is inspired by my colleague and The Correspondent’s “climate person” Eric Holthaus. In his own newsletter last week , Eric wrote: “Once you understand the intersectionality of the climate movement with all other justice-seeking movements, there is no way to not be a climate person.”
The word "intersectionality" is a mouthful but it simply means everything is connected. Race, class, gender, sickness/health, dis/ability - all the labels that define us criss-cross and play ping pong with each other in an infinite loop. You can’t make sense of one without also understanding the others.
I have been feeling Eric’s comment in my bones - make that my nostrils, tongue, lungs, and heart. Delhi’s air is poison. It becomes poison every winter. On Friday, 1 November, the city declared a public health emergency and shut down schools. The local government claims Delhi is 25% less polluted today than it was a few years ago, but that’s not saying much when the picture you are trying to improve upon looks like this:
Now, I don’t think I am stricken by climate grief - yet. But that doesn’t mean I am immune to the apocalypse around me. Thanks to my chronic anxiety, I have trouble breathing even when the air doesn’t smell, taste, and look like a million corpses burning. All of last week, I avoided heading outdoors and still succumbed to frequent panting sessions. I can no longer tell if it’s my anxiety that causing my chest to tighten or the viscous shit I am inhaling. Which means when I feel breathless and panicky now, I resist reaching out for the SOS anxiety pills till it gets really bad. And then I am in this crabby mood all day.
Every now and then, I stare guiltily at my 21-month-old, and shout at people for taking him outside or even leaving a door or window open in his vicinity. Chastising tweets like this don’t help with the guilt. (Aside: I am obsessed with guilt. Have you read my latest piece where a neuroscientist helps me map guilt in the brains of people who have had depression?)
It isn’t just me. A National Geographic story I read cites University of Chicago geneticist Andre Rzehtsky saying there could be a link between air pollution and mental illnesses, based on studies done by researchers in the US and Denmark. These two paragraphs in the story were chilling (or cold comfort):
“In the U.S., they first looked at 11 years of health insurance data for 151 million people who filed claims for four psychiatric disorders: bipolar disorder, major depression, personality disorder, and schizophrenia. They also looked at epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease.
They then analyzed EPA air, water, and land quality data by county and looked at where insurance claims and rates of intense pollution overlapped. Air pollution and bipolar disorder emerged as the strongest overlap.”
There you go, Eric. I guess I have no choice but to be a climate person now. Where are those cloth diapers we haven’t used since Pampers took over?
I’ve always known that disposable diapers end up in landfill and pollute the environment, but used them anyway. In fact I used to fight with my wife, who pressed for cloth, citing the prospect of the baby’s leaky bottom leaving trails all over the house. Breathing the deadly air of Delhi has given me a reason to change my thinking.
Go on then, tell me your most depressing environment story so I can feel better about myself.
Cheers,
Tanmoy